Penned weekly under the elusive identity of "Beatriz Cienfuegos," the essays of La Pensadora gaditana (1763-1764) are a dynamic study of the cultural fabric and popular social debates of late 18th-century Spain. Moreover, the work offers the modern reader a manipulative construction of a fictitious feminine narrator and the multiple voices of "her" imagined readers.
Composed almost certainly by a savvy Andalusian priest named Juan Francisco del Postigo, the subtle tongue-in-cheek tone of the narrator's voice creates a literary space in which the sexual identities of both readers (fictitious) and writers (real) are questioned. The narrators and secondary characters in the 52 essays are cleverly dressed up and dressed down on every page where archetypal references and stereotypical language are repeatedly manipulated in order to construct an ideological text intended to promote a moral and patriarchal agenda characteristic of the Antiguo Régimen.
This landmark essay collection, poorly interpreted and widely unavailable until now, inspired the creation of La pensatriz salmantina (1777), also written with a feminine pseudonym, "Escolástica Hurtado," as well as the writings of Cecilia Böhl de Faber (1796-1877), who wrote under the elusive identity of "Fernán Caballero" in the Romantic period.
The 52 essays of this new edition are a corrected, modernized and annotated transcription of the complete 4-volume, 1,317-page manuscript of La Pensadora gaditana, re-printed in Cádiz in 1786. A 68-page introduction, footnotes, manuscript facsimiles and bibliography complement this first-ever complete critical edition.
455 pp., isbn: 1-58871-067-X
(PB) 2005 $28.95