Slovenska Literatura (Apr 2012)
Humanist correspondence
Abstract
The study presents the „theoretical foundations“ of letter writing by most significant humanists; the second part introduces the letter variety in terms of type and content, the richness in thoughts as well as authentic information related to Slovakia. The study builds on the research, translation, analysis and assessment of the 16th century archive materials and selected prints from domestic and foreign institutions as well as scientific literature. Epistolography acquired a new dimension in Renaissance humanism. Humanists-scholars were best at recording events happening around them and quick to recognize the possibility to inform and promote ideas by means of the printing press. The letters are official as well as personal in tone; they are first and foremost part of an individual´s authentic testimony about a particular period of time, which is pictured at a certain moment from a personal viewpoint. Nevertheless, they also record the general opinion about the epoch among the people the scholar, statesman or clergyman was in contact with. That is the reason why the letters have a great documentary significance nowadays. At the same time it is necessary to recognize the literary value of those letters because they did their share in defining the quality of the contemporary means of expression in terms of content, form and language as well as style, which was considerably manifested in the printed books. The humanist correspondence research does not receive enough attention in the conditions of the modern literary science and historiography. The analysis of the selected texts offers a partial, but, nonetheless specific view on the vast and complicated subject.
