摘 要

作者奥斯卡王尔德将现实社会的丑陋揉进童话故事《快乐王子》中，无情批判和揭露了当时的社会。他严厉攻击了当时社会的严重两级分化，批判了社会对穷人的漠不关心，体现了当时社会的黑暗，向当时的社会发出了自己的控诉。但同时作者又通过快乐王子和雁子对世人的爱和无私奉献的精神，刻画了社会的光明面，探索了解决社会矛盾的道路选择。从这个意义上说，《快乐王子》不仅是对当时社会的批判，也是作者对社会改变的期待。本文分为五部分，第一部分对对作者王尔德及其作品进行了简单的介绍，第二三部分立足于小说中不同阶级的人物对话，透过对话向读者们展示出维多利亚时期的英国社会黑暗与美好。第四部分通过社会黑暗面与美好面的对比，凸显出王尔德批判现实主义的色彩和希望社会得到进步的乌托邦精神。第五部分对文章进行总结，再次强调王尔德对社会黑暗的控诉与社会进步的期待。

关键词： 《快乐王子》；雁子；对话分析；社会问题；社会美好

Abstract

The author, Oscar Wilde, smashes the ugly phenomena in the real society into the story The Happy Prince and ruthlessly evokes and exposes the society. He mercilessly attacked the serious polarization of the society at that time, criticized the society's indifference to the poor, reflected the darkness of the society, and issued his own complaints about the society at that time. At the same time, through the love of the happy prince and the swallow, and their selfless dedication, Wilde depicted the bright side of the society and explored the way which leads to a society where problems can be solved? to solve the social problems. In this sense, The Happy Prince is not only Wilde’s critique of the society at that time, but also the expectation of social change. This paper is divided into five parts. The first part gives a brief introduction to the author Wilde and his works. The second and third parts are based on dialogues between different classes of characters in the novel through which the writer, together with readers jointly witnesses both dark reality and the ideal in the British society from the 19th century. The fourth part in virtue of the contradiction between the dark reality and the ideal highlights Oscar Wilde's critical realism as well as his vision of a utopian community where social progress is witnessed. The fifth part summarizes the paper and emphasizes Wilde's accusation of social darkness and his expectation of social progress.

Key Words: The Happy Prince; swallow; dialogues analysis; social problems; social beauties

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Wilde and His Works 1

1.2 The background of The Happy Prince 1

1.3 Literature Review 2

2 Dialogues Embodying the Social Problem 4

2.1 Social Utilitarianism 4

2.2 Social Indifference to the Poor 5

2.3 Social Polarization between the Rich and the Poor 6

3 Dialogues Embodying the Social Beauties 8

3.1 The Happy Prince's Love for the World 8

3.2 Love between the Happy Prince and the Swallow 9

4.Social Reality and Wilde's Expectation 11

4.1 Social Problems and Wilde's Critical Realism 11

4.2 Social Beauties and Wilde's Expectations for Social Improvement 12

4.3The practical significance 13

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 16

An analysis of the dialogues in the novel The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde

1 Introduction

1.1 Wilde and his works

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is an advocate of British aestheticism in the 19th century. He is known as a brilliant man and a dramatist. Wilde's greatest talents were not in fairy tales or short stories, but in novels such as the Picture of Dorian Gray, and in plays such as Lady Windermere’s Fan and Salome. He established the aestheticism based on hedonism and became the representative figure of British aestheticism.

Although the academic community has a lot of discussion about Wilde’s life experiences and works, the success of his two fairy tales is beyond doubt. “Among the whole English writing world, you can not find any fairy tales dare to compare with Wilde's.” (R. H. Sherard，1906). The Happy Prince is one of the best works. With strong romantic color and rich imagination, he shows the pursuit and praise of the true, the good and the beautiful, thus winning universal praise and arousing the general interest of children and adults.

