Letters of a Portuguese Nun
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 First page of the first edition |
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| Author | Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues |
|---|---|
| Original title | Les Lettres Portugaises |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre(s) | Epistolary fiction |
| Publisher | Claude Barbin |
| Released | 1669 |
The Letters of a Portuguese Nun (Fr. Les Lettres portugaises), first published anonymously by Claude Barbin in Paris in 1669, are a work believed by most scholars to be epistolary fiction (comprising five letters) written by Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues (1628–1685).
Until the 20th century, the letters were ascribed to a 17th century Franciscan nun in a convent in Beja, Portugal, named in 1810 as Mariana Alcoforado (1640-1723), who was said to be writing to her French lover, the Marquis de Chamilly (1635-1715), who came to Portugal to fight on behalf of the Portuguese in their struggle for independence from 1663-1668. Looking from her window, the janella de Mertola, she had seen the young aristicratic officer only once.
The passionate letters were a European publishing sensation (in part because on their presumed authenticity) and set a precedent for sentimentalism and for the literary genres of the sentimental novel and the epistolary novel into the 18th century. A 2006 book written by Myriam Cyr argues that the letters are in fact authentic.
Dated between December 1667 and June 1668, the five letters described the successive stages of faith, doubt and despair through which the Portuguese writer passed. The letters could also be considered pieces of unconscious psychological self-analysis. The five short passionate, lyrical letters, written by Mariana to "expostulate her desertion", form one of the few documents of extreme human experience and reveal a passion which, in the course of three centuries, has lost nothing of its heat. Their absolute candour, exquisite tenderness, absolute passion, hope, pleas and despair and entire self-abandonment have excited the wonder and admiration of great men and women in every age from Madame de Sévigné to Gladstone.
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[edit] Publication and Authorship
The letters, it was said, came into the possession of the comte de Guilleragues, director of the Gazette de France, who turned them into French; the Portuguese "original" of the five letters was said to be lost. Because of their honest and gripping portrayal of amorous passion and their presumed authenticity, the letters were a major literary sensation from their publication in 1669, and they ran through five editions in their first year. A Cologne edition of the same year stated that the marquis de Chamilly was their addressee, which was confirmed by St Simon and Duclos, but the name of their authoress remained undivulged.
In the same year 1669 the original publisher, Claude Barbin, published a sequel, again written by a Portuguese "lady of society" with seven new letters added to the original five. Later, several hack writers wrote serial stories on the same theme. To exploit their popularity, second parts, replies and new replies were issued from the press in quick succession, and they were translated and published throughout Europe and the work inspired the publication of numerous collections of letters. Besides the French editions, versions were published in Dutch, Danish, Italian, English and German.
The interest in these Portuguese love letters was so strong in the 17th century, that the word "portugaise" became synonymous for "passionate love letter".
Their genuineness was asserted by their numerous followers. Some writers however, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau (himself the author of an epistolary novel comprised of letters written by a man and a woman which were presumed to be actual persons by the work's fans) were ready to wager they were written by a man. By the 18th century however, the principal critics of Portugal and France had decided against the detractors. In 1810, Jean François Boissonade de Fontarabie discovered Mariana's name written in a copy of the first edition by a contemporary hand, and the veracity of this ascription was substantiated by the investigations of Luciano Cordeiro, who found a tradition in Beja connecting the French captain and the Portuguese nun.
The attribution to Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues was first put forward by F. C. Green in 1926, and further substantiated by J. Rougeot and F. Deloffre in 1962. It is now generally recognized that the letters are not a verbatim translation from the Portuguese, but instead a work of fiction by the comte de Guilleragues. The Comte de Guilleragues was a confident of Madame de Sablé and served as ambassador to Constantinople from 1677 to his death in 1685.
The 2006 book Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love by Myriam Cyr argues that Mariana Alcoforado did in fact exist; that, as an educated nun of the period, she could have written the letters; and that she was in fact their author. None of the arguments presented by Myriam Cyr however differ significantly from the 19th century debate on the authenticity of the work, and the bulk of the critical evidence continues to favor the thesis of Guilleragues's authorship.
[edit] References to the letters in other works
- Madeleine L'Engle's 1966 novel The Love Letters uses the legend of Marianna Alcoforado and the Marquis de Chamilly its basis, switching between a set of contemporary characters and Marianna's world of the 1660s.
- Even in recent years these letters have been transformed into two short movies (1965 and 1980) and a stage play "Cartas". It was performed in New York in the Bleecker Theatre’s Culture Project in 2001.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Portions of this article come from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica (which still ascribed the work to Mariana Alcoforado).
- Lefcourt Charles R. (September 1976). "Did Guilleragues Write "The Portuguese Letters"?". Hispania 59 (3): 493-497.
- Owen, Hilary (1997). "The Love Letters of Mariana Alcoforado". Cultura 16 (14).
- Cyr Myriam - "Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a Seventeenth-Century Forbidden Love"; Hyperion Books; January 2006; ISBN 07-868-6911-9 (description)
- Imdb movie 1965
- Imdb movie 1980
- Text in French (PDF file).
