Introduction
To begin with, it is important to emphasize that this study views the novel as an encounter of different discourses about the world, and that the relationships established here are based on the interpretation of the different voices that appear in it. Many of the inferences made in the present work draw on a particular context, which is very close in time, and that represents a kind of thought that emerged during the late nineteenth century as a protest against the established notion of art, truth, ethics, morals and society.
Thus, this study takes Bakhtin‘s ideas of polyphony and carnival, and considers The Picture of Dorian Gray a polyphonic novel. This way, one can find that there are critical discourses that seem to be relevant for the comprehension of the novel. Its characters represent these discourses, and the result of the dialogue among them turns out to be an interesting and paradoxical way of understanding life. Taking into account that a novel is an unfinished creation, it is always possible to find new interpretations of the same literary text, and to establish connections with other texts as proposed in this work. The concept of Carnival is important because it allows one to explore some chapters in The Picture of Dorian Gray that can reveal more about a Dionysian voice, and to analyze its importance within the whole context of the work.
The novel shows the moral and psychological growth of its main character. There is a process of change in the way Dorian Gray feels about morality, beauty, art and his relationships with his friends. Dorian Gray starts out being a very naïve, charming and beautiful chap without any intellectual interest and ends up being a paranoid, hedonist and selfish character. The transformation resides in the style of the novel: at the beginning it is very colorful, but when the whole plot is unraveled it turns out to be dark, depressive, dull and even gothic, as well.