13th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research

Presentation Abstracts

CAMERON, Rachael

The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde: counter-memory, sacrifice and culture

Fairy tales have always, and continue to occupy, a pervasive role in Western society. This paper will investigate the contribution of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 text, A House of Pomegranates, to the fairy tale genre. It will recontextualise the fairy tale according to its initial role in society (as oral myth with social functions). A trajectory whereby the folk narrative was transformed (through technologies of writing) and then reappropriated (by aristocratic women of the seventeenth century who sought to use the form for self-representational purposes) shows power relationships and the contestatory nature of this genre within cultural contexts.

Oscar Wilde subverted the fairy tale form by recuperating alternative storytelling traditions/histories, which suggests that counter-memory can have a utopic function. In The Young King, this is represented as synonymous with the structure of the unconscious wish. What is desired in this fairy tale wish is, quite simply, more equitable relations in society. Privilege and plenty are then reconfigured (textually) through the motive force of the unconscious wish that represents an appeal. By using this technique - of recuperating alternative histories and counter-memories - Wilde opposes contingent conventions of culture. He challenges the constructions of forms of identification that promote discriminatory/exclusory practices and inequality by critiquing the social structures that promote this state of affairs. His subversion further shows that resistance establishes opposing social circuits based, not on instinctual renunciation, but renunciation of (excessive/ostentatious) object-ties and forms of ego-identification. This reveals how the unconscious wish for more equitable human relations can be achieved within our current cultural paradigms.