Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

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Oscar Wilde
disillusionment, and the manipulation of others for one’s own
enjoyment and edification” (436–37).
2. Liebman considers Henry to be a serious representation of the
scientific character whose understanding of metaphysics makes
him a consistent pessimist. In his words, “How does one live
in a world in which nothing can be believed and no one can
be trusted? Henry’s answer is what philosophers call ethical
egoism. He encourages Dorian to follow his own example of
pursuing his own self-interest, which means seeking pleasure
and avoiding pain. Henry’s “new Hedonism” is based on the
assumption that the quest for pleasure is natural because it is
an expression of the quest for life, a response to a basic impulse,
. . .” (439).
3. “New Hedonism” is Oscar Wilde’s own term for Henry
Wotton’s amoral philosophy of sensuous enjoyment of life
without a moral underpinning. “Carpe Diem” is the theme of
“seizing the day or moment” that underlies so many Elizabethan
and Romantic poetry. “Doppelganger” is the idea of the
“doubling” of a character either in another character or image
such as metaphor or symbol.
4. John Paul Riquelme in his essay, “Oscar Wide’s Aesthetic
Gothic” traces the myth of Narcissus and Echo as parallels to
Wilde’s own literary relationship with Walter Pater:
“But, in fact, Echo and Narcissus, however different
from each other, are counterparts, whose stories constitute
a single compound myth. Echo as well as Narcissus
plays a continuing role in Wilde’s novel because of the
style’s echoic character. By echoing Pater’s writings
frequently and strategically, Wilde projects the story of
a contemporary Narcissus as one truth about Paterian
aestheticism. He echoes Pater not in order to agree
with the older British writer’s views but to present them
darkly, in shades of gray, as at base contradictory in
destructive and self-destructive ways” (498).
This essay also develops the idea of the doppelganger as essential
in the Narcissism developed by Wilde and recognizes it to be
essentially Modernist: “When Wilde’s Narcissus looks into the
mirror of his painting, coproduced by his older friends, Basil