The Problem of Intermediality in Oscar Wilde's Novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' (1891) and Its Screenings

Oscar Wilde is one of the most well known British writers, who is famous for his novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1891) and there is a great amount of screenings, which are based on this novel. However, in various movies the portrait of Dorian Gray is depicted in different ways. Consequently, the plot of the story is usually altered, that is why this problem became a great interest to researches around the world. In the novel the main role plays the Portrait of Dorian Gray, so here appears the problem of the visual masterpiece's description using the literary tools - ekphrarsis. The film adaptation is the opposite attempt of transforming the text into the visual material. This study investigates the problem of intermediality of literary masterpiece with the usage of Wilde’s novel as an example. The method of compositional analysis will be used for this research in order to make a description of the portrait in the novel and in each movie and then to make a comparison between them. Data will be analyzed and divided by topics.