Neomyths about Endymion in the Victorian poetry

Abstract

The artistic peculiarities of the transformation of mythological plot about Endymion in the works by Hugh Donald Barclay, Oscar Wilde, Stephen Phillips are investigated. The author reasearches distinguished features of each literary version. Wilde's aestheticism is of peculiar interest. Both Barclay’s and Wilde’s versions create an alternative fate of Endymion in the Victorian society. Phillips’s version is an attempt to revive the ancient Greek original myth in details to acquaint the Victorian readers with the ancient human values. An active creative reconsideration of a mythological material in the context of the national and historical conditions of the Victorian epoch and continuity of the Elizabethan love discourse are considered as basic tendencies of functioning of English poetic endmionada in the XIX-th century.