| Popis: |
This essay discusses letter-exchange as a multimedial and partly ritualized form of communication. It focuses on the role of the bearer, as not only as a channel for the message, but also as a mediator and go-between. Gifts added a material dimension to letter-exchange, and they were subject to subtle codes that often caused a sender to downplay their value and importance. The reception of letters was a ritualized event, consisting of a fixed sequence of gestures, and involving all the senses. Letters were regularly read by others, a phenomenon that one could call “public intimacy‘; the reading of letters often stood at the core of a complex semi-public performance, involving extensive mediation, rhetorical dramatization, and ceremony. The essay also examines the impact of social decorum and hierarchy on letters, notably on the form of address, formulas of deference, the vocabulary with which the letter-writer introduced requests, etc., for which the term “epistolary codes‘ can be used. |
