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You may take some ideas for your writing...

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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: A Summary

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You may write the questions down...

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CGI 3D Animated Short Film "INTERVIEW"- Funny Animation by The Animation Workshop

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PPT

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A good example of a summary (written by one of your classmates) :)

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A good example of a summary (written by one of your classmates) :)

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Thank you so much for your work

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Song by The Pretenders

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Pretenders - Back On The Chain Gang (1982)

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Article discussing the main subjects in the novel. Enjoy!

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The Picture of Dorian Gray: art, ethics and the artist

Dark desires and forbidden pleasure are at the centre of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Greg Buzwell examines the interplay between art and morality in Oscar Wilde's novel, and considers its use of traditional Gothic motifs as well as the theories of the new aesthetic movement.

Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), is a superb example of late-Victorian Gothic fiction. It ranks alongside Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) as a representation of how fin-de-siècle literature explored the darkest recesses of Victorian society and the often disturbing private desires that lurked behind acceptable public faces. The novel also examined the relationship between art and reality, highlighting the uneasy interplay between ethics and aesthetics as well as the links between the artist, his or her subject and the resulting image on canvas.

The Picture of Dorian Gray as first published in Lippincott's Magazine

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Front cover to the Lippincott's Magazine publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's only novel, July 1890.

'The terrible pleasure of a double life'

The idea of a double life - of outwardly playing a respectable role while inwardly pursuing an existence that crossed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour - is central to the plot of the novel. Dorian Gray, once he becomes aware his portrait will bear the scars of his corruption - thus leaving his actual appearance unstained - feels free to ignore the pious morality that pervaded the Victorian era. Rather like Dr Jekyll in Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dorian is able to pursue his debauched activities knowing his respectable appearance and unblemished looks will shield him from accusations of depravity. His ability to have the best of both worlds - the continued acceptance of his peers and the ability to fulfil his basest desires - becomes in itself an important part of his fascination with events. When attending a society gathering only hours after having committed a murder we are told Dorian 'felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life' (ch. 15).

Dorian's friend Lord Henry makes this link between the criminal and the respectable citizen clear when he observes: 'Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime is to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations' (ch. 19). Dorian, with his visits to opium dens and his delight in high culture combines the criminal and the aesthete - the very definition of 'decadence' distilled into a single person and a disturbing example of the split between the wholesome public persona and the furtive private life.

Henry Keen's illustrations to The Picture of Dorian Gray

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This illustration by Henry Keen draws out Dorian Gray's double nature, 1925.

Ethics and aesthetics

While much of The Picture of Dorian Gray delights in the beautiful and the intoxicating indulgence of the senses - the novel's opening paragraph for example describes the heady pleasures to be derived from the scents of roses and lilacs - it can be argued that Wilde intended his book neither as a celebration of decadence nor as a fable about the perils of its excesses. As Wilde states in the preface to the novel 'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all'. In other words, any moral disgust or vicarious pleasure derived from the book reflects more upon us as readers than it does on the novel itself. The book is a tale, pure and simple. It is we, the readers, who force it to bear the weight of a moral dimension.

'Dogmas for the Use of the Ages' by Oscar Wilde

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'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book': Oscar Wilde's manuscript drafts of epigrams, here titled 'Dogmas for the Use of the Ages', later used for the Preface to Dorian Gray.

The idea lying behind Aestheticism, the controversial theory of art that was newly fashionable at this time, was that art should be judged purely by its beauty and form rather than by any underlying moral message ('art for art's sake'). This is exemplified in the novel by the dandyish Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry advocates the hedonistic pursuit of new experiences as the prime objective in life. In his view, 'one could never pay too high a price for any sensation' (ch. 4). Dorian, although seduced by Wotton's poisonous whisperings, is increasingly interested in the moral consequences of his behaviour. He stands before his decaying portrait, comparing the moral degradation as depicted in oil with his unblemished innocence as reflected by the mirror. The contrast gives him a thrill of pleasure: 'He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul' (ch. 11). Dorian - via his wish to remain handsome, while the painting bears the weight of his corruption - muddies the boundary between art and life, aesthetics and ethics. The painting is made to serve a moral purpose, being transformed from an object of beauty into a vile record of guilt, something 'bestial, sodden and unclean' (chapter 10). This tainting of the picture perhaps constitutes, for the aesthete, Dorian's greatest crime - namely the destruction of a beautiful artwork.

Paintings and ancestry

Paintings often play a sinister role in Gothic fiction. The first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) includes a figure stepping from a painting and into reality while Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), written by Oscar Wilde's great-uncle Charles Maturin, describes the haunting gaze of a portrait as it follows the viewer around a room. The picture hidden in Dorian's attic may be the most disturbing portrait in Wilde's book, but it is not the only canvas in the novel which provides a pointer to Dorian's behaviour. At one point Dorian walks through the picture-gallery of his country home, looking at the portraits of his ancestors: 'those whose blood flowed in his veins'. The saturnine and sensuous faces stare back at him, causing Dorian to reflect whether 'some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached his own?' (ch. 11). This poses the question as to whether Dorian is free to determine his own actions, and is thus entirely responsible for his behaviour, or whether his actions are dictated by his genetic inheritance - an inheritance, as the faces of his ancestors indicate, 'of sin and shame'. The eminent mental pathologist Henry Maudsley wrote in his book Pathology of Mind (1895): 'Beneath every face are the latent faces of ancestors, beneath every character their characters'. This idea already seems present in much Gothic fiction, including Wilde's novel.

Melmoth the Wanderer

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The monstrous portrait from Charles Maturin's Gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer, 1820.

