On Characters in“the Picture of Dorian Gray”——An Interpretation of Oscar Wilde’ [4]
论文作者:佚名论文属性:短文 essay登出时间:2009-04-16编辑:黄丽樱点击率:9553
论文字数:2973论文编号:org200904161321317594语种:英语 English地区:中国价格:免费论文
关键词:aestheticismhedonismnarcissismdandyismcynicismsensibility
ho comments on his niece in chapter three---“what brings you out so early? I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five”. It presents to readers the image of an indolent lad who speaks “with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him”. Lord Henry’s dandyism in dress and demeanor is also vintage Oscar Wilde. His appearance---long hair, velvet suit, fur-trimmed coat and his superbly judged, highly mannered style of lecturing contrive to show his exquisite sensibility as a dandy. But it is not only in demeanor but in thought that Lord Henry displays Wilde’s predilection for dandyism. His slackness in dealing with life, in the story, is everywhere to find when he preaches to Dorian Gray. For instance, “ never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed”. / “My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect---simply a confession of failures”. / “Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life”. / “All that experience really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we could do many times, and with joy”. / “I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices”. Even Dorian makes comment on Lord Henry in such way as “Harry spends his days in saying what is incredible, and his evenings in doing what is improbable…”. The dandy’s languid self-centeredness and his amoral, hot-house culture is echoed by aesthetes of the Wilde circle in whose lives everything gives way to detailed discussion of pictures and other art objects, or simply gossiping. Wilde is, in particular, a veritable dandy who in his ephemeral lifetime teases with the notions of love, marriage and human nature and makes various mild mockeries at life as a whole.
Cynicism:
In his propagating the notion of “Art for art’s sake” as a new kind of art untrammeled by social and moral rules, Oscar Wilde wears the badge of cynicism on his aesthetic coat. Slings of attack are often shot, in his works, toward the hypocrisy and utilitarianism prevailing in the 19th century of Victorian era. In “the picture of Dorian Gray” there exists an abundance of such examples, through which Lord Henry the incarnation of Wilde hurls satires at Victorian moral system. For example, when Lord Henry talks with his uncle about aunt Agatha’s charity appeals, he mockingly said: “philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic”. And later at aunt Agatha’s home, he further satirizes by saying: “humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh,
history would have been different”, “there is no literary public in England for anything except newspaper, primers and encyclopedias” and “Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature”. This cynic attitude toward the environment of which he is a part is more noticeable in his conversation with Dorian. He devalues people at that time as “knowing the price of ev
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