Oscar Wilde's Writing Traits
-Wilde liked to use music as an expression, in some way, the movement of the feelings (or emotional values) that cling to the unconscious process. In The Picture Of Dorian Grey Wilde uses such traits to evoke the emotions of characters such as Basil and Dorian.
Example: Dorian reacts to Sibyl Vane, the first girl with whom he falls in love, as if she were music. He describes her to Lord Henry:
"And her voice — I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow notes, that seemed to fall singly upon one's ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant hautbois. In the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing. There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins. You know how a voice can stir one."
-Wilde also liked to use colors as imagery for emotions. In Symphony of Yellow he uses words like yellow for sorrow and green for death or sadness.
Example:
Oscar Wilde's Symphony Of Yellow
An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
-Furthermore, Wilde used metaphors to prove points. In The Decay Of Lying he uses metaphors peppered with Wildean epigrams to prove his point, instead of making an argument.
Example:
"Ah! Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos illuminated by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language: as a novelist he can do everything except tell a story . . . Somebody in Shakespeare — Touchstone [from Shakespeare's As You Like It], I think — talks about a man who is always breaking shins over his own wit, and it seems to me that this might serve as the basis for a criticism of Meredith's method. But whatever he is, he is not a realist. Or rather I would say that he is a child of realism who is not on speaking terms with his father."
Example: Dorian reacts to Sibyl Vane, the first girl with whom he falls in love, as if she were music. He describes her to Lord Henry:
"And her voice — I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow notes, that seemed to fall singly upon one's ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant hautbois. In the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing. There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins. You know how a voice can stir one."
-Wilde also liked to use colors as imagery for emotions. In Symphony of Yellow he uses words like yellow for sorrow and green for death or sadness.
Example:
Oscar Wilde's Symphony Of Yellow
An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
-Furthermore, Wilde used metaphors to prove points. In The Decay Of Lying he uses metaphors peppered with Wildean epigrams to prove his point, instead of making an argument.
Example:
"Ah! Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos illuminated by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language: as a novelist he can do everything except tell a story . . . Somebody in Shakespeare — Touchstone [from Shakespeare's As You Like It], I think — talks about a man who is always breaking shins over his own wit, and it seems to me that this might serve as the basis for a criticism of Meredith's method. But whatever he is, he is not a realist. Or rather I would say that he is a child of realism who is not on speaking terms with his father."