Oscar Wilde and the Art of Irony: A Study of His Novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', Appunti di Lingue e letterature classiche

Scarica Oscar Wilde and the Art of Irony: A Study of His Novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' e più Appunti in PDF di Lingue e letterature classiche solo su Docsity! OSCAR WILDE Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin. He attended the University of Oxford where he approached the aesthetic movement. He will later become the leader of the Aesthetic Movement. Wilde's first literary success was the novel "THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY" released in 1891, an extremely decadent and at the same time full of mystery romazo. He also wrote many comedies, the most famous is certainly "THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST" of 1895. His career came to a halt when he was jailed for his homosexuality in 1895. In prison he wrote the "DE PROFUNDIS", an autobiographical letter. He died in 1900 in Paris. He was the perfect Dandy, the man for whom perfection in dress was as important as perfection in art. for Wilde there was no difference in fact, he wanted his life to be his masterpiece. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST Released in February 1895 the importance of being Ernest was an instant hit. The comedy is based on continuous misunderstandings, discoveries, revelations, held together by a brilliant dialogue. It is based on two main schemes: question / answer and question / answer / comment. The work abounds with irony, sarcasm, nonsense, puns and paradoxes. The humor comes from what the characters say and how they say it and the actors, to be successful, have to appear unflappable when exchanging lines. This is Wilde's technique of opposites: treating all serious things in life with banality. These somewhat extreme situations reveal the superficiality of the English upper classes and their lives. The success of the show is due to the fact that he turns the unpleasant realities of life into funny jokes. Wilde's drama is in language, situations and characters allow words to show increasingly witty and refined conversational patterns. This work belongs to the genre called: "Artificial Comedy", which suspends the moral judgment present in real life. THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY This is Wilde's only novel that best sums up his aesthetic theory of a life of sensation and pleasure as the supreme art form. The man of taste, like the artist, is above common morality and must pursue his own aesthetic goals, even if this has a tragic outcome in the novel. The plot has similarities with popular fairy tales where a person's life is strictly dependent on a magical object. But Wilde managed to include the most complete literary statement of his aesthetic doctrine: for Dorian the pursuit of pleasure and beauty is the true purpose of life, "life itself is the first, the greatest of the arts". This is also stated in the novel's preface. Although it is an important document for both Dorian and Wilde himself, there is a risk of taking these aphorisms too literally, while their true value lies in the way they fit into the novel and Wilde's actual conversations. The novel contains many elements of the mystery visible everywhere. The ending of the novel is in line with classic horror and crime stories, in particular it has many points of contact with Stevenson's "THE STRANGE CASE OF DOCTOR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE". Apparently the novel seems to have no moral foundation. Dorian ignores moral considerations and even normal human feelings: his lifestyle causes three deaths. But the story's ending contains a moral message that there is a price to pay for a life of pleasure. this is not explicitly stated in the novel but we find it in another work by Wilde, "De profundis", written in prison. CHARLES DICKENS Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812. He moved with his family to London until his father was imprisoned due to debt. Then he had to go to work in the factory and this marked him a lot, so much so that the conditions of the boys in the factories, the poverty of some london neighborhoods are themes present in his works. Then he wrote comic journals and adopted the name of Boz and in 1836 wrote “Sketches by Boz”. Then he wrote the Picwick Papers. He died for a stroke in 1870. He knew the social injustices, the poverty of the masses which led him to have a critical vision of reality. In Oliver Twist he talks about an orphan who lives in terrible conditions in the workhouses. In Nicholas Nickleby ha attacks cruelty in boarding schools, in Hard Times he criticizes the factory sistem and utilitarism. In 1840 he wrote his most famous novel A christmas carol, where we find a combination of feelings, supernatural and moral and symbolic objectives. Then he writers David Copperfield, his masterpice, which his a semi-autobiographical book in which he talks about the sufferings of childhood. Then there is Great Expectations, that can be defined as a Bildungrsroman. Dickens’s novels are set in the countryside, provincial towns, industrial settlements and Victorian London. His characters are orphans, criminals who came from lower class and are described with great care. The aristocrats are often falls into stereotypes. Often tends to divide the characters into good and bad. In his plots we find intrigues and mysteries and coincidences. He is the master of the English language. He manages to combine the pathetic with the comic and social criticism. The strong point of his style his humor. He greatly influenced his contemporary writers, but also later writers such as Kafka and Dostoyevsky. He was able to combine social realism with symbolism and to represent some aspects of the human psyche. OLIVER TWIST Oliver Twist is about the adventures of an orphan who tries to keep his angelic nature despite the hars life around him. Dickens combined sentiment with social satire and realism. He wants to highlight serious problems such as the bad treatment of the orphans of the workhouses. In fact he criticizes the new poor law for this reason. Dickens was good at mixing social criticism with description of some characters such as Mr Bumble or Mrs Mann. HARD TIMES The story is set in an imaginary industrialized city, COKETOWN. The novel is built around two problems: the system of the factory, and the application of the principles of utilitarian philosophy, according to which everything is judge on the basis of its value. We find naturalistic and highly symbolic scenes, and some passages are comical and satirical, such as the scenes of the definition of the words horse, in which we have the point of view of Bitzer and that of the teacher.