Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Editorial

2002; Berghahn Books; Volume: 14; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3167/001115702782352024

1752-2293

Carol Banks,

Themes in Literature Analysis

When I was a child I remember being fascinated by a bundle of very old letters which my grandmother kept at the back of her writing desk, tied together with a piece of faded ribbon. The letters were still in their respective envelopes; some had stamps bearing Queen Victoria’s head – Penny Blacks and Reds – which I marvelled at, for these were collectors’ items already in the 1950s, or so my older sister informed me. The envelopes were addressed in different styles of copperplate handwriting in blue or black ink which had sometimes spitted a careless blot or two randomly across the neatly etched script. Inside, curling characters scrolled across the folded pages, which occasionally enclosed a small memento: a sepia photograph or a pressed flower – a violet still faintly blue. The writing itself seemed to speak volumes to a small child who was still painstakingly learning to form her own characters at school; but the letters were far more than mere handwriting to be deciphered and interpreted. For me, as for my grandmother, these were distinct voices from the past. And in their different rhythms of speech, forms of expression and often oldfashioned vocabulary, these individual letter-writers seemed to momentarily live again when their words were reiterated.