Dorian Gray, Or, The Modern Narcissus

Författare

Jacob Mattsson

Summary, in English

In Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection, not realizing it was merely an image. Unable to leave this reflection, Narcissus died. Doctor Faustus was, in both Marlowe’s and Goethe’s version, a highly successful scholar who makes a deal with the devil. The devil gets Faustus’ soul in exchange for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The young, beautiful Dorian Gray realizes that his beauty will fade with time. He therefore expresses the desire to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth. Consequently a portrait painted of him ages rather than himself.
The theme concerning beauty, narcissism and deals with the devil can be traced through history. By making a connection between Narcissus, Doctor Faustus, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the two filmic adaptations (from 1945 and 2009) of the latter, this essay attempts to examine how these different pieces of art reveals the historical time and discursive culture in the moment of their reinterpretation.
Thereby this essay manages to prove the theories of how art is an, explicit or implicit, intertextual dialogue between artists as well as how adaptations reveal, as Robert Stam describes it, the constantly changing discursive grids – cultural, generic, ideological, industrial. The essay also discusses how the feministic movement during the 20th century has been a major contributing factor to the reinterpretation of these pieces of art.

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