ENG324Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Metalepsis, Ekphrasis, Moral Panic
Document Summary
Poet, playwright, critic, journalist, lecturer, and novelist. Grew up with cross disciplinary backgrounds (parents) art and science. Promoted controversial views, aesthetics, plays talked about the hypocrisy of victorian society. This is wilde"s only novel, published in 1891. Moral fable but not a celebration of excess. Wilde"s trials pretending to be gay (could be arrested without proof). Wilde"s time in jail and death parallel the events of the novel (older man enticed by a younger man and leads to his downfall) P. 156-7 why is it dorian associate with him rumors circulating about him, list of men who"s reputation was ruined by dorian. Natural vice this corruption was already in these men, dorian didn"t corrupt them. Repressing their moral or bring them out when they are with dorian, then go into scandal. Dorian"s vices are sexual but wilde doesn"t pin them down. Each man sees his own sin in dorian gray. What dorian gray"s sins are no one knows.
