7 CHARACTERISTICS of the EPISTOLAR genre
The literary genres They are divided according to the content and structure of the work. Within them we find genres of the discursive type and, at the same time, within this subgenre, letters are the primary input of the epistolary exchange. In this lesson from a TEACHER we will discover what the characteristics of the epistolary genre with examples.
According to the epistolary RAE it means “letter or missive that is written to someone”. Similarly, when we highlight the etymology of the term, from the Latin epistolaris, we see that it also refers us to "Relative to the letter", since it is built with the term epistle which means "letter" and the suffix ar which means "relative to."
Before delving into the characteristics of the epistolary genre, let's understand its nature a little more. When we talk about this writing type We are dealing with the structure, content and the way in which a type of communication and production occurs through the exchange of letters.
It differs from the novel, dramaturgy, and poetry insofar as
involves two-way communication. While these other types of narrative are unilateral, since the author transmits the information to the reader without the reader being able to make a reply, the sense of the epistolary genre is to create an intermittent exchange. That is, although the letter is created in the absence of one of the two interlocutors, their response is expected and allows remote communication.This reciprocity is achieved, since both people share a code, they can have both a public relationship and a private relationship where intimate and personal issues are discussed. This sense of the cards determines their typology. For example, we find the institutional letters or governmental that belong to public entities; there are also love letters and romantic statement; there are political letters and philosophical used in the past for two intellectuals to exchange ideas.
This wide range of letters has allowed the genre to take us into historical contexts and serve researchers in the humanities and social sciences to know the intimacy of figures from other times. For this reason, the letters are used to carry out historical texts. Gloria Hintze and María Antonia Zandanel point out in their text Some notions about the epistolary genre that, as well as autobiographies, intimate diaries or memoirs, “review the letters, study their respective contexts, as well as strengthen other writings of the self is supposed to approach one of the axes on which the knowledge and saying of the historical moment is organized in which individuality and identity are forged. society".
Let us now highlight those factors that stand out within the exchange of letters as a literary genre:
Now that we know the definition and characteristics of the epistolary genre, let's see some letter examples significant in history.
Dear Warner Brothers.
There seems to be more than one way to conquer a city and keep it under your own control. For example, until the moment we thought about doing A Night in Casablanca, he had no idea that the city belonged exclusively to you. However, a few days after announcing our film, we received his long and ominous legal document in which we were ordered not to use the name of Casablanca. It seems that in 1471 Ferdinand Balboa Warner, his great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, stumbled upon the coasts of Africa and, lifting his cane, named them Casablanca. I just don't understand your attitude. Even if they thought about the rerun of their film, I am quite sure that the average moviegoer would eventually learn to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo Marx. I don't know if I could, but I'd certainly like to give it a try.
Little one, yesterday you must have received a newspaper and in it a poem from the absent woman (you are the absent one). Did you like it, little one? Do you convince yourself that I remember you? Instead, you, in ten days, a letter. I, lying on the wet grass, in the afternoons I think of your gray beret, of your eyes that I love, of you. I go out at five o'clock to wander the streets alone, through the neighboring fields. Only a friend accompanies me, sometimes.
I have fought with the numerous girlfriends that I had before, so I am alone as never before, and I would be as never happy if you were with me. On the eighth I planted a tree, a scent, in the backyard of my house. I also brought the fifth, thinking of you, a magnificent white narcissus. Here, at night, a terrible wind breaks loose. I live alone in the heights and sometimes I get up to close the window, to silence the dogs. At that time you will be asleep (as in the train) and I open a window so that the wind brings you here, without waking you up, as I used to bring you.
In addition, I will raise tomorrow, in your honor, a kite of four colors and I will let it go to the sky of Lota Alto. You will receive, my dear, one of these nights a long message as the southern cross passes my window. Sometimes today I feel anguish that you are not with me. That you can't be with me, always.
Long kisses from your Pablo
My dear pickle,
I go out on the boat with Paxthe, Don Andrés and Gregorio and I am out all day. Then I return with the certainty that there will be a letter or several. And maybe there are. If there isn't, I'll be sad and wait until the next morning. I will think that there will be nothing until the evening.
Write me pickle, if it was a job you have to do you would. It's so hard being here without you and I'm doing it but I miss you so much that I could die. If something happened to you, it would die in the same way that an animal dies in the zoo if something happens to its partner.
Much love, my dear Mary. Know that I'm not being impatient, I'm just desperate
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