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Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales
Traditional Chinese edition of Oscar Wilde's eight famous fairy tales: The Happy Prince; The Nightingale and the Rose; The Selfish Giant; The Devoted Friend; The Young King; The Birthday of the Infanta; The Fisherman and His Soul; and The Star-Child, with reading guide. The stories are accompanied by the illustrations of the popular artist Anai. In Traditional Chinese. Annotation copyright Tsai Fong Books, Inc. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.
Audio Cassette
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 4, 2017
มีบางเรื่องที่เสียดสีสังคม แต่ไม่ใช่ทุกเรื่อง
บางเรื่อง มันคล้ายกับเป็นการบันทึกยุคสมัยเอาไว้มากกว่า
แล้วเรื่องที่เสียดสีสังคม
เราว่าเขาไม่ได้เสียดสีสังคมเอาสนุก หรือมันส์ปาก
แต่เหมือนเจ็บแค้นอะไรมา
ตัวละคร และสถานการณ์บางเรื่องฮาร์ดคอร์มาก
ในบางเรื่อง เขาชี้มุมมองความคิดนอกกรอบ
ทั้งกรอบของวัฒนธรรมประเพณี และศาสนา
ดูแหกคอกนิดๆ เหมือนเป็นเด็กแนวแห่งยุคสมัย
และเหมือนกับที่คนแปลบอก .. นี่มันไม่ใช่นิทานสำหรับเด็ก!
บางเรื่อง มันคล้ายกับเป็นการบันทึกยุคสมัยเอาไว้มากกว่า
แล้วเรื่องที่เสียดสีสังคม
เราว่าเขาไม่ได้เสียดสีสังคมเอาสนุก หรือมันส์ปาก
แต่เหมือนเจ็บแค้นอะไรมา
ตัวละคร และสถานการณ์บางเรื่องฮาร์ดคอร์มาก
ในบางเรื่อง เขาชี้มุมมองความคิดนอกกรอบ
ทั้งกรอบของวัฒนธรรมประเพณี และศาสนา
ดูแหกคอกนิดๆ เหมือนเป็นเด็กแนวแห่งยุคสมัย
และเหมือนกับที่คนแปลบอก .. นี่มันไม่ใช่นิทานสำหรับเด็ก!
May 29, 2017
And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.'
Review coming soon.
.
Review coming soon.
.
April 4, 2021
The Selfish Giant is one of my all time favourite tales
December 20, 2016
Beautifully written tales on lessons of love, selflessness, and compassion. These stories are ingeniously crafted to bring the reader into the tale. My favorite story is "The Happy Princess" who gives everything he has to help the desperate citizens of his city who are in need the most.
December 20, 2017
This is an interesting, warped collection of fairy tales. I think they would be wasted on children. They're a bit twisted which makes them entertaining.
July 1, 2018
i felt my heart die along with the nightgale’s.. my god this book is beautiful.
January 28, 2022
Genuine genius. Imagery so vivid it shook me to the core of my being.
June 18, 2016
Fairy tales and Oscar Wilde - sounds like a perfect match. Dark, romantic, tragic, sickly comic, moralistic, aesthetic, fantastical, poetic. Wilde's catalogue of talents fits perfectly to the list of necessary fairy tale ingredients. And they are all present and accounted for. Unfortunately, most of these tales do not live up to their potential.
Wilde writes very traditional tales with his own twists. He personifies animals, but also statues, fireworks and plants. He follows the rules of fairy tale construction (there are lots of threes, lots of stock fairy tale characters (witches, princes, woodcutters) lots of lessons learned) but he adds a darker touch, a cynical side, of real tragedy. His language is flowery and fittingly fantastical, as well as often religious in tone and allegory. He takes these fairy tales very seriously, but there are moments of very Wildian humour and sly parody.
But for whatever reason, a lot of the stories fall flat. Perhaps he sticks too doggedly to the formula, perhaps his descriptions are too wordy, but they often get boring long before they end. They are also far more predictable than one would expect, even innovative stories like the arrogant rocket who doesn't light. They are also relentlessly sad. The story of the poor neighbor of the rich miller rams home its moral message early but offers no punishment for the immoral character, instead punishing the weaker poor man with an graceless death in the snow. The opening tale about a gold plated statue of a prince helping his poor subjects through the sacrifices of a swallow who pays for his goodness with death is deeply, symbolically romantic in a way that few other than Wilde can evoke, but its sadness leaves a hollow feeling and a bitter taste. Another in which a bird bleeds to death to aid a lover who is then rejected anyway has the same morbid romanticism, full of animal and floral imagery. Depending on the reader's mood they could be lovely or downright cruel.
