Eve's Enlightenment

by Jaffe, Catherine M.; Lewis, Elizabeth Franklin

• ISBN13: 9780807133897
• ISBN10: 0807133892
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-01
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Women and the republic of letters	p. 15
Women of Letters in Eighteenth-Century Spain Between Tradition and Modernity	p. 17
Enlightenment Experience in the Life and Poetry of Sor María Gertrudis de la Cruz Hore	p. 33
Reasons for Education New Echoes of the Polemic	p. 51
Margarita Hickey's Guide to the Traps of Love	p. 62
Illustrating Sainthood The Construction of Eighteenth-Century Spanish American Hagiography	p. 84
Women's lives Material and Social Practices	p. 101
Women in Society in Eighteenth-Century Spain Models of Sociability	p. 103
The Wife, the Maid, and the Woman in the Street	p. 115
Women Alone in Enlightenment Spain	p. 128
An Enlightened Perspective on Hysteria in Eighteenth-Century Mexico	p. 143
Representations of women Between Rational Equality and Sensibility	p. 159
The Enlightenment Origins of Cuba's Iconic Mulata	p. 161
Doña Leonora's Library Women's Reading from the Spectator (1711) to El Semanario de Salamanca (1795) 178	p. 178
"Virtue in Distress" in the Spanish Sentimental Novel An Unsustainable Model of Rational Sensibility	p. 197
Mothers, Majas, and Marcialidad Faces of Enlightenment in Spain	p. 218
Contributors	p. 237
Index	p. 241
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Eve's Enlightenment presents essays by leading scholars in the fields of history, art history, literature, and psychology discussing how Enlightenment philosophies compared to women's actual experiences in Spain and Spanish America. Relying on newspaper accounts, poetry, polemic, paintings, and saints' lives, this diverse group of contributors consider how evolving legal, social, and medical norms affected women, and how art and literature portrayed them. They also examine how these Hispanic women's experiences contributed to a trans-Atlantic understanding of the Enlightenment. While Enlightenment reformers demanded rational equality for men and women, society increasingly emphasized sentiment and passion as defining characteristics of the female sex, creating a serious incongruity between these competing forces. Despite clear gaps between Enlightenment ideals and women's experiences, however, the contributors agree that the women of Spain and Spanish America not only took part in the social and cultural transformations of the time, but also exerted their own power and influence to help guide the Spanish-speaking world towards modernity. An introduction by the editors provides helpful historical and contextual information. Eve's Enlightenment presents the first interdisciplinary collection published in English in its field, offering a wealth of information for scholars of eighteenth-century Spanish history, literature, art history, and women's studies.