Oscar Wilde, the Short Story Writer

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation aims to validate Oscar Wilde as a short story writer in the fullest extent of the expression. The thirteen narratives of The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories (1891), and A House of Pomegranates (1891) demonstrate that Wilde was not just writing stories that were short: they display a profound awareness of and playful attitude toward the affordances of the short story form and the late Victorian publishing industry. This aim is achieved through a combination of 1) a critical literature review, 2) evidence-based reconstructions of collections' histories and (con)texts, and 3) analyses of the liminality in and of three selected short stories: “The Selfish Giant”, “The Canterville Ghost”, “The Birthday of the Infanta".