Comprehension

>>What are you told of Dorian's lifestyle?

Dorian's lifestyle consists on celebrating beauty from every side, therefore he usually opens to the world his beautiful house once or twice every month during the winter and on each Wednesday evening. Musicians delight his guests and dinner is offered to them. During his dinners, Dorian shows is exquisite taste in the selection and the placing of those invited and in the decoration of the table .

>> What is for him the greatest art?

For him the greatest art is Life itself.

>>Why is Dorian Gray an ideal for educated young men? Why is being consulted on matters of fashion not enough for Dorian?

Because he seems to embody a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton or Oxford: he combines something of the real culture of the scholar with all the grace, distinction and perfect manner of a citizen of the word.
Being consulted on matters of fashion is not enough for Dorian because he would also be consulted on the wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a cane.

>> What is the common attitude to "the worship of the senses" and what has this attitude caused?

The commonest attitude to "the worship of the senses" is to criticize it, because men are naturally afraid of passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, but it caused only a greater degradation compared to that people try to escape .

>>What are the principles of Dorian's "new Hedonism"?

The principles of Dorian's "new Hedonism" are:
• To re-create life
• To save it from Puritanism
• Never to accept any theory that would sacrifice any passionate experience
• To teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of life.

Interpretation

>> What kind of narrator does Wilde use in his novel? Do you feel his presence?

In his novel Wilde uses a 3rd person omniscient narrator, so it is possible to feel his presence.

>>What idea of life is expressed in the final sentence of the passage?

In the final sentence of the passage Wilde gives an idea of a short life, which for this reasons should be experienced

>>Walter Pater (1839-1894), the forerunner of the aesthetic movement, expressed the same concept of life in his collection of essays, Studies in the History of Renaissance (1873) which he concluded with the following words: "Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life". Where in the last paragraph does Wilde quote Peter?

Wilde quote Peter in the lines 65-66: "Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be".