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摘要王尔德的每篇童话中都包含有宗教意象，其九篇童话中的八篇都有人物死亡的情节。但每个人物死亡所蕴含的意义和原因也不尽相同。本论文根据王尔德童话中主要人物因死亡而表现出的主题进行分类，粗略归纳为人物因爱与奉献而死和因救赎而死两种主题。从人物死亡的原因切入，联系其它宗教意象和这些意象在宗教上的解释，分析童话中人物死亡和出现这些意象的作用，最后总结并推测王尔德使用这些意象的目的。33727
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关键词 《快乐王子及其它童话》 《石榴屋》宗教意象 奥斯卡.王尔德
毕业论文外 文 摘 要
Title The Religious Image in Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales
Abstract
Most of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales contain religious images. Death is one of the religious images that make his stories different from other writers’ work. The main characters' death can be distributed as death for love as well as devotion or death for salvation. This paper selects some of the characters and discusses what each character's death means. In the fourth part it lists some possible reasons related with aestheticism, Victorian Era and religion to explain why Oscar Wilde used these religious images and what roles these religious images play in his fairy tales.
Keywords The Happy Prince and Other Fairy Tales A House of Pomegranate religious image Oscar Wilde
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Death for love and devotion 2
3 Death for salvation 4
4 The intention of using religious images 7
Conclusion 9
Acknowledgements 10
References 11
1 Introduction
Oscar Wilde wrote nine fairy tales of two collections, The Happy Prince and Other Fairy Tales and A House of Pomegranates. His fairy tales have some of same elements as other fairy tales like fancy characters, praising beauty, generosity and goodness, criticizing the selfishness, superficiality and evilness. However, some religious images like soul, death, god and their inner relations are hard for children to understand. It is only in a fairy tales form but shows some morality and social problems aiming for people of all ages. At that time in England, some newspapers gave high praise to his fairy tales like Athenaeum wrote that the book made great reputation once it published and it was not written for ‘British children’ or ‘British public’ but for those who received good education and the minority who could appreciate the elegance of his work ( Astell, 2006, p79). His religious belief is a key to understand his work. As he was attracted by Jesus and research more, he even identified himself as Jesus and used allegory more often (Chen, 2009, p7). His fairy tales are quite different from the traditional fairy tales and the religious images as long as their special parts shown in the fairy tale could be the reasons.
Except The Young King, in all each eight other fairy tales there is at least one or more characters dead in the end. Death is a religious image when it is associated with its meanings and how one dies. The association is obvious when it is about the place where one would go after dying like heaven or hell in Christianity. Death is like a turning point. The theme would show itself intensely and strongly through a figure’s death. Sometimes it is confusing when it’s unnecessary to let someone die, though it is reasonable as the story goes and shows something really worth thinking about moral. As these characters are not dead for the same reasons, this paper discusses from two aspects: death for love and devotion, death for salvation.
2 Death for love and devotion
In The Nightingale and the Rose, the nightingale lets the thorn of the Rose-tree press against her heart to obtain the blood so as to dye a red rose. In the end, the rose became “crimson as a ruby was the heart.”(Wilde, 2009, p17) “..., for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.”(Wilde, 2009, p17) The nightingale devotes her life for the true lover, the boy, which she thinks so. Love always accompanies with devotion. The nightingale dies out of love but her behavior is a kind of devotion. The boy doesn’t gain the love of the girl so he throws the rose made by the nightingale’s blood away. Therefore, the nightingale’s effort does not have any impact in the real world. The girl says: “besides, the Chamberlain’s nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.”(Wilde, 2009, p21) The comparison between the nightingale and the boy along with the girl is a satire showing normal people’s utility and secular (Lu, 2000, p81), and also the greatness of the nightingale’s love.