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The rhetoric of literary fairy tales and their contextual receptions: a case study of “The Little Match Girl” and “The Happy Prince”

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Abstract

Traditional concept of plot calls for an integrated and holistic reading of narrative texts. However, the singular way for narrative fiction to convey thematic messages via story-telling makes room for the ambiguity that some specific textual signals may be designed by the author to serve other purposes than the plot and the explicit theme. This is quite manifest in literary fairy tales, which are often claimed to be targeted at dual audience and tend to produce competing readings in the process of their worldwide transmission. Examining the divergent receptions of H. C. Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” and Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince,” and taking insights from Dan Shen’s theoretical discussion of “the covert progression,” this paper aims to associate such competing readings with the specific rhetoric of the literary fairy tale which incorporates diverse textual signals in the seemingly simple and fanciful form: these textual elements not only can be woven into the fairy tale plot to enrich its textual complexity, but also can form an independent track of signification paralleling that of the plot development, in which story events and characters serve other functions than what they do in the plot.

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Notes

  1. Facing the criticism that this text, already included in prestigious collections of children’s literature, should not also appear under such a title, Youichi Obashi, the editor and translator, chooses not to support his gay reading with textual analysis, but to challenge the opponents by claiming their resistance is simply out of the long-standing bias against homosexuality (368).

  2. Such detailed descriptions of male beauty is a standing feature in Wilde’s fiction, usually regarded as a sign of his homosexual orientation. However, in a graphic version of “The Happy Prince” (Wilde 2012), this description of the young playwright is mysteriously absent. Considering that no other revisions have been made, with all conversations put in the speech bubbles and narration in frames, the intention of such deliberate omissions is noteworthy.

  3. In non-Christian countries like China and Japan, such religious redemption cannot console eastern kids, who nevertheless regard the tale as tragically ended.

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  1. English Department, Fudan University, No. 220, Handan Road, Shanghai, 200433, People’s Republic of China

    Feng Duan

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Correspondence to Feng Duan.

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Duan, F. The rhetoric of literary fairy tales and their contextual receptions: a case study of “The Little Match Girl” and “The Happy Prince”. Neohelicon 49, 25–41 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-022-00633-1

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