1.2 The background of The Happy Prince

The Wilde advocated aestheticism and art for art's sake, that is, the value of works has nothing to do with social morality except works. However, no writer is separable from the social environment he lives in and will be affected by various social factors. Wilde advocated that art should be used to show beauty. On the other hand, his works also reflects the social reality. The Happy Prince can reflect this point. Although Wilde placed The Happy Prince in a background that seemed to have no clear social characteristics, he intentionally posted the label of the British society in Victorian time during the story. When the swallow was preparing to rest at the foot of the statue of the happy prince, he mistakenly made the tears of the happy prince as rain, and said: “The client in the north of Europe is really dreadful.” “North of Europe” narrows the scope of the story and makes the Britain one of the possible countries for the story. The emergence of ornithology professors in fairy tales has increased the likelihood that the country involved in the story is Victorian England, because “ornithology was a specialized science until the Victorian era”. The story also wrote that a seamstress “embroidered passion-flowers on a satin gown”. According to Barbara Morris's Victorian Embroidery: An Authoritative Guide, passion-flower is a design used in clothing for the 19th century Victorian period and reached its peak in the mid-19th century. The passions-flower is embroidered for the “Maids-of-Honour”, which is a unique professional woman in the UK, referring to the unmarried adult women around the Queen. It can be seen that all the evidence is more and more concentrated to prove that the social background of The Happy Prince refers to the Victorian England, which is the social environment the author Wilde lived in.

1.3 Literature review

Oscar Wilde, the representative writer of aestheticism at the end of the 19th century, is the British writer who read the most for Western readers after Shakespeare. And his works have been translated into most language. Fairy tale is a special and important part of Oscar Wilde's works. Wilde published two fairytale collections, Happy Prince and Pomegranate House. They are written not only for children, but also for adults who are cherished by Wilde. In the 1950s, research basically followed the style of early time, focusing on Wilde's personal life and personality, as well as anecdotes such as homosexual disputes, lawsuits, and trials that caused him to die young. After the 1960s, research on Wilde became more and more focused on the text and went to the study of the artistic form of his works, such as aestheticism, utopian spirit, social justice and so on. Since the 1980s, all researches on Wilde have presented an increasingly diversified trend in cultural studies. And the comments tend to be more tolerant, objective and fair. In China, the happy prince was first translated into Chinese by Mr. Zhou Zuoren in the works of Wilde. On the basis of this translation, the first climax of criticism towards Wilde's researches was formed, but the research on it was not very thorough and in-depth.

Following the macroscopic research in the late 1980s, the study on Wilde began to advance in the 1990s. First of all, Oscar Wilde's aestheticism and literary view were placed in the 19th century in the United Kingdom, and combined with a variety of modern concepts and research theories, accurately grasp the essence of the thought. Second, the sinicization of the cultural criticism tendency of Wilde's research. Again, the method of comparative literature began to be used in Wilde's research. Although in recent years, the academia’s enthusiasm for Wilde has grown. Compared with other types of literary works, his fairy tales are still in a neglected position, lacking systematic and in-depth research. But Wilde’s fairy tales are not just children’s books. They are the irony of the social phenomenon at the time and the author’s social ideal expression through the magical technique of children. This paper will focus on the dialogues in the fairy tale The happy prince. Through the dialogues, Wilde shows the readers the social polarization between the rich and the poor, social indifference to the poor, social utilitarianism. And the Happy Princes love for the world, but the failure of him and the swallow to save the poor. By the study of these phenomena, we can lead people to think about how to establish a correct social atmosphere and how to really help the poor instead of unnecessary sacrifice.

2 Dialogues embodying the Social problems

In this part, this paper first puts the dialogues of the characters into the era of the time to analyze, through the dialogues of different groups and different angles, to find the problems of the society at that time, namely utilitarian, social indifference to the poor and social polarization between the rich and the poor. The focus of this part of the report is to expose the dark side of the society at the time through these social problems, and also to reflect the side of critical realism in The Happy Prince.