摘 要

奥斯卡•王尔德（Oscar Wilde，1854.10.16—1900.11.30）,爱尔兰作家、诗人、剧作家，英国唯美主义艺术运动的倡导者。他一生中就写过两部童话集，《快乐王子和其他故事》和《石榴之家》，一共仅有九篇童话，但每一篇都是精华，他的童话作品可以与安徒生童话和格林童话相媲美，最著名的童话为《渔夫和他的灵魂》《快乐王子》《夜莺与玫瑰》。

本文拟在细读文本《快乐王子和其他故事》，《石榴之家》基础上，精密联系作者创作的时代背景，从唯美主义，宗教气息，悲观色彩三个方面，系统地、多角度、多层面地分析王尔德是如何运用上述技巧生动地描写童话人物的，从细微处反映童话人物的生活。

关键词：奥斯卡·王尔德；《快乐王子》；《石榴之家》；人物

Contents

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………....1

2. Demonstration…………………………………………………...…….3

2.1 The aesthetic pursuit of fairy tale characters..............................….....3

2.1.1 The appearance of concrete characterization………….…..…..…..3

2.1.2 The persistent inner pursuit of the perfect image……………….....5

2.2 Religious features of Wilde’s fairy tale characters………………...…5

2.2.1 Self-sacrifice type…………………………………….…………...6

2.2.2 Self-salvation type………………………………………….……..7

2.3 The pessimism of Wilde’s fairy tale characters………………………9

2.3.1 The protagonist’s hopelessness towards the good life……………9

2.3.2 The indifference of other people …………………………….…..10

3. Conclusion..................................................................................…… 11

Works Cited……………………………………………….……...…...12

Bibliography……………………………………..………………...…..13

The Analysis of Characters in Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales

1. Introduction

Oscar Wilde (October，16，1854—November，30，1960), born in Dublin, Ireland, is the pioneer of British aestheticism art movement, the famous writer, poet， dramatist and artist. Wilde entered into Oxford University in 1874, influenced by Walter Pater and John Ruskin’s aesthetic ideas and contacting the new philosophy of Hegel, Darwin, and Raphael, he therefore became the pioneer of aestheticism writers after establishing the direction. His work occupies an important position in the history of world literature, at the same time he is also a start-up period, the first batch of foreign writers introduced to Chinese new literature.

Wilde’s fairy tales includes The Happy Prince and The Home of Pomegranate. In his fairy tales, it is not hard to see Oscar Wilde's pursuit of beauty and people comment Wilde’s fairy tales like this,

"If most of the European fairy tales are a romantic and exciting plot, Wilde’s fairy tales are an exception. The author cannot limit himself with the specification of the fairy tale; he still reflects the beauty as the highest ideal in the practice, always with kinds of ways to explain it."（Lin 112）

In Wilde’s fairy tales, beauty is everywhere, from the appearance to the heart of the characters. For him, the best way of writing fairy tales is the pursuit of beauty as well as his inner secret storage and uncertainty of illicit close space. The climax of the fairy tale often leaves a memorable beauty, yet often with a tragic ending as a contrast. As in The Happy Prince, a tall statue was made and stood in the center of the city after the death of the happy prince, with precious stones’ eyes, the whole body covered with gold, but he saw the city ugly and poor, so his heart broke into halves. The swallow wanted to help “the happy prince” to relieve for the poor, and as a result was frozen to death at his feet.

Since the 1930s and the1940s, the researches on Wilde have decreased sharply and even stagnated in the dozens of years afterwards. By the late 1980s, as the overall research level came to improve, the analysis on a specific work of Wilde seems insufficient. The overall analysis of his works becomes gradually necessary. In recent years, there has been a sudden upsurge in the research of his fairy tales at home and abroad. For example, in his Wilde’s Creation of Fairy Tales and Aestheticism, Yang Jiangzhu believes the fairy tales of Wilde “full of internal contradictions: there are ‘his serious accusation of the prevailing social system’ but meanwhile there is ‘aestheticism’” To put it simpler,

“Wilde is contradictory. As a writer, he hates to judge everything he describes in his works, but what he is doing in his works is to narrate the unfairness and suffering of the world and criticize the social system that causes the pains. His accusation is firing his passion as a poet.”（35）

There are quite a few foreign scholars who are interested in Wilde. Shilling law, Ann points out in Telling Beautiful Untrue Things the Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, what Wilde tries to tell his readers in The Fisherman and His Soul is that the aesthetes believe in the significance of “heart”. Without the protection and guidance of “heart”, soul, or the nature of aestheticism would turn into something ruthless and inhuman. In his biography of Oscar Wilde, Richard Ellman mentions that “there are two different worlds: one is the real world that can be seen by us but not talked by us; the other is the art world about which we have to talk, or it would not exist anymore.”（27）What Wilde was trying to do is to seek for reality and significance of life as well as rebuild his confidence of life in order to resist the erosion and deprivation of the people in the real world.

Put specifically, my thesis will focus on the fairy tale characters in Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tale. This thesis will be divided into three parts. The first chapter deals with the aesthetic pursuit of fairy tale characters, including the appearance of concrete characterization and the persistent inner pursuit of the perfect image. The second chapter focuses on the religious features of Wilde fairy tale characters from self-sacrifice type and self-salvation type. The third chapter turns to the pessimism of Wilde fairy tale characters, thus showing the protagonist’s hopelessness towards the good life and the indifference of other people.