Aesthetic and ethical assessments in Oscar Wilde’s novel "The picture of Dorian Gray"

Аннотация. В статье рассматриваются морфологические категории средств вербализации концепта BEAUTY в романе Оскара Уайльда «Портрет Дориана Грея». Рассмотрено полную сеть эстетических и этических оценок в исследуемом романе.

Ключевые слова: концепт, роман, морфология, ассоциативная сеть, лексема, вербализация, эстетическая оценка, этическая оценка.

Currently, in linguistics there is an urgent need for a term that would organically combine mental and linguistic categories. Concept meets this need being both psychological and linguistic phenomenon.

Morphological representation of concepts, as part of their verbalization, although dealt with in the works of many researchers (N.A. Basylaya, O.M. Blagodarnyi, S.G. Vorkachov, A.L. Vohmyanina, O.S. Kubryakova, A.Yu. Mokrushyna, G.G. Slyshkin, M.V Shamanova and others), still remains one of the least highlighted issues in modern linguistics. Therefore, the lack of conceptual unity, constituted on the basis of the whole diversity of language appeals to concepts, not only dominant nouns, is considered as one of the topical problems of modern conceptography [9].

The difference between concepts and lexical meanings of the word lies in the fact that the latter lack categorial and grammatical, i.e.morphological meaning, and therefore donot relate to a specific part of speech [7].

However, an appeal to morphology coincides with the general logic of cognitive research in linguistics, focused on the study of the correlation of linguistic forms with their cognitive analogues [3]. It objectifies linguistic knowledge, which is part of the knowledge of the world, and represents the fundamental concepts that play a crucial role in the development of human conceptual system and ensures its orderliness. Without it a human wouldn't be able to form a specific image of the world [5].

In the context of cognitively oriented theory of language nomination a part of speech is interpreted as indirect, but, at the same time, real and objective projection on the language of different objects of reality that surround us [11], the result of perceiving the most significant properties of the object in the process of the perception of reality [2].

Many conceptual studies are aimed at the morphological aspect. In particular, it was found out that lexical and semantic field is represented mostly by verbs and nouns [7]. Morhlological categories of the means of verbalization of the concept were explored [4].

The present paper deals with the morphological categories of the means of verbalization of the concept BEAUTY.

At the first stage of the research the synonymic sets of the lexemes beauty, beautiful, beautifully and beautify are determined, using online dictionary YourDictionary [16]. It contains comprehensive information from authoritative sources, including Full Roget's Thesaurus as the headmost resource in researching synonymy. That will give a possibility to achieve the most complete representation of the synonymic sets under study.

The second stage is focused on the representation of the above mentioned synonymic sets in Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. With this purpose the software Digitale Bibliothek Band 59: English and American Literature is used.

Nouns as means of verbalization, as scientists claim, are characterized by rich associative potential and the ability to activate the mind images. Nominative means of verbalization are defined as units that are used for naming separate fragments of non-linguistic continuum, which are singled out bylanguage consciousness and correspond to a worldview of specific linguistic and cultural society [6].

Synonymic set of the lexeme beauty contains 32 components: beauty, enchantress, ornament, belle, advantage, excellence, merit, value, radiance, bloom, glamour, winsomeness, magnificence, majesty, shapeliness, allurement, fascination, appeal, attraction, harmony, exquisiteness, delicacy, charm, pulchritude, handsomeness, prettiness, fairness, comeliness, loveliness, grace, attractiveness.

The most frequently met among nouns are the lexemes beauty (54) (In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures [15]), charm (21) (Don't run down dyed hair and paintedfaces. There is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes, said Lord Henry [15]), grace (12) (Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed [15])value (11) (Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing [15]) and fascination (8) (The fascination that she had exercised over him would return. They would be happy together. His life with her would be beautiful and pure [15]).

The second layer of nouns verbalizing the concept beauty is made up by the lexemes loveliness (5), harmony (4), advantage (4), bloom (3), ornament (2), radiance (2), glamour (2), appeal (2), attraction (2), delicacy (1), fairness (1) and comeliness (1).

A number of combinations of the lexeme beauty, which is a direct lexical nomination of the concept under study, can enrich the results of the research by building up a network giving an idea of what beauty is both associated with and contrasted to. So, beauty is viewed as wonder (To me Beauty is the wonder of wonders. [15], youth (When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs leftfor you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory ofyourpast will make more bitter than defeats [15]), grace and purity (Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could not do with him [15]), color and joy (One should sympathisewith the colour, the beauty, the joy of life [15]), spirituality (But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic [15]).

On the other hand, beauty is contrasted to intellect (But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face [15]), thought (People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is [15]) and genius (Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty [15]).

Adjectival nominations are based on category of the characteristic which is formed in the process of perceiving the fact that the holistic object has its own attributes. The notion of the characteristic correlates with the individual feature peculiar to the defined notion (as opposed to other objects of the same conceptual categories) and, at the same time, reminds a person of other familiar object or phenomenon [12]. Thus, adjectival nominations represent notions, which are not three-dimensional objects, but specific characteristics of these objects [11].

Adjectives present the world as a set of attributes reflected in the concept, without which the object cannot be represented in the human consciousness [1]. They serve as verbalizators of the knowledge, acquired by an individual through the interaction with it and the comprehension of the experienced [13].