Truth, Goodness And Sublimation-Ethical Elements In Oscar Wilde’s Fairytales

Oscar Wilde won his award in the world first because of his plays; then he wrotea distinctive novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” which made more people love hisworks of relative types. Comparatively speaking, readers of his fairy tales weremainly children for a very long time because of readers’ fixed concepts that the fairytales were written for children as their pillow books, and pundits who had interest instudying the profound meanings and significance of these fairy tales were not so many.Not until his special close friend Robert Ross started the comprehensive study ofWilde’s works, did Wilde’s fairy tales begin to attract adult readers.This thesis is an attempt to analyze Oscar Wilde’s two volumes of fairy tales: AHouse of Pomegranates and The Happy Prince from the perspective of ethicalcriticism to shift people’s usual aesthetic angles of view to the moral ones, and letmore and more adults read his fairy tales to focus on their real social values. Thisthesis mainly focuses on ethical elements like the true, the good and the sublime in hisfairytales.Through the analyses of the ethical elements implied in Wilde’s fairytales, theauthor tries to illuminate the theme of this thesis: though Wilde is an aesthete and triesto ignore morality in his life; those ethical elements in his fairytales manifest hisnever-stopping speculation on ethical moral problems in his society. All of thoseproblems have been profoundly implied by Wilde’s counter-fairytale writing style,which are Wilde’s peculiarities in literary writing that the author tries to explore. Healways yearns for an ideal social order, and desires and pursues the truth, thegoodness and the sublimation of the soul in his own way, which reflect his longingsfor an ideal world: no deception, no utilitarian, no hypocrisy, however, hiscounter-fairytale elements tell his readers those are only longings that can not berealized because of the social background in Victorian times.