FWF - Spanische Briefe - From Spectator Press to Epistolary Novel.

This research project, entitled “Spanish Letters. From Spectator Press to Epistolary Novel”, investigates the use of fictitious letters in Spanish press and literature in the late 18th and early 19th century. The ‘letter form’ or ‘epistolary mode’ was a favourite narrative device for authors of the 18th and 19th centuries to convey enlightened values and concepts to the reading public. In Spain – the focus of the present research project –, the narrative device of the letter became increasingly fashionable among the emerging bourgeois readership through the literary-journalistic genre of the Spectator press, which was popular south of the Pyrenees between the 1760s and 1800s. The success of the letter form then culminated in the development of the epistolary novel, which experienced its Spanish heyday between 1789 and 1840. For enlightened authors across Europe, the (fictitious) letter was the preferred narrative device because it was perceived as an intimate form of communication operating without hierarchical differences or authority. Moreover, contrary to the general idea of the Enlightenment as the Age of reason, enlightened ideology educated its readers by means of emotions rather than by mere reasonable arguments. As the wide success of the Spectator press and of the epistolary genre in the course of the century shows, the readership responded favorably to this form of useful entertainment. It even seems as if the authors used the Spectator periodicals as testing ground to develop the full epistolary potential. In general, the Age of Enlightenment is a highly intriguing and pivotal period of research as in the course of the 18th century numerous sociocultural transformations took place which influence our (Western) society until today. As the Spanish Enlightenment was less radical than in other European countries, it was long underestimated as a field of research. Interest in this period has only begun to develop in recent years, leading to the publication of several foundational studies on the Spanish Enlightenment. In the “Spanish Letters” project we will amplify this recent tendency with a specific Literature and Cultural Studies perspective. This project will (1) inventorize the under researched Spanish epistolary novel between 1789 and 1840 and disseminate this information to the (scientific) public in an open access database; (2) analyze the formal-aesthetic contribution of the letter form in the Spectator press to the epistolary novel; and (3) shed light on the evolution of Enlightenment thoughts and concepts, such as education, friendship, family, happiness, reason, economy or love from the Spanish Spectator press to the epistolary novel at the turn of the 18th and 19th century.