Entre pássaros e humanos: humanização e tragicidade em contos de Oscar Wilde.

Abstract

This work aims to investigate Oscar Wilde’s tales “The Happy Prince”, “The Nightingale and the Rose” and “The Devoted Friend” from the perspective of the concept of humanization employed by Antonio Candido in A Literatura e a formação do homem (1999) and O Direito à Literatura (2005). We seek to understand how this humanization process occurs in the aforementioned stories. We outline considerations on Wilde’s historical and literary context based on authors such as Greenblatt (2006), Hanson (2013), Litvack (2013) and Pater (1980). To explain the presence of children’s literature in the Victorian Era, we use Roberts’ (2002) text. Our theoretical framework consists of Candido (1999; 2005), Shelley (2008) and Todorov (2009) to discuss the concept of humanization, which guides this research, in addition to Aristotle's Poetics. We use the Poetics since we consider Wilde's tales as tragic actions and the Aristotelian treatise to be a valuable tool for the studies of the tragic, in addition to presenting, to a certain extent, flexible concepts that can be applied to the narrative genre. As a means of deepening the concepts presented by Aristotle, we support our reflections on Luna (2005) and her studies on the tragic action. For the analysis, three short stories by Oscar Wilde from the book The Happy Prince and Other Tales [(1888) 2018] were selected, in which it is possible to glimpse and discuss the Aristotelian notions of kindness, hamartia and hybris, catastrophe, terror and piety. Given the articulation of these concepts with the notion of humanization, we realize that Wilde's tales, as tragic actions, tend to cause catharsis in their reception. Catharsis, in turn, enhances the humanization process through literature, for in the tragic experience is inserted the humanizing notion of good disposition towards others, through an identification with the character who suffers the results of the tragic action.