Abstract

While romantic letters are usually understood as unstudied and natural expressions of heartfelt love, I argue they are learned through genre instruction and crafted through rhetorical practice. In the nineteenth-century United States, manuals taught generic conventions for epistolary address, pacing of exchange, and rhetorical purpose, embedding within this instruction a heteronormative conception of romantic relations. Yet these same conventions were susceptible to queer adaptation, particularly in the epistolary practices of writers composing same-sex relations. Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus were African American women who learned but reinvented the conventions by negotiating category-crossing forms of address, timing exchange with urgency rather than restraint, and repurposing the romantic letter to erotic and even political ends. Analyzing Brown and Primus's letters alongside manuals thus underscores the dynamic ways both instruction and practice shape romantic letters and life.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2014-01-01
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2013.861009
Open Access
Closed

Citation Context

Cites in this index (5)

  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. College Composition and Communication
  3. Rhetoric Review
  4. Rhetoric Review
  5. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Also cites 10 works outside this index ↓
  1. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays
  2. 10.1086/448884
  3. Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy
  4. 10.2307/358391
  5. 10.1057/9780230100664
  6. Rhetorical Democracy: Discursive Practices of Civic Engagement
  7. 10.1215/10642684-10-3-367
  8. 10.1080/00335638409383686
  9. 10.1353/rap.2006.0028
  10. Isocrates and Civic Education
CrossRef global citation count: 7 View in citation network →