The picture of Dorian Grey and G. B. Show: appunti in inglese

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY Plot: Dorian Gray is a dandy, a man who should live life in full, completely, realising his wishes and dreams; one of the feature of a dandy is youth that represent beauty. Youth and beauty can give happiness. Dorian at the beginning of the play fascinates a painter called Basil and thanks to a witchcraft gives eternal youth on the man while on the portrait we will find the signs of age and vices. Dorian Gray now lives only for pleasure and making use of everyone and letting people died insensitively. We know that at the end Dorian and the painter see the portrait who was put in an attic and covered. When Dorian sees the portrait he stabs it and Dorian himself died and the picture returns to its original purity. At the end Dorian's face is withered, wrinkled, loathsome in fact when people sees him died they don't recognise him. They recognise him only for a ring that he is wearing. Allegory: It is a nineteen century's version of the myth of the Faust: both Dorian and Faust are men who sell their soul to devil to obtain something: in the case of Dorian to obtain youth, in the case of Faust to obtain knowledge. How? Thanks to the picture that represent the dark side of Dorian personality, that is the double. Dorian tries to forget this dark side of his personality locking jis portrait in a dark room under a sheet. Moral: Every excess will be punished, reality can't be escaped. When Dorian destroys the picture he dies, the picture is the symbol of the Victorian society of the immorality of the bad conscience of the middle class. Dorian's appearance pure and innocent is the symbol of the middle class' hypocrisy who would like hide behind a curtain. Finally the picture shows Wilde's theory of art: art is eternal and more important than life and is art that wins. The picture recovers all its perfection and Dorian dies. Narrator: Third person narrator with an internal prospective, there is an identification between the reader and the character. The setting is very well described; great importance is given to senses and perceptions and Wilde uses techniques typical of drama: the characters reveal themselves through what they say or through what other people say. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST The importance of being Ernest is a “Comedy of manner” that deals with moral and social behaviour of upper middle classes' people who follow specific social codes. They are well-made plays with fixed pattern of 4 phases: 1- exposition 2- complication 3- crisis 4- resolution in the same period we can find completely different plays, the “Drama of ideas” that consists of comedies which deals with ideas in a witty and humorous way; the stage is used as a means to attack evils and institutions or show hypocrisy. In this kind of comedy we have a blend of comedy, serious intent and didacticism; this kind of play doesn't only aim at entertaining, but above all it aims at thinking, learning and d