Ancient Epistolary Fictions
Ancient Epistolary Fictions
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USDA comprehensive look at fictive letters in Greek literature from Homer to Philostratus, first published in 2001. It includes both embedded epistolary narratives in a variety of genres (epic, historiography, tragedy, the novel), and works consisting solely of letters, such as the pseudonymous letter collections and the invented letters of the Second Sophistic. The book challenges the notion that Ovid 'invented' the fictional letter form in his Heroides and considers a wealth of Greek antecedents for the later European epistolary novel tradition. Epistolary technique always problematizes the boundaries between fictionality and reality. Based on a process of selection and self-censorship, the letter is a construction, not a reflection, of reality. The author bypasses the question of sincerity for a close look at epistolary self-representation, the function of the letter form and the nature of the relationship between writer and reader in a wide range of ancient Greek texts.
- Close reading of a variety of ancient Greek texts
- Applies modern literary theory to ancient texts
- An overview of the epistolary form in antiquity
Reviews & endorsements
"...this book is an interesting and enjoyable journey through a variety of Greek texts...It presents a clear and thoughtful account of attempts to categorize and theorize different types of letter...This book is very successful in terms of its project and the analysis of its themes."
-Ruth Scodel, The Classical Outlook
"Rosenmeyer has written the first comprehensive analysis of the ancient Greek letter in and as literature...The book is clearly written, thoroughly documented, and imaginatively argued, and demonstrates that fictional letters constitute a useful literary category."
Religious Studies Review
"This volume will become a standard reference work for this subject matter and time period."
CHOICE
"The Ancient Epistolary Fictions: The Letter in greek Literature is a book that every research library should have in its collection. R's meticulous and systematic scholarhip, her complete and substantiated suggestions and ideas, and her careful philological approach to these selected texts result in a sound piece of erudite work. The sections on the ancient novel and letters themselves make the whole enterprise worthwhile."
Classical Bulletin
"After reading Rosenmeyer's book I realized how much my studies of epistolary fiction in the early modern period had underestimated the importance of Greek models. As Rosenmeyer demonstrates, virtually every epistolary theme we are familiar with found its first use in a Greek text."
Thomas O. Beebee, Comparative Literature Studies
Product details
November 2006Paperback
9780521028943
384 pages
228 × 152 × 24 mm
0.572kg
Available
Table of Contents
- 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.
