Ancient letters : classical and late antique epistolography / edited by Ruth Morello and A. D. Morrison.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Morello, Ruth.

Morrison, A. D.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Latin letters--History and criticism.

Latin letters.

Letter writing, Latin--History.

Letter writing, Latin.

Authors, Latin--Correspondence--History and criticism.

Authors, Latin.

Authors, Latin--Correspondence.

Statesmen--Rome--Correspondence--History and criticism.

Statesmen.

History.

Genre:

Personal correspondence.

Physical Description:

xvii, 373 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Ancient letters are a notoriously varied and complex genre; under the heading of 'letters' come not only the everyday letters preserved among the Oxyrhynchus papyri but also imperial rescripts, New Testament Epistles, and a vast body of epistolary material (in prose and verse) on politics, philosophy, family life, medicine, and literature, as well as collections of fictional and pseudepigraphic letters. This collection presents a series of case studies in ancient epistolography which explore the varieties and rhetorical advantages of the letter form, asking how each letter writer manipulates the epistolary tradition, why he chose the letter form over any other, and what effect the publication of volumes of collected letters might have had upon a reader's engagement with epistolary works. This volume is the first of its kind on ancient letters in any language, and it brings together both well-established and promising young scholars currently working in the fields of ancient literature, history, philosophy, and medicine to engage in a shared debate about this most adaptable and 'interdisciplinary' of genres.

Contents:

What is a letter? / Roy K. Gibson and A. D. Morrison

Down among the documents : criticism and papyrus letters / G. O. Hutchinson

'...When who should walk into the room but...' : epistoliterarity in Cicero, ad qfr. 3.1 / John Henderson

Cicero's stomach : political indignation and the use of repeated allusive expressions in Ciceros correspondence / Stanley E. Hoffer

Didacticism and epistolarity in Horace's epistles 1 / A. D. Morrison

The importance of form in Seneca's philosophical letters / Brad Inwood

Letters of recommendation and the rhetoric of praise / Roger Rees

Confidence, Inuidia, and Pliny's epistolary curriculum / Ruth Morello

The letter's the thing (in Pliny, book 7) / William Fitzgerald

The epistula in ancient scientific and technical literature, with special reference to medicine / D. R. Langslow

Back to Fronto : doctor and patient in his correspondence with an emperor / Annelise Freisenbruch

Alciphron's epistolarity / Jason Konig

Better than speech : some advantages of the letter in the Second Sophistic / Owen Hodkinson

Mixed messages : the play of epistolary codes in two late antique Latin correspondences / Jennifer Ebbeler

St Patrick and the art of allusion / Andrew Fear.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [349]-366) and indexes.

ISBN:

9780199203956

0199203954

OCLC:

79003890