Fairy fiction : fairy tale aspects in a selection of Oscar Wilde’s works

This thesis explores fairy tale elements in a selection of Oscar Wilde’s works, to a large extent based on a list of thirty-one fairy tale functions introduced by the Formalist Vladimir Propp. The works studied are the fairy tales “The Happy Prince”, “The Nightingale and the Rose”, “The Selfish Giant”, and “The Star-Child”; the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray; and the plays Salomé and An Ideal Husband. These works are compared and contrasted in subsequent chapters, and they are all analysed in light of the fairy tale genre. The works are studied regardless of Oscar Wilde’s life and the time and society in which he lived. Thus the focus in this thesis is on the works as literature in their own autonomic right, and on the recurrence of elements from the fairy tale genre in a selection of works traditionally thought of as belonging to a variety of genres