picture of Dorian and the rise of Aestheticism

Oscar Wilde, despite having lived and died in the first half of the twentieth century, that is, in the year 1900, when he was just about 46 years old, remains, to this day in the twenty first century, a man whose intellectual witticisms and aestheticisms are well appreciated and even stay unparalleled today. In fact, it is often said that Oscar Wilde's life in itself was a veritable art form, and nowhere is this better demonstrated than in his work 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. It is through this work that the author explores sensitive topics like the social classes and their behavior, the vanity and the narcissism that is inherent in these people, and the mortality that everyone has to face at one time or another during their own lifetimes. (Tanaka, 5)

The novel in its first published version appeared in...
[ View Full Essay]