Playful Letters

Alphabetic letters are ubiquitous, multivalent, and largely ignored. Playful Letters reveals their important cultural contributions through Alphabetics—a new interpretive model for understanding artistic production that attends to the signifying interplay of the graphemic, phonemic, lexical, and material capacities of letters. A key period for examining this interplay is the century and a half after the invention of printing, with its unique media ecology of print, manuscript, sound, and image. Drawing on Shakespeare, anthropomorphic typography, figured letters, and Cyrillic pedagogy and politics, this book explores the ways in which alphabetic thinking and writing inform literature and the visual arts, and it develops reading strategies for the “letterature” that underwrites such cultural production. Playful Letters begins with early modern engagements with the alphabet and the human body—an intersection where letterature emerges with startling force. The linking of letters and typography with bodies produced a new kind of literacy. In turn, educational habits that shaped letter learning and writing permeated the interrelated practices of typography, orthography, and poetry. These mutually informing processes render visible the persistent crumbling of words into letters and their reconstitution into narrative, poetry, and image. In addition to providing a rich history of literary and artistic alphabetic interrogation in early modern Western Europe and Russia, Playful Letters contributes to the continuous story of how people use new technologies and media to reflect on older forms, including the alphabet itself.

Calligraphy refers to "beautiful writing," an ancient art form still practiced today. Thought to have originated in China, calligraphy is skilled handwriting that produces expressive lettering and words. Each letter and word differs, even when produced by the same craftsperson, because it is improvised at the moment of writing. After a brief introduction to calligraphy, this book presents pages with examples of playfully lettered words. Each word has at least one letter that has been playfully embellished in a way that relates to the meaning of the word. That letter has also been enlarged and placed in the bottom of the page so that you can see its details (and imperfections). The pages are arranged alphabetically by the first letter of the word. Each page also contains plenty of white space for copying the word or letters. Thus, this book can be an enjoyable introduction to the art of calligraphy as well as a workbook for practicing your skills.

Roman Letters offers a rich selection of original translations of ancient Roman letters spanning from the 1st century BCE to the 2nd century CE. Chronologically arranged and grouped according to author or collection, the letters cover various topics and themes selected from a broad range of authors. A unique single volume text that makes classical letters accessible and readable to undergraduates and the non-specialist reader Presents a wide range of authors and material, with over 200 selected texts Includes selections that illustrate a complete cycle of correspondence, as well as letters written by the same author and covering the same topic/theme but sent to different recipients Letters are arranged chronologically, with letters grouped according to author or collection An accompanying website offers additional, complementary letters Topical index highlights various topics and themes represented by the letters

In Shakespeare through Letters, David M. Bergeron analyzes the letters found within Shakespeare’s comedies, histories, and tragedies, arguing that the letters offer the principal intertextual element in the plays as text in their own right. Bergeron posits that Shakespeare’s theater itself exists at the intersection of oral and textual culture, which the letters also exhibit as they represent writing, reading, and interpretation in a way that audiences would be familiar with, in contrast with the illustrious culture of kings, queens, and warriors. This book demonstrates that the letters, profound or perfunctory, constitute texts that warrant interpretation even as they remain material stage props, impacting narrative development, revealing character, and enhancing the play’s tone. Scholars of literature, theater, and history will find this book particularly useful.

Volume IV of The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, covering the years 1780-1781, will be of particular interest to students of Burney as it marks the young author's introduction into the world following the astonishing success of her novel Evelina (1778) and includes her visits to Streatham and her encounters with Hester and Henry Thrale and Dr Johnson. It was an exciting period in her life, which she managed to enjoy despite struggling to repeat her first success while avoiding the often unwelcome attention it brought. But it was also a difficult period in her family life as she dealt with jealous interference by her stepmother, the courtship of her sister Susan by a man she considered untrustworthy, and the misbehaviour of her brothers. Burney's enthusiasm makes the most of her experiences and she describes characters and scenes with all the genius displayed in her novels. Her descriptions contain the four great attributes that distinguish her novels: brilliant handling of detail, total and full recall of conversations characteristic of the speaker, sensibility and empathy for others, and great relish for the ridiculous wherever it occurred.