O triunfo da beleza: retratos do comportamento em contos de fadas de Oscar Wilde

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the behavior of some characters in the fairy tales of Irish writer Oscar Fingal O Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900), more specifically the five ones those consists the work The Happy Prince and other stories, from 1888. We intend to verify why art s strength comes from the elements that compound it, whereas ideological units, plurissignificant and multifaceted, are only likely to be analyzed when facing other elements, containing contexts and users of such contexts. In Wilde s fairy tales this aesthetic sense prevails and the characters tend to acquire multiple forms and a lot of meanings. Therefore, if we could consider the literary work as an ideological system it is essential to emphasize the characters who are inserted in that system, as well look into it so that one can delimitate its constituting elements, identifying whether its actions are right products of criticism and reflection about the facts or if they are motivated by instincts inherent to rationality, and proceeding to the analysis of these characters not only concerning themselves but also concerning the other characters, to the space they share, the time offered to them and above all, the diegesis which captures them. Thus, Oscar Wilde becomes a valuable importance author to verify all these concepts, due to the variety of his gallery of literary types and due to his ironic and acute aesthetic sense that will lead to the analysis of the characters constitution and motivation of their possible, unstoppable sometimes, subversive posture.