The Letters of a Portuguese Nun were written by the 17th century Franciscan nun, Marianna Alcoforado, to Noel Bouton, later Marquis de Chamilly. The letters to her lover which have earned her renown in literature were written between December 1667 and June 1668, and they described the successive stages of faith, doubt and despair through which she passed. The letters could also be considered pieces of unconscious psychological self-analysis. The five short letters written by Marianna to "expostulate her desertion" form one of the few documents of extreme human experience, and reveal a passion which in the course of two centuries has lost nothing of its heat. Perhaps their dominant note is reality, and, sad reading as they are from the moral standpoint, their absolute candour, exquisite tenderness and entire self-abandonment have excited the wonder and admiration of great men and women in every age, from Madame de Sévigné to Gladstone.
The foreign bibliography of the Letters, containing almost one hundred numbers, may be found in Cordeiro's study, Soror Marianna, A Friera Portuguem (Lisbon, 1891). Besides the French editions, versions exist in Dutch, Danish, Italian and German; and the English bibliography is given by Edgar Prestage in his translation The Letters of a Portuguese Nun (Marianna Alcojorado), 3rd ed. (London, 1903). The French text of the editio princeps was printed in the first edition (1893) of this book. Edmund Gosse in the Fortnightly Review, vol. xlix. (old series) p. 506, shows the considerable influence exercised by the Letters on the sentimental literature of France and England.
The Letters of a PortugueseNun were written by the 17th century Franciscan nun, Marianna Alcoforado, to Noel Bouton, later Marquis de Chamilly.
The letters to her lover which have earned her renown in literature were written between December 1667 and June 1668, and they described the successive stages of faith, doubt and despair through which she passed.
The five short letters written by Marianna to "expostulate her desertion" form one of the few documents of extreme human experience, and reveal a passion which in the course of two centuries has lost nothing of its heat.
There are signs in the fifth letter that Marianna had begun to conquer her passion, and after a life of rigid penance, accompanied by much suffering, she died at the age of eighty-three.
The letters created a sensation on their first appearance, running through five editions in a year, and, to exploit their popularity, second parts, replies and new replies were issued from the press in quick succession.
Notwithstanding that the Portuguese original of the five letters is lost, their genuineness is as patent as the spuriousness of their followers, and though Jean-Jacques Rousseau was ready to wager they were written by a man, the principal critics of Portugal and France have decided against him.
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