Ancient Epistolary Fictions: The Letter in Greek Literature

ISBN-13: 9780521800044 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 382 str.

Patricia A. Rosenmeyer

Opis

This book offers the first comprehensive look at the use of imaginary letters in Greek literature from Homer to Philostratus. By imaginary letters, it means letters written in the voice of another, and either inserted into a narrative (epic, historiography, tragedy, the novel), or comprising a free-standing collection (e.g. the Greek love letter collections of the Imperial Roman period). The book challenges the notion that Ovid "invented" the fictional letter form in the Heroides, and considers a wealth of Greek antecedents for the later European epistolary novel tradition.

Recenzje

'… this new publication is the work of a pioneer.' Gnomon

Spis treści

Acknowledgments; Prologue; Part I. Epistolarity: An Introduction: 1. A culture of letter writing; Part II. Epistolary Fictions: 2. Homer: the father of letters; 3. Letters in the historians; 4. Staging letters: embedded letters in Euripides; 5. Letters in Hellenistic poetry; Part III. The Epistolary Novel: 6. Embedded letters in the Greek novel; 7. The Alexander Romance; 8. Pseudonymous letter collections; 9. Chion of Heraclea: an epistolary novel; Part IV. Epistolography in the Second Sophistic: 10. The Letters of Alciphron; 11. Aelian's Rustic Letters; 12. The Erotic Epistles of Philostratus; Afterword; Bibliography; Index.