Ancient Love Letters: Form, Themes, Approaches

Description

This volume investigates the form of love letters and erotic letters in Greek and Latin up to the 7th Century CE, encompassing both literary and documentary letters (the latter inscribed and on papyrus), and prose and poetry. The potential for, and utility of treating this large and diverse corpus as a ‘genre’ is examined. To this end, approaches from ancient literary criticism and modern theory of genre are made; mutual influences between the documentary and the literary form are sought; and origins in proto-epistolary poetic texts are examined. In order to examine the boundaries of a form, limit cases, which might have less claim to the label ‘love letter’, are compared with more clear-cut examples. A series of case studies focuses on individual letters and letter-collections. Some case studies situate their subjects within the history and literary evolution of the love letter, using both intertextuality and comparative approaches; others placing them in their cultural and historical contexts, particularly uncovering the contribution of epistolarity to erotic discourse, and to the history of sexuality and gender in diverse eras and locations within Classical to Late Antiquity. Documents origins and development of the Love Letter in European literature up to the early Middle Ages. First systematic approach to Love Letters/Erotic Letters in antiquity (Greek and Latin, prose and poetry, literary and documentary letters). Table of Contents Introduction Part 1 The ‘Grammar’ of the Epistolary Genre: Structural Perspectives Chapter 1 Greco-Roman Love Letters and Modern Genre Theory Chapter 2 Mapping Some of the Generic Borders of the Greek Love Letter Chapter 3 The Body and the Letter Chapter 4 Letters Before Letters Part 2 Intertextuality: Literary Models, Topoi, Conventions, Imitative Strategies Chapter 5 Lookin’ for Love (in Plato’s Epistles) Chapter 6 The Structure and Ordering of the Philostratean Love Letters Chapter 7 Hyperliterarity, Intertextuality and Formalized Erotic Language. The Letters of Aristaenetus Chapter 8 Philostratus’ Erotic Epistles and Latin Elegy Revisited Chapter 9 Sealed with a Curse: Elegy, Epistolography, and Magic Ritual in Ovid Heroides 6 Part 3 Cultural Issues and Backgrounds Chapter 10 Alciphron: The Erotic Letters in the Spotlight Chapter 11 Epistolarity, Eroticism, and Agency: The Female Voice in Fictional Greek Love Letters Chapter 12 Is Diogenes in Love with a Eunuch? The Destabilising Power of Erōs in the Letters of Theophylact Simocatta Chapter 13 In a Sentimental Mood? Love, Sex, Marriage (and Other Catastrophes) in Personal Letters (and Everyday Documents) from Graeco-Roman Egypt Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index Nominum Index Rerum Index Locorum