“Into the Exquisitely Obscure”: Aestheticism and Fragmentation in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray

Abstract

This paper aims at tracing a link between early literary works, namely via French Décadence, the notion of Art for Art’s Sake and the trope of doubleness, concepts that intertwine both independent self-assertion and the defeat of Man by Nature as these come to be represented in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The dialogue between coeval aesthetical movements and the complexity of such an oeuvre unveils instances of undeniable influence; on the other hand, it also ascertains the uniqueness of Wilde’s provocative take on beauty and life.