Reviews for Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography

The average rating for Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-06-26 00:00:00 Jason Braswell 'What is a letter?' The question posed in Gibson and Morrison's introductory essay is one which resonates throughout this collection: what is a letter, they ask, and where does the boundary lie between letters and other forms of texts? Moving between the classical Latin letter collections of Cicero, Seneca and Pliny, this collection also explores less familiar Greek and Hellenistic texts that situate themselves against the epistolary. Drawing on modern scholarship and touching on Derrida's remark that all literature is a letter, the essays here re-open questions of genre, of intertextuality, and give letters back a central place in ancient literature. I would have liked to have seen at least one essay discussing the relationships between 'real' letters and poetic missives (most obviously Ovid's Heroides, but also the 'cover-letter' reading of Catullus 50, for example) but while the relationship between poetry and letters is implicitly touched on in a number of pieces this aspect is absent. Nevertheless, this is a stimulating collection that problematises the genre of the letter in provocative ways.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-04-08 00:00:00 Elisa Rodriguez Incidentally cute. Fundamentally flawed. Also, John Henderson is clearly the craziest person working in classics today. Who quotes Rod Stewart to begin a scholarly article? Amazing.