On the Narrative and Moral Functions of Fictitious Portraits in E.A. Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”, M.E. Braddon’s <i>Lady Audley’s Secret</i>, and Oscar Wilde’s <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i>
<p id="p1">This chapter investigates the functions of portraits in narrative texts and argues that their use helps authors to comment on their characters and that portraits can play an important role for whole plots. The relations between painting and writing are complex and multidirectional and inv...
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| Formato: | Capítulo de libro |
| Lenguaje: | inglés |
| Publicado: |
IntechOpen
2025
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/1208039 |
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| Sumario: | <p id="p1">This chapter investigates the functions of portraits in narrative texts and argues that their use helps authors to comment on their characters and that portraits can play an important role for whole plots. The relations between painting and writing are complex and multidirectional and involve questions of style, genre and realism. In reference to A.S. Byatt’s essay <em><italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">Portraits in Fiction</italic></em>, this contribution suggests that a differentiation between “literary portraits”, “portraits in literature” and “fictitious portraits” will prove helpful for future discussions of the interrelations between art and literature. The analysis is concerned with portraits that have been invented solely as part of a fictitious text and do not exist outside the narrative. The chapter argues that the invention of “a portrait in words within a text” can prolong and intensify the sensations of the readers. The analysis discusses how writers use fictitious portraits to explore the interrelations between the visible and the invisible, and especially the tensions between visuality and morality. By focusing on three canonical examples—Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”, Braddon’s <em><italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">Lady Audley’s Secret</italic></em> and Wilde’s <em><italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">The Picture of Dorian Gray</italic></em>—the chapter also illustrates the significance of gender issues in nineteenth-century fiction. While Poe’s story creates the example of a passive female sitter in the tradition of the Gothic novel, Braddon’s sensation novel presents an active female criminal whose wickedness is revealed by her portrait. Wilde combines Braddon’s idea of the revelatory powers of a portrait with Poe’s idea of the vampiristic qualities of painting.</p> |
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| ISBN: | 978-1-83634-428-5 |
| DOI: | 10.5772/intechopen.1009288 |