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(2014) Gender and modernity in Spanish literature, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
José Cadalso's epistolary novel Cartas marruecas (Moroccan Letters) and Josefa Amar y Borbón's treatise Discurso sobre la educación física y moral de las mujeres (Discourse on the Physical and Moral Education of Women) reflect aspects of the ethos of the Enlightenment epitomized by thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Kant described the essence of the Enlightenment as humankind's true coming of age with people's courage and commitment to use their intelligence above all else. Kant's common cry 'sapere aude!" or "dare to know!" encapsulated his plea that people access maturity, autonomy, and guidance through their own intelligence. Voltaire expressed ardently antireligious sentiment by stating that theology actually entertained him through its repeated representation of the demented nature of humankind. Hume asserted that sensory perception was untrustworthy and that only mathematical equations expressed certainty, while Montesquieu identified monarchies with honor, republics with virtue, and despotic regimes with constant fear. Rousseau questioned the introduction of private property and the influence of science, culture, and societal conventions in promoting affective and egalitarian bonds between people. Almost all Western European Enlightenment thinkers agreed that political and legal imperatives should regulate society rather than tribal or religious ones (Muñoz Puelles 54–58).
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Smith Rousselle, E. (2014). (Dis)order, in Gender and modernity in Spanish literature, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 17-36.
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