Il ritratto di Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

This magical revelation also states that it will be the painting to age in place of Gray which becomes thus his alter ego. Thanks to this exchange, the boy will not grow old and will remain as it is in the painting: young, handsome, bold, disinhibited. For his obsession, he comes to conclude a pact with the devil: eternal youth in exchange for his soul. The picture has what Dorian wants with all his soul: eternal beauty and youth. We must focus on the symbiotic relationship between Dorian and the portrait that represents him. Lord Wotton represents for Dorian the dark side, Basil Hallward, the painter who paints beauty, represents Gray's moral conscience and, precisely for this reason, is killed by the protagonist. Wilde through the people in the novel describes the aristocratic world he knows perfectly, a world full of superficiality and inconsistency.

Gray lives a life based on lust, pleasure, and immorality and is obsessed with the thought of time that passes inexorably and takes away the most precious assets (beauty and youth). Dorian will experience it on his own skin: he is young and beautiful but these two characteristics will bring him to destruction and despair. Wilde's pages express in a powerful and effective way the aesthetic doctrine that pleasure and beauty are the only purposes in the life of a man who should live his life as if it were a work of art and to preserve his youth as If it were a value. Dorian Gray's portrait is not only the symbol of aesthetics, but also of Wilde's poetics “art is fine to itself and knows no limits, being above all even morality”.

Wilde's masterpiece is 'The Portrait of Dorian Gray', a representative novel of the artistic current of aestheticism, which puts the center of all art and beauty, pleasure, and a lively lifestyle. It is mainly known for the frequent use of aphorisms. He was an apparently simple and spontaneous writer, but essentially very refined and inclined to awake the attention of his readers and invite them to reflection. Baixe Oscar Wilde: Il ritratto di Dorian Gray e outras Notas de estudo em PDF para Inglês, somente na Docsity! OSCAR WILDE Oscar Wilde was considered the greatest representative of aestheticism in England during the twentieth century.

Il ritratto di Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde