[PDF] Epistolary Bodies eBook

Author : Elizabeth Cook
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 48,46 MB
Release : 1996-07-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0804764867

GET BOOK

Informed by Jurgen Habermas's public sphere theory, this book studies the popular eighteenth-century genre of the epistolary narrative through readings of four works: Montesquieu's Lettres persanes (1721), Richardson's Clarissa (1749-50), Riccoboni's Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd (1757), and Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer (1782).The author situates epistolary narratives in the contexts of eighteenth-century print culture: the rise of new models of readership and the newly influential role of the author; the model of contract derived from liberal political theory; and the techniques and aesthetics of mechanical reproduction. Epistolary authors used the genre to formulate a range of responses to a cultural anxiety about private energies and appetites, particularly those of women, as well as to legitimate their own authorial practices. Just as the social contract increasingly came to be seen as the organising instrument of public, civic relations in this period, the author argues that the epistolary novel serves to socialise and regulate the private subject as a citizen of the Republic of Letters.

Author : Jordan Zweck
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 47,16 MB
Release : 2018-01-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1487501005

GET BOOK

In Epistolary Acts, Jordan Zweck examines the presentation of letters in early medieval vernacular literature, including hagiography, prose romance, poetry, and sermons on letters from heaven, moving beyond traditional genre study to offer a radically new way of conceptualizing Anglo-Saxon epistolarity.

Author : Amanda Gilroy
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 34,10 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780813919737

GET BOOK

This innovative collection of essays participates in the ongoing debate about the epistolary form, challenging readers to rethink the traditional association between the letter and the private sphere. It also pushes the boundaries of that debate by having the contributors respond to each other within the volume, thus creating a critical community between covers that replicates the dialogic nature of epistolarity itself, with all its dissonances and differences as well as its connections. Focusing mainly on Anglo-American texts from the seventeenth century to the present day, these nine essays and their "postscripts" engage the relationship between epistolary texts and discourses of gender, class, politics, and commodification. Ranging from epistolary histories of Mary Queen of Scots to Turkish travelogues, from the making of the modern middle class and the correspondence of Melville and Hawthorne to new epistolary innovators such as Kathy Acker and Orlan, the contributions are divided into three parts: part 1 addresses the "feminocentric" focus of the letter; part 2, the boundaries between the fictional and the real; and part 3 the ways in which the epistolary genre may help us think more clearly about questions of critical address and discourse that have preoccupied theorists in recent years. In sum, Epistolary Histories is a defining contribution to epistolary studies. Contributors: Nancy Armstrong, Brown University Anne L. Bower, Ohio State University, Marion Clare Brant, King's College, London Amanda Gilroy, University of Groningen Richard Hardack, Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges Linda S. Kauffman, University of Maryland, College Park Donna Landry, Wayne State University Gerald MacLean, Wayne State University Martha Nell Smith, University of Maryland, College Park W. M. Verhoeven, University of Groningen

Author : Maria Löschnigg
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 461 pages
File Size : 47,80 MB
Release : 2018-09-10
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 3110582171

GET BOOK

Since the late twentieth century, letters in literature have seen a remarkable renaissance. The prominence of letters in recent fiction is due in part to the rediscovery, by contemporary writers, of letters as an effective tool for rendering aspects of historicity, liminality, marginalization and the expression of subjectivity vis-à-vis an ‘other’; it is also due, however, to the artistically challenging inclusion of the new electronic media of communication into fiction. While studies of epistolary fiction have so far concentrated on the eighteenth century and on thematic concerns, this volume charts the epistolary renaissance in recent literature, entering new territory by also focusing on the aesthetic implications of the epistolary mode. In particular, the essays in this volume illuminate the potential of the epistolary (including digital forms) for rendering contemporary sensitivities. The volume thus offers a comprehensive assessment of letter narratives in contemporary literature. Through its focus on the aesthetic and structural aspects of new epistolary fiction, the inclusion of various narrative forms, and the consideration of both conventional letters and their new digital kindred, The Epistolary Renaissance offers novel insight into a multi-facetted (re)new(ed) genre.

Author : K. Brindle
Publisher : Springer
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 24,41 MB
Release : 2014-01-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1137007168

GET BOOK

Neo-Victorian writers invoke conflicting viewpoints in diaries, letters, etc. to creatively retrace the past in fragmentary and contradictory ways. This book explores the complex desires involved in epistolary discoveries of 'hidden' Victorians, offering new insight into the creative synthesising of critical thought within the neo-Victorian novel.

Author : Rebecca Earle
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 21,79 MB
Release : 2016-12-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1351939289

GET BOOK

This volume of ten essays discusses the pivotal role that letters have played in social, economic and political history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The recent scholarly interest in the history of reading has as yet yielded few studies which consider letters as a category of readable material. The contributors to this book seek to redress this oversight, viewing letters as texts which can reveal information, not only about their writers and readers, but about the wider historical context in which they were written. Topics covered include the mercantile letter, diplomatic correspondence, and what these epistolary forms suggest about the rise of a polite, literate culture in the eighteenth century; the experience of immigration from Europe to America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the relationship through the letter; and the working of gender in the epistolary form. Rebecca Earle provides an overview of how the study of letter-writing can open up new avenues of historical as well as literary investigation. This, together with contributions form leading international scholars, makes Epistolary Selves an essential text for those researching the letter genre.

Author : Thomas O. Beebee
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 35,85 MB
Release : 1999-03-28
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780521622752

GET BOOK

This book explores epistolary fiction as a major phenomenon across Europe from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century.

Author : Anne Bower
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 42,56 MB
Release : 2014-11-20
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 0817358145

GET BOOK

Letters - a most traditional and old-fashioned form of discourse - continue to offer special opportunities for writers and readers in the postmodern era. Bower explores the way letters shape the act of writing and writing as act.