M.A. dissertation, University of Hong Kong, 1976. / Typescript.

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No description available.

This thesis examines Oscar Wilde’s theories of art in connection with specific debates ongoing in Victorian psychology as it emerged in the periodical press. By cross examining Wilde’s periodical contributions with psychological theories, concepts and discussions disseminated through periodicals this thesis offers a contextual account of Wilde’s creativity. Scholars generally look to Wilde’s Oxford Notebooks to gain an insight into his interaction with scientific culture. While the notebooks are an invaluable source to scholars they only cover Wilde’s learning in the 1870s and therefore exclude the influential context of the 1880s when he was engaged as a journalist for numerous periodicals and newspapers. Chapter one will demonstrate how reading Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray alongside neighbouring articles in the Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine reveals the hidden context of psychology in which the editors of the issue attempted to establish the text. The second chapter explores Wilde’s engagement in the disputes over psychological nomenclature alongside the psychology of George Henry Lewes, James Sully and other contributors. The third chapter will investigate the network in which Wilde’s reviewing for the Pall Mall Gazette established him. Wilde’s exchanges with aesthetic theorists and fellow reviewers Sully and Grant Allen will also be documented. The fourth chapter will demonstrate how Wilde creatively engaged with theories of atomism, emotionalist psychology and physiological aesthetics. The final chapter will examine the ethical questions posed by Wildean aesthetics in relation to scientific naturalism. Wilde originally communicated his theories through periodicals but also delivered lectures (which were reported in magazines), as well as eventually transforming his periodical articles into book publications. While this thesis places the onus on the periodical formats of Wilde’s texts, his lectures and revised editions of his writings will also be examined where relevant.

Although critics have studied Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray for nearly one hundred years, no one has examined the author's Irish Celtic heritage in relation to such unanswered questions as the source for the supernatural power that grants Dorian's wish to remain young and creates the central conflict, the purpose of the eleventh chapter, or the apparent "overwriting" or "purple patches" of prose.As a result, the novel has remained elusive, yet fascinating, to both critics and readers. This study asserts that the problem with the traditional approaches critics have taken to solve these questions is that Dorian_ Gray does not entirely belong to mainstream British literary tradition. It also belongs in part to Irish Celtic literature.Consequently, the answers to these unresolved "mysteries" become part of a natural, even inevitable culmination of Irish folklore placed in a Victorian London setting. questions lie in Wilde's Irish background. By looking at the mythology and folklore of Wilde's native Ireland, the “mysteries” become part of a natural, even inevitable culmination of Irish folklore placed in a Victorian London setting.This study's approach to Dorian Gray combines both historical and textual study and builds upon the already substantial number of source studies and biographies available. Moreover, this study examines the almost entirely unexplored background of Wilde's Irish past in the novel which relates to Irish literature. In addition to these components, this paper also offers explanations for the source of the supernatural elements, the problems within the eleventh chapter, and the strategy of the overall structure. Finally this study examines the satirical elements that have their origin in Irish folklore. In many ways, this analysis unifies the other, often conflicting, approaches by explaining these previously misunderstood elements. / Department of English

This study seeks to show that in the work of Oscar Wilde, form and content, though manifestly separate, are latently connected. In Wilde's aesthetics, form and content are more than mere critical generalities---they are also metaphors for, respectively, art and nature, order and chaos, two conflicting but interdependent principles. Form in Wilde's work is a metaphor for the artist's defense against the largeness and ambiguity of nature and life. Therefore, to create, Wilde needs to insist on form over content, art over nature. Form in Wilde's work manifests itself in a deliberately artificial style, a style revealed by, for example, epigrammatic dialogue and posing of characters. However, because of this emphasis on form, nature and life will make an uncanny figurative return in Wilde's fiction, a return symbolized, for instance, by emotional ambivalence, intellectual ambiguity, and even acts of murder. In Wilde, form and content are interdependent because the content is latent in the principle of form, which stands for the human struggle against the perceived disorder of nature and life, a struggle which nevertheless is revelatory of that same chaos.

This thesis examines Oscar Wilde, George Gissing and the challenges of aesthetic authorship in the literary marketplace of the 1890s. Using Pater’s formulation of the aesthetic as a basis for my understanding, I argue that the commodity-driven changes that transformed the literary marketplace at the end of the nineteenth century created insurmountable obstacles for authors working within the aesthetic ideal. I examine the conflict between the demands of the aesthetic and those of the literary market through two specific notions of ‘utility’. In the first instance, following Regenia Gagnier’s The Insatiability of Human Wants, I explore the seemingly opposed notions of economic utility and aesthetic authorship and how they appear to merge, with examples from the fictional prose of Wilde and Gissing. I then explore the public’s use of the aesthetic, which, I argue, is discernible in the celebrity-status of these authors; in particular, I focus on the growing need for authors to perform for their public—a need which signals a shift in the public’s consumption of art away from the literary work and towards the author himself. / As both forms of utility are essential aspects of literary production, yet also pose unaesthetic demands on the author, I examine how Wilde and Gissing respond to these challenges through their literary prose. Taking The Picture of Dorian Gray [1891] and New Grub Street [1891] in addition to Gissing’s The Whirlpool [1897] and Born In Exile [1892] and Wilde’s “The Remarkable Rocket” [1888] and “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” [1891], alongside both authors’ letters and contributions to journals and magazines of the day, I reveal how their aesthetic idealism shapes their writing in an oppositional manner. Despite the overt differences between Wilde and Gissing, I also find striking similarities in their positioning as aesthetic authors in the late-Victorian literary field. By doing so, my thesis comprehensively examines how both authors mediate their aesthetic ideals in the literary marketplace of the 1890s.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1976. / Typescript. Also available in print.

University, Diss., 2001--Giessen.

The preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray is often dismissed as merely an addendum to the novel intended to detract hostile readers and absolve the text itself of any accusations of immorality. When coupled with the narrative itself, however, the novel shows both the impossibility of producing the new through traditional notions of revolution, as well as the way in which the Deleuzian conception of judgment inhibits Dorian from ever viewing the portrait as insignificantly amoral, as not symbolic of his sins. Yet the preface, coupled with the various aesthetic objects in the text, is productive of a new form of judgment, one that does not reproduce the same moral order. This takes the form of a "useless" judgment. When Lord Henry claims he wishes to change nothing in England but the "weather," this is the same as the portrait, returned to its original form, hanging over Dorian's body at the novel's end: neither is a judgment with a use, but rather a judgment of a work of art that produces nothing in the work of art. Lord Henry cannot change the weather, and the portrait's changes do not help or affect Dorian in any way. Thus we see the answer to Deleuze's question of what the "refusal of work" would look like. Art is "quite useless" in that it is both extremely removed from any and all spheres concerned with moral order, and also fairly indifferent to this fact and Dorian's concern with maintaining a world organized by useful symbols.