'As Luzes' de Maria Teresa Horta: uma Retórica da Sensibilidade

Abstract

In this paper, we look at Maria Teresa Hortas (2011) novel, Leonors Enlightenment, from an unusual perspective, the rhetoric of sensibility, as it was conceived during the period of Leonor de Almeidas life (1750-1834), i.e., as a form of persuasion built upon the Physiology of Taste, where the description of sensations makes part of a strategy to achieve the sublime and its rhetorical function. Knowing that Maria Teresa Horta didnt have the intention to write a biography, or even a popular historical novel about Leonor de Almeida, it is quite interesting to note that this approach to some philosophical concepts from the 18th century (mainly those of Sensibility, Soul or Sympathy) may be a way to give form to a certain aesthetic of modernity.