Epistolography

Illustration from the 13th century novel Hadîth Bayâd wa Riyâd

epistolol (epistolo 'letter', gráphō 'write') - 1) the art of writing letters in accordance with the customs of a given epoch or environment; 2) literature dealing with lists and their collections and literary works written in the form of letters.

In essence, epistolography deals with letters written in the past, when the function of the letter itself played a much bigger role than today. The letters were often read not only by the addressee, but also by officially and with the consent of the sender to many other people, also quoted fragments of other letters and constituted a type of exchange of information which was a substitute for the press. They were also a place to express views and discussions, etc. At the same time, many of these letters can be considered as works of the borderline of literature. All these lists were kept for years, often in the form of whole collections for archives, and after a number of collections of such letters, without the passage of strictly private passages, were even published in the form of books.

Epistolography also deals with the methods of reading and interpreting letters, as many of them were constructed according to very rigid and elaborate rules, and contained content that must have been appropriately interpreted since they could contain content not directly or in a hidden way, However, they were clearly understandable for today's readers.

The earlier the epoch, the more often the lists were public, and the ways of writing them were stricter. There were even philosophical discussions and scientific papers on how the letters should be written.

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