Het Granaatappelhuis

Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.2

Word count: 196K words
Chapters: 20

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Het Granaatappelhuis by Oscar WildeAuthor: Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900,Language: Dutch, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Sep 4, 2017

Editor's review

Het Granaatappelhuis is the Dutch translation of Wilde's collection of fairy tales, gathering allegorical stories written in exquisite prose. Here Wilde keeps the shell of the fairy tale while writing for adults: beauty and goodness, sacrifice and vanity, desire and its price intertwine, in language polished and tinged with irony. The Dutch version serves both as a reader for language learning and for literary appreciation, and makes it easy to compare with the English original to see the translator's choices. It is not light bedtime reading; some stories end on notes of melancholy and moral edge. For Wilde scholars it is a concrete sample of how his work circulated in continental Europe; for general readers, an aesthetic exercise in close reading of short fiction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who love Wilde's fairy tales and aestheticist literature
Intermediate learners of Dutch who want to read literature in the original
Those who need short texts for comparative literary translation practice
Readers interested in nineteenth-century European fairy-tale publishing

Not a good fit for

Young readers seeking only light, cheerful children's stories
Those with no Dutch at all who are unwilling to use a parallel text
Readers expecting a novel-length plot

Reading tips

Read one story closely at a time, pausing afterward to retell the plot and its moral.
Read alongside Wilde's English original and note the translator's word choices.
Record recurring images such as jewels, roses and sacrifice.
Dutch learners can read through first and look up words later, to avoid constant interruption.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book in Dutch or English?

This edition is a Dutch translation; the title Het Granaatappelhuis is the Dutch name for The House of Pomegranates. If you read the English original, you can use it as a parallel translation; if your goal is learning Dutch, you will need intermediate reading ability or above.

Is it suitable as a bedtime story for children?

Be cautious. Wilde's stories are written in fairy-tale form but often have melancholy endings and moral irony, and are not all light and cheerful. Before reading to children, parents should look through the book themselves, choose the gentler pieces, and be ready to discuss them.

Why read a translation rather than the English original?

The value of a translation lies in language learning and in observing how a work circulated. A Dutch version helps learners build literary vocabulary and shows how Wilde was received in the Dutch-speaking world. If your main aim is to study the original style, you should still consult the English text.

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About the author

Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900 Author

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish writer known for his plays, fiction, fairy tales and epigrams. The collection here contains 55 of his works, including the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (also appearing as Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray, Le portrait de Dorian Gray and Dorian Grayn muotokuva) and the fairy-tale collection The Happy Prince, and Other Tales. The Picture of Dorian Gray centres on a portrait and its subject's fate, exploring beauty, youth, morality and indulgence through polished dialogue and an aesthetic style; The Happy Prince, and Other Tales uses fairy-tale form to portray sacrifice and compassion in clear, gently ironic prose. Wilde's writing is witty and ornate, marked by paradox and epigram, and his works have long circulated in many languages. Beyond his dates, public information is limited, so no biographical details are conjectured here.