ABSTRACT
Was the eighteenth-century culture of sensibility truly cosmopolitan? Did it shape distinct emotional styles according to language, social origin, and gender? This chapter addresses these questions using as a source the transatlantic and multilingual collection of letters written by women of different backgrounds and locations to the enlightened and revolutionary criollo Francisco de Miranda. Considering the emotional rhetoric, material culture, and gendered dimensions of these letter exchanges, the chapter highlights the tensions between the relatively transnational character of literary and cultural codes and “national” traditions and between the constraints imposed by epistolary conventions and individuals’ ability to adapt them to “perform” their emotions and construct subjectivities.
