Publisher's Synopsis
Religion moved people in 18th-century Europe like no other topic. But how to speak publicly about religion when, on the one hand, the Inquisition sanctioned any deviation from the norm and, on the other, the Radical Enlightenment propagated criticism of religion? In this charged field of tension, narrative art in Portugal between 1700 and 1800 offers diverse answers to one of the most burning questions of the time. This study opens up a largely unknown corpus of texts, sheds light on the omnipresent censorship, and outlines the special features of Portuguese narrative development in a European comparison based on exemplary novels by Antonio Jose da Silva, Soror Maria do Ceu, Teresa Margarida da Silva e Orta, and Teodoro de Almeida.
