Material Aspects of Letter Writing in the Graeco-Roman World. c. 500 BC - c. AD 300

Letter writing was widespread in the Graeco-Roman world, as indicated by the large number of surviving letters and their extensive coverage of all social categories. Despite a large amount of work that has been done on the topic of ancient epistolography, material and formatting conventions have rem...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sarri, Antonia
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: De Gruyter 2018
Series:Materiale Textkulturen [Material Text Cultures]
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: Directory of Open Access Books - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
LEADER 02335nma a2200301 u 4500
001 EB001983342
003 EBX01000000000000001146244
005 00000000000000.0
007 cr|||||||||||||||||||||
008 210512 ||| eng
020 |a 9783110423488 
020 |a 9783110426953 
100 1 |a Sarri, Antonia 
245 0 0 |a Material Aspects of Letter Writing in the Graeco-Roman World. c. 500 BC - c. AD 300  |h Elektronische Ressource 
260 |b De Gruyter  |c 2018 
300 |a 1 electronic resource (viii, 388 p.) 
653 |a papyrus 
653 |a Epistolography 
653 |a Letters 
653 |a Graeco-Roman Egypt 
041 0 7 |a eng  |2 ISO 639-2 
989 |b DOAB  |a Directory of Open Access Books 
490 0 |a Materiale Textkulturen [Material Text Cultures] 
500 |a Creative Commons (cc), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 
028 5 0 |a 10.1515/9783110426953 
856 4 2 |u https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/52848  |z DOAB: description of the publication 
856 4 0 |u https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110426953  |7 0  |x Verlag  |3 Volltext 
520 |a Letter writing was widespread in the Graeco-Roman world, as indicated by the large number of surviving letters and their extensive coverage of all social categories. Despite a large amount of work that has been done on the topic of ancient epistolography, material and formatting conventions have remained underexplored, mainly due to the difficulty of accessing images of letters in the past. Thanks to the increasing availability of digital images and the appearance of more detailed and sophisticated editions, we are now in a position to study such aspects. This book examines the development of letter writing conventions from the archaic to Roman times, and is based on a wide corpus of letters that survive on their original material substrates. The bulk of the material is from Egypt, but the study takes account of comparative evidence from other regions of the Graeco-Roman world. Through analysis of developments in the use of letters, variations in formatting conventions, layout and authentication patterns according to the sociocultural background and communicational needs of writers, this book sheds light on changing trends in epistolary practice in Graeco-Roman society over a period of roughly eight hundred years.