Carla Almanza-Gálvez
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UTOPIAN NARRATIVE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SPAIN: GENERIC FRAMEWORKS AND SOCIAL REFORMISM by Carla Almanza-Gálvez A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sheffield Faculty of Arts and Humanities School of Languages and Cultures May 2016 Acknowledgements The research undertaken for the present thesis was primarily supported by the generous award of a three-year University of Sheffield Faculty Scholarship, for which I can now formally express my gratitude. I would like to thank my two supervisors, Dr Geraldine Lawless and Dr Rhian Davies, for their guidance and critical input at every stage of the writing of this thesis. I am most grateful to Geraldine for many fruitful early discussions about the overall shaping and presentation of each chapter. Rhian has been steadfast in offering invaluable practical advice and motivation at all stages in the doctoral process. Sincere thanks are also due to Dr David McCallam, who enthusiastically co-supervised my work during the revision phase, providing illuminating feedback. I am equally grateful for his insightful comments during my Research Support Group sessions. I am especially indebted to Professor Philip Deacon for having been a devoted mentor throughout my doctoral experience and for having shared his extensive knowledge of eighteenth-century Spanish culture with me. His genuine interest in every aspect of my research and his erudite criticism were a constant inspiration for my work. Finally, my heartfelt appreciation goes to my parents and sister for their unfailing encouragement and unconditional support. Abstract The present thesis focuses on the most important Spanish utopian writings of the 'long' eighteenth century, setting them in historical context within the tradition formally inaugurated by Thomas More's Utopia (1516). The works studied comprise the undated, anonymous Descripción de la Sinapia, península en la tierra austral, Gutierre Vaca de Guzmán's Suplemento de los viajes de Enrique Wanton al país de las monas, the anonymous 'Monarquía de los Ayparchontes' in the periodical El Censor, Andrés Merino's Monarquía columbina and Pablo de Olavide's 'Cartas de Mariano a Antonio' in El Evangelio en triunfo. The five texts have hitherto received varying degrees of academic attention, but less analysis than merited of their place within an ongoing, transatlantic, cultural tradition. Part I sets out historically the main ideological, literary and social characteristics of the genre: the theoretical conceptualisations of utopian writing as initiated by More, the foundations of the utopian tradition in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hispanic world, and links between the utopian format and socially reformist texts in eighteenth-century Spain. Part II examines in detail the five chosen texts, exploring their differentiating features with respect to the prevailing utopian tradition and demonstrating their distinctiveness in relation to Spanish economic, political, religious and social structures, while probing their idealising strands on a spectrum stretching from reformism to utopian experimentalism. The analyses ultimately reveal great variety in the social focus of the texts and an eclectic approach to the salient features of the utopian generic tradition, as well as the widely contrasting links to Enlightenment ideals and thought. Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Introduction 1 I. Setting the Scene 1. The Conceptualisation of Utopian Discourse 15 2. Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Utopianism in the Hispanic World 34 3. Utopian Writing in the Context of Eighteenth-Century Spanish Reformism 49 II. Utopias: Ideal and Satirical 4. Sinapia and the Legacy of Utopia 70 5. Social Satire and Utopia in the Suplemento de los viajes de Enrique Wanton al país de las monas 105 6. Utopianism in the 'Monarquía de los Ayparchontes' and Related Periodical Texts of the 1780s 145 7. Anti-Enlightenment Perspectives in the Monarquía columbina 175 8. Between Utopia and Reform: The Educational and Socio-Economic Vision of the 'Cartas de Mariano a Antonio' in El Evangelio en triunfo 201 Conclusion 233 Bibliography 241 Introduction The pursuit of utopia is presently understood as a desire to change an unsatisfactory order of things by proposing an alternative organisational system that can better an existing society. However, utopian desire goes beyond being a mere mental concept and first crystallised as a fictional narrative when the English humanist Thomas More wrote his foundational work Utopia in 1516. Building on the Morean model, a utopian tradition subsequently flourished in Europe, but compelling utopian fictions were not written in Spain until the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This late manifestation of Spanish utopian writing can be seen to parallel the reformist spirit that characterised the political and cultural life of the Enlightenment era. It is in this context that the present thesis aims to set out new analyses of the most outstanding utopian works of the 'long' eighteenth century in