Disciplina y educaciónconsejos materno/paterno filiales en Inglaterra y España (1650-1800)

Abstract

Moral literature had an enormous importance in the Modern Age in Europe. The existence of different types of texts that had an instructive purpose in this period are a proof of this: conduct manuals, sermons, or even epitaphs, but also letters of instruction written by fathers and mothers to their children. These were supposedly of a private and familial nature, but in fact became public texts after being edited. Why is it relevant to analyze the moral instructions contained in this specific type of epistolary writings? The answer to this question lies in the very nature of these letters, which offered picture from within society itself. in this study we have tried to combine the analysis of these primary sources with a historic view, more specifically of Modern History, the History of the Family, Gender History, or History of Mentalities. The topic of our thesis is the working and transmission of ideology and its reinforcement in the following generation. For that purpose we have used the concept of ideology introduced by the French theoretician Louis Althusser (“Ideology and Ideological State Aparatases”, 1974): a concept of ideology divided in two dimensions, a more concrete one based on specific practices, on top of which an abstract or imaginary level lays. The first objective of this study was then the analysis of the relations of power established both at the familial and social level in a type of discourse that, although at first sight seems to be determined ideologically by the author’s own agenda, offers numerous nuances if we look at the religious, political, or gender differences of each writers, as well as at the differences in the figure of the addressee. Similarly, different personal circumstances influence these texts. In other words: it does not have the same effect if it is a father or a mother that writes; a Protestant, a Catholic or a dissident; someone loyal to the king or to the Protectorate in England, to mention only a few cases. All this adds complexity to the analysis carried out and to the discourse included in the sources, as did the fact of their being understood as guidelines in a codified discourse, which established a literary genre whose structure was used by other authors in their writings. When comparing the letters of the Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon context, it seems evident that we deal with a genre strongly linked to the Protestant Reformation and the political and religious turmoil which followed in the next centuries, which could explain the abundance of this type of texts in contrast to the Catholic context. In the Modern Age, England lived a period of real agitation in the religious, social and political aspects. After breaking with a symbolic father such as the Pope, the different religious groups, including Anglicans, Puritans, or Quakers, started to change the duties of the understanding of the faith, moving from the figure of the priest towards a model of individual responsibility. But also, in the mid-17,b Century, they broke with another great paternal figure from the point of view of the symbolic order with the monarch’s execution, a figure that, after the years of the Interregnum, would be recovered with the Restoration. In this atmosphere, the composition and publication of texts as the ones described aimed at reinforcing the paternal authority at the symbolic level and to promote the established order (in the religious and social aspects) in search for stability. For this reason, the advice offered to sons and daughters, both by fathers and mothers, are of a similar nature. In this way, a genre of a conservative nature was built, with the purpose of reinforcing and pass on the worldview of a specific social group, that of the high classes, which are the ones who see their letters published. That is, these letters are published because of their social utility, which can be found in the fact that their reinforce an order that has been threatened and that is necessary to maintain. For such reason, they try to make every individual accept their established role in the social mechanism. Finally, the fact that both mothers and fathers go in the same direction, ideologically speaking, when writing these epistles makes us speak of neutral gender regarding their authorship.