The ancient epistolary collection redux: Socrates and Cicero in Petrarch's Fam. 1.1

• ANN VASALY ^[1]
  1. [1] Boston University

     Boston University

     City of Boston, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, ISSN 0076-0730, Vol. 61, Nº. 2, 2018, págs. 106-116
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The introductory letter of Petrarch's collection of prose epistles (Epistolae Familiares) includes a number of traditional programmatic elements, including a dedication to his close friend Ludwig Van Kempen, a narrative describing the collection's genesis, and a defence of its style and contents, rooted in the example of Cicero's letters to Atticus, Quintus, and Brutus, which Petrarch had discovered some five years earlier. In other ways, Fam. 1.1 is an absolutely unprecedented introduction to an epistolary collection — ultimately staging within the letter a kind of ‘conversion narrative’ that transforms the yet‐uncompleted collection into an instantiation of the spiritual journey of its author.