Title: Wildean ecology : the representations of aesthetic culture and grotesque nature in Oscar Wilde's fairy tales
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2023, vol. 49, iss. 2, pp. 145-158
Extent
145-158
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2023-2-7
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.79908
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Rights access
open access
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
In his fairy tales, Oscar Wilde represents his ideological worldview by engendering anthropomorphised characters who would respond to Wildean didactic and Christian values. While the major literature on Oscar Wilde's fairy tales concentrates on moral values, social inequality, the concept of beauty, and Victorian consumer culture, this article investigates Wilde's perception of Victorian culture and nature through Ecocritical lenses. Wilde, I argue, draws a strict line between culture and nature, and his representations of culture are elevated, majestic, and alluring while his nature is demeaning, grotesque, and distasteful. Wilde only cherishes the aspect of nature which has become both semantically and physically domesticated and naturalised. The Garden becomes an epitome of naturalised nature which uniquely responds to cultural values. Furthermore, through exploring some tales from both The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), and A House of Pomegranates (1891), I suggest that Wilde's anthropomorphised characters are of less value in comparison to his human characters. Lastly, I elucidate how trespassing culture proves to be fatal for the Dwarf who represents pristine nature.
References
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[36] Tatar, Maria (2017) The aesthetics of altruism in Oscar Wilde's fairy tales. In: Bristow, J. (ed.), Oscar Wilde and the Cultures of Childhood. London: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture, 145–157. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60411-4_6 | DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60411-4_6
[37] Taylor, Jesse Oak (2015) Where is Victorian ecocriticism? Victorian Literature and Culture, 43(4), 877–894. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1060150315000315 | DOI 10.1017/s1060150315000315
[38] Thompson, Mary Shine (2001) The importance of not being earnest: children and Oscar Wilde's fairy tales. New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship, 7(1), 191–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614540109510653 | DOI 10.1080/13614540109510653
[39] Vaninskaya, Anna (2011) The Victorian press and the fairy tale. Journal of Victorian Culture, 16(1), 151–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2010.519553 | DOI 10.1080/13555502.2010.519553
[40] Voskuil, Lynn (2020) Why Victorian ecocriticism matters? In: Denisoff, D. and T. Schaffer (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature. London: Routledge, 506–516. | DOI 10.4324/9780429507724-45
[41] Westling, Louise (2006) Literature, the environment, and the question of the posthuman. In: Gersdorf, C. and S. Mayer (Eds.) Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism. New York: Rodopi, 25–49. | DOI 10.1163/9789401203555_003
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[48] Wilde. Oscar (2013) De Profundis and Other Prison Writings. London: Penguin Classics.
[49] Williams, Marc, O., Lorraine Whitmarshand Diamait Mac Giolla Chríost (2021) The association between anthropomorphism of nature and pro-environmental variables: A systematic review. Biological Conservation, 255: 1–15. 109022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109022 | DOI 10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109022
[2] Baudrillard, Jean (2019) The Mirror of Production. (M. Poster, Trans.). New York: Verso.
[3] Bernardo, M. Susan (2019) Nowhere to Go: Caught Between Nature and Culture in Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales. In: Mazzeno, L. W. and R. D. Morrison (Eds.), Victorian Environmental Nightmares. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 227–242. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14042-7_12 | DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-14042-7_12
[4] Bunting, Ben (2015) Nature as ecology: toward a more constructive ecocriticism. Journal of Ecocriticism 7(1), 1–16. https://ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/joe/article/download/469/1069
[5] Childs, Michael. J. (1990) Boy labour in late Victorian and Edwardian England and the remaking of the working class. Journal of Social History, 23(4) 783–802. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3787673 | DOI 10.1353/jsh/23.4.783
[6] Clark, Bruce B. (1981) A burnt child loves the fire: Oscar Wilde's search for ultimate Meanings in Life. Ultimate Reality and Meaning 4(3), 225–247. https://doi.org/10.3138/uram.4.3.225 | DOI 10.3138/uram.4.3.225
[7] Clark, Timothy (2011) The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment (Cambridge Introductions to Literature) (Illustrated). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[8] Clark, Timothy (2015) Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept (Illustrated). New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
[9] Davis, Philip (2008) Why Victorian Literature Still Matters (Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos) (1st ed.). New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
[10] Ellmann, Richard (1987) Oscar Wilde. London: Penguin Books.
[11] Fiske, John (2011) Reading the popular. London: Routledge.
[12] Fiske, John (2016) Power Plays Power Works. London: Routledge.
[13] Flegel, Monica (2018) Innocent cruelty and the love of beauty in Oscar Wilde's fairy tales. In: Flegel, M. and C. Parkes. (Eds.) Cruel Children in Popular Texts and Cultures. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 41–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72275-7_3 | DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-72275-7_3
[14] Fuller, Jennifer D. (2013) Seeking wild Eyre: Victorian attitudes towards landscape and the environment in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Ecozon 4(2), 150–165. | DOI 10.37536/ecozona.2013.4.2.534
[15] Garrard, Greg (2011) Ecocriticism (The New Critical Idiom) (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
[16] Glotfelty, Cheryl (1996) Ecocriticism Reader. Georgia: University of Georgia Press.
