Epistolary Narratives presents detailed literary readings of a wide range of Greek literary letter collections across a range of genres, cultural backgrounds, and time periods, leading collectively towards a better appreciation of Greek epistolary collections as a unique literary phenomenon.
Covering material as diverse as curse tablets, coins, tattoos, and legal decrees, Deborah Steiner explores the reception of writing in archaic and classical Greece. She moves beyond questions concerning ancient literacy and the origins of the Greek alphabet to examine representations of writing in the myths and imaginative literature of the period. Maintaining that the Greek alphabet was not seen purely as a means of transcribing and preserving the spoken word, the author investigates parallels between writing and other signifiers, such as omens, tokens, and talismans; the role of inscription in religious rites, including cursing, oath-taking, and dedication; and perceptions of how writing functioned both in autocracies and democracies. Particularly innovative is the suggestion that fifth-century Greek historians and dramatists portrayed writing as an essential tool of tyrants, who not only issue written decrees but also "inscribe" human bodies with brands and cut up land with compasses and rules. The despotic overtones associated with writing inform discussion of its function in democracies. Although writing could promote equal justice, ancient sources also linked this activity with historical and mythical figures who opposed the populist regime. By examining this highly nuanced portrayal of writing, Steiner offers a new perspective on ancient views of written law and its role in fifth-century Athenian democracy. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Prose fiction, although not always associated with classical antiquity, flourished in the early Roman Empire, not only in realistic Latin novels but also and indeed principally in the Greek ideal romance of love and adventure. Enormously popular in the Renaissance, these stories have been less familiar in later centuries. Translations of the Greek stories were not readily available in English before B.P. Reardon’s first appeared in 1989.Nine complete stories are included here as well as ten others, encompassing the whole range of classical themes: romance, travel, adventure, historical fiction, and comic parody. A foreword by J.R. Morgan examines the enormous impact this groundbreaking collection has had on our understanding of classical thought and our concept of the novel.
In Discourses of Desire, Linda S. Kauffman looks at a neglected genre—the love letters written by literary heroines. Tracing the development of the genre from Ovid to the twentieth-century novel, Kauffman explores through provocative and incisive readings the important implications of these amatory discourses for an understanding of fictive representation in general. Among the texts Kauffman treats are Ovid's Heroides, Heloise's letters to Abelard, The Letters of a Portuguese Nun, Clarissa, Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw, Absalom, Absalom!, and The Three Marias: New Portuguese Letters. Drawing on the work of such theorists as Todorov, Genette, Barthes, Bakhtin, Lacan, and Derrida, Kauffman demonstrates how the codes of love shape intertextual dialogues among these works, in which each innovation in the genre is simultaneously a response to and a departure from the one preceding it. Throughout, she pays particular attention to the unsettling questions that the genre's shared thematic preoccupations and formal characteristics pose for concepts of gender, authorship, genre, and mimesis. Drawing on poststructuralism and psychoanalytic criticism to extend the boundaries of feminist theory, Kauffman makes a significant contribution to contemporary critical discussions of writing and gender, mimesis and narrative discourse, and poetics and politics. Her book, broad in its scope and far-reaching in its implications, will be valuable reading for anyone interested in feminist criticism, literary theory, and literary history.
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.
A trio of tales offering an eye-opening alternative view of ancient Greece's literary culture. A fascinating counterpoint to the monumental epics of ancient Greece, Greek Fiction features three novelistic works written between the first and fourth centuries AD. Chariton's "Callirhoe"-perhaps the first novel ever written-is the stirring tale of two star-crossed lovers who are torn apart when Callirhoe is kidnapped and sold into slavery.
A Companion to Byzantine Epistolography offers the first comprehensive introduction and scholarly guide to the cultural practice and literary genre of letter-writing in the Byzantine Empire.