Reading, Interpreting and Historicizing: Letters As Historical Sources
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EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION EUI Working Paper HEC No. 2004/2 Reading, Interpreting and Historicizing: Letters as Historical Sources Edited by REGINA SCHULTE and XENIA VON TIPPELSKIRCH BADIA FIESOLANA, SAN DOMENICO (FI) All rights reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form without permission of the author(s). © 2004 Regina Schulte and Xenia von Tippelskirch and individual authors Published in Italy December 2004 European University Institute Badia Fiesolana I – 50016 San Domenico (FI) Italy www.iue.it Index INTRODUCTION............................................................................................. 5 RITA COSTA GOMES, Letters and Letter-writing in Fifteenth Century Portugal ........................... 11 GABRIELLA ZARRI, Sixteenth Century Letters: Typologies and Examples from the Monastic Circuits.......................................................................... 39 PERNILLE ARENFELDT, Provenance and Embeddedness. The Letters from Elisabeth, Countess Palatine (1552-1590) to Anna, Electress of Saxony (1532-1585)................................................. 53 XENIA VON TIPPELSKIRCH, Reading Italian Love Letters around 1600.................................................. 73 BEATRIX BASTL, “Wer wird schon Gellert sein? Hier schreibe ich!” - Geschriebene Äußerungen als mündliche Herausforderungen ......................................... 89 BENEDETTA BORELLO, Family Networking. Purpose and Form of Epistolary Conversation between Aristocratic Siblings (Siena 17th Century) ............ 107 KLAUS MARGREITER, Briefe an den Kaiser. Anträge auf Nobilitierung als Quelle für die mitteleuropäische Sozialgeschichte des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts....................................................................... 123 CLAUDIA KOLLBACH, “Je connois vôtre facilitée à manier la plûme”. Epistolary Skills and Princely Children at the Court of Baden-Durlach in the 18th Century............................................... 135 LUISA TASCA, “Vostro devotissimo servo”. Segretari e società italiana nell’Ottocento .................................................. 149 EUI WP HEC 2004/2 REGINA SCHULTE, “Die Luis ist ein Närrin”. Suppositions about the Betrothal Letters of Queen Luise of Prussia (1793) ................................... 163 EMANUELE D’ANTONIO, Alcune lettere a Paolo Mantegazza: Questione ebraica, discorsi ebraici, e politiche dell’identità ebraica nell’Italia liberale, 1880-1899..................................................................... 173 MARINA CALLONI, Esilio: empatie e passioni politiche............................................................. 187 HANS ERICH BÖDEKER, Letters as historical sources – Some concluding reflections…………… .. 199 EUI WP HEC 2004/2 Introduction Reading, Interpreting, Historicizing: Letters as Historical Sources Since antiquity letters have been written to bridge distances, to build networks and to strengthen relationships. Historians have always appreciated letters as valuable sources, literary historians have investigated their literary quality. In this volume, scholars consider letter writing as an important sociocultural praxis, explore letters as an important means of communication, and accept the challenge of this rather complex category of historical sources.1 This volume is based on the results of a very intense workshop held at the European University Institute (28 February - 1 March 2003) during which historical changes in the use of letters were investigated, individual letters were interpreted through in-depth analyses, and various methodological instruments were tested in terms of their functionality. The volume focuses (as did the workshop) mainly on letters written in the German-speaking territories of Europe and in Italy and includes the study of a letter collection (in Latin) of a Portuguese abbot resident in Florence. The papers presented at the workshop and collected here cover the development of letter writing from the 15th century to the early 20th century, from the early modern monastic world, and early modern court culture up to bourgeois society. Contributions have been placed in chronological order so as to make continuities and historical changes visible. Over time, from the correspondences of the early modern court societies to bourgeois society, the incidence of spontaneous and associative reactions grew, as did the claim for “originality”. 