ABSTRACT
Oscar Wilde clearly articulated the changing direction of his brand and his creative point of view when he composed "The Picture of Dorian Gray". Wilde presented a radical alternative to Victorian life, labeled New Hedonism, and seductively articulated it in a polished narrative. The perspective it outlined seemed to eschew the playful moral ambivalences of earlier works and adopt a frankly contemptuous view of conventional values. Wilde came up with a narrative markedly different from the whimsical fiction that he wrote during the 1880s. In Great Britain, readers and critics alike were quite familiar with the Wilde brand of the 1880s, and based on that awareness they had very clear expectations for his creative work. To refocus critical thinking about his writing and to downplay some of the most inflammatory reactions to elements in "The Picture of Dorian Gray", Wilde wrote a broad declaration of his aesthetic values.
