Diana G. Barnes – författare

Epistolary Community in Print contends that the printed letter is an inherently sociable genre ideally suited to the theorisation of community in early modern England. In manual, prose or poetic form, printed letter collections make private matters public, and in so doing reveal, first how tenuous is the divide between these two realms in the early modern period and, second, how each collection helps to constitute particular communities of readers. Consequently, as Epistolary Community details, epistolary visions of community were gendered. This book provides a genealogy of epistolary discourse beginning with an introductory discussion of Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser’s Wise and Wittie Letters (1580), and opening into chapters on six printed letter collections generated at times of political change. Among the authors whose letters are examined are Angel Day, Michael Drayton, Jacques du Bosque and Margaret Cavendish. Epistolary Community identifies broad patterns that were taking shape, and constantly morphing, in English printed letters from 1580 to 1664, and then considers how the six examples of printed letters selected for discussion manipulate this generic tradition to articulate ideas of community under specific historical and political circumstances. This study makes a substantial contribution to the rapidly growing field of early modern letters, and demonstrates how the field impacts our understanding of political discourses in circulation between 1580 and 1664, early modern women’s writing, print culture and rhetoric.

From hate mail to suicide notes to begging letters, this book explores the relationship between letter writing and emotion through case studies from antiquity to the 21st century. It shows how the epistolary form has offered a wide range of ways to communicate private feelings, make public statements and offers a rich historical source to explore how people have performed emotions for a range of audiences.Emotions and the Letter shows how this long-standing historical source can provide insights into a diversity of emotion traditions. Uses of the letter in different periods and its emotional potential reflect important interactions between individuals and society, private and public, aesthetics and authenticity. Applying approaches and methods from the history of emotions, literary studies and affect studies, this collection significantly advances our understanding of why letters remain a critical mode of communication and explores how to analyse letters for historical emotions research.