On The "Adult World" In Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales

Oscar Wilde is a prominent writer in Britain. Scholars from both China andwestern countries noticed the great study value of Wilde’fairy tale before early,however, due to a long-term stagnancy, it was not until1980s that study of Wildeachieved fruitful research results. Now more and more adult people begin readingWilde’s fairy tale, this article concerns about how Wilde created the “adult world”in his works, which is proposed by Zhou Zuoren,with application of close readingmethod and general study method and attempts to re-evaluate Zhou zuoren’s views aswell.The thesis contains three parts. The first part (chapter one and two) includes thereview and a brief outline of the author’s personal experience, indicating the necessityof studying Wilde’s fairy tales from the point of “adult world”. The second part(chapter three and chapter four) analyzes the language characteristics and narrativestyle in Wilde’s fairy tales, supported by prototype theory, tragedy theory andgame-spirit. Combined with the writing strategy, the thesis demonstrates “the thincover” constituted by defamiliarization and philosophy,“the bitter aftertaste”constituted by pathetique aesthetic value and redemption significance and concludesthat Wilde’s fairy tales contains both the innovation and inheritance of the westernclassic fairy tales. The third part (chapter five) focuses on the reading tension in fairytales through three levels with the acceptance theory, pointing out that there areinseparable inner links between the children readers and adults writers, self identityand text identity, reality role and fiction role. The chapter six is the conclusion.