In the Heart of the Wildean Pomegranate: Beauty, Passion and Faith in Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/bbgfnw83Keywords:
Oscar Wilde, Happy Prince and Other Stories, aestheticism, allegory, pomegranate, Victorian literatureAbstract
Oscar Wilde’s fictitious writings are known for their richly imaginative worlds, where vividly descriptive imagery and ornate language embody the spirit of aestheticism per se. Within this highly decorated aesthetic framework, the allegorical layers of meaning – art, passion, Christianity – of his three tales, “The Selfish Giant,” “The Happy Prince” and “The Fisherman and His Soul” (all included in the collection The Happy Prince and Other Stories, containing the volumes The Happy Prince and Other Tales and A House of Pomegranates) unfold in a structure mise en abyme, embedded within one another and offering a layered, artistic interpretation. As we peel away the layers by reading these three tales in sequence, the innermost core of Wilde’s allegorical pomegranate gradually reveals itself – a core which I intend to uncover in this paper. The aim of my research is to examine in depth the themes of beauty, love, and faith in Oscar Wilde’s allegorical stories and to provide a comprehensive analysis of how these motifs reveal the layers of his artistic vision and philosophy.
References
Atlas Obscura. “Sans Souci: The Ruined Haitian Palace of a Slave-Turned Brutal Kleptocrat.” 2013. Slate, https://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/10/22/sans_souci_the_ruined_haitian_palace_of_a_slave_turned_brutal_kleptocrat.html. Accessed: 29 December 2024.
Boyiopoulos, Kostas, Yoonjoung Choi, and Matthew Brinton Tildesley. The Decadent Short Story: An Annotated Anthology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
Cuddon, J. A., Claire Preston, and M. A. R. Habib. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 5th ed, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2013.
Duffy, John-Charles. “Gay-Related Themes in the Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 29, no. 2, 2001, pp. 327–49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25058557. Accessed: 4 August 2025.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. London: Vintage Books. Kindle, 1988.
Emery, Jacob. “Figures Taken for Signs: Symbol, Allegory, ‘Mise En Abyme.’” Comparative Literature, vol. 64, no. 4, 2012, pp. 339–55. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41819557. Accessed: 9 May 2025.
Frankel, Nicholas. “General Introduction.” The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Harvard University Press, 2012, pp. 1–34.
Hodgkins, Hope Howell. “White Blossoms and Snozzcumbers: Alternative Sentimentalities in the Giants of Oscar Wilde and Roald Dahl.” CEA Critic, vol. 65, no. 1, 2002, pp. 41–49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44377554. Accessed: 28 Aug. 2025.
Manning, Gary, Jr. “‘Paid Full’? The Meaning of τετέλεσται (Tetelestai) in Jesus’ Final Words.” 2022. The Good Book Blog, https://www.biola.edu/blogs/good-book-blog/2022/paid-in-full-the-meaning-of-tetelestai-in-jesus-final-words. Accessed: 30 December 2024.
Pater, Walter. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. London: Project Gutenberg, 2020. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4060/pg4060-images.html. Accessed: 4 August 2025.
Pendlebury, Kate. “The Building of ‘A House of Pomegranates.’” Marvels & Tales, vol. 25, no. 1, 2011, pp. 124–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41388981. Accessed: 17 October 2024.
Quintus, John Allen. “Christ, Christianity, and Oscar Wilde.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 33, no. 4, 1991, pp. 514–27. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40754965. Accessed: 24 August 2025.
Tsang, Gabriel F. Y. “The Allegorical Function of Mise en abyme in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Ah Cheng’s ‘The King of Children.’” Language and Semiotic Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2019, pp. 102–15. Accessed: 9 May 2025.
Wilde, Oscar. De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol & Other Writings, Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Edition, 1999.
Wilde, Oscar. The Happy Prince and Other Stories. London: Collins Classics, 2015.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Alma Books Ltd, 2014.
Wood, Naomi. “Creating the Sensual Child: Paterian Aesthetics, Pederasty, and Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales.” Marvels & Tales, vol. 16, no. 2, 2002, pp. 156–70. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41388625. Accessed: 24 Augst 2025.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Emese Melkó
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
