| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 英文學系碩士班 === 96 === This thesis focuses on Wilde’s aesthetic philosophy of art and life and its relation to his sole novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Through Wilde’s aesthetics, this thesis argues that the ending of the novel is not as moral as it may first appear. The publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray arouses severe criticism of its immoral sensuality. The novel is Wilde’s mediation on a large number of subjects. It includes Wilde’s reflection on the contemporary literary atmosphere in late-Victorian England, notably Ruskin and Pater and aestheticism and Decadence. It also includes Wilde’s philosophy of art as illustrated in his critical essays.
Chapter One begins with an overview of the historical and cultural background in the mid- and late-nineteenth century. This includes John Ruskin’s moral aesthetics and its opposition as embodied in Walter Pater, whose Conclusion to The Renaissance paves the way for the Aesthetic and Decadent Movements.
Chapter Two explores Wilde’s philosophy of art and life, from his early American lectures to his later critical essays in Intentions, and applies it to read this novel as a criticism of aestheticism. Wilde’s aesthetic philosophy is most embodied in his Intentions, with which The Picture of Dorian Gray is strongly associated. Yet, the novel not only shows his reflection of aestheticism and Decadence but shows it in a passive light on art and life.
Along with the issue of the relation between art and life, Chapter Three is centered on Decadence and the Gothic, as embodied in the ugly picture of Dorian. In these two modes commingling together with Wilde’s aesthetic perspectives, this chapter sheds the light on the sensational ending of the story. In Dorian’s reckless pursuit of self-gratification, moral conscience and individualism are intertwined. This chapter focuses on Dorian’s struggling individualism in the contrary emotions between aesthetic sensual pleasure and moral awareness, in the struggle between art and life. In this elaboration, Chapter Three and Conclusion show that the novel has a moral ending which is not to be celebrated. The ending of the novel is not to be simplified as moral but ambiguous and paradoxical.
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