THE PREFACE TO "THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY"

Oscar Wilde

The preface of The picture of Dorian Gray is considered the manifesto of the Aesthetic movement.

Manifestos are text of literary criticism which expound how poems should be written and critic what was going on at the time, the movements that come up until that moment.

During the 19^th century the idea of art was that it should entertain people and teach something: literature had a didactical function.

Beauty   à came from the classics

            à Keats

The critic has to find beauty in things. He has not to see things from his point of view.

The reader makes the meaning, not the writer à the reader projects himself in the things à revaluation of the role of the reader.

Style epigrammatic or assertive.

It is organized into a series of statements where Oscar Wilde expounds his ideas about art. Art, according to the writer, is the creation of beautiful things. He goes on saying that the idea of morality is in no way connected or to be connected to art. What matters is how art is produced: it can be well or badly reproduced. The instruments of the artist are thought and language.

Art does not mirror life and all art is quite useless.

The style of the preface can give no ideas about its function (Aestheticism)

The writer seems to be dictating a code. This happens because the ideas about art were different in previous years (art should be useful and teach a moral). Previous literature, for example, was Victorian literature, and according to its standards even art should be useful because whatever was not useful was sinful.

At the same time, the preface introduces a motif relevant to the whole novel: the atmosphere typical of the period contemporary to Wilde. It also gives hints at some of the characteristics of the protagonist's personality.

It is not art that has to mirror life, but the life of the individual should became a work of art: it is the so cold motto of the doctrine of art for art's sake. It is not the artist he who matters, but art.