Journal ArticleDOI
Letters as / not a genre
Margaretta Jolly,Liz Stanley +1 more
TLDR
In this article, the authors present a dialogue in which Margaretta's Voice asks general, if not straightforwardly generic questions about letters and Liz's Echo answers them in relation to her current two epistolary projects, theorizing 'the epistolarium', and editing a new Olive Schreiner collected letters for publication.Abstract:
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 Margaretta's Voice asks general, if not straightforwardly generic questions about letters and Liz's 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 sce...read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Death of the Letter? Epistolary Intent, Letterness and the Many Ends of Letter-Writing
TL;DR: In this article, the authors distinguish between prevailing genre conventions for letter-writing in different time periods and the underlying epistolary intent and letterness involved, and so overstate the newness of the changes discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Another letter from the Home Office: Reading the material politics of asylum
TL;DR: In this paper, the use of letters by the UK Border Agency to communicate decisions on asylum claims is explored, and it is argued that taking the materiality of the letter seriously demands a reworking of the politics of asylum.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Epistolary Gift, the Editorial Third-Party, Counter-Epistolaria: Rethinking the Epistolarium
TL;DR: This article explored counter-epistolarity, as forms of epistolarity that trouble one or more aspects of definitional characteristics of letters, in relation to their epistolary gift dimensions.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Meanings of Happiness in Mass Observation’s Bolton
Ian Gazeley,Claire Langhamer +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyse the responses generated through a competition that asked, "What is happiness?" and conclude that introspective and relational factors were also important determinants of well-being.
Visual Autobiographies in East London: Narratives of Still Images, Interpersonal Exchanges, and Intrapersonal Dialogues
Cigdem Esin,Corinne Squire +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, a study of visual autobiographical workshops, conducted with social diverse groups in East London, provides us with insights about the narrative nature of still images, and the co-construction of narratives across a number of contextual levels, including those of interpersonal interaction, and internal dialogues within the self and with imagined audiences.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Genre as social action
TL;DR: In this paper, a conception of genre based on conventionalized social motives which are found in recurrent situation-types is proposed, and the thesis is that genre must be conceived in terms of rhetorical action rather than substance or form.
Journal ArticleDOI
Genre and the new rhetoric
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a map of R&D knowledge production for the US Department of Defense Observing Genres in Action: Toward a Research Methodology Genre and the Pragmatic Concept of Background Knowledge.
Book
The Story of an African Farm
TL;DR: In this article, two cousins grow up in the 1860s on a lonely farm in the thirsty mountain veld, and their childhood is disrupted by a bombastic Irishman, Bonaparte Blenkins, who gains uncanny influence over the girls' gross, stupid stepmother.
Book
Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography
TL;DR: The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions as discussed by the authors.