Epistolary Knowledge for Mass Consumption

Book excerpt: "This dissertation examines the understudied development of epistolary knowledge in China during the late Qing and Republican periods (ca. 1831–1949), when an increasing number of guides to letter writing were published. Attending to the ways letter-writing manuals transmitted epistolary codes and conventions for the betterment of Chinese society contributes to understanding how such manuals attempted to define effective written communication in social, emotional, commercial, and family life. This study aims to offer fresh insights into Chinese mass education as well as to situate Chinese epistolary culture within a global context.Model letters analyzed in this study are translated into English for the first time. Following the pervasive interest in maintaining epistolary communication during the late Qing and Republican periods, I focus on rhetorical devices and language in letter manuals and present three major arguments. First, the rules and guides of letter writing, a social practice traditionally implicated with power, helped both men and women writers establish and strengthen personal relationships, and these guides facilitated the masses’ relentless pursuit of education, employment, and social refinement. Second, the ability to write letters, which entails literary competence beyond mere literacy, expanded the social influence of educated women by enabling them to become independent correspondents. Third, although sample letters were often dismissed by contemporary commentators as impractical teaching materials replete with formulaic phrases, a close reading of their content reveals new fashions in epistolary communication for incorporating complex concerns with nation-building and family reform. In the final analysis, letter writing became so central to people’s everyday lives that rudimentary competence in epistolary forms was required for people who aspired to establish themselves in contemporary Chinese society"--