The Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun

The Portuguese Letters were published anonymously in 1669, achieving instant success, and exciting a host of sequels and imitations. Ostensibly they were translations into French of five love letters written by a Portuguese nun to the French officer who had loved her and left her. The nun was identified more than a hundred years later as Mariana Alcoforado (1640-1713), a Portuguese gentlewoman cloistered in the Franciscan convent of Beja. The officer had earlier been identified as Noel Bouton de Chamilly (1635-1715), who went to Portugal in 1663 in the Regiment de Briquemaut, to support the Portuguese in their war of independence against the Spanish. It is only recent scholarship that has identified Guilleragues as the author of these letters, but the debate continues. The letters display a remarkable acuity of psychological insight into the mind of a woman in love, attesting to a slow but crucial development of self-awareness and a beautifully controlled treatment of passion on the edge of hysteria.