Abstract
Oscar Wilde was described by W. B. Yeats as “a man of action, a born dramatist.” Although people did not recognize him as a serious playwright until the 1890s, Wilde had managed to find other outlets for his theatrical passion, for example in writing fiction. In this paper, it is argued that Wilde incorporates metadrama into his 1888 fairy tale collection, The Happy Prince and Other Tales. The discussion focuses on how Wilde employs the metatheatrical devices of the-play-within-the-play and role-playing to treat the social problems of self-immolating altruism and identity crisis respectively. In representing the social malady of exaggerated self-sacrifice, Wilde adopts the satirizing strategy which maintains the sense of the illusion evoked by the inset tale while simultaneously estranging the outer/inner story connection by dint of nonrecognition. Similarly, identity crisis is reflected through an estranged mode of role-playing: Wilde’s characters impress the reader as performing too much to have a real-life identity. The ironic detachment enabled by the two metadramatic tactics in question constructs a mask, which allows Wilde to criticize social problems in a non-imitative manner, the central aim of the 1888 volume. In Wilde’s fairy tales, the use of metadrama, in facilitating representations from a critical distance, can be seen as an example of what is labelled as “sincere mannerisms.” Beneath the mask of his insincerity, Wilde is truly a serious humanist, assiduous in imparting to us the knowledge of ourselves and our existential condition.
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Notes
“The Selfish Giant,” the third tale in the Happy Prince volume, is not included in my discussion. Unlike the other four pieces, theatricality is not a key feature of this story. The ambiguous authorship of the writing, as noted in recent studies, may contribute to explaining its difference from the others. As Joseph Bristow tells us, “the Morgan Library acquired a manuscript of […] ‘The Selfish Giant’ (1888), which is unexpectedly in his spouse’s handwriting” (2013, p. 4). “This document,” Bristow continues, “has raised speculation about the role that Constance Wilde, herself a talented adapter of children’s tales, might have played in the composition of a cherished fairy story traditionally attributed to her husband” (p. 4). In a more recent study, Ian Small further suggests that the Giant tale might be “the product of an informal collaboration” between the couple (2017, p. xxiv).
While Hornby prefers his own term, metadrama, over Abel’s metatheatre, this paper shows no preference and uses the two words alternately.
The English translation today is commonly “estrangement” or “defamiliarization,” which are the terms I will use in the following.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Björn Sundmark for his academic guidance and invaluable dedication of time and thought. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers who recognized the value of my research; special thanks go to the reader who has significantly suggested reinforcing the discussion on metatheatre in relation to the concept of estrangement.
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Yuanyuan Liang is a PhD candidate in the English Programme at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research interests include children’s literature and Irish literature. Her PhD project focuses on the representation of trauma in Margaret Mahy’s young adult fiction.
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Liang, Y. An Estranged Perception: Metatheatricality of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales. Child Lit Educ 53, 238–250 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-021-09456-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-021-09456-7