Epistolary Genre in Roman Literature: Types and Authors
Item 10: The Epistolary Genre
The epistolary genre is minor compared to the epic or oratory. Letters are those involving a sender and a specific recipient, which may be real or fictitious. They are normally in prose and of variable length depending on the letter.
A first division can be drawn between public and private letters.
Private Letters
The private letter is addressed to a specific recipient, which is the only one who can fully understand its content and usually arises from a particular circumstance. Its language is colloquial and easy. Cicero distinguishes two types: newsletters, they made aware of a recipient, and the letters expressive in communicating feelings.
Sometimes written for pure entertainment. It is written in prose, in simple language and has the basic feature soon. Responds to a certain structure:
- Greeting. This includes the sender’s name in the nominative and dative of the recipient and the word salutem at the end without any verb.
- Body of the letter. This is the content, using the first and second person, they just give facts and innuendos that are understandable to the recipient and not always for the reader.
- Farewell. It comes to clichés to reiterate the health care and want to say goodbye to the recipient or end point.
Public Letters
To which we call letters, addressed to a wider audience and the content is of general interest, language ceases to be colloquial to be more careful and prepared. Usually written in prose. We can make some distinctions:
Official Letter
Writings governing relations have an information function and the form is painstaking. The official correspondence of emperors and consuls is an example of such letters.
Charter Agreement
They have a specific recipient in theory but are intended for a fairly wide audience. They are true tests where ideas are expressed in epistolary form. A clear example is the Epistulae ad Lucilium moral of L.A. Seneca.
Charter Proem
Several authors have made their works precede a dedication to the patron or sponsor. These are letters which give lavish praise and even an image of servility.
Epistolary in Verse
Letters written in verse, the recipient can even be a fictional character.
Horace (65-8 BC)
Author of two books entitled Epistulae, written in verse. The first is a commentary on Roman society and the second is aimed at the Ram brothers. He took the opportunity to compose an entire literary theory. Quintilian called it Ars Poetica.
Ovid (43 BC-AD 17)
The poetic genius of the letter is Ovid. In Tristia, he added some Epistulae elegies, letter books composed during the exile appeals, servile flattery to the emperor, the wife calls, etc.
Stresses in the Heroides are legendary heroines’ letters from men who were loved and then turned away from them, monologues addressed to a second person will not ever.
Epistolary Prose
Large collections of letters in prose, both public and private type.
Seneca (4 BC-65 AD)
Author of the Moral Epistulae ad Lucilium. This is 20 books with 124 letters to his friend and pupil targeting not only reading but its publication.
It is a code of behavior based on Stoic ideas.
Cicero (106-43 BC)
Cicero wrote about 2000 letters. Many of them were published after his death. They are classified as follows:
- Epistulae ad Atticum: for his good friend Atticus.
- Epistulae ad relatives: for people in their family environment.
- Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem: to his brother Quintus.
- Epistulae ad Brutum: who would be the murderer of J. Caesar.
For these letters parade many elements of Roman society. Small confession: strengths, weaknesses, ambitions, political and economic problems. It is an indelible document of the life of a man and an era.
Pliny the Younger (62-114 AD)
He compiles and edits letters without regard to chronological order. It consists of 10 books, including the first nine letters of all kinds, it is the tenth letters to the emperor Trajan. Treat a wide range of topics in an elegant and elaborate manner.