http:\/\/cofk.history.ox.ac.uk\/uploads\/Woudhuysen_Beal_Edited.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\nProfessor Henry Woudhuysen<\/strong> (Oxford) examines the material dimensions of epistolary practice. Arguing that the \u2018social life\u2019 (or \u2018cultural biography\u2019) of the letter-as-object has attracted little sustained scholarly attention (a trend reinforced by the tendency of online repositories of letters to efface their material attributes), Woudhuysen uses a wide range of examples to explore varieties of and markets for paper and ink; handwriting, superscriptions and addresses, salutations, signatures, and \u2018significant space\u2019 (those portions of the page left deliberately black for symbolic or practical reasons); the complex relationship between the formatting of letters and economics, in particular in terms of the strategies employed by letter-writers to maximise available space in order to reduce the cost of postage; and different styles of folding and sealing, and their associated connotations.<\/p>\nIn his commentary Dr Peter Beal<\/strong> (School of Advanced Study, University of London) discusses (inter alia) the cultural transmission of epistolary styles, casting doubt in particular on the ability of prescriptive letter-writing manuals to shed light on these complex processes; considers the relationship between the formatting of letters and that of the other products of early modern scribal culture (such as petitions); and explores the ways in which letters were stored and filed by their recipients.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Writing a Letter in Seventeenth-Century England: Forms and Formats (with commentary from Peter Beal) 2010 Seminar Series \/ Thursday 20 May, 2010 Professor Henry Woudhuysen (Oxford) examines the material dimensions of epistolary practice. Arguing that the \u2018social life\u2019 (or \u2018cultural biography\u2019) of the letter-as-object has attracted little sustained scholarly attention (a trend reinforced by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":187,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-566","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11969,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/566\/revisions\/11969"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}