[17] Jones, Justin T. (2011) Morality's ugly implications in Oscar Wilde's fairy tales. Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 51(4), 883–903. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41349042 | DOI 10.1353/sel.2011.0039
[18] Julian, Philippe (1969) Oscar Wilde. London: Granada Publisjing Limited.
[19] Killeen, Jarlath (2016) The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde. London: Palgrave.
[20] Kujundžić, Nada (2016) The moral meets the marvellous Grimms' didactic fairy tales. The ESSE Messenger 25(1): 68–80.
[21] Kumar, Sandip (2016) Ecocriticism: A study of environmental issues in literature. BRICS Journal of Educational Research 6(4),168–170.
[22] Levine, George (1993) By knowledge possessed: Darwin, nature, and Victorian narrative. New Literary History 24(2), 363–391. https://doi.org/10.2307/469411. | DOI 10.2307/469411
[23] Marland, Pippa (2013) Ecocriticism. Literature Compass 10(11), 846–868. https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12105
[24] McKechnie, Claire C. and John Miller (2012) Victorian animals. Journal of Victorian Culture 17(4), 436–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2012.735448
[25] Miller, John (2012) Postcolonial ecocriticism and Victorian studies. Literature Compass 9(7), 476–488. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2012.00891.x
[26] Morton, Timothy (2009) Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (First Edition). New York: Harvard University Press.
[27] Nassaar, Christopher S. (2002) Wilde's the happy prince and other tales and a house of pomegranates. The Explicator 60(3), 142–145. https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940209597688 | DOI 10.1080/00144940209597688
[28] Parham, John (2010) Green Man Hopkins: Poetry and the Victorian Ecological Imagination. (Nature, Culture and Literature, 6). New York: Rodopi.
[29] Poorghorban, Younes (2022) The commodified happiness: the only established source of meaning in Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince and The Nightingale and the Rose. Prague Journal of English Studies 11(1), 51–65. https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2022-0003 | DOI 10.2478/pjes-2022-0003
[30] Rojavin, Marina (2014) If THE swallow made the prince happy: translating Wilde into Russian. The Slavic and East European Journal 58(1), 76–92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44739651
[31] Sumpter, Caroline (2006) Innocents and epicures: the child, the fairy tale and avant‐garde Debate in fin‐de‐siècle little magazines. Nineteenth-Century Contexts 28(3), 225–244. https://doi.org/10.1080/08905490600955472 | DOI 10.1080/08905490600955472
[32] Sumpter, Caroline (2006) Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
[33] Tait, Adrian (2021) Eco-criticism(s) and Victorian fiction: a review essay. Dickens Studies Annual, 52(1), 103–137. DOI 10.5325/dickstudannu.52.1.0103. |
[34] Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence (2010) Beautiful maidens, hideous suitors: Victorian fairy tales and the process of civilization. Marvels & Tales 24(2), 272–296. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41388956 | DOI 10.1353/mat.2010.a402478
[35] Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence (2014) Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
[36] Tatar, Maria (2017) The aesthetics of altruism in Oscar Wilde's fairy tales. In: Bristow, J. (ed.), Oscar Wilde and the Cultures of Childhood. London: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture, 145–157. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60411-4_6 | DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60411-4_6
[37] Taylor, Jesse Oak (2015) Where is Victorian ecocriticism? Victorian Literature and Culture, 43(4), 877–894. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1060150315000315 | DOI 10.1017/s1060150315000315
[38] Thompson, Mary Shine (2001) The importance of not being earnest: children and Oscar Wilde's fairy tales. New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship, 7(1), 191–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614540109510653 | DOI 10.1080/13614540109510653
[39] Vaninskaya, Anna (2011) The Victorian press and the fairy tale. Journal of Victorian Culture, 16(1), 151–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2010.519553 | DOI 10.1080/13555502.2010.519553
[40] Voskuil, Lynn (2020) Why Victorian ecocriticism matters? In: Denisoff, D. and T. Schaffer (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature. London: Routledge, 506–516. | DOI 10.4324/9780429507724-45
[41] Westling, Louise (2006) Literature, the environment, and the question of the posthuman. In: Gersdorf, C. and S. Mayer (Eds.) Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism. New York: Rodopi, 25–49. | DOI 10.1163/9789401203555_003
[42] Wilde, Oscar (1997) The Fisherman and His Soul and Other Fairly Tales. London: Bloomsbury Classics.
[43] Wilde, Oscar (1994) The Happy Prince and Other Stories. London: Wordsworth Editions Limited.
[44] Wilde, Oscar (2008) A House of Pomegranates. New York: Tark Classic Fiction.
[45] Wilde, Oscar (2021) The Decay of Lying: And Other Essays (Penguin Great Ideas). London: Penguin Books.
[46] Wilde, Oscar (2020). The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin Books.
[47] Wilde, Oscar, Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis (2000) The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. New York: Fourth Estate.
[48] Wilde. Oscar (2013) De Profundis and Other Prison Writings. London: Penguin Classics.
[49] Williams, Marc, O., Lorraine Whitmarshand Diamait Mac Giolla Chríost (2021) The association between anthropomorphism of nature and pro-environmental variables: A systematic review. Biological Conservation, 255: 1–15. 109022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109022 | DOI 10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109022