scholarly journals Review of Michael Davis’s “Mind and Matter in The Picture of Dorian Gray”

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-78
Author(s):  
Hannah Brunning
Keyword(s):  
Picture Of Dorian Gray ◽  
Dorian Gray

The Criminal Emperors of Ancient Rome and Wilde’s ‘true historical sense’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shushma Malik
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Picture Of Dorian Gray ◽  
Dorian Gray ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores how Wilde uses ‘historic sense’ (the intuition of a learned historian and the antecedent of historical criticism) as a tool with which to analyse the past, particularly the criminal emperors of ancient Rome. In his essay ‘Pen, Pencil, and Poison’, Wilde claims that ‘true historical sense’ in relation to the past allows us to ignore the crimes of Nero and Tiberius, and instead to recognize and appreciate them as artists. His decadent reading of the past is undermined, however, when we compare this version of historically guided intuition with his definition of the phrase in other works. By examining ‘Pen, Pencil, and Poison’ alongside The Picture of Dorian Gray and ‘Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis’, we can see how Wilde manipulates his readings of the criminal emperors of Rome in order to fit his own changing relationship with Decadence and the (im)morality of crime.

Wilde’s New Republic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marylu Hill
Keyword(s):  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Classical Training ◽  
Picture Of Dorian Gray ◽  
New Republic ◽  
Dorian Gray ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Philosophical Questions

As a result of his classical training in the Honours School of Literæ Humaniores at Oxford, Oscar Wilde drew frequently on the works of Plato for inspiration, especially the Republic. The idea of a New Republic and its philosophy resonated profoundly with Wilde—so much so that the philosophical questions raised in Plato’s Republic become the central problems of The Picture of Dorian Gray. This chapter maps the parallels between the Republic and Dorian Gray, with specific focus on several of Plato’s most striking images from the Republic. In particular, the depiction of Lord Henry suggests not only the philosophical soul gone corrupt, but also the ‘drone’ who seduces the oligarchic young man into a life of ‘unprincipled freedom’, according to Plato’s definition of democracy. By invoking the Socratic lens, Wilde critiques Lord Henry’s anti-philosophy of the ‘New Hedonism’ and contrasts it with the Socratic eros.

The Inability of the Victorian Gentleman to Reconcile Hedonism and Guilt in The Picture of Dorian Gray

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamarra Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Primary Component ◽  
Picture Of Dorian Gray ◽  
Dorian Gray ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Societal Expectations

The conflict between the rules of society and the rights of the individual can lead to a chaotic moral state. In Michael Brander’s The Victorian Gentleman, Brander details how Victorian gentlemen are permitted freedom as long as they adhere to social norms in public. In Joris-Karl’s Huysmans’ À Rebours, Huysmans details how a member of the Decadent movement, Des Esseintes, prioritizes the fulfilment of his own desires over societal expectations. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde demonstrates how the tension between the Victorian pressure to conform and the Decadent philosophy to seek pleasure leads to Dorian Gray’s downfall. In his condemnation of the Victorians for their equation of appearancewith morality, and the Decadents for their preference of sensation over morality in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde endeavours to show the consequences of the suppression of guilt.In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the tension between the Victorian notion of the appearance of morality and the Decadent tendency to subvert the significance of art to moralityculminates in Dorian Gray’s inability to accept that he possesses guilt. As his participation in the Decadent lifestyle leads to his indulgence and vice, and he cannot distinguish between his looksand his conscience, he experiences the loss of the primary component of morality: the soul.

scholarly journals Art, the Artist and Ethics in Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Zrinka Frleta
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Picture Of Dorian Gray ◽  
Dorian Gray ◽  
Art For Art's Sake ◽  
Art And Ethics

This paper examines ideological and philosophical premises of aestheticism, presented in Wilde's critical essays (The Critic as Artist and The Decay of Lying), and epigrams in the preface to the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which both offer a philosophical context to the novel. Aestheticism emphasized that art can not be subordinated to moral, social, religious and didactic goals, because its ultimate goal is art itself, l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake). „Art never expresses anything but itself.“ „All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals.“ „Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.“ „Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.“ (Wilde, 1891). The relations between art and reality (concealment of reality) and art and ethics (an ethical function of art) have been explored through the interaction of the characters of Basil Hallward and Sibyl Vane with Dorian Gray. The paper also examines the role of the artist, his morality in the process of creating and experiencing the work, and the influence of the work of art on the artist himself/herself.

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