The death of the letter? Epistolary intent, letterness and the many ends of letter-writing

Liz Stanley

doi:10.1177/1749975515573267

The death of the letter? Epistolary intent, letterness and the many ends of letter-writing

Liz Stanley

School of Social and Political Science

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Is the letter now ‘dead’, in terminal decline because of the impact of new
digital technologies? Such arguments raise interesting and important
points. However, they fail to distinguish between prevailing conventions
about letter-writing in particular time-periods, and the underpinning
fundamentals of ‘epistolary intent’ and ‘letterness’, and so they overstate
the newness of the features discussed. Examples of departures from ‘the
letter’ but which display clear epistolary intent and inventive letterness are
discussed in support, including the letters of Olive Schreiner, St Paul’s
letters, Roman legionary letters, World War 2 love letters, letters between
mathematicians, and student emails

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	240-255
Number of pages	16
Journal	Cultural Sociology
Volume	9
Issue number	2
Early online date	10 Mar 2015
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975515573267
Publication status	Published - Jun 2015

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

digital communications
email
epistolary intent
epistolary theory
letters
letterness

Access to Document

10.1177/1749975515573267

Cultural Sociology-2015-Stanley-240-55
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).
Final published version, 381 KBLicence: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY)

RESEARCHING AND ANALYSING OLIVE SCHREINERS LETTERS: THE EPISTOLARIUM IN SOCIAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE
Stanley, L.
ESRC
1/10/08 → 31/03/12
Project: Research

Cite this

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abstract = "Is the letter now {\textquoteleft}dead{\textquoteright}, in terminal decline because of the impact of newdigital technologies? Such arguments raise interesting and importantpoints. However, they fail to distinguish between prevailing conventionsabout letter-writing in particular time-periods, and the underpinningfundamentals of {\textquoteleft}epistolary intent{\textquoteright} and {\textquoteleft}letterness{\textquoteright}, and so they overstatethe newness of the features discussed. Examples of departures from {\textquoteleft}theletter{\textquoteright} but which display clear epistolary intent and inventive letterness arediscussed in support, including the letters of Olive Schreiner, St Paul{\textquoteright}sletters, Roman legionary letters, World War 2 love letters, letters betweenmathematicians, and student emails",

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The death of the letter? Epistolary intent, letterness and the many ends of letter-writing

Abstract / Description of output

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

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RESEARCHING AND ANALYSING OLIVE SCHREINERS LETTERS: THE EPISTOLARIUM IN SOCIAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE

Cite this