Ancient Love Letters Drago, Anna Tiziana; Hodkinson, Owen
2023, 2023-01-30
eBook
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.
Abstract
The letters of Phalaris are among the letter collections assembled by Rudolf Hercher in his, ‘Epistolographi graeci’, published in 1873. They differ from other collections in that volume in ...the size of the corpus ( 148 letters ) and the breadth of the manuscript tradition ( more than 132 manuscripts ). Moreover, the number and the order of the letters vary greatly from one manuscript to another. These characteristics explain why there is no modern critical edition of the letters of Phalaris. This paper addresses a methodological issue: how can we get a comprehensive view of the transmission of the letters of Phalaris? It examines these letters from the perspective of the collection, given that the letters of Phalaris are often transmitted within manuscripts that combine several corpora of letters, thus forming large epistolary collections. This paper shows to what extent the results obtained by the editors of other epistolary texts can be applied to the letters of Phalaris and what is gained, on a literary level, by replacing these letters in their context of transmission.
The letters of Phalaris are among the letter collections assembled by Rudolf Hercher in his, ‘Epistolographi graeci’, published in 1873. They differ from other collections in that volume in the size ...of the corpus ( 148 letters ) and the breadth of the manuscript tradition ( more than 132 manuscripts ). Moreover, the number and the order of the letters vary greatly from one manuscript to another. These characteristics explain why there is no modern critical edition of the letters of Phalaris. This paper addresses a methodological issue: how can we get a comprehensive view of the transmission of the letters of Phalaris? It examines these letters from the perspective of the collection, given that the letters of Phalaris are often transmitted within manuscripts that combine several corpora of letters, thus forming large epistolary collections. This paper shows to what extent the results obtained by the editors of other epistolary texts can be applied to the letters of Phalaris and what is gained, on a literary level, by replacing these letters in their context of transmission.
The series Philologus. Supplemente / Philologus. Supplementary Volumes publishes monographs and edited volumes pertaining to all aspects of the study of ancient literature and its reception, with a ...special focus on interdisciplinary approaches, combining Classics with Literary and Cultural Studies.
Mixis Marquis, Émeline; Billault, Alain
2017
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
Observateur hors pair, critique acerbe, orateur virtuose qui manie l’humour et l’ironie tout autant qu’il se plaît aux références intertextuelles et aux réflexions métalittéraires, Lucien de Samosate ...est un des grands noms du IIe siècle après J.-C. Son influence sur des œuvres aussi variées que l’Éloge de la Folie d’Érasme, Pantagruel et Gargantua de Rabelais, les Dialogues des morts de Fontenelle, les Voyages de Gulliver de Swift et les Petites œuvres morales de Leopardi témoigne de l’étendue de ses expérimentations littéraires.C’est à l’une des spécificités de l’écriture lucianesque, la mixis, que le présent ouvrage est consacré. Le mélange des genres à l’œuvre chez Lucien y est examiné par un ensemble de spécialistes dans ses dimensions théoriques et pratiques. En effet, si Lucien se revendique fièrement comme l’inventeur d’un type particulier de mélange, le dialogue comique, une multiplicité d’autres formes, d’autres « ingrédients » sont convoqués dans ses textes. En s’interrogeant sur la nature de la mixis, sur ses modalités et sur ses fonctions, ainsi que sur ses effets, il s’agit de proposer une synthèse sur un des éléments clés de la poétique lucianesque
La tradition manuscrite des œuvres de Lucien est habituellement décrite comme une tradition double, présentant deux classes de manuscrits (β et γ) issues de deux translittérations différentes. ...Certains textes, cependant, ont une tradition simple - un type de transmission jusque là peu étudié. Pour comprendre ce que sont ces textes de Lucien à tradition simple, il faut se pencher sur le cas d’un manuscrit mutilé, dont le contenu est aux trois quarts perdu : le Londiniensis Harleianus 5694 (sigle E). Par une étude de l’acolouthie, il est possible de reconstruire le contenu de E et de déterminer le nombre de textes de Lucien à tradition simple. Cela permet ensuite d’examiner les caractéristiques de la tradition manuscrite propre à ces textes et les implications en matière de stemma et d’édition critique. Ces éléments visent à fournir un cadre de réf lexion pour l’ensemble de la tradition lucianesque.
The manuscript tradition of the works of Lucian is usually described as twofold, presenting two classes of manuscripts (β and γ), stemming from two different transliterations. Some Lucianic texts, however, have a simple manuscript tradition - a type of transmission little studied up until now. To understand the nature of the texts of Lucian with a simple tradition, one must examine the case of the mutilated Londiniensis Harleianus 5694 (E), of which three quarters of the text is lost. By studying the acoluthia, one can reconstruct the contents of this manuscript and determine the number of texts with a simple tradition. The characteristics of the transmission of these texts and the implications regarding the stemma and critical edition can then, in turn, be examined. These elements aim at furnishing a theoretical framework for the whole Lucianic tradition.
Traditionally, Alciphron’s work is divided into four of letters, according to the social status of the letter writers and their letters of fishermen, of farmers, of parasites and of courtesans. It is ...not surprising that the letters of courtesans mainly deal with erotic themes, and this is why ancient editors like Stephan Bergler and Ernst Eduard Seiler did describe the fourth type of letters as amatoriae, a category larger than the usual title meretriciae. However, it is less evident for the reader that eros also plays a central role in the other three books of letters. Indeed, nine letters in each of these three books are concerned with topics which one can call ‘erotic’ in a broad sense.It is this importance of erotic letters in the whole work of Alciphron (and not only in the letters of courtesans) that I investigate in this chapter: their nature, their form as well as their status in the collection. After delimiting my corpus of study, I examine the main features of these letters: who writes, to whom, in which form, for what reason and with what arguments? Are there similarities among these erotic letters in terms of form and content, or are they remarkable mainly for their artful poikilia? Lastly, I focus on the composition of Alciphron’s work and insist on the careful organisation of the erotic letters and on the numerous echoes and parallels that the reader detects within and among the books.
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