The soul paradox between The Little Mermaid and The Fisherman and His Soul

Abstract

By comparing Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and Oscar Wilde’s The Fisherman and His Soul, this paper focuses on the completely different value orientation carried by the concept of “soul” and reveals how Wilde subverts the sanctity of the soul through three strategies. First, turning the soul object into a disposable obstacle, in contrast to Andersen’s subjective pursuit of the soul. Secondly, make the soul bear the evil of the world, and compare the sacredness and purity of the soul in Andersen’s version. Thirdly, the necessity of soul redemption is denied by the death of soul, so as to rewrite Andersen’s ethical logic of exchanging good deeds for souls. Through the core adaptation of anatomy, we can get a glimpse of the subversive will of aestheticism literature to the moral order in the 19th century.