By analyzing Mar�a Romero's 1792 Spanish translation of
Madame de Graffigny's Lettres d'une P�ruvienne (1747),
this article demonstrates how one woman utilized translation as a
vehicle for expressing her own views in a time when women writers
were still discouraged from publicly circulating their work. A study
of Romero's translator's note, footnotes, and text alterations shows
that she both built on the gender critique embedded in Graffigny's
text and subverted the French author's political message about Spain's
barbarity in the conquest of the Americas. The article also evaluates
Romero's calls for religious renewal to show that not all Enlightenment
thinkers saw religious passion and critical reasoning as opposites. Such
analysis challenges the dichotomy of reason and passion inherent in
much Enlightenment scholarship and argues for the importance of its
deconstruction in situating women in Enlightenment society.
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