The Poet as a Lover: Oscar Wilde's 'The Garden of Eros'

Abstract

Although Oscar Wilde is mostly known for his work in the theatre and his novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890), he also produced a great variety of poetry in his lifetime. 'The Garden of Eros' is a long poem published in the collection "Poems" in 1881. This poem not only illustrates Wilde’s extreme cultural repertoire in Greek and Roman mythology and his expertise in creating poetic imagery but also manifests Wilde’s ideas on love and the essence of art, as well as being a declaration of love to poetry. Based on Octavio Paz’s (1996) ideas on poetry as the eroticism of language, I analyze Wilde’s role as a lover poet, his criticism on modern art and his entreaty for the beauty of art.