›res vera, res ficta‹: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography

Published by De Gruyter 2023

›res vera, res ficta‹: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography

Edited by: Janja Soldo and Claire Rachel Jackson

Volume 149 in the series Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111308128

Overview
Contents

About this book

Letters are famously easy to recognise, notoriously hard to define. Both real and fictitious letters can look identical to the point that there are no formal criteria which can distinguish one from the other. This has long been a point of anxiety in scholarship which has considered the value of an ancient letter to be determined by its authenticity, necessitating a strict binary opposition of genuine as opposed to fake letters.

This volume challenges this dichotomy directly. Rather than defining epistolary fiction as a literary genre in opposition to ‘genuine’ letters or reducing it down to fixed rhetorical features, it argues that fiction is an inherent and fluid property of letters which ancient writers recognised and exploited. This volume contributes to wider scholarship on ancient fiction by demonstrating through the multiplicity of genres, contexts, and time periods discussed how complex and multifaceted ancient awareness of fictionality was. As such, this volume shows that letters are uniquely well-placed to unsettle disciplinary boundaries of fact and fiction, authentic and spurious, and that this allows for a deeper understanding of how ancient writers conceptualised and manipulated the fictional potential of letters.

Author / Editor information

Janja Soldo, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom; Claire Rachel Jackson, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Introduction: Fictions of Genre Claire Rachel Jackson and Janja Soldo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I: (Auto)Biographical Fictions
Fact and Fiction in Pliny’s Epistles: The Augustan Poetry Book and its Legacies Roy K. Gibson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
Fiction and Authenticity in the Letters of Euripides Claire Rachel Jackson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
Greetings from the Margin: Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto Catharine Edwards Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Part II: Editorial Fictions
Just Some Notes for My Own Use: Arrian’s (‘Arrian’s’?) Letter to Lucius Gellius Michael Trapp Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
Cicero’s Epistulae ad Familiares: From Authentic Letters to Literary Artefact Serena Cammoranesi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
Part III: Pseudepigraphic Fictions
The Latin Letters of Pseudo-Brutus (Cic. Brut. 1.16 and 1.17) Kathryn Tempest Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
Fictionality and Pseudepigraphy in the Apocryphal Letter Exchange between Seneca and Paul Janja Soldo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Part IV: Ekphrastic Fictions
Fictions in the Real World: Language and Reality in Cicero’s Letters Ruth Morello Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Let’s Get Real: Ekphrasis, Reality and Fiction in Pliny’s Epistles Emilia A. Barbiero Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
List of Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
General Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
Index Locorum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Wissenschaftler/-innen der Klassischen Philologie, Epistolographie, Literaturwissenschaft und Alten Geschichte
Pages
- Front matter: 8
- Main content: 272
Keywords: epistolography; fictionality; letter collections; epistolary fiction

eBook

Published: September 18, 2023
ISBN: 9783111308128

Hardcover

Published: September 18, 2023
ISBN: 9783111306995