How to distinguish between style, literary genre and discourse mode in an epistolary corpus? A comparison of two case studies

The epistolary genre has its roots in Antiquity and is born from a strong need of communication. Despite its traditional definition of « conversation between absent people », the letter form is in reality quite difficult to study and define (Cugusi 1983). For example in regards to its content, it can develop almost any theme, be it in prose or poetry, going from consolation to simple conversation, to polemical attacks and many more: in this way, it almost fluctuates between different genres (Scourfield 2013). Even the tone and style may vary according to the addressee and the nature of the letter, whether it is private or public (Deswarte, Herbers, Sirantoine 2018).
Our researches are focused on two epistolary authors in particular who each have exploited the genre in a different way: on one hand, there is Jerome of Stridon (347-419 A.D.), who presents a vast corpus of 120 letters ( Hagendahl 1958). From these, the 10 consolatories stand out as a model for the Christian consolatory genre (Favez 1937; Mantel 2021) and they are the subject of Arianna Rosa's research.
On the other hand, there is Peter Damian (1006/7-1072 A.D.), who left us a large corpus of 180 political and polemical letters, intended to influence his contemporaries in the context of the Gregorian Reform; from these, Valérie Thon is studying 20 letters in detail in her thesis (Leclercq 1960; D’Acunto 2016).
The goal of our presentation is to compare the methodology of our individual researches and, in doing so, we will offer concrete examples that will highlight the similarities and differences in each author’s style, discourse mode and the use of the epistolary genre. It’s interesting to note that both our methods use the HyperBase program, a software developed by the LASLA (Laboratory for the Statistical Analysis of Ancient Languages) of the University of Liège and the Laboratory « Bases, corpus, language » of the University of Nice (Longrée 2012; Vanni 2024). It allows us to explore statistically the vocabulary and morphosyntactic categories of our epistolary authors in order to study in a new way their language and personal style.