Hans Fernández - Böcker

This book offers the first panoramic study on the development and characteristics of the literary-journalistic genre of spectator periodicals in Hispanic America and Brazil. After contextualizing these publications within the emancipation processes of 19th-century American Enlightenment, it explores the new coexistence modes and esthetics they disseminated.

The Spectators, also known as Moral Weeklies, were an important magazine genre which came into being in the early 18th century and which shaped European identity by developing the strategies of critical journalism and by popularizing the ideas and values of the Age of Enlightenment. Investigating modes of storytelling in the Spectators is an important starting point for a paradigmatic investigation of our historical, cultural and philosophical evolution since the Enlightenment and the impact of these magazines on issues of identity in today’s Europe. In this collection on ‹Storytelling in the Spectators›, we present a series of contributions which study English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Czech, Polish and Danish-Norwegian periodicals.