So, during my senior year, one absolute classic that I loved reading was, The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde.
I read this classic second semester of my senior year at the beginning of that term.
Background of the novel:
The novel is sometimes viewed as an autobiography of Wilde’s life
or as gothic melodrama. The ethics of the aesthetic doctrines clarify the books themes. Wilde was an outspoken proponent of the Aesthetic Movement,
adopting the words of Walter Pater, “to burn with this hard gemlike flame to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.” The French symbolists’ ideas were more sympathetic to the Aesthetic Movement. Wilde borrowed the phrase “art for art’s sake” from a French author of the time. Did Wilde reject the aesthetic doctrines himself? He added a preface to the 1891 book which stated the aesthetic principles in epigrammatic form, opposite to what the novel itself demonstrates. Extreme aestheticism cannot be lived, but neither can one live
solely in reality.
Some of the preface of the novel
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.