Politeness and Impoliteness in Coptic Documents: The Correspondence of the Monk Frange in 8th Century Thebes

Abstract

The exceptional dossier of the monk Frange, who lived on the Theban mountain at the beginning of the 8th century, has preserved several hundred Coptic letters on ostracon. In these letters, the monk goes from the most exquisite politeness to extreme rudeness. Playing on the codes of language and epistolography of his time, whose codes he does not hesitate to break, he expresses the full range of his feelings, from exalted joy to cold anger. In addition to the letters that Frange himself wrote are those written by a range of other individuals, among whom a number of women are prominent. This article presents the first examination of politeness in this corpus, focussing first on Frange’s means of expressing politeness or rudeness in his messages, and second on the strategies employed by the women who wrote to him. Beyond politeness, these case studies also demonstrate how such an approach can provide significant contributions to understandings of the broader context in which such letters are produced