Download or read book The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Aesthetic Movement in England at the Turn of the Century written by Natalia Spektor and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-05 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), course: Proseminar B: London Past and Present: Literary and Cultural Heritage of a Metropolis, 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: There are some famous writers at the end of the 19th century who are often mentioned as "decadent". They have asserted the superiority of beauty and pleasure over all other considerations. Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray presents the aestheticism and the hedonist way of living. The novel anticipates developments and structures of society of that time. The importance of Dorian's experiences refutes the decadent theories which are described in the Yellow Book that enthralls the protagonist. The novel as a whole can be seen as a psychological study which analyzes the gradual debasement of Dorian's nature. At the end of the story he is responsible for every vice and crime including murder. The author shows that on the one hand pleasure and beauty are the highest goods, on the other hand he argues that they also bring death and crime. The task of this research paper is to analyze the mentioned contradiction and the influence of the Aesthetic movement on the novel as well as Oscar Wilde's view of art. I would like to begin with a brief survey of the social and intellectual background at the end of the 19th century, exploring the major art movements of that time and how far they affect Wilde's work. Afterwards his main principles of Aestheticism and their reflection in the novel are analyzed as well as Dorian's life under the influence of the hedonist model. Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray reveals the contradictions of Wilde's relationship with the decadent trends of that time. He adopts and proclaims their esthetical and literary views, but the flippant amoralism that he sometimes parades so defiantly is belied by the final catastr

Download or read book Summary of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde written by getAbstract AG and published by getAbstract AG. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 17 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oscar Wilde was the model of the dandy, with his impeccable style of dressing, exquisite manners and unrivaled quick-wittedness. As the 19th century ended and the 20th began, Oscar Wilde was the toast of London’s high society. But the publication of Wilde’s only novel changed everything: In 1890, The Picture of Dorian Gray caused a minor scandal that would grow into a major one five years later, when the author was found guilty of homosexual activity. In the book, the dazzling youth Dorian wishes to stay young and handsome forever, while his portrait ages in his place. He indulges in depraved pleasures and doesn’t stop short of murder, until his conscience awakens at long last: Yet it takes a personal sacrifice for the picture and its model to switch places again. Thanks to the witty dialogue, the novel is fun to read, and the merciless cult of youth and beauty remains as topical in today’s age of social media self-promoters and reality stars as it was in Victorian England. This novel is one of Wilde’s most disturbing and profound works – humankind’s dream and nightmare simultaneously come true. This summary of The Picture of Dorian Gray was produced by getAbstract, the world's largest provider of book summaries. getAbstract works with hundreds of the best publishers to find and summarize the most relevant content out there. Find out more at getabstract.com.

Download or read book The Aesthetic Movement in England written by Walter Hamilton and published by . This book was released on 1882 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-30 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this summary, study guide, character list, are included as bonus.Oscar Wilde's preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray consists of a list of Wilde's aphorisms that deal directly with art, artists, critics, and audience but only obliquely with the novel. They speak to the importance of beauty espoused by the Aesthetic movement.The preface offers one of Wilde's most famous aphorisms: "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." According to Wilde, the artist might consider the moral or immoral lives of people as part of the subject matter of a work, but art itself is not meant to instruct the reader. The true artist is not out to prove anything and makes no judgments of right or wrong. What people call "vices" or "virtues" are merely materials for the artist. Those who attempt to go beneath the surface of a work, or to read meaning into a symbol, do so at their own risk. Considerable disagreement about a work of art only proves that the work is "new, complex, and vital

