The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray and "The Critic as Artist"

1. Be sure to read the description of Aestheticism in Norton 2:1740-41. How well do the statements of Wilde's Preface to Dorian Gray match with that description?
2. How do Wilde's statements in the Preface about critics and criticism compare to Pater's? his statements about Realism?
3. Like Arnold in "The Function of Criticism," Wilde argues in "The Critic as Artist" that criticism is creative. Does his position agree with Arnold's in its details? What is his view of Arnold's claim that criticism attempts to see the object as in itself it really is? How do Wilde's views compare to Pater's?
4. The highest criticism, like the highest art, says Wilde, "is never trammeled by any shackles of verisimilitude. No ignoble considerations of probability, that cowardly concession to the tedious repetitions of domestic or public life, affect it ever" (1755). Over and over in his discussion, he elevates form over content. Of the writers we've read this term, both poets and prose writers, which ones would Wilde have praised? which would he have dismissed or loathed?