letter in verse, a literary genre.
The epistle was first used in European poetry by Horace in the first century B.C. It continued to thrive in Latin poetry and in the new languages of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and flourished in the age of classicism with Boileau, Voltaire, Pope, J. Gottsched, A. P. Sumarokov, and D. I. Fonvizin. In the romantic period, the epistle went out of style, although some were still written, such as “My Penates” by K. N. Batiushkov and “Letter to the Censor” by A. S. Pushkin. By the mid-19th century, the epistle as a genre ceased to exist.
Traditionally, the content of an epistle is predominantly moral-philosophical and didactic, but there were also numerous narrative, panegyric, satirical, and amorous epistles. The only element shared in common by epistles is an address to a specific person and, accordingly, themes such as petitions and good wishes. The term “epistle” is sometimes applied to open letters in prose with a particularly important publicistic, didactic, religious, or official content, including the Epistles of the New Testament, the epistle of Archpriest Avvakum, the epistles of Prince A. Kurbskii to Ivan the Terrible, and a presidential epistle, or letter, such as one addressed to the Congress in the USA.
M. L. GASPAROV