ABSTRACT
From the Bible to the Internet, from the pens of the mighty and the lowly, letters have always been an essential channel of communication between human beings for good and for evil. Letters provide an access to the currency of the past. They are a record of ideology and intrigue, and illustrate struggles and alliances of power. This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores epistolary rituals, and demonstrates that the letter genre is valuable for the enrichment of gender studies as a whole. It uncovers new ways of seeing gendered politics in letters and explores social and cultural relations between the sexes through individual political involvement or observation. Political relations between the sexes can be seen at many levels in letters as they emerge as historical artefacts of politics of the daily routine, the rituals of subversion or establishment politics, political campaigns or elections.
