The Picture of Dorian Gray
Compare and contrast the styles (including word choices, syntax, and distinctive metaphors or patterns of imagery) to two of the following texts: “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”. What purposes do these different styles serve? You should ground your argument on careful analyses of at least one significant passage from each text you discuss.
“The Picture of Dorian Gray”:
Literal images
Figurative images
Symbols: The author's attempts to represent areas of human experience that ordinary language cannot express; the symbol evokes a concrete, objective reality while suggesting a level of meaning beyond that reality Denotative meaning: the literal meaning of a word | Connotative meaning: suggestions and associations resulting from a word or group of words. | Style is the author's personal expression. | * It reveals his/her way of perceiving experience and organizing perceptions. | * Irony: a discrepancy between what is stated and what is suggested; saying one thing and meaning another. | * Hyperbole: the opposite of understatement; exaggeration used for rhetorical effect: may be dramatic heightening. | · omniscient narrator: godlike narrator; he/she can enter character's minds and know everything that is going on, past, present, and future. | Advantage: very natural technique; author is, after all, omniscient regarding his work. | Disadvantage: unlifelike; narrator knows and tells all; is truly a convention of literature | Scenic Technique | * Resembles a movie or play in its manner of presentation. | | We are close to the actions in both a spatial and temporal sense. | | The author presents actions that take a few seconds to perform in a passage that takes a few seconds to read. | * Scenic techniques used at the beginning of a novel are more likely to capture a reader's attention at once because they are concrete and vivid. | Panoramic technique | *
“The Picture of Dorian Gray”:
Literal images
Figurative images
Symbols: The author's attempts to represent areas of human experience that ordinary language cannot express; the symbol evokes a concrete, objective reality while suggesting a level of meaning beyond that reality Denotative meaning: the literal meaning of a word | Connotative meaning: suggestions and associations resulting from a word or group of words. | Style is the author's personal expression. | * It reveals his/her way of perceiving experience and organizing perceptions. | * Irony: a discrepancy between what is stated and what is suggested; saying one thing and meaning another. | * Hyperbole: the opposite of understatement; exaggeration used for rhetorical effect: may be dramatic heightening. | · omniscient narrator: godlike narrator; he/she can enter character's minds and know everything that is going on, past, present, and future. | Advantage: very natural technique; author is, after all, omniscient regarding his work. | Disadvantage: unlifelike; narrator knows and tells all; is truly a convention of literature | Scenic Technique | * Resembles a movie or play in its manner of presentation. | | We are close to the actions in both a spatial and temporal sense. | | The author presents actions that take a few seconds to perform in a passage that takes a few seconds to read. | * Scenic techniques used at the beginning of a novel are more likely to capture a reader's attention at once because they are concrete and vivid. | Panoramic technique | *