Oscar Wilde's Graded Readers and their Exploitation in Obligatory and Post-Obligatory Education

Abstract

[ES]El objetivo principal de la tesis de este máster es estudiar y analizar lecturas graduadas basadas en obras de Oscar Wilde actualmente disponibles en España en diferentes niveles de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria y Bachillerato para los estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera. Aunque Wilde en cuanto a estudios literarios se refiere, siempre ha sido más aclamado por su teatro, este ha tenido limitada su incidencia en lecturas graduadas para la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera. Por el contrario, su prosa ha sido adaptada para este tipo de lecturas más a menudo, sobre todo su única novela, The Picture of Dorian Gray y sus cuentos "Lord Saville´s Crime" y “The Canterville Ghost". Algunos como "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Birthday of the Infanta", "The Selfish Giant", etc., son conocidos relatos en el mundo anglófono que, aunque escritos originalmente como literatura infantil, han sido objeto de reducida presencia dentro del corpus de lecturas graduadas y sin embargo pueden ser de gran utilidad para fomentar la coeducación o diversas competencias transversales (respeto y tolerancia ante las diferentes preferencias sexuales, la igualdad social de los sexos, igualdad de género etc…).

[EN]The main objective of this Master's Thesis is to survey and analyze Oscar Wilde's graded readers currently available in Spain at different levels of Obligatory and Post-Obligatory Secondary Education for students of English as a foreign language. Although Wilde's most acclaimed literary corpus is drama, this has had relatively limited incidence in graded readers. On the other hand, his prose has been adapted for graded readers more often, especially Wilde's only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and his short stories "Lord Savile's Crime" and "The Ghost of Canterville". Some attention will nevertheless also be paid in my Didactic Unit to other less popular short stories (as far as their presence in the corpus of graded readers is concerned) such as "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Birthday of the Infanta", "The Selfish Giant", etc., all of them well known stories in the Anglophone world which, despite having been written originally as children's literature, have enjoyed only a reduced presence in the corpus of graded readers. However they can be of great use in our EFL classroom to encourage relevant issues such as coeducation, cross-curricular competences (respect and tolerance for different sexual preferences, the social equality of the sexes, genre differences, etc.).