Chapter Autobiographical Elements in Printed Editions of Late Antique Latin Letter Collections

Overview & Synopsis

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.