Taking Risks. A Reading of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.199411737Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyse Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray from a postmodernist standpoint. By drawing on a variety of critical perspectives, such as psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and reader-response criticism, it tries to suggest an alternative reading in which the picture that gives the novel its title is regarded not as a "work of art," but rather as a text in which many conflictive meanings play and interact with one another. The relationships between the main characters, Dorian, Henry, and Basil, are interpreted as illuminating in turn those between the text, the author, and the reader / literary critic. In this light, The Picture of Dorian Gray finally emerges as a metaphor for the very act of reading.
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