Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie, the Wilde colonial boy, social and political subversion in Oscar Wilde's fairy tales

grantor: University of TorontoWilde used 'The Happy Prince and Other Tales' and ' A House of Pomegranates' to scrutinize the literary, moral and political assumptions that underpinned nineteenth-century morality and politics, especially as they affected marginalized people both in Britain and in the colonies, During his Oxford years, Wilde played down his Irishness, but his observations and experiences during his North American lecture tour seem to have reminded him of his socialist/Irish Nationalist heritage, and caused him to re-examine his literary agenda in relation to English society and values. Wilde's satirical strategy develops gradually from gentle parody of society's foibles in "The Happy Prince" and "The Nightingale and the Rose," to a serious interrogation of patriarchal and imperial practices in "The Young King" and "The Star Child." In the later tales, he examines how both the fairy tale and the Bible had been enlisted to promote values that sustained nineteenth-century English systems of control. His early letters, reviews and essays demonstrate that he recognized the power of popular fiction, especially the fairy tale, as moral propaganda. Consequently, he chose that genre to represent his revisionist ideas, and gradually devised more sophisticated methods to suit the complexities of the issues he was addressing. Wilde's agenda becomes more focused, and his strategies more subtle, as he discovers the extent to which both fairy tales and the Bible have been used by the Establishment as controlling agents. As post-colonial writers reclaim their history and identity through ironic mimicry of the perceptions and discourse of the oppressor, Wilde, by echoing the language and content of the King James Bible, authenticates his own point of view and reclaims those parts of biblical teaching that have been ignored or altered to preserve the moral and social status quo. Through the two sets of fairy tales, Wilde exposes the abuses of the marginalized in society by the systems of control, and the ways in which apparently innocuous children's literature and even the Bible itself can be exploited to serve those systems.Ph.D