Publisher's Synopsis
Women have been associated with letter fiction since the 17th century when the familiar letter was first adopted as an art form. The genre is enjoying a critical revival because of Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" and also because of its history both as a forum for women's writing and a vehicle for male writers to appropriate the voice of the female correspondent.;This collection addresses a variety of gender-related quwstions. Several contributors argue for radical rereadings of texts that have been granted a marginal status in the literary canon. Others propose new approaches to acknowledged masterpieces of epistolary literature. This book brings together current scholarships on an old and vital literary form and challenges basic assumptions about the genre and its traditions.
