Oscar Wilde

The Star-Child (MP3-Download)

Ungekürzte Lesung. 35 Min.
Sprecher: Ritchie, Ray

• Hörbuch-Download MP3

Produktbeschreibung

"The Star-Child" is the story of an infant boy found abandoned in the woods by a poor woodcutter, who pities him and takes him in. He grows up to be exceedingly beautiful, but vain, cruel, and arrogant, believing himself to be the divine child of the stars. He lords over the other children, who follow him devotedly, and takes pleasure in torturing the forest animals and village beggars alike. One day, a beggar woman, emaciated, haggard and with bleeding feet, arrives in the village in search of her lost son, who the Star-Child is revealed to be. However, he scorns her and sends her away, and in doing so, is transformed into a loathsome cross between a toad and a snake as a punishment. His followers abandon him, and he sets off to seek forgiveness from his mother. He also repents his cruelty and asks forgiveness from the animals he had tortured. At length, he comes to a city, where he is captured and sold into slavery. His master, a malevolent sorcerer, treats him cruelly and gives him three tasks which he must complete. First, he sends him to find a piece of white gold hidden in the forest. The Star-Child searches all day, but cannot find it. Upon returning to the city, he sees a rabbit caught in a trap and stops to free him. In gratitude, the rabbit shows him where the gold is and the Star-Child happily takes it. However, returning with the gold, an ailing beggar calls to him that he will surely starve unless he can give him money for food. The Star-Child gives him the piece of gold, and his master beats him and gives him neither food nor water that night.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bookstream Audiobooks
• Gesamtlaufzeit: 35 Min.
• Erscheinungstermin: 22. Januar 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9783990869826
• Artikelnr.: 60895066

Autorenporträt

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He went to Trinity College, Dublin and then to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he began to propagandize the new Aesthetic (or 'Art for Art's Sake') Movement. Despite winning a first and the Newdigate Prize for Poetry, Wilde failed to obtain an Oxford scholarship, and was forced to earn a living by lecturing and writing for periodicals. After his marriage to Constance Lloyd in 1884, he tried to establish himself as a writer, but with little initial success. However, his three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince (1888), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1891) and A House of Pomegranates (1891), together with his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), gradually won him a reputation as a modern writer with an original talent, a reputation confirmed and enhanced by the phenomenal success of his Society Comedies - Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, all performed on the West End stage between 1892 and 1895. Success, however, was short-lived. In 1891 Wilde had met and fallen extravagantly in love with Lord Alfred Douglas. In 1895, when his success as a dramatist was at its height, Wilde brought an unsuccessful libel action against Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde lost the case and two trials later was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for acts of gross indecency. As a result of this experience he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He was released from prison in 1897 and went into an immediate self-imposed exile on the Continent. He died in Paris in ignominy in 1900.