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The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - Coggle Diagram
The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
PLOT
The well-known artist Basil Hallward meets Dorian Gray, a cultured, wealthy, and impossibly beautiful young man who immediately captures Basil’s artistic imagination. He made a portrait of him and when Dorian sees his picture he’s impressed by the perfection of his beauty and so he expresses the desire to remain young forever
Meanwhile he lives an immoral life and all the signs of his immorality appeared on the painting which is kept hidden in a room.
When Dorian, totally corrupt and evil, sees the corrupted images of the portrait decides to destroy the portrait and begin a new life.
He stabs the painting that had caused him all this pain, they find the picture hanging on the wall, as beautiful as it ever was, and an old and ugly man lying dead on the floor.
It is the prototycal story of the double, a theme wich will be developed in Freud's psychoanalysis
The myth of Narcissus
About a person who can ony love himself
He is incapable of outward love
He cannot see other people and he cannot love them
He is too much focused on himself
This excessive selflove will bring him to the death (self-destruction)
3 main themes
The myth of Narcissus
The theme of the double
The myth of Faust
It was originally pubblished in 1890 on a monthy megazine
The first edition raised a lot of criticism
They said that Oscar Wilde had to be prosecuted for violating pubblic morality
The editor deleted some parts because he thought they were too immoral
When he pubblished the second version, he added THE PREFACE, which is considered the Manifesto of the English Aesthetic Movement, but also Wilde's self-defend
THE PREFACE
Wilde undicated the role of Art
Art is useless, Art should represent beauty
The artist's role is to create beautiful things, he doesn't wanto to prove anything
He can express averything
He talks w/ the reader, the critic or the spectator, if u find ugly or immoral things in my work, it's u to be immoral
"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written."