The Intimate Space of Written Words: The Paradox of Privacy and Publicity in Love Letters

• In Event: Historicizing Feeling: Affect, Emotion, and the Making of Communication

Abstract

Love letters are often romanticized to be the most private and authentic genre of communication despite the artificiality of writing and the possibility of eavesdropping. The exposure of love letters to unintended eyes and the anticipation of unintended disclosure have been fairly common throughout the history. However, researchers and cultural critics have yet to fully grasp this aspect of love letters. This paper examines love letters as a space- and time-binding medium and investigates the relationship between the channel and the genre. It argues that letter writing entails the paradox of privacy and publicity, and that lovers have to cope with the paradox and with the consequences of information leakage especially when societies define love against their favor. The material conditions of letter writing and the social regulation of love interact to shape lovers’ experiences of letter writing and inform the generic features of love letters.

Author

• Hua Su, University of Iowa