›res vera, res ficta‹: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography

›res vera, res ficta‹: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography
Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages : 324
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9783111308494
ISBN-13 : 3111308499
Rating : 4/5 (499 Downloads)

Book Synopsis ›res vera, res ficta‹: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography by : Janja Soldo

Download or read book ›res vera, res ficta‹: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography written by Janja Soldo and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-09-18 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Letters are famously easy to recognise, notoriously hard to define. Both real and fictitious letters can look identical to the point that there are no formal criteria which can distinguish one from the other. This has long been a point of anxiety in scholarship which has considered the value of an ancient letter to be determined by its authenticity, necessitating a strict binary opposition of genuine as opposed to fake letters. This volume challenges this dichotomy directly. Rather than defining epistolary fiction as a literary genre in opposition to ‘genuine’ letters or reducing it down to fixed rhetorical features, it argues that fiction is an inherent and fluid property of letters which ancient writers recognised and exploited. This volume contributes to wider scholarship on ancient fiction by demonstrating through the multiplicity of genres, contexts, and time periods discussed how complex and multifaceted ancient awareness of fictionality was. As such, this volume shows that letters are uniquely well-placed to unsettle disciplinary boundaries of fact and fiction, authentic and spurious, and that this allows for a deeper understanding of how ancient writers conceptualised and manipulated the fictional potential of letters.


›res vera, res ficta‹: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography Related Books

›res vera, res ficta‹: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography
Language: en
Pages: 324
Authors: Janja Soldo
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2023-09-18 - Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

GET EBOOK

Letters are famously easy to recognise, notoriously hard to define. Both real and fictitious letters can look identical to the point that there are no formal cr
A Companion to Greek Literature
Language: en
Pages: 583
Authors: Martin Hose
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-02-11 - Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

GET EBOOK

A Companion to Greek Literature presents a comprehensive introduction to the wide range of texts and literary forms produced in the Greek language over the cour
Henry of Ghent
Language: en
Pages: 480
Authors: W. Vanhamel
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 1996 - Publisher: Leuven University Press

GET EBOOK

Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Series 1, No. 36 Henry of Ghent stands out as a leading thinker, together with Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, of the second ha
Reading Roman Friendship
Language: en
Pages: 389
Authors: Craig A. Williams
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-10-18 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

GET EBOOK

A comprehensive study of friendship in ancient Rome attentive to gender and social status, language and the commemoration of the dead.
The Johannine Community in Contemporary Debate
Language: en
Pages: 293
Authors: Christopher Seglenieks
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024-07-24 - Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

GET EBOOK

Few scholarly constructs have proven as influential or as durable as the Johannine community. A product of the era in New Testament studies dominated by redacti