The letters in the Jean-Paul cultural circle are oriented to the idea of simultaneous love. Questioning the possibility of finding a philological way to represent this idea means turning the requirements and implications of editorial practice into a basis for creating a theory. This, in turn, leads to a proposal for a theoretical philology. "

If somebody in the 18th century had wanted to send a love letter using SMS text, they would have been doomed to fail a ' neither the technology nor the recipient would have been able to handle such a flood of emotional signs. Why is that? The present volume collects contributions from a variety of disciplines dealing with hitherto neglected questions of a cultural history of the love letter. The results are surprising a ' the love letter has its own rules, and is far more independent from the development of other forms of written culture than was previously assumed.

The series "QUELLEN UND FORSCHUNGEN ZUR LITERATUR- UND KULTURGESCHICHTE" (Sources and Research in the History of Literature and Culture), with a rich tradition stretching back to 1874, is an established feature among the renowned publications for German Literary Studies. Edited by Ernst Osterkamp and Werner Roecke at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the series presents examples of high-quality scholarship examining literary texts in conjunction with historical cultural phenomena, particularly with the other arts. There is an explicit demand for literary studies with a transdisciplinary approach. German literature from the Middle Ages to the present day forms the main focus of the series. As the historical cultural thrust of the series includes aspects of intercultural experience and national perceptions of the other, Quellen und Forschungen is also open to occasional comparative studies. The publications of the series include monographs, doctoral and professorial theses and thematically focused volumes of collected papers. Works presented for acceptance in the series are required to display scholarly relevance and excellence in method and presentation.