摘 要

唯美主义运动是19世纪末期的一场艺术运动，它倡导艺术之美，而这种美不含任何功利性的、道德的以及政治上的企图。奥斯卡·王尔德（1856-1900）作为唯美主义运动的真正代表，是唯美主义创作的实践者，又是唯美主义理论的倡导者。就艺术与现实的关系上来说，王尔德认为，艺术应该超脱现实，游离人生。他的小说《道林格雷的画像》充分体现了唯美主义。本文分为四个部分：第一部分简要介绍小说的内容、唯美主义运动的历史发展以及维多利亚时代的价值观，并且列出相关学者对该小说的批判评价；第二部分介绍作者写作的背景信息并分析小说中三个角色与作者自身的相似处；第三部分提出唯美主义的三个主要原则在小说中的体现：艺术至上、艺术是完全独立的以及艺术是超道德的，并进一步分析了艺术与道德的关系；第四部分是结论，先对每一章节的内容做一个概述，再对文章的中心主旨做一个总结并升华。

关键词：王尔德； 唯美主义运动； 道林格雷的画像

Abstract

Aestheticism movement was an art movement which advocated only the beauty of art, excluding any utilitarian, moral, or political purpose in the late 19^th-century. Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) as the representative of this movement was not only the practitioner of aestheticism but an advocate of aesthetic ideas as well. Considering the relationship between art and reality, he regarded that art is beyond reality and free from the real life. His novel The Picture of Dorian Gray fully embodies his aesthetic values. This paper consists of four main parts: The first part includes the context of the novel, the development of aestheticism movement and the values of the Victorian time. Besides, critical comments from related scholars are also listed in the introduction. The second part contains the background of the novel, including how two literary works influenced the novel and how three characters resemble Oscar Wilde himself. The third part introduces three main principles of aestheticism reflected in the novel: art is supreme, art is independent, and art is irrelevant to morality and further analyzes the relationship between art and morality. The last part is the conclusion of the whole paper, summarizing every chapter and illuminating the theme of the paper.

Key Words: Oscar Wilde; Aestheticism movement; The Picture of Dorian Gray

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The Background of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray 5

2.1 Writing Inspiration of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray 5

2.2 The Resemblance between Characters and Oscar Wilde 6

3 Aesthetic Principles in The Picture of Dorian Gray 8

3.1 Supremacy of Art 8

3.2 Independence of Art 8

3.3 The Relationship between Art and Morality 9

4. Conclusion 12

Reference 13

Acknowledgements 14

Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's

The Picture of Dorian Gray

1 Introduction

Among all the classic books in the literary circle, Oscar Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray has been a wonderful masterpiece over the years. The study on aestheticism cannot be really achieved without mentioning Oscar Wilde as his famous works made him a disputed figure for Aestheticism. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. Being a spokesman for aestheticism, Wilde had actively participated in a variety of literary activities, such as writing a book of poems, taking lectures in North America and working as a journalist. Wilde’s attitude towards aestheticism was deeply influenced by his college teacher, Walter Pater whose philosophy of life was regarded as a “Golden Book” by Wilde. Oscar Wilde was good at writing poems, plays, and short stories. However, in his whole life, he only wrote one novel, which is The Picture of Dorian Gray. In the novel, there are three main male characters who had different values of life yet shared the same goal: chasing beauty in life. Dorian Gray, a man with alluring beauty, was innocent and naive at first. He was later introduced to aesthetic values by Lord Henry, a wise man with original views of life. The third man was Basil Hallward, an artist who drew an extraordinary portrait of Dorian Gray which changed his entire life.

The novel shows Wilde’s idea of aestheticism. In the 1860s, the aestheticism movement started from a little group of artists who were dissatisfied with the status quo. Those typically included William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The former was an English poet, novelist and socialist; the latter was as well an English poet who founded Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. These young artists found totally different ways of living which against the traditional values of Victorian society. Aestheticism had developed rapidly since increasing reformers involved in this movement for chasing the pure beauty. The sprouting of the aesthetic movement caused a radical impact on that time, meanwhile, the ideas they spread were in dramatic contrast to the Victorian values. French poet Théophile Gautier came up with the concept “Art for art’s sake”, which later was regarded as a battle cry of the movement. Aestheticism movement battled against the traditional values of beauty, art, and lifestyles in the Victorian age. Reformers established the Grosvenor Gallery as their talking-shop in 1877. It was more like a Royal Academy where they expressed original ideas of art. The talking-shop was where Oscar Wilde chose to make his first sensational appearance. Thus, the aestheticism movement gradually altered to performance art. One of the main principles of aestheticism is that art is not restricted to artistic work. Art is everywhere, in public or private places, in the attitude that how we live our lives.

