The extract is the preface of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1891.

The Preface has an introductory function of the novel, and also it works as a poetic manifesto.

The text, indeed, is built up of short statements that stick in the reader’s mind, so it has an epigrammatic form.

All the extract is structured in a dialectical way seeming to be contradictory: for example, “the highest, as the lowest form, of criticism is a mode of autobiography”. This conveys Manichean philosophy in the background of Aestheticism.

The dialectical structure is also reinforced by the image of Caliban: he/it is one of the primary antagonists in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He/it is an half-human, half – monster character. The metaphor of Caliban is aimed to convey Victorian reaction to “Realism” and “Romanticism”, that is human reaction to reality and inwardness.

Oscar Wilde added the Preface after the publication of the novel: it conveys Wilde’s idea of art. Moving from Ruskin and Pater’s theory of art and aesthetics, Mr.Wilde expresses his view of art based on the cult of Beauty. Beauty does not mean only attraction, but it implies fascination.

Besides Oscar Wilde defines a new position of the spectator: art has to involve the reader who has to interpret the work of art, “diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital”.