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Summary THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY A* context sheet
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A* level context and arguments for the prose section of English Literature Edexcel A-level - THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde
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Influence James 1:27, without sin is ‘unspotted’
The Yellow Book: a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who spent his life trying
to realise in the 19th century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every
century except his own… full of argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of
elaborate paraphrases [LH!!!]
THE EPIGRAM; two structures, a statement followed by a conclusion and the other a
transition between the two. Wilde believed the latter diluted the wit by lengthening the
phrase.
o Due to the egotistic nature of Wilde's character's, he adapts this configuration by
writing in the first person to make the speaker the subject of his or her epigram.
o 'An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.' - Edwin
Whipple
Boundaries of life and art
Walter Pater and aestheticism – fixation on subjective consciousness and individual desire.
Wilde reflects om Victorian morality and anticipates a modern sense of replica without
substance.
o 1873, Studies in the History of the Renaissance - acknowledgment of hidden and
mysterious motives and desires
Aestheticism – highly conscious/sensual engagement to every moment (lover’s suicide is
perfect fulfilment)
o Style; 'purple prose', stylistic techniques of imaginative writing, often densely
allusive. Wilde's writing further relished in playfulness and paradox.
o French symbolism and Decadence – response to utilitarianism and industrialisation
o Keats - Wilde thought Keats a pioneer of aestheticism; 'What the imagination seizes
as Beauty must be truth' - he declared in a letter to his friends Benjamin Bailey
Swinburne - insisted the beauty of poetic form and what e deemed 'perfect workmanship'
made any subject admirable.
Nietzsche, Wagner and Hegel – tragedy is the highest form of art, it can deal with darkest
and most sublime aspects of human nature (esp during darkness of industrialisation).
Tragedy confronts the grim reality and redeems us from vulgarity it through an overture of
human passion.
Constant use of chiasmus – acknowledges Dorian’s moulding to high society, but embraces
a sense of primitivism.
3rd person, omniscient narrator, allows detached/moral commentary and then the
omniscience which implies a sense of intimacy
Art and Morality
Many Victorians believed that literature and art fulfilled important ethical roles, however for
aestheticists, art was primarily about the elevation of taste and the pure pursuit of beauty
They believed arts should be judged on the basis of from rather than morality - 'art for art's
sake'
Exoticism
Les Fleurs du mal - (The Flowers of Evil) volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire.
Deals with themes of decadence and eroticism , particularly focusing on suffering and its
relationship to origional sin, disgust toward evil and oneself, obsession with death, and
aspiration toward an ideal world.
Youth/ Defilement
Max Nordau, Degeneration (1890s) – argues conservative view that society is in decline –
social orders are falling apart – Wilde idealised eternal youth and beauty
Fin de Silecla – period at the end of Victorian period, bridge between Victorians and
beginnings of new and modern (decadence)
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