Description
This is the first collection of critical essays that explores Oscar Wilde’s interest in children’s culture, whether in relation to his famous fairy stories, his life as a caring father to two small boys, his place as a defender of children’s rights within the prison system, his fascination with youthful beauty, and his theological contemplation of what it means to be a child in the eyes of God. The collection also examines the ways in which Wilde’s works—not just his fairy stories—have been adapted for young audiences.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Oscar Wilde and the Cultures of Childhood - Joseph Bristow.- 2. "Play[ing] Narcissus to a photograph": Oscar Wile and the Image of the Child - Lindsay Smith.- 3. The Good Aesthetic Child and Deferred Aesthetic Education - Diana Maltz.- 4. Wilde's Legacy: Fairy Tales, Laurence Housman, and the Expression of "Beautiful Untrue Things" - Lorraine Janzen Kooistra.- 5. Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Sharp, and the Politics of Dress and Decoration in the Fin-de-Siècle Fairy Tale - Amanda Hollander.- 6. The Aesthetics of Altruism in Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales - Maria Tatar.- 7. Oscar Wilde's Fairly Tales and the Evolution of Lying - Jessica Straley.- The Young Know Everything: Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales as Children's Literature - Perry Nodelman.- 9. Greater than the Mystery of Death: Rewriting Oscar Wilde for Young Audiences - Margaret D. Stetz.
