Ancient letters

"Ancient letters are a notoriously varied and complex genre; under the heading of 'letters' come not only the everyday letters preserved among the Oxyrhynchus papyri but also imperial rescripts, New Testament Epistles, and a vast body of epistolary material (in prose and verse) on politics, philosophy, family life, medicine, and literature, as well as collections of fictional and pseudepigraphic letters." "This collection presents a series of case studies in ancient epistolography which explore the varieties and rhetorical advantages of the letter form, asking how each letter writer manipulates the epistolary tradition, why he chose the letter form over any other, and what effect the publication of volumes of collected letters might have had upon a reader's engagement with epistolary works. This volume is the first of its kind on ancient letters in any language, and it brings together both well-established and promising young scholars currently working in the fields of ancient literature, history, philosophy, and medicine to engage in a shared debate about this most adaptable and 'interdisciplinary' of genres."--BOOK JACKET.