University of Sussex
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

Letters As/Not A Genre

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 09:26 authored by Margaretta JollyMargaretta Jolly, Liz Stanley
With the rise of life writing studies, letters have become the subject of an increasing number of interdisciplinary analyses. The following essay ruminates on what common characteristics hold such analyses together and the peculiar difficulties they encounter in theorising a genre that perhaps, out of all writing practices, most exposes the limits of genre theory itself. The essay is written, appropriately, as a dialogue, in which Margarettas Voice asks general, if not straightforwardly generic questions about letters and Lizs Echo answers them in relation to her current two epistolary projects, theorizing the epistolarium, and editing a new Olive Schreiner collected letters for publication. The echo here is a voice that, unlike most echoes, answers back in an argumentative way. While Margaretta suggests that letters are proto-genres whose distinctive yet infinitely malleable features can be best understood through the social and literary codes of relationship, Liz explains how, after her scepticism about the concept of genre in her influential The Auto/Biographical I, she understands what makes Schreiners letters distinctive.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Life Writing

ISSN

1448-4528

Issue

2

Volume

2

Page range

91-118

Pages

22.0

Department affiliated with

  • Centre for Community Engagement Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC