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Autobiographical Elements in Printed Editions of Late Antique Latin Letter Collections

  • Roy K. Gibson

Ancient letter collections possess clear autobiographical elements and potential, since their constituent letters regularly contain fragments of the author’s life story. But it is not clear that autobiographical narration was the primary purpose of ancient letter collections. This was a situation of some frustration to early modern editors of ancient letter collections, who regularly supposed that the primary function or use of letters was in fact to tell the author’s life story. In the first centuries of print, editors undertook a programme of re-arrangement of ancient letters designed either to intensify the autobiographical elements of letter sequences or – through chronological re-arrangement – to put letters in the sequence of the author’s life.

  • Keywords:
  • Autobiography,
  • Late Antiquity,
  • Latin Literature,
  • Epistolography,
  • Editiones principes,
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Roy K. Gibson

Durham University, United Kingdom - ORCID: 0000-0001-8737-7481

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  • Publication Year: 2025
  • Pages: 17-33

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  • Publication Year: 2025

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Autobiographical Elements in Printed Editions of Late Antique Latin Letter Collections

Authors

Roy K. Gibson

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0676-1.04

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2025

Copyright Information

© 2025 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY-SA 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

In aula ingenti memoriae meae. Forme di autobiografia nella letteratura tardolatina

Book Subtitle

Atti dell’International Workshop - Siena, 13 e 14 giugno 2024

Editors

Filomena Giannotti, Daniele Di Rienzo

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

240

Publication Year

2025

Copyright Information

© 2025 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY-SA 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press, USiena Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0676-1

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0675-4

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0676-1

eISBN (epub)

979-12-215-0677-8

Series Title

Studi di Antichistica

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