“Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll”:
The poetry of Oscar Wilde
Introduction–“The poet is WILDE, but his poetry’s tame”
I. Wilde the Classicist
i. “He was a Grecian lad…” — A poetic pilgrimage
ii. “If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated”
iii. “The heterosexual Wilde of antiquity”
iv. “Nay, it is Narcissus, his own paramour. Those are the fond and crimson lips no woman can allure”
II. Wilde the Aesthete and Decadent
i. “The visible personification of absolute perfection”
ii. Nature and artifice—“A really well made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature”
iii. Stasis, metamorphosis and representation