The Last Rose of Summer:Death and Sacrifice in Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales

Abstract Wilde is not a prolific writer, but almost in all fairy tales he has composed, death and sacrifice never fail to show up in one way or another。 It is noticeable that his creative idea and courage to confront death and sacrifice transfers the horror of death to imagination for beauty。85283

Through textual closing reading of the two collections of Wilde's fairy tales along with a study of the researches done by predecessors, this paper intends to discuss why Wilde favors the death theme and how death and sacrifice are embodied in his fairy tales。 With interpretation of specific texts this paper attempts to explore Wilde's unique understanding of death and sacrifice from three aspects,namely, from religious, cultural and personal perspective thus to analyze Wilde's consciousness of death, particularly sacrifice, which is of noble meaning of death。

Keyword: Oscar Wilde； death； sacrifice；children's literature

夏日里的最后一株玫瑰——王尔德童话中的死亡与牺牲

摘    要

奥斯卡·王尔德并不是一位多产的作家，他仅有的九篇童话故事中却几乎全部涉及死亡和牺牲的情节，其表现方式也多种多样。同时，他编造死亡的创意和直面牺牲的勇气也成功地将死亡的恐怖转化成美的想象。本文将王尔德的两部童话集《快乐王子和其他故事》源Q于W优H尔J论K文M网WwW.youeRw.com 原文+QQ75201.,8766 、《石榴屋》作为研究对象，在以往学者的研究基础上，通过文本细读及笔者自己的理解，分析童话内容，探讨王尔德死亡主题的形成渊源。对于王尔德童话中所涉及的死亡与牺牲，本文拟从宗教、文化和个人三个方面加以阐释,结合具体实例尝试探讨王尔德对这一主题的独特理解，从而剖析王尔德的死亡意识,尤其是牺牲这一具有崇高意义的死亡。

毕业论文关键词：王尔德；死亡； 牺牲； 儿童文学

Contents

Introduction 1

1。 Oscar Wilde's preference for death and sacrifice theme 5

2。 Death and sacrifice from the religious perspective 7

3。 Death and sacrifice from the cultural perspective 9

4。 Death and sacrifice from the inpidual perspective 11

Conclusion 13

References 16

The Last Rose of Summer：Death and Sacrifice in Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales

Introduction

The richness of Oscar Wilde's tunes and words are given full range in two sparkling collections of fairy stories written between 1887 and 1891。 He became interested in writing cute stories because his wife Constance Lloyd gave birth to two baby boys, Cyril and Vyvyan respectively in 1885 and 1886。 It can be considered as the direct cause of his writing fairy tales because the conceited and loving father wanted his sons to read his fairy tales and construct agreeable values。

The Happy Prince and Other Stories was first published in 1888, consisting of five stories, "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Selfish Giant", "The Devoted Friend", and "The Remarkable Rocket"。 In regard to A House of PomegranAates, it is a collection of another four whimsical tales published in 1891, containing "The Young King", "The Birthday of the Infanta", "The Fisherman and his Soul", and "The Star-Child"。 来自优W尔Y论W文C网WWw.YoueRw.com 加QQ7520,18766