One of the main factors of aestheticism is poetry, from the work of Pre-Raphaelites, Swinburne, and William Morris, through to flourish of poetic voices in the final decades of the 19th century. Those who were important in this movement include Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons and Vernon Lee. Since their writing styles contained a lot of stylistic techniques of imaginative writing and a large amount of allusion and metaphor, they were sometimes condemned as “purple prose”, which means “the prose text is so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw excessive attention to itself”(West, 2014). Oscar Wilde’s writing is typical of the Aestheticism. His work is full of playfulness and paradoxes, rejecting the old-fashioned, conservative Victorian values. Those aesthetes maintained an opposite view to traditional forms through art. Among all these aesthetes, Oscar Wilde took it into practice: performing himself as a flawless, well-mannered figure. His attitude could be even presented in how he dressed in his personal life. One way he tried to conform to aesthetic lifestyle is dressing formally. He put much effort into his clothing choices, which led to a new trend of fashion style. He always wore a velvet jacket, knee pants, black silk stockings, white shirt with a big collar, green scarf and a buttonhole in the shape of a sunflower or a lily. Speaking of the lily, he mentioned this flower several times in the novel, which became a symbol of his aesthetic lifestyle. Lily represents purity, innocence, and beauty. He carried out aesthetic principles in all details in his life. He even called himself the professor of Aestheticism.

Different from other values, aesthetic values mainly explain the importance of beauty. As Robert Vincent Johnson notes, “aestheticism is not one single phenomenon, but a group of related phenomena, all reflecting a conviction that the enjoyment of beauty can by itself give value and meaning to life”(Johnson, 1969, p.179). In aesthete’s view, art can be separated from life. However, its existence threatened the Victorian morality as it highly focused on sensual pleasures and the pursuit of beauty in art.

The Picture of Dorian Gray has raised many controversial opinions and critics in the society at that critical period of time since it was published. Victorian criticism tended to evaluate literature through the demands of morality and utility. “Most of the public furor over the perversity of Dorian Gray should no doubt be judged in light of the prevailing Victorian standard of moral earnestness as a mark of sincerity”, as Karl Beckson urges. “In the eyes of his contemporaries, Wilde's carefully cultivated role as a public sinner spoke louder than any protestations he made on behalf of his novel. Thus, despite his own best efforts in his defense, even a sympathetic critic like Walter Pater responded to topical interests rather than to the novel’s serious concern” (Dickson, 1983). “Clever always, this book, however, seems to set forth anything but a homely philosophy of life for the middle-class - a kind of dainty Epicurean theory father -yet fails, to some degree, in this; and one can see why. A true Epicureanism aims at a complete though harmonious development of man's entire organism. To lose the moral sense therefore, for instance, the sense of sin and righteousness, as Mr. Wilde's heroes are bent on doing so speedily, as completely as they can, is to lose, or lower, organization, to become less complex, to pass from a higher to a lower degree of development” (Pateramp; Matthew, 2010, p.143).

Being against the critical opinion that the novel promoted immorality, Robert Boyle, an English literary critic of the 19^th century described Oscar’s work, “Those who rage and howl, like the critics of Wilde’s novel, suffer from seeing their own savage faces reflected in the artist’s creation. For the artist morality is of interest only as subject matter; ethics should not constrict his scope, nor does he concern himself with encouraging or discouraging the moral behavior. The work of art is totally useless; it finds its goal within itself, a beautiful creation reflecting all things human. It should be contemplated for itself, and aims at no other use. Thus, the critics who condemn it as having evil effects should look inside themselves for the causes of those effects, not in the work.” (Gale, 2005, p.12)

James Joyce, an Irish novelist, and poet critically commented about the novel: “Wilde seems to have some good intentions in writing it — some wish to put himself before the world — but the book is rather crowded with lies and epigrams. If he had had the courage to develop the allusions in the book it might have been better.” (Beckson, 1974, p.96) Joyce considered Wilde as a novelist who was unwilling to expose himself and lacked the courage to break through. He considered that the purpose of literature was to show the psychological complexity of people’s experience.