Colonial Aestheticism: A Discourse Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray

By adopting colonial and postcolonial theories in Oscar Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, this essay will present an anti-colonial view of the Irish author as an inhabitant of a colonialist country such as England and would criticize colonialism, imperialism and neo-colonialism as well as aesthetic movement via discourse analysis. It is worth noting, despite the fact that Wilde was by no means a colonial author, yet colonial clues can be easily traced in his novel. Since Wilde in his The Picture of Dorian Gray mainly deals with negative and destructive consequences of influence from/on people and phenomena and capturing them, their relation and subjectivity can be defined in terms of the colonizer and the colonized. Lord Henry’s colonialist actions and behavior as one of the main characters of the story towards story’s protagonist and victim as the symbol and representative of the colonized finally influence him, leading to his colonization and annihilation. Yet, the main character of the story is as guilty and responsible for his colonization and annihilation as some other people and environmental factors without consciously meaning to do so. The bases for this research paper were the theories of postcolonial critics such as Edward Said and Homi Bhabha as well as Wilde’s biography as an aesthetic writer, by which several questions have been answered. These questions range from the basis on which Wilde was – either consciously or unconsciously – writing against colonizers and their ideologies to the way by which colonialism had influenced his thought and ideas as well as his characters in the novel. Colonial discourse analysis of destructive power of living a life empty of moralities via devotion to hedonism and mere beauty and pleasure under the name of art was another goal of this research. In addition, the direct relevance and linkage between aestheticism in this novel with colonial and anti-colonial theories have been surveyed and each one’s destructive consequences has been described, criticizing when there is little (if any) distinction between ethics and appearance

Keywords:

Aestheticism , Colonialism , Discourse Analysis , Oscar Wilde , The Picture of Dorian Gray