Oscar as (Ovid as) Orpheus

Whereas Plato is more commonly considered as an ancient source for The Picture of Dorian Gray, this chapter looks at Ovid and his Metamorphoses as a classical model for Wilde’s sole novel. Unlike Narcissus and Pygmalion, who are more obviously alluded to in Dorian Gray, Ovid’s Orpheus has mainly been overlooked as a mythical archetype for Wilde’s novel. Orpheus, the legendary minstrel whose story is related in Books 10 and 11 of the Metamorphoses, has long been regarded as the archetypal artist who is the most relevant self-reflexive representative of the poet Ovid himself. While the tragic relationship between Dorian Gray and Sibyl Vane in Wilde’s novel has been compared to that between Orpheus and Eurydice in Ovid’s poem, this chapter proposes that the Ovidian Orpheus’ misogynistic and pederastic tendencies can help unravel the evocatively named Dorian’s troubled relations with the sexes, as well as those of Wilde himself.