Happy Prince tells the story of the happy prince and the swallow who sacrificed themselves to help the poor. When the happy prince was alive, he lived happily in the palace every day and never knew what sadness and poverty were.
After his death, when he was made into a statue and stood over the city, he saw all the ugliness and suffering in the city. So he asked the swallow to give all her valuables to the poor. Later, the swallow froze to death and the happy prince died of a broken heart, but they lived in heaven forever.
2. Creative background
19 In the 1980s, the economic crisis in the capitalist world seriously affected the development of British economy, and then dealt a heavy blow to the financial strength of the government. In order to cope with the economic crisis at that time, the British government pursued a laissez-faire economic development model, and social Darwinism was a social trend of thought born in response to the British government's economic crisis resolution route at that time.
However, this mode of crisis resolution has promoted economic development, but deprived the government of its sympathy for the poor, aggravated social contradictions and seriously delayed social development. The indifference of the upper class to the lower class in fairy tales reflects the influence of "social Darwinism" prevailing in Britain at that time.
3. The author
Oscar Wilde
Extended data 1, influence of works
In 1980s, the Irish writer Oscar Wilde wrote and published the fairy tale Happy Prince. This fairy tale caused great repercussions in Britain at that time. Today, more than 65,438+000 years later, people are still recreating and commemorating this Victorian children's literature through films, plays, cartoons and other artistic forms.
2. Introduction to the author
Oscar Wilde (185410/0/October16-1900101October 30th) was born in. /kloc-Britain (Ireland, to be exact, but ruled by Britain at that time) was the most famous in the 0/9th century.
3. Writing characteristics
Although Wilde's tragic fairy tales hide the feelings of the same sex or the opposite sex behind the story, the language and words he uses almost decorate love with a kind of flashy beauty, but this beauty is of no help to the final disillusionment and disappearance of secular love, and can only be perfected by loving Christ and supreme art.
As Wilde himself said, "the purpose of art is not simple truth, but complex beauty." He showed the tragic story of aestheticism in a unique narrative way and created an unspeakable beauty.
He compared the great causal fate of Greek tragedy, the lonely pain of humanists in Shakespeare's plays and the tragic heroic spirit in Hemingway's works, and described the beauty and sadness in life-love in ordinary life, beauty in spiritual world, and the great pain their destruction brought to people's hearts, highlighting the redemption and destination of Christ's divinity.
Wilde no longer repeats the cliche that the prince and princess lived happily for a hundred years, nor does he express the good wish that one good turn deserves another, and one evil turn deserves another. He only tells the tragedy in a cold and detached tone, and with the help of the interlaced perspectives and eyes of the characters, the reader can hear the fisherman's long sigh, the nightingale's dying song, the dwarf's sad cry and his heartbreaking voice.
As an implied author, he has always kept silent about the characters in the story, making the death inspired by Christ the best ending ceremony for the characters to bid farewell to their tragic fate. He repeatedly questioned the ubiquitous contradictions and paradoxes in life with imperfect fairy tales. It alludes to the difficulty and complexity of the real society, and shows his perfect and pure pursuit of art, love and life in a tortuous way.
He also predicted his unique life route with his own works: wandering on the edge of hedonism and sensualism, vacillating between material and spirit, longing and despair for love, converting to Catholicism in loneliness, throwing himself into the embrace of Christ before he died, and getting his real peace of mind like the tragic characters in his works.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Happy Prince
Baidu Encyclopedia-Oscar Wilde