Oscar Wilder As A Story-teller---on The Influence Of Wilde’s Multiple Identities On His Shorter Fiction

As a representative of the English aestheticism movement, Oscar Wilde was quite a disputable figure. He was an Irishman in England, a married homosexual, a radical aesthete and a versatile writer. His short stories and fairy tales, which can be roughly classified as shorter fiction, are remarkable for their distinctive styles but have always been neglected. So based on in-depth reading of the texts, this thesis now intends to explore the influence of Wilde’s multiple identities on his shorter fiction by examining the stylistic and narratological features of these works.The thesis is composed of five parts. The first chapter mainly includes a brief introduction to Wilde and his works, literature review as well as the originality and structure of the thesis.Chapter two seeks to explore aesthetic elements in Wilde’s shorter fiction. This chapter centers on the stylistic features of his works by studying elements like characterization, imagery, syntax, and theme, and try to find out how Wilde managed to explain his aesthetic theories by integrating the beauty of form and sound in his tales without giving them much moral education.Chapter three digs into Wilde’s Irish background and analyzes how this affected the narratological features of his works.While chapter four just studies Wilde as an outsider of the mainstream English society and tries to explore what on earth Wilde pursued in his aesthetic works.The author concludes in the last chapter that Wilde’s shorter fiction, though not as mature as his plays and only novel, are also bold attempts at literary aestheticism. They also reveal Wilde’s inheritance and development of traditional Irish folklores. They are a good channel for Wilde to preach his artistic theories, but more importantly they provide him with a way to exhibit his individuality, the free development of which was just what he sought after behind his ostentatious and rebellious masks.