Date of Award
5-2004
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. Abigail Cheever
Second Advisor
Dr. Elisabeth Gruner
Third Advisor
Dr. John Marx
Abstract
Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray calls for a reinvention of aestheticism during the Victorian Age. Wilde felt that the Victorians had surrendered any ornamentation in art to the rules of formality in religion and politics. He also believed that art should teach solely through its existence that there is a realm above mankind. Art should not be used for anything else. Dorian curses himself when he uses his portrait to exchange his soul for eternal beauty. Wilde wrote this novel as his work of art. And, the novel is to "civilize" the Victorian public, to return them to a Hellenic and Renaissance ideal, thus contradicting his aesthetic beliefs. Also, Wilde used the novel to cunningly mask his homosexual life. Wilde ingeniously presents his didactic anti-didacticism through a complex and complicated novel about art and its dangers and rewards.
Recommended Citation
Finney, Dominic Laron, "Didactic anti-didacticism : aesthetics and contradictions in Oscar Wilde's The picture of Dorian Gray" (2004). Master's Theses. 648.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/masters-theses/648