Letter

Abstract: This book looks at two of the most important ancient Greek historians living in the fifth century bce who are considered to be the founders of the western tradition of historiography. This book examines the relevant relationship between these historians which is considered, especially nowadays, by historians and philologists to be more significant than previously realized. The volume includes an introduction which addresses the changing view of how the historians relate to one another and twelve chapters written by leading experts in the field of ancient history and philology. Nine of the chapters discuss either comprehensive issues pertaining to the historians' relationship or their common themes and practices, while three further chapters discuss the ancient reception of Herodotus and Thucydides and investigate the historians' debt to Homer.

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction:Epistolary Research in Chinese Studies and Beyond Textual Sources of Early Medieval Chinese Letter Writing The Organization of This Book Remarks on Translation Part One. Materials and Concepts of Letter Writing1. Materiality and Terminology:The Spread of Paper Calligraphy and Letter Writing Writers and Transporters of Letters Terminology The Genre of Personal Letters 2. Letters and Literary Thought:Cao Pi's "Disquisitions on Literature" on Letters as a Genre The Absence of Letters in Lu Ji's "Rhapsody on Literature" Liu Xie's The Literary Mind and the Carvingof Dragons on Letters Letters in Xiao Tong's Selections of Refined Literature Letters about Literary Thought Part Two. Epistolary Conventions and Literary Individuality3. Structures and Phrases Letter Opening Letter Body Letter Closing Terms of Address and Self-Designation 4. Topoi Lamenting Separation Letters as Substitutes for Face-to-Face Conversation The Limits of Writing and Language 5. Normativity and Authenticity Letter-Writing Guides Expressing Individuality within the Bounds of Convention Conclusion Notes Bibliography Glossary-Index

Abstract: Most people do not keep the letters or emails they receive, let alone copies of their own; the very idea can strike one as hubristic. But these exchanges can have dangerous afterlives. Some letters are sombrely preserved, even sent to archives and editors, while others are disposed of equally seriously. Burning a letter describes many literary denouements for that reason. Destroying a personal letter is especially associated with love or family gone wrong, just as the preservation of personal letters is typically a woman's task. Archiving, publishing or even simply analysing letters is therefore a delicate business, traversing the correspondent's relationship with other relationships between editor, publisher, archivist and public reader. Those new layers of negotiation, as I discovered when researching my book on the role of letters in contemporary feminism, ironically requires writing more letters and emails. How do we balance individual need for privacy, or conversely, for public attention against collective interest for education, for political change, for amusement? Rather than rehearse now long-standing battles about the aesthetic potential of communicative forms, I wish here to reflect on what the publication of letters may tell us about their peculiarity as life writing how the ethical dilemmas raised by the acts of preserving and collecting letters are bound up with the wider conflict in life writing between the obligation to truth and the obligations of trust. The burned letter highlights the significance of the letter as a material object, and why it may feel dangerous to let it survive its original function and context. Feminist critics have wished nevertheless to save and make public personal letters, and editors wrestle with ethical questions as well as with letter writers, owners and their inheritors in compiling letter collections. Epistolary publication, like letter writing itself, is ethically hazardous because it involves relationships of difference, power, and desire.