The Picture Of An Unbalanced World: "Only Connect"-an Archetypal Study Of Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales

The last two decades of the past century have witnessed a sweeping and worldwide interest in Oscar Wilde. Celebrated as a spokesman for Aestheticism, Oscar Wilde seems to have survived the time and is now enjoying another prosperous period of fame and attention. Oscar Wilde was first known to the public of London by his two volumes containing nine fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891).The term,"fairy tale", has come from Madam d'Aulnoy's Contes des fees, which was published in English in 1699 as Tales of the Fairys. Wilde, however, writes fairy tales"partly for children and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy, and who find in simplicity a subtle strangeness"(Wilde,1962:219). The thesis will focus on the study of Wilde's two collections of fairy tales: The Happy Prince and Other Tales and A House of Pomegranates through the archetypal analysis of the images and motifs underlying in the paratext of the tales, which account for Wilde's efforts to communicate his vision of life. The archetypes and motifs in the thesis will be examined in the light of Jungian archetypal criticism. The writer of the thesis believes that in his fairy tales, Wilde tries to reflect the insecurity and imbalance of life in his age and especially man as the pitiful victim of an unbalanced world who becomes alienated from himself and nature, as well as the universe.This thesis tries to avoid the widespread and popular trend in studies and criticism of Wilde by merging his personal and biographical facts into his works and makes a indepth research into the use of archetypal images and motifs implied in Wilde's fairy tales. The employment of archetypes owes much to Wilde's interest in the relationship between archetypes and literature and the theme of connection accounts for the modernity in Wilde's fairy tales. A good understanding of the archetypes in Wilde's fairy tales might result in an appropriate interpretation of Wilde's particular vision of reality and his aspiration for balance and connection.