Essay on the Gay as a Literary Figure in The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Gay as a literary Figure in The ascertain of Dorian Gray This paper shall explore the gay as a literary figure based on Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray. The aim of the essay is threefold. Firstly, to show how the gay is related to two of the most potent archetypal images those of Dionysos and Apollo. Secondly, to demonstrate that the Wildean gay is profoundly afraid of life, and that his interest in form and aesthetic proportion rests on a principle of evasion. Thirdly, to contend that the humor in this novel, and by acknowledgment also in Wildes plays, is a symptom of the authors fascination with an archetypal gay. The Picture of Dorian Gray revolves around Dorians dual nature. On the one hand, he is the young hero whose adventures the novel records on the other, he is a mixed image of extraordinary personal beauty. When Lord Henry tells him that his exceptional looks bequeath not last, the young man prays that he be allowed to remain as he is in Basils portrait of him. Dorian wants to enjoy his youth for ever. His wan wish is a key to the archetypal factors which... ... intoxication and Apollonian form of Dionysian involvement and Apollonian unapproachability. He is able to enjoy the Dionysian pleasures to which he wants to vacate himself, but at an Apollonian distance. Works Cited Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Isobel Murray. London Oxford University Press, 1974. Wilde, Oscar. The garner of Oscar Wilde. Ed. R. Hart-Davis. London Hart-Davis, 1962. Jung, C.G. The Collected Works. Ed. Sir Herbert Read etc. London Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953-1976. Vol. 9.ii par. 73. Also CW 11.283.