At the edge of literariness: literature and epistolarity

Abstract

In order to confront the issue of the literariness of letter-writing, which cannot be reduced to a question of style, the passage to literacy, made possible since ancient times by manuals of correspondence is first considered; then the illusion of non-fiction, hiding the tendence toward fictionality; and the tradition of the theory of the letter since Greece. As sign of the passage to literariness, the continuity of a literary genre, admitted by the writer, is examined. A few representative examples are singled out: the decision by Petrarch toward the middle of the XIVth century, to bring together a unitary collection of familiar epistles; Garcilaso's verse epistle in 1534, addressed to Boscan; the lettere volgari of Aretino after 1538; and the decisive take-off of the epistolary novel in 1669 with the Lettres portugaises of Guilleragues. In each case the specificity of the genre is seen as a manner of joining literature.