The one's that work are excellent readers, in particular the longest story, 'The Fisherman and his Soul'. In the story of a fisherman who loves a mermaid and cuts out his soul to win her heart, Wilde's imagery is given space and time to flow into the realms of the fantastical. There are dramatic, awe-inspiring scenes packed with religious imagery, like the fisherman's close encounter with the devil and the final rising up of the sea and the Sea-folk to swallow up the doomed fisherman. In this epic, sweeping tale, Wilde's romantic vision of the fairy tale universe comes to bright fruition.
Perhaps the final tale, 'The Star-Child' sums up Wilde's vision. A very moralistic progress of a young changeling ends in happiness after he repents of his arrogance and vanity, suffers deeply and painfully and offers charity to the poor. His reward is a reunion with his lost parents and wealth and power as a prince. Yet Wilde can not stop at the Happily-ever-after. Almost as an afterthought he adds the tragic future and hammers the nail in by revealing that those who ruled after his young death did so evilly. Wilde roots out the true darkness of from the heart of fairy tales, mixes it up with his own breed of slightly Gothic romanticism, yet in some cases the combination ends up tasting bitter and uninteresting. 4
Wilde writes very traditional tales with his own twists. He personifies animals, but also statues, fireworks and plants. He follows the rules of fairy tale construction (there are lots of threes, lots of stock fairy tale characters (witches, princes, woodcutters) lots of lessons learned) but he adds a darker touch, a cynical side, of real tragedy. His language is flowery and fittingly fantastical, as well as often religious in tone and allegory. He takes these fairy tales very seriously, but there are moments of very Wildian humour and sly parody.
But for whatever reason, a lot of the stories fall flat. Perhaps he sticks too doggedly to the formula, perhaps his descriptions are too wordy, but they often get boring long before they end. They are also far more predictable than one would expect, even innovative stories like the arrogant rocket who doesn't light. They are also relentlessly sad. The story of the poor neighbor of the rich miller rams home its moral message early but offers no punishment for the immoral character, instead punishing the weaker poor man with an graceless death in the snow. The opening tale about a gold plated statue of a prince helping his poor subjects through the sacrifices of a swallow who pays for his goodness with death is deeply, symbolically romantic in a way that few other than Wilde can evoke, but its sadness leaves a hollow feeling and a bitter taste. Another in which a bird bleeds to death to aid a lover who is then rejected anyway has the same morbid romanticism, full of animal and floral imagery. Depending on the reader's mood they could be lovely or downright cruel.
The one's that work are excellent readers, in particular the longest story, 'The Fisherman and his Soul'. In the story of a fisherman who loves a mermaid and cuts out his soul to win her heart, Wilde's imagery is given space and time to flow into the realms of the fantastical. There are dramatic, awe-inspiring scenes packed with religious imagery, like the fisherman's close encounter with the devil and the final rising up of the sea and the Sea-folk to swallow up the doomed fisherman. In this epic, sweeping tale, Wilde's romantic vision of the fairy tale universe comes to bright fruition.
Perhaps the final tale, 'The Star-Child' sums up Wilde's vision. A very moralistic progress of a young changeling ends in happiness after he repents of his arrogance and vanity, suffers deeply and painfully and offers charity to the poor. His reward is a reunion with his lost parents and wealth and power as a prince. Yet Wilde can not stop at the Happily-ever-after. Almost as an afterthought he adds the tragic future and hammers the nail in by revealing that those who ruled after his young death did so evilly. Wilde roots out the true darkness of from the heart of fairy tales, mixes it up with his own breed of slightly Gothic romanticism, yet in some cases the combination ends up tasting bitter and uninteresting. 4
February 9, 2017
I really love The nightingale and the rose and The happy prince, but occasionally these stories smack you in the face with some religious propaganda and I try not to judge literature that is a product of it's time (I really liked water babies) but even I struggle when the preach is beyond peradventure.
September 10, 2012
This little volume surprised me. Lots of tongue-in-cheek humor and a bit of satire, but still very lovely and fun and perfect to be read aloud to kiddos.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews