As I continue to delve into the multifaceted genre of stories conveyed by letters, I realized that the three terms, epistle, missive, and letter, describe the same thing, or do they?
There’s a nuance to the terms and how they are used by the author and understood by the reader. I began with definitions found in the OED, where else!
Epistle and its various permutations take up 2-1/2 pages of the OED. The term epistle comes from the Greek, adopted into Latin, and comes directly into Old English. The very first definition is “a communication made to an absent person in writing.” The definitions go on to narrow the use of the term to poetry in letter form and a letter from an apostle in a religious sense (seen often in New Testament and Apocryphal Scripture).
Missive comes from the Latin mittere, to send. Most particularly, missive is a letter or epistle sent from one person to another. The second OED definition states that a missive is “sent by a superior authority, especially the sovereign, to a particular person or body of persons, conveying a commend, recommendation or permission.” While the term can also mean something thrown like a missile, it stays in the category of a formal, short communication. When I think of a missive, I think of those sent on the battlefield or between warring parties.
Letter comes from the Latin littera, as in the letter of the alphabet, shaping letters, and anything written as an epistle, document, or record. The term should not be confused with the term LETTER as in someone who lets or rents a property.
Now that the definitions are differentiated from one another, it’s clear that the use of terms depends upon what nuance the writer wants to imparts to the reader.
It’s time to go on the hunt for more novels of this ilk and to also look for those written as journals and diaries and internal dialogue.
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