Borrowed Sins: Oscar Wilde’s Aesthetic Plagiarisms in The Picture of Dorian Gray

• Published in: Journal of narrative theory 2019, Vol.49 (2), p.137-168
• Main Author: Leonard, Sandra M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Allusion; Ambiguity; Apocrypha; Archetypes (Psychology); Authorship; Bibliographic literature; British & Irish literature; Collaboration; Color; Essays; Ethics; Exegesis & hermeneutics; Heroism & heroes; Intertextuality; Irish literature; Literary canon; Literary characters; Literary criticism; Literary devices; Literary influences; Loanwords; Logic; Morality; Museums; Narrative techniques; Palimpsests; Plagiarism; Plot (Narrative); Readers; Scholars; Social criticism & satire; Source materials; Victorian period; Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900); Writers
• ISSN: 1549-0815; 1548-9248; 1548-9248
• DOI: 10.1353/jnt.2019.0006

Olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the pistachio-colored peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes, carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, flame-red cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. (113 [1890]) In this passage, all of the underlined words indicate direct borrowing from various sections of A. H. Church's museum guide, Precious Stones Considered in Their Scientific and Artistic Relations, including that of the color-changing chrysoberyl "appearing of a raspberry red hue by candle or lamplight" and amethysts that contain "alternate layers of ruby and sapphire" (72, 54). Whereas appropriation, allusion, adaptation, pastiche, and other less transgressive types of intertextual play have been widely developed as avenues for scholarly inquiry and literary interpretation, plagiarism has not received such attention in terms of its aesthetic power. [...]in a particularly notable study, Florina Tufescu justifies Wilde's plagiarisms by arguing that he wrote under a different set of ethical standards, embracing, not a "Romantic," but a "Classical" paradigm, according to which plagiarism is condemnable only if "artistically unsuccessful" (5). [...]as long as Wilde's appropriations produce beautiful art, they need not be considered plagiarism.