Charmides and Other Poems

Charmides and Other Poems presents verse by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) centred on Charmides, the longest and most ambitious poem of his 1881 Poems volume. The poem, in which a Greek youth profanes the temple of Athena and is pursued by the goddess’s vengeance beyond death, drew on Wilde’s Oxford classical training and his devotion to Keats, and its lush sensuous manner announced the aesthetic creed that Wilde was then carrying through Britain and America on his lecture tours. The surrounding poems include sonnets and lyrics from the same early period, when Wilde was establishing himself as the public face of the aesthetic movement a decade before his triumphs in fiction and drama. The collection documents the poetic apprenticeship of English literature’s greatest wit. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.