A Corpus-assisted Stylistic Analysis of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
Varvara Gurina · Digital Repository (National Repository of Grey Literature) · 2025
This thesis explores the ways in which the linguistic features set Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray apart from other novels published in the 1890s. Methodologically, the thesis relies on the approaches of corpus stylistics. The study is corpus-assisted, in that it relies on quantitative data (keywords, frequency lists, collocations) as its starting point, but most of the analysis is qualitative. The corpus analysis is performed using #LancsBox X. The analysed material comprises Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and a corpus of late 19th century novels, which is used as a reference corpus. The analysis indicates stylistic and linguistic choices that contribute to the novel's distinctive tone and its unique position within Victorian literature. It reveals the text's Aesthetic and Decadent preoccupation with beauty and corruption. It also demonstrates that Oscar Wildes's prose style is structurally similar to a play, however, the reporting verbs he uses are diverse in style. The analysis further uncovers a pattern of emotionally distant and detached speech and the characters' tendency towards generalizations and abstract hypothetical discussions. At the same time, this works demonstrates the efficiency of using corpus-based methods in literary analysis, since it allows to uncover...