page_title: Spanish Enlightenment literature
section_title: José Cadalso
hierarchical_section_title: Spanish Enlightenment literature / Prose / José Cadalso
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of José Cadalso
context_page_description: Spanish Enlightenment literature is the literature of Spain written during the Age of Enlightenment.
  During the 18th century a new spirit was born which swept away the older values of the Baroque and which receives the name of "Enlightenment". This movement laid its foundations in a critical spirit, in the predominance of reason and experience, philosophy and science were the most valued sources of knowledge. The period is also known as the "century of lights" or the "century of reason". In short, human happiness was pursued by means of culture and progress. The new winds that caused that art and literature were oriented towards a new classicism. The expression of feeling was avoided, norms and academic rules were followed, and balance and harmony were valued. At the end of century a reaction against so much rigidity arose, a return to the world of the feelings taking its place; this movement is known as "Pre-romanticism".
context_section_description: José Cadalso y Vázquez de Andrade (1741–1782) is another of the great prose writers of the 18th century. He wrote important literary works, whose most important creation was Moroccan Letters. It was said of him that he had a vast culture, probably enriched by his trips to England, France, Germany and Italy. He was a military man and he received the colonel rank. He was deeply in love with the actress María Ignacia Ibáñez, whose excesses that she committed caused her death at a very early age. Cadalso tried to unearth her, action which caused his exile to Salamanca (ordered so that he was cured of his insanity). He was later destined to Extremadura, Andalusia, Madrid and finally Gibraltar, place where he died during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. His body was laid to rest in Santa Maria la Coronada Parish Church in San Roque, Cádiz.
  As poet, and under the name of "Dalmiro", he composed the work Leisures of my youth (1771). His love towards the actress María Ignacia Ibáñez made him approach the dramatic world. Although he wrote three tragedies, only one of them was represented, and with little success, Don Sancho García, count of Castile (1771). His work in prose is however more extensive. In Dismal nights he narrates in dialogue form his frustrated yearning for rescuing the body of María Ignacia from the tomb. Entirely neoclassical is the book The erudites to the violet, against the false intellectuals; seven lessons that satirize those who try to know much studying little.
  Nevertheless, the Moroccan Letters (1789), published posthumously, are the ones that give the most importance to the literary production of Cadalso. According to a very cultivated model in France (for example, the Persian Letters of Montesquieu), the author composes a book with ninety letters written between Gazel, moor that visits Spain, his Moroccan teacher and friend Ben-Beley, and Nuño Núñez, Christian friend of Gazel. They comment on the historical past of Spain and its present life, and they judge the work of the governors and the customs of the country.
caption: José Cadalso
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