Epistolary acts : Anglo-Saxon letters and early English media
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Epistolary acts : Anglo-Saxon letters and early English media
（Toronto Anglo-Saxon series / general editor, Andy Orchard ; editorial board, Roberta Frank ... [et al.], 29）
University of Toronto Press, c2018
- : cloth
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [195]-213) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
As challenging as it is to imagine how an educated cleric or wealthy lay person in the early Middle Ages would have understood a letter (especially one from God), it is even harder to understand why letters would have so captured the imagination of people who might never have produced, sent, or received letters themselves. In Epistolary Acts, Jordan Zweck examines the presentation of letters in early medieval vernacular literature, including hagiography, prose romance, poetry, and sermons on letters from heaven, moving beyond traditional genre study to offer a radically new way of conceptualizing Anglo-Saxon epistolarity. Zweck argues that what makes early medieval English epistolarity unique is the performance of what she calls "epistolary acts," the moments when authors represent or embed letters within vernacular texts. The book contributes to a growing interest in the intersections between medieval studies and media studies, blending traditional book history and manuscript studies with affect theory, media studies, and archive studies.
Table of Contents
Abbreviations Introduction: Epistolary Acts and The Husband's Message Chapter One: Reconstructing the Anglo-Saxon ars dictaminis: Form, Vocabulary, and Immediacy Chapter Two: Spreading the Word: the Sunday Letter, Mass Communication, and the Self-Replicating Document Chapter Three: Messengers, Materiality, and Transmission in the Old English Apollonius of Tyre, Letter of Abgar, and Mary of Egypt Chapter Four: Bodies of Record: Witnessing, Memory, and Erasure in Aelfric's Life of Basil and the Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers Epilogue: Epistolary Afterlives Bibliography
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