Rebellious Themes: A Defamiliarized Reading Of Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales

Putting aside his scandalous lifestyle and homosexual identity, as an Irish-born dramatist, essayist, novelist, poet, critic and short story writer, Oscar Wilde(1854-1900) is undoubtedly accepted as one of the greatest artists in Britain in the 19 th century. As an inseparable part of Wilde’s mature literary career, his two collections of fairytales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales(1888) and A House of Pomegranates(1891) are the precious product of Wilde’s childlike innocence and charming wit, which not only make him a real literary giant, but also become the splendid pearl in world children literature. Therefore, Wilde’s fairy tales are worthy of reading and rethinking to everyone, including children who want to behave themselves, gain experience, as well as adults who want to relive the innocence, honesty and dream in their childhood.Besides his identity as an author, scholars and critics both home and abroad have studied and analyzed many aspects of Wilde’s works. Yet, there are few scholars or critics who systematically study Wilde’s fairy tales from the perspective of Defamiliarization. As a result, the thesis will try to explore Wilde’s fairy tales with the technique of Defamiliarization by means of close readings of the text to have a deep understanding of Wilde’s innovation in his creation of children literature and his contribution to the world literature. This thesis will try to explore Wilde’s three well-known fairy tales The Happy Prince, The Nightingale and the Rose, The Devoted Friend with the technique of Defamiliarization, especially the rebellious themes contained in them, they are: love-love that dares not speak its name; ending-obsession with death ending; morality-good deeds bearing bad fruit.Through careful analysis of the thesis, the author finds out that the combination of the technique with the fairy tales makes Wilde’s work contain more deep meaning, which will help readers to have a good understanding of Wilde’s innovation in his creation of children literature and his contribution to the world literature. At the same time, the thesis also points out a new creative form and theme direction for the oncoming writers to make more contributions for the children literature.