Beyond epistemological confinement: The sentimental ethos of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters

Yolanda Caballero Aceituno

doi:10.14198/fem.2020.36.02

Autores/as

Yolanda Caballero Aceituno Universidad de Jaén, Jaén, España https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2727-7603

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14198/fem.2020.36.02

Palabras clave:

Ethos sentimental, Retórica sentimental, Escritura de viajes, Felicidad, Episteme alternativa, Narrativa de empoderamiento, Cosmovisión feminista

Resumen

En el siglo dieciocho el sentimentalismo emergió como un movimiento ideológico y artístico que subrayó el valor de una episteme alternativa que desafió el culto a la razón. La narrativa epistolar de The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763), de Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, está permeada por una retórica sentimental orientada a materializar un ethos basado en la apertura, la simbiosis cultural y la expansión epistemológica que contribuyó a desestabilizar las narrativas patriarcales anglocéntricas. Siguiendo a Yuri M. Lotman, desde su fructífera posición mediadora entre dos «semiosferas» culturales diferentes (la Oriental y la Occidental), Montagu se configuró como una escritora de frontera que convirtió su viaje físico en un vehículo para literaturizar una cosmovisión vitalista que le permitió transcender limitaciones epistemológicas y emocionales. La ideología de su narrativa epistolar se codificó, de manera efectiva, a través de motivos, tropos e ideas sentimentales que generaron una textualidad única cuya anatomía se analiza en este artículo.

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