Research Project: Love Letters - Sonja

In my presentation I will be going to talk about my results after having researched written love letters in the past and the present.

The main question I want to research is how love letters have changed through history. I want to take a closer look at how they’ve developed in form and content, what writers used to express by writing them and what love letters mean today. Another interesting aspect to research is the role of technical improvement and its influence on the classic love letter as I imagine it. Are loving words transmitted by facebook or email still a love letter? And if so would that expression of love be less worth just because it isn’t handwritten as love letters used to be? In the process of research I want to stay close to the following questions:

-How has the choice of words changed over the years?

-Do letters written by famous people differ from those written by someone just like you and me?

-Who were and are love letters addressed to? Do only lovers write them to express their love to each other or can letters for example written by parents and addressed to their children be considered love letters as well?

-Do people even write love letters anymore?

-Is a love email less worth because it doesn’t take as much effort as a “snail-mail” letter?

In order to gain answers to these questions I will use books, movies and probably some of my own letter I have received from different people as sources. I think it’s going to be interesting to examine letters from famous people from the past as well as letters that aren’t much older than two or three years of which I know the writers personally. Hopefully these different sources will give me an insight of the development of the love letter in general.