Stylistic Use of Phraseology in the Novel "the Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

Stylistic use of phraseological units in the novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

The work of fiction is in fact the richest field for the deployment of phraseology for stylistic effect, since the literary author has access to the entire wealth of the language, and can draw on its expressive resources on various levels.

Wilde's only novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890), attracted much attention, and his sayings past from mouth to mouth as those of one of the professed wits of the age. This novel is about a youth, whose features, year after year, retain the same youthful appearance of innocent beauty, while the shame of his hideous vices become mirrored, year after year, on the features of his portrait. This novel covers the whole range of human experience and imagination.

Both Oscar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray cast long shadows. If Dorian Gray was an "essay on decorative art", it was also a piece of decorative art, composed of carefully selected phrases. Wilde was a man of great originality and power of mind.

Stylistically, Wilde seems to be striving in his prose for a synaesthesia of the visual, plastic and musical arts through language. He uses numerous inverted phraseological units creating his own proverbs and quotes which have become winged phrases.

"Being natural is simply a pose and the most irritating pose I know".

Variation of the given phraseological phrase changes completely meaning of the original saying "being unnatural is simply a pose". Lord Henry plays the part of critical cynic, propagating so-called "black" philosophy. The proverb denies sincerity choosing the thesis "life is a game".

"He doesn't burn with his natural passions".

The author applies extension of the component structure of phraseological unit "to burn with passion". Wilde strives to stress on the fact that a person who is affected by someone is not able to behave naturally. Dorian Gray has become a victim of Henry's immorality as he lived out the life which had been programmed for him by his "friend".

"...beauty doesn't die".

The author made antonymous change of the original proverb "beauty passes". Oscar Wilde denied the traditional criterions of the bourgeois ethics. He thought that the only moral value was the ideal of beauty in nature and in person.

"Humanity is the world's original sin".

Original sin is that of Adam, not humanity. The writer again used inverted proverb to create stylistic effect aiming at intensified expression of the protagonist's words. The phrase supposes "immoral" idea which is one of the concepts of hedonism being described in the novel.

"My heart shall never be put under their microscope".

Variation of the component structure of the phraseologism "to put something under microscope" leads to creation of the passive construction used by Oscar Wilde. In this case the given phrase means "to be examined very carefully". Basil means that he is not going to exhibit his picture not to reveal his real soul, feelings. According to him, "he has put too much of himself in it".