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RESEARCH PRODUCT

“Poisonous plants” or schools of virtue? The second “rise” of the novel in eighteenth-century Spain

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If Spanish literature (both Catalan and Castilian)had played a central role in the development of fictional prose narrative from the fifteenth century, the late eighteenth century witnessed a second "rise" of the novel, consisting not only of original works, but also of translations, in connection with changes in reading practices and new models of domesticity and sensibility. This essay focuses on moral debate about the sentimental novel, showing how it was both politicised (new types of fiction being usually perceived as foreign and subversive) and gendered, and how it contributed to shape women's uneasy relation to the novel in their reading and writing.