Concetti Chiave
- The epistolary novel emerged in 18th-century Europe, where long letters were a key form of communication.
- Montesquieu's "Lettres persones" marked the first international success of the genre, blending philosophy with storytelling.
- Epistolary novels cover diverse themes, from unhappy love stories by Goethe and Foscolo to socially charged narratives by Richardson.
- The genre offers technical variety, featuring either a single or multiple correspondents, with the editor often presenting the letters as discovered documents.
- Samuel Richardson revolutionized the genre by dramatizing letter-writing, making them vivid and dynamic, with letters that seem alive, often being lost, found, or altered.
The first international succes is "Lettres persones",a philosophical novel by Montesquieu.
The epistolary novel shows in fact a variety of contents:
-novel based on unhappy love like Goethe and Foscolo's novel
-novel whit strong social tones like novel by Richardson
Tecniques
The epistolary novel presents a great tecnical variety.We may distinguish between "a single-point-of-view" epistolary novel or "a composite-point-of-view" epistolary novel.(difference is in a one or more correspondents)
Also importanto is the role of EDITOR who pretends to have found the letters and presents them to the pubblic.
Richardson's revolution
Samuel Richardson(1689-1761) was the first writer who drammatize letter-writing.He uses many devices for making his letters lively and intensly dramatic,as if they were written to the moment.Such is the dramatic, or melodramatic power of Richarson's novels that letters in them seem to have a life of their own:they are interrupted,idden,lost,found,stolen,given back,counterfeited.
Society in Epistolary novel
The epistolary novel served a dual purpose:
-On the one hand, writer found in letters the ideal for giving their view of man and society
-On the other hand, became the means of psichological analysis of characters.
(In this Richardson was the first acclaimed master and his lesson was soon followed by other European writers.
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