Spain,1 a neglected area of study when compared with the scholarly interest in utopian narratives elsewhere in Europe during the same period. What is more, recent academic research, principally in the last forty years, has brought to light new texts relating to the utopian tradition — like the anonymous Sinapia or Andrés Merino's Monarquía columbina — and found references to lost works, such as José de Cadalso's Observaciones de un oficial holandés en el nuevamente descubierto reino de Feliztá.2 Scholarly surveys have also underscored the existence of utopian material in Spanish works belonging to other generic forms such as novels or in texts constituting narrative episodes published in contemporary periodicals.3 Seeking to contribute new perspectives to the existing field of utopian texts, the present thesis will analyse five works that are illustrative of these heterogeneous forms of textual expression. The texts have been chosen on the one hand because of their literary import — that is to say, their relationship to a literary tradition of utopian writing in Spain as well as in the rest of Europe — and on the other hand because of their links to reformist socio-political writings designed to contribute to the debate in Spain about society and its structures and practices. The five texts are also significant because of their variety and complexity, in that they highlight different features of the 1 By 'long' eighteenth century I understand the period between circa 1675 and 1808. 2 See José de Cadalso, Escritos autobiográficos y epistolario, ed. by Nigel Glendinning and Nicole Harrison (London: Tamesis, 1979). 3 Pedro Álvarez de Miranda, 'Sobre utopías y viajes imaginarios en el siglo XVIII español', in Homenaje a Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, ed. by Víctor García de la Concha (Salamanca: Biblioteca de la Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Salamanca, 1981); Elena de Lorenzo Álvarez, 'Literatura de viajes y utopías', in Literatura española del siglo XVIII, ed. by Alberto Romero Ferrer and Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos (Madrid: Liceus, 2005), pp. 1-21, <http://www.liceus.com>. 2 utopian tradition and display the experimental vision of their authors in setting their ideas within a utopian framework. The objective in grouping these writings together is to offer a fresh approach to the history of the Spanish utopian genre in the 'long' eighteenth century, one that takes into account the ideological and stylistic interplay between the selected texts and explores how each of them establishes a dialogue with literary utopianism as a genre. The works to be studied in detail, and in chronological sequence, are fictitious accounts of ideal societies and their corresponding social, political, economic and religious institutions. The first is the Descripción de la Sinapia, península en la tierra austral, 4 one of the most recently discovered texts that, although undated, may justifiably be included within the framework of the 'long' eighteenth century, as will be explained below. The second text is Gutierre Joaquín Vaca de Guzmán's Suplemento de los viajes de Enrique Wanton al país de las monas (1771),5 an extensive two-volume sequel composed by a Spanish author to an existing Italian work, and which can be read independently of the stimulus text, namely Zaccaria Seriman's Viaggi di Enrico Wanton alle terre incognite australi ed ai regni delle scimmie e dei cinocefali (1749- 64). The third work to be analysed is what can appropriately be called the 'Monarquía de los Ayparchontes' (1784-85), an anonymous utopian text that appeared in three instalments in the critical periodical El Censor.6 The fourth work in the corpus is Andrés Merino de Jesucristo's Monarquía columbina (pre-1787), 7 published 4 Descripción de la Sinapia, península en la tierra austral, in 'Sinapia': una utopía española del Siglo de las Luces, ed. by Miguel Avilés Fernández (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1976), pp. 67-134. 5 [Gutierre] Joaquín [Vaca] de Guzmán y Manrique, Suplemento, o sea tomo tercero [–cuarto y último] de los viajes de Enrique Wanton al país de las monas (Madrid: Antonio de Sancha, 1778). Detailed bibliographical study has not been made of the text, but the first edition of the Suplemento is almost certainly that of 1771, since copies of volume 4 with that date are known to exist, though none have so far been located of volume 3. No copies of the 1771 edition of volumes 3 and 4 are available online. 6 The text itself is untitled with each of the three sections included in separate issues of the periodical. The society depicted is more than once referred to as a monarquía and therefore I will use the more appropriate title of 'Monarquía de los Ayparchontes'. Recent critics have expressly incorporated the word 'utopía' into the title without carefully considering what was in accord with the original author's concept of the text. See El Censor, 8 vols (Madrid: n.p., 1781-87; facsimile edition by José Miguel Caso González, Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, Instituto Feijoo de Estudios del Siglo XVIII, 1989), III [1784]: 'Discurso LXI', pp.