Metaphoric Spaces and Wildean Narrativity

Abstract

In recent years, the awareness of spatiality has turned into one of the concerns in narrative studies. As a case study, the present study aims at applying the most influential theories on spatiality, proposed by Mark Johnson, and Hilary Dannenberg on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The paper attempts to identify the implications of spatial narrativity on this work. Discovering the novel from such spatial perspective heavily reveals the existence of a spatial structure in the narrative that constructs its abstract level, and indicates numerous spatial components that do not come into sight on the surface level. Moreover, applying the traditional assumptions of space, the analysis examined the spatial settings for all the incidents in the novel that showed the presence of an organized spatial narrativity throughout the work. The results of traditional and current theories indicated that spatial mappings provide the basis of the narrativity in Wilde's work.