Amar y Borbón, Josefa Free essays
admin @ December 26, 2007
Free essays: During the last few years of the 18th century, Spanish letters focused almost exclusively on the essay. These writings, much maligned by 19th-century Romantics who saw little of value produced during the Spanish "enlightenment," provided a critical step in the development of the modern Spanish essay. Josefa Amar y Borbón belongs to a group of intellectuals who read prohibited books, met periodically to discuss issues of concern, and wrote extensively on topics that were bound together by a common theme — a concern for the decadent conditions of Spain and a desire to rectify the situation through education. Whether these writings were called discursos (speeches), cartas (letters ), memorias (memoirs), or ensayos (essays), they are recognized today as basic elements of the Spanish essay. Aragonese by birth, but reared and educated in Madrid, Amar y Borbón was the product, as well as an example, of the enlightened elite in Bourbon Spain.
Free essays: Well versed in Greek, Latin, French, English, and Italian, Amar y Borbón translated many works from these languages into Spanish. In the 1780s she began publishing essays and treatises whose subjects fall into three broad categories: those concerning science and medicine, those dealing with the study of letters and the humanities, and those combating superstition. Aside from her translations, the author’s original literary production, as catalogued to date, includes eight essays published between 1783 and 1787, and a book, Discurso sobre la educación física y moral de las mugeres ( 1790; Discourse on the physical and moral education of women). Each of Amar y Borbón’s essays has three main structural components: authority, tradition, and synthesis. Authority is expressed by numerous citations of classical sources.
Free essays: These autoridades, whom the author quotes in the original language before translating, are from all epochs. Tradition refers to Spanish customs; this component not only provides a point of comparison and contrast with "authority," but is also a minute description of 18th-century society. Tradition also provides the reader with some insight concerning Amar y Borbón’s point of view in many instances. the last component, synthesis, combines what "should be" (authority) with "what is" (tradition) to form what "might be" — the synthesis.While these structural components appear in most of the author’s essays, her style is far from simple, for like many of her contemporaries, she interjects numerous digressions in the form of philosophical musings: questions about the nature of religion and the religious education of children; diatribes against current practices in Spanish society such as men reserving all honors, awards, and recognition for themselves and wishing to deprive women of their intellects; or historical cataloguing of a subject such as the history of corsets from ancient times to the 18th century.
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