The Picture Of Dorian Gray-Wilde’s Moralit In Aestheticism

The aestheticism was a trend of literary thoughts which appeared in the late nineteenth century in the west. The esthete advocated the belief of "Art for art’s sake", and believed that art had independent life. They also thought that art transcended life and was unsurpassable.Oscar Wilde was a famous British essayist, novelist, playwright and poet, and was the leader of Victorian aestheticism movement in19th century and the advocate of the principle of the "art for art’s sake". In his many works, The Picture of Dorian Gray was the only novel receiving disputes of many critics. This novel was the representative of aesthetic theories of Wilde, regarding the elements of the evil and immorality, the novel was even regarded as a poisonous book. Then Wilde himself was also controversial, and his theories were pointed out to be contradictory.The foundation of this paper is the aesthetic theories of Wilde, and it analyzes the characters and plots in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Through the analysis, the ideas of "The Supremacy of Art" and "Life Imitates Art" are fully showed and understood. Wilde also advocates that art should have nothing to do with the reality itself, and believes that it is the life and nature that imitates art instead the art imitates life. And about the supremacy of art, in the opinion of Wilde, art should have a higher position than all the external things including morality, and also should not be subject to moral or political impact. In the social context at that time, art was used to serve the society, so Wilde also opposed to such utilitarian art, and thought that art should be independent and useless. But his condemnation of the crime and the changes of the portrait in this novel also illustrate his worship to the traditional morality. As an esthete, Wilde insists that art should be separate from and nothing to do with morality, however he failed in the real life. The Picture of Dorian Gray is the perfect integration of the aestheticism and morality, while it could prove that Wilde is an ethical esthete.