The Image of a Dandy in Oscar Wilde’s fiction
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Date
2023
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Publisher
Riga, Latvia : “Baltija Publishing”
Abstract
In recent decades we have witnessed an inevitable renaissance of profound scholarly and critical interest in the ambiguous figure of a dandy in almost every sphere of research. That interest, in our opinion, is provoked, at least in part, by the dandy as an ideal for the middle and higher-class gentlemen of the 18th -19th century society (not unlike the “Renaissance man” at the end of the 14th to 15th centuries). On the other hand, it stems from a very practical interest – is it still possible for a dandy to exist in our pragmatic, modern era or not? In our research, we attempted to analyze the qualities of a dandy and the philosophy of dandyism as it is realized in selected Oscar Wilde’s fiction. We have provided a short overview of the history of aestheticism and dandyism, and we singled out notable qualities of a dandy, which are: the dandy’s quest for perfect appearance (manifesting in dressing, manners, age and narcissism), vanity (lack of occupation), provocative genius (the ability to produce the unexpected), dandy’s discourse (his usage of paradox, epigram and irony) and dandyism (as a combination of aestheticism, stoicism and platonism). After that, we analyzed the realization of those traits in dandy characters in the play “An Ideal Husband” and the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by O. Wilde. We found out that there are at least three different kinds of dandies depicted in those literary works: an ideal dandy, a dandy-hedonist, and a fallen dandy.
Description
In recent decades we have witnessed an inevitable renaissance of profound scholarly and critical interest in the ambiguous figure of a dandy in almost every sphere of research. That interest, in our opinion, is provoked, at least in part, by the dandy as an ideal for the middle and higher-class gentlemen of the 18th -19th century society (not unlike the “Renaissance man” at the end of the 14th to 15th centuries). On the other hand, it stems from a very practical interest – is it still possible for a dandy to exist in our pragmatic, modern era or not? In our research, we attempted to analyze the qualities of a dandy and the philosophy of dandyism as it is realized in selected Oscar Wilde’s fiction. We have provided a short overview of the history of aestheticism and dandyism, and we singled out notable qualities of a dandy, which are: the dandy’s quest for perfect appearance (manifesting in dressing, manners, age and narcissism), vanity (lack of occupation), provocative genius (the ability to produce the unexpected), dandy’s discourse (his usage of paradox, epigram and irony) and dandyism (as a combination of aestheticism, stoicism and platonism). After that, we analyzed the realization of those traits in dandy characters in the play “An Ideal Husband” and the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by O. Wilde. We found out that there are at least three different kinds of dandies depicted in those literary works: an ideal dandy, a dandy-hedonist, and a fallen dandy.
Keywords
dandy, dandyism, O. Wilde, aestheticism, image
Citation
Ihoshev K. M. The Image of a Dandy in Oscar Wilde’s fiction. Trends in the development of philological education in the era of digitalization: European and national contexts : Scientific monograph. Riga, Latvia : “Baltija Publishing”, 2023. Pp. 568-589.