This book examines how three exiled Jesuits from colonial Mexico-Rafael Landivar, Francisco Clavijero, and Pedro Marquez-shaped the discourse of continental emancipation from Spain. By considering their works in relation to critical debates about the root causes of the international expulsion and suppression of the Jesuits and scholarship about the Spanish American Wars of Independence, Luis Ramos examines these pivotal events as inextricably linked. All three authors arrived in Italy at different stages of their spiritual and intellectual development and extolled their homeland through similar and distinct strategies of representation. They instilled in their compatriots a bolder understanding of colonial Mexico's place within the broader Republic of Letters while prompting their Italian readers to question their assumptions about the New World. They broadened the horizon of an eighteenth-century European reading public eager for the most reliable information about the New World and gave the discourse of creole patriotism a past, present, and futurist dimension. In so doing, Landivar, Clavijero, and Marquez established the spatial and political parameters of an emerging continental poetics of independence, and their works served as a wellspring of literary inspiration that subsequent authors from Spain's recently emancipated colonies would draw from.

About the Author
Luis Ramos teaches Latin American cultures and humanities at New York University. His research interests include Spanish American and Italian literatures in exilic and diasporic contexts; the Enlightenment; the Age of Revolution; and antiquity and classical revival in the Hispanic world. He is serving as president of the Ibero-American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies for the 2025-26 academic year.


Book Information
ISBN 9781836244707
Author Luis Ramos
Format Paperback
Page Count 248
Imprint Voltaire Foundation
Publisher Liverpool University Press