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The chapter explores reflections on the practice of letter-writing, with equal attention to instructional handbooks (esp. Demetrius’ Περὶ ἑρμηνείας‎, Iulius Victor’s Rhetorica, Pseudo-Demetrius’ Τύποι ἐπιστολικοί‎, Pseudo-Libanius’ Ἐπιστολιμαῖοι χαρακτῆρες‎, and Erasmus of Rotterdam’s De conscribendis epistolis) and the meta-generic statements that letter-writers routinely embed in their correspondence (with a special focus on Cicero, Ovid, Seneca, and Pliny the Younger). In both types of sources, what one might call the social dimension of style registers as a primary concern: in order for the letter to fulfil its purpose, namely to generate a special bond between sender and recipient, the chosen idiolect has to be ‘appropriate’ (πρέπον‎/aptum) to the interpersonal relationship and its specific circumstances and exigencies. Shared stylistic values and the willingness of the letter-writer to adjust his character to that of the recipient generate a sense of community between the correspondents.

This chapter discusses the first twentieth-century composer Claude Debussy, the man with whom modern music begins. This chapter includes roughly a quarter of Debussy's surviving correspondence. Prior to the appearance in 1980 of the original French edition, his published letters were scattered among a dozen or so small assemblages, each limited to one or two epistolary partners, some of them in back issues of rather obscure French periodicals. Access was cumbersome. François Lesure, head of the music division of the Bibliothèque Nationale, who has already put us in his debt for a comprehensive collection of Debussy's critical prose, has made a very judicious selection. Debussy's epistolary style, like his music, is ironic, nuanced, allusive, ambiguous. Everything means more than it says. Like the characters in Pelléas et Mélisande—whom, in his later correspondence, he actually fell into the habit of quoting—Debussy intones his little sentences deadpan, depending on a vast reservoir of subtext to complete the meaning.

In this chapter, the author bears witness to the life-changing effects of the self-liberating theory and practice of women of color feminism. By way of Alice Walker, she honors and describes the pedagogical approaches, as well as the spirituality, of four professors whose womanist attitudes—which were implied through their required reading assignments and classroom discussions—informed and liberated her personhood. Written in an epistolary style, her essay is a narration of her experiences in each of her professors’ graduate studies classrooms. She also includes original poems inspired by both classroom readings and her professors’ humanity in order to illustrate her transformation. Clearly, as she writes from a deeply heartfelt location, her “professors” of womanism made a life-changing impression on her.