Eve's Enlightenment: Women's Experience in Spain and Spanish America, 1726–1839
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Description
Eve's portrayal in the Bible as a sinner and a temptress seemed to represent -- and justify -- women's inferior position in society for much of history. During the Enlightenment, women challenged these traditional gender roles by joining the public sphere as writers, intellectuals, philanthropists, artists, and patrons of the arts. Some sought to reclaim Eve by recasting her as a positive symbol of women's abilities and intellectual curiosity. In Eve's Enlightenment, leading scholars in the fields of history, art history, literature, and psychology discuss how Enlightenment philosophies compared to women's actual experiences in Spain and Spanish America during the period.
Relying on newspaper accounts, poetry, polemic, paintings, and saints' lives, this diverse group of contributors discuss how evolving legal, social, and medical norms affected Hispanic women and how art and literature portrayed them. Contributors such as historians Mónica Bolufer Peruga and María Victoria López-Cordón Cortezo, art historian Janis A. Tomlinson, and literary critic Rebecca Haidt also examine the contributions these women's experiences make to a transatlantic understanding of the Enlightenment.
ISBN
9780807133897
Publication Date
2009
Publisher
Louisiana State University Press
City
Baton Rouge
Keywords
Spanish literature, Women, Enlightenment, Latin America, History
Disciplines
Latin American Literature | Social History | Spanish Literature | Women's History
Recommended Citation
Jaffe, Catherine Marie and Franklin Lewis, Elizabeth, "Eve's Enlightenment: Women's Experience in Spain and Spanish America, 1726–1839" (2009). Modern Languages and Literatures Books. 3.
https://scholar.umw.edu/modernlanguages_books/3
Comments
Prof. Jaffe and Prof. Franklin Lewis are the editors of this book.