Control Of Psychical Distance In The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde, one of the most important representatives of aestheticism in late nineteenth century, is famous for his subversive aesthetic ideas and his practices of these ideas in life. The base of this subversion lies not in Wilde's shouting of slogans, but in his witty writings. His writings own both resource and profundity, which have opposed the social and cultural evils of pragmatism prevailing during Victorian time. As a writer and aesthete, Wilde had deeply realized the crisis of human spirit, and put forward the idea of art independent of life and art remoulding life while seeking for the way out. This idea gives expression of the aesthetic attitude he advocated: the aesthetic subject should maintain certain distance from the aesthetic object.This thesis tries to analyze Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray from the theoretical perspective of "psychical distance," inquiring Wilde's practice in literary works of his aesthetic idea that "distance exists between art and life," so as to expound the significance of this idea. Wilde won his fame as a dramatist, but his aesthetic ideas are mainly embodied in The Picture of Dorian and its preface. The preface expresses Wilde's ideas directly, while the narration embodies these ideas either clearly or vaguely. Wilde is one of the earliest figures who lay emphasis on critic spirit and conscious writing: he thinks that the artist is also the critic, and critic spirit is conveyed during the course of artistic creation. Therefore, he blends his aesthetic ideas into literary creation, and tries to make the reader reach his ideal aesthetic state through controlling the reader's psychical distance.Essentially, Wilde's aesthetic ideas advocate a "distanced" attitude, so firstly this thesis examines the whatness of "distance" in aesthetics. British aesthete Edward Bullough puts forward the conception of "psychical distance" for the first time, holding the idea that there is a distance between aesthetic subject and its affections, or such objects as are the sources of such affections, which is called "psychical distance." In aesthetic appreciation and creation, the ideal state is the foremost decrease of distance without its disappearance. The differences between natures of the objects and abilities of the subjects are two conditions that influence distance. And we use this theory as our basis and tool, to discuss how Wilde, as the creative subject, controls the reader's psychical distance by his work, which serves as the object. Obviously, Wilde's ability of distance is much stronger than the reader, who is the appreciative subject, therefore there is great necessity and probability for him to control the reader's psychical distance.Then this thesis tries to analyze how Wilde controls his reader's psychical distance through The Picture of Dorian Gray from three aspects: characterization, narrative point of view and thematic presentation. On characterization, Dorian and his picture reacted as a whole, adjusting the reader's psychical distance; the artist Basil was Wilde's ideal figure, showing the author's attitude more definitely, through whom the reader's psychology is guided. On narration, Wilde unites the omniscient point of view and third-person limited point of view, keeping some objectivity while allowing the reader to enter certain character's inside, thus has controlled the reader's psychical distance more effectively. On thematic presentation, by analyzing the presentation of Wilde's "art above life, life imitating art" in the novel, which is a "distanced" aesthetic idea, we can deduce that to control the reader's psychical distance by the use of artwork is consistent with Wilde's aesthetic ideas, and is necessary.Though being misunderstood and debated all the time, Wilde insisted on his artistic ideal all along. Today, at a time when material civilization is highly developed, his exploration of human psychology and belief of pursuing the magnificent spiritual world are still of great significance.