Download or read book Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde s the Picture of Dorian Gray written by Jannis Rudzki-Weise and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2010-12 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2.0, University of Kassel, course: Anglo-American Literature, language: English, abstract: Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, can be considered a revolutionary piece of literature not only because it broke out of the traditional value and belief pattern of the Victorian society but also because it replaced the traditional pattern with new concepts coined by Wilde and his former tutors. Several themes such as homoeroticism, an aesthetic lifestyle or influence and corruption, were issues that many had been afraid to address in the time before Wilde. In this research paper, I will place my main focus on the matter of aestheticism, the causes that it has and the consequences that result from an aesthetic lifestyle. In order to analyze these aspects, it is inevitable to have a closer look at Oscar Wilde's beliefs about art and morality which serve as a basis for understanding the main character's behavior in the novel. To begin my paper, I will outline Wilde's thoughts on art and aestheticism as presented in his famous selection, Intentions, which consists of a number of essays and dialogues on aesthetics as well as his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray that has been regarded as Wilde's personal praise of aestheticism. This background information is essential to understanding the main character's motivations in the story, which can often be related to Wilde's life as an artist. I will then make a detailed analysis of the characters Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton, Sibyl Vane and Dorian Gray and will explain how their aesthetic behavior and their moral beliefs can be linked to Wilde's thoughts. To end, I will attempt to summarize my findings referring to the statement that Wilde also included criticism of aestheticism in his novel. The term 'aestheticism' derives from Greek, meaning "perceiving through senses" and is a nineteenth-century European concept that rej

Download or read book English Literature from the 19th Century Through Today written by J. E. Luebering Manager and Senior Editor, Literature and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the works, writers, and movements that shaped the British literary canon from the nineteenth century through the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Studies in the History of the Renaissance written by Walter Pater and published by . This book was released on 1873 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pater's first major work, a study of kindred spirits in love of beauty. Criticized as a "demoralizing moralizer".--Jim Kepner ; Oscar Wilde's favorite book by Pater (Greif, p. 157) ; Includes essays on Pico della Mirandola, Michelangelo, da Vinci and Winckelmann.

Download or read book Quicklet on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde CliffNotes like Summary and Analysis written by Lacey Kohlmoos and published by Hyperink Inc. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If you could drink, smoke, and eat as much as you wanted and see no change in your appearance, would you indulge? If you could cheat, steal, and even murder without any consequences, would you do it? What would you sacrifice for eternal youth and beauty? Is your soul too much of a price to pay? With The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde weaves a tale of love, betrayal, murder, and revenge that delves into all these questions and more. When Dorian sees a portrait of himself and becomes aware of his own intense youth and beauty, he proclaims that he would give anything to preserve his looks and let the portrait grow old instead. This simple wish uttered in a moment of passion changes his life forever. As the portrait grows old over time and bears the marks of Dorian’s bad habits and cruelty, his innocent and youthful face never changes. As he sets out on a mission to experience every type of pleasure that the world has to offer, he discovers that he can get away with anything. Even murder. The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s only novel. When it was first released, its homoerotic undertones and harsh criticism of strict Victorian morality made it wildly controversial. The novel was even used as evidence against Wilde when he was tried for “gross indecency.” Today it is considered classic literature and often read in high school and college English classes. The book’s themes, as well as the author himself, continue to intrigue readers. Wilde challenges people to look at the way they live their lives and question their happiness. Are they freely pursuing happiness or constricting their personal growth by repressing their desires? Although written over 100 years ago, the story’s intrigue still holds up and even manages to deliver quite a few shocking moments. As Dorian plunges into the grimy underworld of Victorian London, he does things that many people would condemn in public while secretly wishing that they could do the same. Perhaps this is why The Picture of Dorian Gray has been adapted into numerous movies. There is nothing sweeter than forbidden fruit.

Download or read book The Aesthetic Movement written by Lionel Lambourne and published by Phaidon Press. This book was released on 2011-08-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Aesthetic Movement swept through England in the latter part of the nineteenth century, touching every sphere of the fine and decorative arts and bringing a new freedom to all aspects of design. In architecture, the dogmatism of Gothic gave way to the charm of Queen Anne. In interiors, heavy Victorian forms were replaced by the lighter, fresher Japanese-inspired shapes; in the graphic arts, innovative methods - coupled with a new approach to form - led to the revitalization of illustration and book design. Personified by such colourful figures as James McNeill Whistler, Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, the movement was held together by the coherence of its philosophy and its adamant faith in elegance and richness. This beautiful and witty book will prove invaluable to enthusiasts of design and architecture and to all those intrigued by the social history of the period.

