Abstract

Oscar Wilde is famed as an advocator of Aesthetic Movement, with the failure of his lawsuit in which he was charged with homosexuality, Aesthetic Movement failed too.  

Among all his works, The Picture of Dorian Gray best reveals his aesthetic view. This paper demonstrates and summarizes several outstanding features of aestheticism by analyzing its plotting, characters and its rhetoric diction. 

First of all, Wilde believes the supremacy of art and that it can only be achieved through the pursuit of beauty in life and the fulfillment of senses, just as what he exclaims that “beauty guides life”. Dorian Gray’s infatuation to his painting picture and his love for Sybil as the embodiment of Shakespearean art shows his preference to sensorial pleasure, which is fully analyzed in Chapter One in this paper. 

Secondly, Wilde thinks highly of individuality and attach great importance to individual instinct so that he encouraged to free one’s instinctive nature and to seize every opportunity for sensorial enjoyment. In Chapter Two, Dorian Gray’s decadent and debauchery life, taking sensorial pleasures as the sole meaning of life, is revealed in detail, which echoes with Wilde’s ideal above-mentioned.

Thirdly, in Chapter three, Wilde faces evils and tries to transfer them into beauty through artistic creation. He realizes that a person’s nature and instinct should be taken seriously. As long as one’s instinct can be free, the beauty can be found even in the ugliness and darkness. His above-mentioned thoughts are fully taken effect by Dorian in the novel. 

Wilde also emphasizes the aesthetics in stylistic form and language, which is analyzed in Chapter Four. He carefully refines his diction in the novel, making the bitter irony and paradoxical statements another feature of the novel.

Key words: aestheticism; sensorial pleasure; individual instinct; stylistic form

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

I. Introduction-6

II. Aesthetic Sensibility-8

2.1 Irrational Love-8

2.2 Pervasiveness of Aesthetic Sense-9

III. Aesthetic Lifestyle—New Hedonism-11

3.1 Dorian’s Fall-11

3.2 Pursuit of Instant Pleasure and Instinctive Liberation-12

IV. Aesthetic Immorality-15

4.1 Beauty from the Ugliness and Darkness-15

4.2 Beauty from the Hidden Homosexuality-16

V. Aesthetic Form—Wilde’s Innovative Style and Language-20

5.1 Plot design-20

5.2 Tactful Language-22

VI. Conclusion-24

Bibliography-26