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ifpoetshadmerch 's review for:
The Happy Prince and Other Tales
by Oscar Wilde
Here is my much overdue review on this book. Quarantine Week 6 (?) is hitting me hard, and I’m feeling generally unmotivated. It took me an embarrassingly long time to even make my way through reading this short collection of fairy tales, but nevertheless I’m finally mustering up the energy to gather up my thoughts.
I had actually read the title piece The Happy Prince a couple of years ago, and either did not draw the connection between it and Wilde or forgot that the short story had been written by him. Either way, Wilde writing fairy tales just makes sense. Wilde is famous for his epigrams: short, witty sayings that somehow blend humor, profoundness, and frustration into one (an example: The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.) His writing is also typically very dramatic and moralizing, so I guess I really shouldn’t have been so surprised to hear that he had a couple of fairy tale collections under his belt. Combined with the usual over-the-top characters, Wilde’s writing style lends to the perfect storm of elements for a fairy tale. It’s kind of the perfect storm
I will say that these seem to be more like fairy tales in the classical/ Brothers Grimm sort of sense rather than a Disney take on fairy tales. Though less grotesque, morals seemed to be learned from instances of suffering, rather than happy endings.
I had actually read the title piece The Happy Prince a couple of years ago, and either did not draw the connection between it and Wilde or forgot that the short story had been written by him. Either way, Wilde writing fairy tales just makes sense. Wilde is famous for his epigrams: short, witty sayings that somehow blend humor, profoundness, and frustration into one (an example: The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.) His writing is also typically very dramatic and moralizing, so I guess I really shouldn’t have been so surprised to hear that he had a couple of fairy tale collections under his belt. Combined with the usual over-the-top characters, Wilde’s writing style lends to the perfect storm of elements for a fairy tale. It’s kind of the perfect storm
I will say that these seem to be more like fairy tales in the classical/ Brothers Grimm sort of sense rather than a Disney take on fairy tales. Though less grotesque, morals seemed to be learned from instances of suffering, rather than happy endings.