On The Musicality Of Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales

Oscar Wilde is one of the greatest Irish novelists in Victorian era and is also the most famous spokesman of the British Aestheticism Movement in the late 19^th century.In 1888 and1892,he respectively published his first collection of fairy tales The Happy Prince and Other Tales and another collection A House of Pomegranates.Since the publishing of the two collections,scholars have never stopped analyzing his aesthetic ideas from his nine fairy tales.Nevertheless,most scholars only focus on the traditional perspectives in his works,such as the view of tragedy,consciousness of death,ethics and moralities and aesthetic features.Although their perspectives are more and more diversified,few of them discuss the musicality in his works in detail and only some of them refer to rhythm or cadence.From ancient times to the highly civilized modern society,music and literature boom when they are intertwined with and enriched by each other.Musicality has already become an important tool for writers and a meaningful perspective to analyze literary works.Actually,rhythm is only a superficial aspect of the utilization of musicality in literature,and more and more writers try to use musical forms to organize their works.Such a further integration between music and literature will enrich the expression of literary works.Based on an interdisciplinary approach in comparative literature and close readings,this thesis focuses on the musicality of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales,by using musical theories,musical psychology and musical aesthetics,to improve and supplement the study of musicality not only in Wilde's fairy tales,but also in literature in general.The introduction briefly introduces Wilde's life and his fairy tales,and also explains the relationship between music and literature.By illustrating the domestic researches,studies abroad,research methods and theoretical frameworks,it shows the perspective and significance of this thesis.The first chapter clarifies the explicit features of musicality in Wilde's fairy tales,including musical contents and musical rhythm.Musical contents contain natural music and artificial music.In the part of natural music,the image of the singing of birds will be focused on.Artificial music mainly refers to the sounds made by humans and musical instruments.Musical rhythm consists of rhetorical figures and short sentences.Wilde endows his works with musical rhythm by means of rhetorical figures like alliteration,repetition and parallel construction.By making music direct objects to read,Wilde uses his melodic words to create unique significances for his works.When readers appreciate his works,they can be easily touched by and connect their inner experiences in the mind with Wilde's literary language with explicit musical features.The second chapter identifies the implicit features of musicality in Wilde's fairy tales.Except using obvious musical elements,Wilde even tries to further integrate literature and music to organize his literary works,such as drawing lessons from musical forms and musical textures.By using nocturnal structures to build frames,rondo form to develop storylines,polyphony to diversify narrative modes and counterpoints to create conflicts,Wilde is like a musician who is skilled at using music forms to create artistic works.Explicit and implicit features of musicality are supplementary to each other in Wilde's fairy tales to make his works much more fascinating and attractive.The third chapter is about the effects that musicality brings to Wilde's fairy tales.In this chapter,the relationship among musicality,texts and readers will be analyzed in detail to illustrate how musicality acts on literary works.Texts to readers is what an object to a subject.Musicality in literature affects both the subject and the object in a reading activity.To texts,musicality can add aesthetic feelings of language,shape characters and environment,deepen themes,and diversify narrative modes.To readers,musicality in literary works has many functions,such as catharsis,education,synesthesia,expectation and review.The special effects that musicality endows the text can indirectly express the writer's inner emotions and directly arouse readers'feelings.It makes the texts become more expressive and gives readers a unique aesthetic taste and experience.The conclusion sums up the features and effects of musicality in Wilde's fairy tales and affirms the importance and worth of the study of musicality in literature.