Title: The Letter in the Theatron: Epistolary Voice, Character, and Soul (and Their Audience)
Abstract: The first part of this chapter offers a short history of the practice of literary theatron, or “recital”. The term is first attested in late antiquity, when theatres and other theatre-style buildings were used for the public performance of letters. It is not attested during the early middle Byzantine period. Once literary theatra reappeared in the eleventh century, the term metonymically seems to have provided the name for the apparently more flexible venues in which such gatherings were convened in that period. In the second part, the chapter traces the fate of a letter once it came into a theatron by looking at four aspects in particular: How was the letter given a voice? What did audiences expect in a letter thus “voiced”? Which reaction was, in turn, expected from the audience? And to what degree, finally, was all this influenced by social hierarchy?