The Picture of Dorian Gray provides both a standard 'Gothic' account of Dorian's actions - the supernatural picture and the lascivious ancestors gazing from their portraits - but also a forward-looking scientific rational for his depraved desires, namely the importance of inheritance in determining behaviour. Dorian resembles his mother physically, inheriting from her 'his beauty, and his passion for the beauty of others' (ch. 11), while, as his corruption accelerates, the twisted portrait in Dorian's attic increasingly resembles his wicked grandfather. This latter idea suggests Dorian is a scientific case study, as well as a moral one. Throughout the book Lord Henry treats Dorian as a beautiful subject upon which to experiment - partly via his encouragement of Dorian to pursue a philosophy of pleasure, and partly through a call to social evolution - a wish to abandon the restraints of Victorian morality on the grounds that sin and conscience are outmoded primitive concepts to be swept aside in the pursuit of new sensations. Lord Henry locates progress in the overcoming of hereditary fears: 'Courage has gone out of our race ... The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us' (ch. 2). His call to youth is a call to courage. Dorian's ultimate failure to live up to Lord Henry's ideals is due to his inability to escape his conscience as depicted in the portrait. By attempting to destroy the painting, and thus free himself from the constant reminder of his own guilt he, ultimately, manages only to destroy himself.

The Picture of Dorian Gray illustrated by Majeska

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Taken from the 1930 American edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, these colour illustrations depict the physical transformation of Dorian Gray's portrait.

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Oscar Wilde and Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray first appeared in the July 1890 number of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine and immediately caused an outcry due to its perceived references of homosexual desire. The review in the Scot's Observer memorably described the book as having been written for 'outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph-boys' - a reference to a recent scandal involving a homosexual brothel in London's Cleveland Street. In response to such hostile criticism Wilde considerably amended the text and a longer, noticeably 'toned-down' version of the book was published by Ward Lock and Co in April 1891. It is this later version that forms the standard text of the novel. Even so the Lippincott's version was used by opposing counsel in evidence against Wilde in two of his trials in an attempt to show him guilty of 'a certain tendency'. For many people Oscar Wilde the artist - with his flamboyant public persona and his secretive private life - and his novel with its two distinctly different versions and its duplicitous central character mirrored each other from the start.

Greg Buzwell is Curator of Contemporary Literary Archives at the British Library. He has co-curated three major exhibitions for the Library - Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination; Shakespeare in Ten Acts and Gay UK: Love, Law and Liberty. His research focuses primarily on the Gothic literature of the Victorian fin de siècle. He has also edited and introduced collections of supernatural tales by authors including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edgar Allan Poe and Walter de la Mare.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray: art, ethics and the artist | The British Library

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Dark desires and forbidden pleasure are at the centre of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Greg Buzwell examines the interplay between art and morality in Oscar Wilde's novel, and considers its use of traditional Gothic motifs as well as the theories of the new aesthetic movement.

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If you want to review...

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MODALS permission, obligation and necessity 

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MODALS permission, obligation and necessity 

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BLOG - To be used on Wednesday 6th FEB/ Thursday 7th FEB

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BLOG - To be used on Wednesday 6th FEB/ Thursday 7th FEB

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You may have a look if you wish, but please, do not use the blog before your next class.

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Some ideas you may comment on:
- The purpose of art (The aestheticism movement, of which Wilde was a major proponent, sought to free art from the responsibility of being a tool for education or moral enlightenment).
- The supremacy of youth and beauty ( For although beauty and youth remain of utmost importance at the end of the novel-the portrait is, after all, returned to its original form-the novel suggests that the price one must pay for them is exceedingly high).
- The superficial nature of the Victorian society.
- The negative consequences of influence (in Lord Henry's words: " There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral,--immoral from the scientific point of view.")
- The evil nature of Lord Henry.

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Some ideas you may comment on: - The purpose of art (The aestheticism movement, of which Wilde was a major proponent, sought to free art from the responsibility of being a tool for education or moral enlightenment).

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Comment (orally) on a passage of the book. This could be one:

Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions." "I hate them for it. An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them...

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"How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this--for this--I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!"

Revelation for Dorian and the omen of what is going to come later on in the novel

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"You have made me understand what love really is. My love! my love! I am sick [40] of shadows. You are more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to do with the puppets of a play? When I came on to-night, I could not understand how it was that everything had gone from me. Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them hissing, and I smiled. What should they know of love? Take me away, Dorian--take me away with you, where we can be quite alone. I hate the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire. Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand now what it all means? Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for me to play at being in love. You have made me see that."

Sybil Vane

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"An exclamation of horror broke from Hallward's lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous thing on the canvas leering at him. There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely marred that marvellous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual lips. The sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet passed entirely away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own brush-work, and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright vermilion."

The discovery made by Basil

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"He took the lamp from the table and crept up-stairs. As he unlocked the door, a smile of joy flitted across his young face and lingered for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good, and the hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to him. He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already. He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and dragged the purple hanging from the portrait. A cry of pain and indignation broke from him. He could see no change, unless that in the eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome,—more loathsome, if possible, than before,—and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilt."

The end of the book

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You may use this app to record yourself. Once you download your recording, you shall send it to me via email.

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Vocaroo is a quick and easy way to share voice messages over the interwebs.

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The presentation I used the other day

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Recommended book for grammar and vocabulary

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Recommended book for grammar and vocabulary

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Some of you have asked for it, so here it is... (I found it useful for self-learning, since it has the key at the back).

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A review

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MADE BY GROUP A
Thank you for your work

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MADE BY GROUP B
Thank you so much, well done

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British Parliament and its charismatic chairman...

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British Parliament and its charismatic chairman...

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This is the same guy since...ages

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"Liar!" Bercow loses it as May gets branded by SNP's Ian Blackford

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This is the video I wanted to show you :)

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This is the video I wanted to show you :)

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Vocabulary Unit 3

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Group B