The article provides an analysis of Oscar Wilde's epistle published in his first poetry collection, “Poems”. They are considered as texts that vividly demonstrate the aesthetic worldview of the author, which becomes a kind of genre dominant in the writer's entire work. In his epistles, the poet appeals to his contemporaries, artists, mainly to the artists of his beloved Lyceum Theater, as well as (no less, and perhaps more importantly) to his idols, the poets of the past, classic author of 17th century John Milton and romantic poets John Keats and Percy Shelley. The author analyzes the commonality of motifs in Wilde's poems and the works of his
predecessors, as well as examines the syntactic features of the texts. The researcher concludes that in the epistles from his debut book, Oscar Wilde creates a special aesthetic artistic reality in which people who actually exist or existed in ancient times become eternally living literary characters. In addition, Wilde seeks to start a dialogue with the poets of previous eras, thus drawing a connection between their work and his own and embedding his works in the context of world literature.
For citation: Plastinin P.D. The meaning of an epistle in Oscar Wilde’s works (based on the book “The poems”), Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities,
2025, iss. 4, pp. 32—38.