Nieves Muñoz, professor of the UGR, reveals the literary and moral world of M. C. Fronton’s letters

“M. C. Frontón in epistolary tradition” is the title of the research work published by professor Mª Nieves Muñoz Martín in the number 16th of the Journal of Classical Antiquity Studies “Florentia Iliberritana” edited by the Universidad de Granada.

According to Professor Muñoz Martín, of the department of Latin Studies, the Latin author falls within the tradition of the epistolary genre; first of all, she has analysed the references of Frontón and his correspondents to the essential meaning of letter, its functions and the most important features of the epistolary discourse.

Frontón, who became renowned as “orator” and “magister” in charge of the rhetorical education, in Latin language, of the princes and future emperors Marco Aurelio and Lucio Vero achieved, according to the author of the research work, “his own literary and moral world” through the letters in which he exposed his ideas to his disciples and posterity from the positive “deconstruction” of the previous tradition.

According to Mª Nieves Muñoz, “Fronton’s epistolary work is a sample of the survival of the genre, for the continuity of the letter’s topics, motifs and elements, from the Hellenistic-Greek theory, as well as for the acceptation of its essential meaning and the reiteration of the epistolary functions, which remain in the Latin epistolographers from Cicero and will survive in the late Antiquity”.

Reference:
Professor Mª Nieves Muñoz Martín. Department of Latin Studies. Universidad de Granada.
Phone numbers: 958 243 688 / 958 243 684
E-mail: jsmarin@platon.ugr.es