1 Cf. the recent publications : Anne-Marie Sohn (ed.), La correspondance, un document pour l'histoire, Rouen 2002; Gabriella Zarri (ed.), Per Lettera. La scrittura epistolare femminile tra archivio e tipografia, Rome 1999; Adriana Chemello (ed.), Alla lettera. Teorie e pratiche epistolari dai greci al Novecento, Milan 1998; Roger Chartier (ed.), La correspondance. Les usages de la lettre au XIXe siècle, Paris 1991; cf. also the bibliographical repertory on secondary literature about letter-writing at http://www.textkritik.de/briefkasten/forschungsbibl_a_f.htm. EUI WP HEC 2004/2 5 The more recent the letters to which scholars were referring, the more important became the discursive content of these letters. Nevertheless, numerous analogies and related questions were to be found between chronologically distant cases. These connections are due to some specific characteristics of the genre – related to its function for communication: Letters are always written because of absence and are destined to create presence. From antiquity onwards the writing of letters has been regulated by norms, but could allow spontaneous expression of one’s feelings and thoughts. Moreover, it should always be kept in mind that this specific practice moves between the dimensions of the individual and of the social.2 Indeed, similar interest is shown by different scholars studying letters: they all pay particular attention to their form, to the material presentation, to style, grammar and orthography or the employment of formulas of politeness. In addition, they consider how letters may establish a relation to an Other (superior, equal or subordinate). No scholar can ignore the themes and contents contained in the letters, the social and cultural references they include.3 Letters permit us to gain access to a domestic or intimate sphere, include emotions and perceptions, reflect representations and underlying ideologies, always revealing information about the time in which they were written and about their writers and readers.4 Fundamental semiotic analysis of the act of transmitting letters is undertaken in the first paper presented here by Rita Costa Gomes. Learning how to write a letter correctly was part of a specific civility, disseminated first through handwritten collections, then through published correspondences. That writing models were essential for the epistolary experience is also considered by other 2 See Daniel-Odon Hurel (ed.), Correspondance et sociabilité, Rouen 1994 ; Mireille Bossis (ed.), La lettre à la croisée de l'individuel et du social, Paris 1994. 3 The tension between signifier and signified value of letters is very nicely shown in: Lieselotte Steinbrügge, Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, Edgar Allan Poe und der zirkulierende Brief, in: Wechsel der Orte. Studien zum Wandel des literarischen Geschichtsbewusstseins. Festschrift für Anke Bennholdt-Thomsen, hg. v. Irmela von der Lühe/Anita Runge, Göttingen 1997, pp. 231-241. 4 Cf. Sohn, La correspondance, p. 12. EUI WP HEC 2004/2 6 papers: Claudia Kollbach carefully investigates how princely children were educated at the court of Baden-Durlach in the 18th century to become good letter writers. However, Beatrix Bastl questions the claim that norms were always put into action and traces the use of oral expressions in letters written by aristocratic women in Austria (16th-17th centuries). From the second half of the 17th century onwards the French model was particularly strong and its application marked social distinction: Kollbach and Luisa Tasca analyse its influence for the German and Italian case respectively. The normative model was completely disregarded by Luise of Prussia who adopted a self-stylisation based on “naturalness” (see the case examined by Regina Schulte). In the context of normative behaviour, it should not be forgotten that in different historical periods, moralistic, catholic voices were warning against reading letters (Tippelskirch, Tasca). Using letters as historical sources permits us to reconstruct social relationships and family structures and ways of establishing them: letters exchanged between parents and their children and between siblings appear in the contributions of Arenfeldt, Borello, Kollbach (familial letters rather than private letters). Benedetta Borello uses letters as a means of reconstructing material interests and affection characterizing the relationships between members of the Chigi-family (in Siena and Rome 17th century). Love letters and the construction of a relationship are discussed in the papers by Schulte and Tippelskirch, and Marina Calloni takes a close look at letters exchanged between friends. Another realm of social interaction is touched on by Gomes, Gabriella Zarri and also by Borello who show how important epistolary communication proved to be for monastic circuits. Zarri highlights in her paper the importance letter writing could achieve for nuns. Klaus Margreiter's analysis of letters written in order to obtain nobility demonstrates what forms ‘the presentation of the self’ could take in specific letters. Letters could be associated