The Genre Peculiarities of the novel "The portrait of Dorian Gray"

The Genre Peculiarities of the novel

‘The portrait of Dorian Gray’

Performed by

Dolnakova Daria

And Karpova Maria

Novel, recognized as the leading genre of literature of the last two or three centuries, attracts the attention of literary critics and detractors. He also becomes the subject of thoughts of the writers themselves.

However, this genre still remains a mystery. About the historical destinies of the novel and its future very different, sometimes opposing views are expressed. "His - wrote Thomas Mann in 1936 - prose quality, awareness and criticism, as well as the richness of its resources, its ability to easily and efficiently manage display and study music and knowledge, myth and science, his human latitude, it objectivity and irony makes the novel what it is today: a monumental and dominant view of literature. "

So what is a novel? A lot of famous scientists and literary scholars gave their voices to explaining this term, but still there are not complete and unite definition of it. We decided to show and illustrate the brightest features of the novel as in general so and for the particular novel by Oscar Wilde. One of the greatest persons Belinsky called the epic-novel of private life: the subject of this genre, the ‘fate’of a private person, ‘ordinary, everyday life’. In the second half of the 1840s, critics argued that the novel and its related story ‘are now in charge of all other branches of poetry’.

Relying on the judgment of the XVIII century writers H. Fielding and K.M Wieland, the scientist Bahtin in the article "Epic and Novel (‘About the research methodology of the novel’1941) argued that the hero of the novel shows ‘not as a finished and unchanging, but as becoming, changing, educability life’. Here, returning to the novel, we see the development of not only main character but also characters that surround him. First of all, it’s Basil. His art and he himself began changing with the appearance of Dorian Gray. ‘I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself’. Also the life of Sibyl Vane had greatly changed after meeting Dorian Gray. She saw the artificiality of the world she lived in and emotions she felt. ‘I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came and you freed m soul from prison’. But the awareness of that was fatal for her. The most unnoticeable changes had Lord Henry. After all of his mocks and cynic views on marriage he seemed to be a bit regretting of his divorce – ‘Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her’. Of course the biggest changes there were in Dorian Gray himself as for the whole book is devoted to degradation of his soul. In the first chapter we see him as a naive good-natured young man, under the influence of Lord Henry he altered out of all recognition and every his wrong action had reflected at the picture. Basil says about the picture: ‘There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr. Christ! What a thing I must have worshiped! It has the eyes of a devil’.

It is common knowledge that a novel is a long prose narrative that usually describes fictional characters and events in the form of a sequential story.

According to the genre of novel the story was completely made-up but for expressing his own ideas Wilde reflected himself in 3 characters: “it is a tragedy that mirrors my life. Harry is what the world thinks I am. Basil is who I think I am. And Dorian is who I would like to be… in another life perhaps”. The conflicts between characters had place in a successive narration. It has a lot of forecasts that doesn’t interrupt the narration, for example the description of nature in 1st chapter is kind of saying that something is going to happen

The narrative style of the novelist Oscar Wilde is very traditional and common in the literature of the nineteenth century: the author tells his story in the third person, and if we do not take into account the short preface to the novel, he objectified. “To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”. This thesis, stated in the preface to the novel gets the Incarnation

I want to point out the special type of novel ‘The portrait of D.G.’ which usually calls -philosophical fiction. So philosophical fiction refers to works of fiction in which a significant proportion of the work is devoted to a discussion of the sort of questions normally addressed in discursive philosophy. Here in the novel we have philosophical problems devoted to arts first of all – its role in the society, for a certain person and the purpose of its existence. Firstly, the idea of arts presented in the preface where the author gives an account of it in several aphorisms that might contradict each other. Secondly, in the very novel there are characters that express the author’s point of view on the problem. They are Basil Hallward and Sibyl Vane. And when Dorian encroached on their art – the most precious thing they ever had in their lives – they suffered from it but the punishment befallen on him all the same. )

As we have learnt some features of the novel in general, now we are going to speak about this piece of art as an epitome of Wilde’s philosophical view. All over the book we feel the formidable philosophy of aesthetism and hedonism, which makes the novel a brilliant literary work with: 1)minute details(for example the description of Sibyl Vane – “girl with a flower-like face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of the rose”) 2) huge variety of the world of objects 3) symbols(which always refer us to particular events or extraordinary associations) (here are such symbols as the portrait, the weather description (“the wind had blown the fog away, and sky was like a monstrous peacock’s tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes” – as if these “eyes” saw the terrible thing he had done), the book which had poisoned him, the room where the portrait was, his ardour for fashion of dandyism, the philosophy of hedonism, rituals of Roman Catholic church etc.) 4)interlacement of real world with the world of myths and legends.(it can be the names given to Dorian – Adonis, Paris, Narcissus; the mysterious connection between him and his portrait reminds of Faust’s deal with Mephistopheles)

I offer to examine some paragraphs more circumstantially.

1. Individual attention novel deserves a detailed description of the exquisite costumes. Take, for example, Dorian’s description of Sibyl Vane: ‘When she came on in her boy’s clothes she was perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim brown crossgartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk’s feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. She had never seemed to be more exquisite.’
2. The book is full of exotic visual techniques, in this manifest and identity as aesthetic literary movement, and personality of Wilde as writers. This kind of exotic quite evident in the descriptions of the reality, so it can be said as an exotic of unfabled. The important role also plays music of Wagner, Chopin, Schubert.

It is manifested in the use of names of exquisite colors, fragrances, jewelry, etc. For example, some little images which give the concept of exotic visual techniques: ‘the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect... The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmoun grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive’. The author carefully depicts images of flowers, bees, birds - moving against stative. Exotic unfabled reminds himself and the image of interior, be it a living room, library or conservatory.

For example, in the description of the library of Lord Henry appear ‘a luxurious armchair’, ‘a charming room’, ‘panelledwainscotting of olive-stained oak’, ‘cream-coloured frieze’, ‘silk long-fringed Person rugs’, ‘a statuette by Clodion ‘,’ a copy of ‘Les Cent Nouvelles’, bound for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve ‘,’ large blue china jars ‘- trappings of luxury and elegance.

Especially rich in exotic descriptions are in 11th chapter of the novel, which relates to the rather long period of life of the hero. This exoticism begins in the first paragraph.

It is important to note, that one of the most fascinating features in the novel is the language in which it is written. The most common methods used by the author to create images are techniques of metaphor, metonymy, similes, personification, graduations, and allusions. The author uses the emphatic repetition of techniques and makes it more expressive with inversion. All these things make the language of this masterpiece more colorful and multifarious.

To crown it all let’s turn to time in the novel. Fable framework of the ‘Portrait…’ caused a period of parallel lives of Dorian Gray and his picture on canvas. Life of a hero to the point when the portrait takes on the function of the external variability and the existence of a portrait after the death of the hero's of no interest. So it is the only way to characterize the appropriate time in this particular novel.

This work is devoted to the genre peculiarities of the novel ‘The portrait of Dorian Grey’ written by Oscar Wilde. We tried to analyze the most interesting and bright features in it and gave them the literary and book-based explanations. We hope that this analysis helps you to understand not only the main theme, but the conception of the author, his ideas and philosophy.