 | Epistolary Poetry in Byzantium and Beyond: An Anthology with Critical Essays Subjects: Humanities; Language & Literature; Classical Studies; Literature; Late Antiquity & Byzantium; Interdisciplinary Literary Studies; Literary/ Critical Theory; Literary History; Literature by Period; Letters were an important medium of everyday communication in the ancient Mediterranean. Soon after its emergence, the epistolary form was adopted by educated elites and transformed into a literary genre, which developed distinctive markers and was used, for instance, to give political advice, to convey philosophical ideas, or to establish and foster ties with peers. A particular type of this genre is the letter cast in verse, or epistolary poem, which merges the form and function of the letter with stylistic elements of poetry. In Greek literature, epistolary poetry is first safely attested in the fourth century AD and would enjoy a lasting presence throughout the Byzantine and early modern periods. Chapters 3 and 4 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/10.4324/9780429288296 Krystina Kubina is a research associate at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She specializes in late Byzantine poetry and has published a monograph on the fourteenth century poet Manuel Philes (Die enkomiastische Dichtung des Manuel Philes. Form und Funktion des literarischen Lobes in der frühen Palaiologenzeit, Berlin 2020). |
