ON HISTORY ISSUES OF EPISTOLOGRAPHY

Abstract

This article focuses on the origin and development of European epistolography both in Western Europe and in the so called Slavia Orthodoxa. The study arises out of a need to conduct a scholarly-grounded analysis of the nature of letter correspondence within a framework of its evolution against the background of changes in literary epochs. In the submitted article epistolography is interpreted on the basis of etymological dictionaries of the Polish language, which allows deducing the interrelation between epistolography and rhetoric studies. Specifically, it has made possible to expose original differences and gradual converging evolvement of Western and Eastern European letter correspondence. The submitted paper incorporates a historic approach to the analysis of the epistolary genre, clarifies its nature, accounts for its applied character, and reconsiders presumptions implicit in many discussions that modern media of communication are conducive to creating new standards of distant communication, embodied in epistolography. In particular, it analyzes the reasons for differences between epistolary canons in Western and Eastern European letter writing which manifested themselves in definite literary epochs. It also elucidates that the structure and content of letters were affected by aesthetic ideas of a literary epoch, which could be traced in correspondence by famous authors and cultural envoys. The indications are therefore that history of development of European epistolography is a vivid example of great changes taking place in literary genres. The evidence seems to be strong that personal correspondence as a language genre passed its final stage of qualitative changes before mutation of the late XXth century in the era of romanticism and later only employed all achievements of epistolography.