Download or read book British Aestheticism and the Urban Working Classes 1870 1900 written by D. Maltz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-11-22 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cultural study reveals the interdependence between British Aestheticism and late-Victorian social-reform movements. Following their mentor John Ruskin who believed in art's power to civilize the poor, cultural philanthropists promulgated a Religion of Beauty as they advocated practical schemes for tenement reform, university-settlement education, Sunday museum opening, and High Anglican revival. Although subject to novelist's ambivalent, even satirical, representations, missionary aesthetes nevertheless constituted an influential social network, imbuing fin-de-siecle artistic communities with political purpose and political lobbies with aesthetic sensibility.

Download or read book The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-10-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Dorian Gray has his portrait painted, he is captivated by his own beauty. Set in fin-de-siecle London, this novel traces a path from the studio of painter Basil Hallward to the opium dens of the East End. Combining elements of the supernatural, aestheticism, and the Gothic, this is a work of fiction.

Download or read book The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde and published by . This book was released on 2020-08-29 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in a paperback edition. This volume restores material, including instances of graphic homosexual content, removed by the novel's first editor, who feared it would be "offensive" to Victorians.

Download or read book The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-11 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Picture of Dorian Gray altered the way Victorians understood the world they inhabited, heralding the end of a repressive era. Now, more than 120 years after Wilde handed it over to his publisher, Wilde’s uncensored typescript is published here for the first time, in an annotated, extensively illustrated edition.

Download or read book The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in a paperback edition. This volume restores material, including instances of graphic homosexual content, removed by the novel’s first editor, who feared it would be “offensive” to Victorians.

Download or read book Dorian Unbound written by Sean O'Toole and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold reimagining of the literary history of Decadence through a close examination of the transnational contexts of Oscar Wilde's classic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Building upon a large body of archival and critical work on Oscar Wilde's only novel, Dorian Unbound offers a new account of the importance of transnational contexts in the forging of Wilde's imagination and the wider genealogy of literary Decadence. Sean O'Toole argues that the attention critics have rightly paid to Wilde's backgrounds in Victorian Aestheticism and French Decadence has had the unintended effect of obscuring a much broader network of transnational contexts. Attention to these contexts allows us to reconsider how we read The Picture of Dorian Gray, what we believe we know about Wilde, and how we understand literary Decadence as both a persistent, highly mobile cultural mode and a precursor to global modernism. In developing a transnational framework for reading Dorian Gray, O'Toole recovers a subterranean network of nineteenth-century cultural movements. At the same time, he joins several active and vital conversations about what it might mean to expand the geographical reach of Victorian studies and to trace the globalization of literature over a longer period of time. Dorian Unbound includes chapters on the Irish Gothic, German historical romance, US magic-picture tradition, and experimental English epigrams, as well as a detailed history and a new close reading of the novel, in an effort to understand Wilde's contribution to a more dynamic idea of Decadence than has been previously known. From its rigorous account of the broad archive of texts that Wilde read and the array of cultural movements from which he drew inspiration in writing Dorian Gray to the novel's afterlives and global resonances, O'Toole paints a richer picture of the author and his famously allusive prose. This book makes a compelling case for a comparative reading of the novel in a global context. It will appeal to historians and admirers of Wilde's career as well as to scholars of nineteenth-century literature, queer and narrative theory, Irish studies, and art history.

Download or read book The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde and published by Xist Publishing. This book was released on 2016-03-24 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde from Coterie Classics All Coterie Classics have been formatted for ereaders and devices and include a bonus link to the free audio book. “Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray A man sells his soul for eternal youth and scandalizes the city in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.