Complete Poetry

Fülszöveg

Oscar Wilde
Complete Poetry
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Isobel Murray
'Yet each man kills the thing he loves. By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look. Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!'
A powerful poem of universal guilt and a protest against capital punishment, The Ballad of Reading Gaol is Wilde's best-known poem, yet is quite unlike the rest of his poetry. At Oxford Wilde discarded the polidcs of his mother's Irish nationalistic anti-famine poetry to follow an English Romantic tradition, paying tribute to Keats, Swinburne, and the Pre-Raphaelites. Admiration of French masters gradually led to his wriring Impressionist, even decadent poems and his collecdon Poems (1881) brought accusations of obscenity and plagiarism as well as scathing reviews. Unabashed, Wilde revised and reprinted his final 'Author's Edition' in 1892, by which time he was the successful author of fiction, criticism, and... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Oscar Wilde
Complete Poetry
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Isobel Murray
'Yet each man kills the thing he loves. By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look. Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!'
A powerful poem of universal guilt and a protest against capital punishment, The Ballad of Reading Gaol is Wilde's best-known poem, yet is quite unlike the rest of his poetry. At Oxford Wilde discarded the polidcs of his mother's Irish nationalistic anti-famine poetry to follow an English Romantic tradition, paying tribute to Keats, Swinburne, and the Pre-Raphaelites. Admiration of French masters gradually led to his wriring Impressionist, even decadent poems and his collecdon Poems (1881) brought accusations of obscenity and plagiarism as well as scathing reviews. Unabashed, Wilde revised and reprinted his final 'Author's Edition' in 1892, by which time he was the successful author of fiction, criticism, and Lady Windermere's Fan.
This volume follows as closely as possible the chronological order of composition. The Appendix shows Wilde's original ordering, constructed with great care around a 'musical' arrangement of themes. The poems reveal unexpected aspects of a literary chameleon usually identified with sparkling wit and social comedy.
• introduction • textual note • bibliography • chronology • appendix • explanatory notes • index Vissza