Letter

Abstract

The article discusses the issue of the letter from the perspective of the cultural shift in theory and consists of two parts. The first is an attempt to identify the most important theoretical problems that the letter, as a genre, posed to literary theorists of subsequent methodological schools (formalism, structuralism, semiotics) of the 20th century, as well as key issues that, due to the complex ontology of the letter, were discussed in accordance with the latest theoretical approaches and interpretative practices of correspondence collections. The author proves that the letter is of a protean character, and the paradoxicality of the letter as a genre of literature is its ontological status. The second part of the work lists the existing and delineates the potential fields of interpretation of correspondence or individual letters from the perspective of a "disturbed" cultural theory, interested not so much in the ontology of the letter, but in its social and cultural meanings. The article looks in particular at the literary power of the letter and draws attention to the potential of the media-related approach to the letter, in which it is treated as a medium, one could ask, following the example of W.J.T. Mitchell, about the desire and agency of the letter, significantly changing the way of thinking about it in the area of ​​literary theory.