The Ambivalence in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and its relation to Postmodernism

Dissertation data:

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

PART 1 The reception of The Picture of Dorian Gray

1.0 Introduction

1.1 The novel and its homosexual representation

1.2 The literary reception

	1.2.1 The reception of Wilde's work in general

	1.2.2 A hostile reception of Dorian Gray

PART 2 Ambivalence: Relativism and Deconstruction

2.0 Introduction

2.1 Postmodernist relativism and the Wildean truth of masks

	2.1.1 Postmodernist relativism: a shift from essentialism to (de)constructivism

	2.1.2 Wilde's relativism: dandyism and the truth of masks

2.2 Deconstruction and subversion

	2.2.1 Wild relativism

	2.2.2 Literary radicalism and subversion

2.3 Wilde's anti-essentialist paradoxes

PART 3 Wilde postmodernism and Oscarian aestheticism

3.0 Introduction

3.1 Postmodernism in general: Metafiction and Anti-Realism

	3.1.1 The importance of metafiction

	3.1.2 The creative role of the writer and the reader

	3.1.3 The artist-critic and the critic-artist

	3.1.4 Parody and subversion

3.2 Postmodernism in particular: Sontag's New Sensibility

	3.2.1 New Sensibility: an erotics of art

	3.2.2 The divorce of aesthetics and ethics

	3.2.3 Camp and dandyism

	3.2.4 Conclusion

3.3 Apocalypse Now in fin-de-siècle and postmodernism

3.4 Conclusion: The Aestheticist Tradition

General conclusion: A Postmodernist Study of Ambivalence

Bibliography 

Back to homepage