Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Classic Characters in English and American Literature

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)

R.Baena
15.XI.2013
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Life and work of Oscar Wilde

1. Genre. Reading pact

2. Plot and structure

3. Characters

4. Symbols and Themes

5. Ethics and Aesthetics

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Life
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (Dublin 1854, Paris 1900)

Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford

Aestheticism: English poet and critic, English essayist Walter Pater.
Frank Miles, painter, and aesthete Lord Ronald Gower

1882, Lecture tour in America

1884, Marriage to Constance Lloyd
1895-1897, imprisonment with hard labour
1897-1900, Paris
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Work

1881, first book of Poems

1888, The Happy Prince and Other Tales
1889, The Decay of Lying
1890, The Picture of Dorian Gray
1892, Lady Windermere’s Fan
1893, A Woman of No Importance
1895, An Ideal Husband
1895, The Importance of Being Earnest
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

1. Genre

Novel
Gothic
Realism
Tragedy

R.L. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886

Myth of Narcissus
Myth of Faust
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

2. Plot and structure

Dramatic elements. Settings. Dialogues. Disquisitions.

1st part: 10 chapters (Lord Henry’s influence?

2nd part: 10 chapters (18 years later, his life as an adult)

Turning point:

“If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to
grow old! For that –for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is
nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for
that!” (49, chapter II).
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

3. Characters

Dorian Gray. Extremely handsome, impressionable, and wealthy

young gentleman. Sells his soul to the devil. Obssesed with beauty
and youth.

Lord Henry Wotton. Flat character. Corruption. New Hedonism.

“You never say a moral thing and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism
is simply a pose” (Basil on Lord Henry 26).

Basil Hallward. Round character. Friendship. Artist. Fatalism. Moral

concerns.

“Basil Hallwards is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks of
me; Dorian is what I would like to be!” (Oscar Wilde)
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Def. literary terms:

Character: a verbal representation of a human being. Through

action, speech, description, and commentary authors portray
characters. Flat character undergo no change, they are like human
types. Round characters do change during the story.

Symbol: something (a thing, an idea or an object) that represents an

abstract idea.

Theme: central or dominating idea in a literary work, often an

abstract concept which is made concrete through character and
actions.
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

4. Symbols:
The portrait
The yellow book
The opium dens
Theatre

Themes:
The purpose of art
Astheticism. Double life.
Evil in human nature.
Ambition (other classic characters?)
Minor themes: friendship, life as drama…
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

5. Ethics and Aesthetics

“Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid
and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle
magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic
form to formless things, and to have a music of their own… Was
there anything so real as words?” (The Picture of DG 42).

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things… No artist has ethical

sympathies… All art is quite useless”
(Preface to The Picture of DG)
“
“My work will ultimately be recognized as a real work of art with a
strong ethical lesson inherent in it” (Oscar Wilde).