""Before Lady Gaga, Madonna, Prince, David Bowie, Salvador Dali, or Liberace, there was Oscar Wilde, the archetype of the artist poseur....Oscar Wilde's career established a cult of artistic spectacle and personal scandal inspiring provocateurs in every generation since." -From Marcus Schwager's Introduction. Lord Henry Wotton devotes himself to convincing Dorian Gray that physical beauty is the only thing in life worth pursuing. The younger man falls entirely under Wotton's alluring influence, and Dorian eventually gets ...
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""Before Lady Gaga, Madonna, Prince, David Bowie, Salvador Dali, or Liberace, there was Oscar Wilde, the archetype of the artist poseur....Oscar Wilde's career established a cult of artistic spectacle and personal scandal inspiring provocateurs in every generation since." -From Marcus Schwager's Introduction. Lord Henry Wotton devotes himself to convincing Dorian Gray that physical beauty is the only thing in life worth pursuing. The younger man falls entirely under Wotton's alluring influence, and Dorian eventually gets the aesthete's sole desire: his appearance never changes, no matter what he does to his own body. Instead it is a portrait of himself that is increasingly ravaged by time and his mistreatment of himself and others. Dorian's pursuit of pleasure-beautiful and sensually perfect on the outside-is shadowed more and more closely by his own hideous portrait. Oscar Wilde's dark tale feels so real because it paints a picture of human nature not only in Dorian's gullible innocence but also in Wotton's corrupting influence. This Canon Classic shocked its original readers with its portrayal of sin, even as it displayed the unavoidable consequences"--
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