A Study of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales
Abstract: Oscar Wilde is an important writer and representative of the aesthetic movement of the late Victorian period in the nineteenth century. Wilde is chiefly renowned as a novelist and playwright, and in particular for his contribution to the development to the aesthetic movement. Wilde was also a poet and good at writing fairy tales. Wilde wrote nine fairy tales in all. Each of them is a perfect reflection of his aestheticism views. To be both beautiful and educational is the most distinguishing features in his fairy tales.
This thesis is to focus on aestheticism in Oscar Wilde’s nine fairy tales collected in his two books The Happy Prince and Other Stories and The House of Pomegranates. The aestheticism in Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales is mainly embodied in the following aspects: the vocabulary Wilde used in writing the stories, the personality of characters in the stories, the dialogues of the characters or the description of them, and the plot and theme of the stories. This thesis consists of three parts: a brief introduction of aestheticism and the major works of Oscar Wilde; aestheticism in Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales, in which the aestheticism will be examined in two aspects divided by the two books; and a conclusion about the nine fairy tales.
Keywords: aestheticism, beauty, Oscar Wilde, fairy tale
Contents
Abstract i
摘 要 i
Introduction 1
1. 1 A Brief Introduction of Aestheticism 1
1.2 Oscar Wilde and His Major Works 2
1.3 Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales 3
2 Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales 5
2.1 The Happy Prince and other Stories 5
2.1.1 A Sketch of the Book 5
2.1.2 Aestheticism in ‘The Happy Prince’ 5
2.1.3 Aestheticism in ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ 6
2.1.4 Aestheticism in the other three stories 8
2.2 The House of Pomegranates 9
2.2.1 A Sketch of the Book 9
2.2.2 Aestheticism in ‘The Young King’ and ‘The Star-Child’ 10
2.2.3 Aestheticism in ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’ 11
2.2.4 Aestheticism in ‘The Fisherman and His Soul’ 13
3 The Beautiful Sorrow in Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales 13
References 14
Acknowledgements 15
