ABSTRACT
This paper demonstrates how Spanish intellectual José Maria Blanco y Crespo (1775-1841), in his abolitionist work, used a literary technique known as humanitarian narrative, derived from the Enlightenment philanthropic ideology, to sensitize readers against the slave trade, awakening in them compassion for the African individuals turned into commodities by slave traders. As such, it argues that, although the critical content of his libel, for the most part, echoes other texts, his stylistic form, from which he articulated the already known criticisms of the slave trade with the humanitarian ideals then in vogue, is an example of the sentimental discourse of Enlightenment moral philosophy. His Bosquexo del en esclavos... can thus be considered a literary expression of the historical modern reinvention of emotions consolidated by the Enlightenment, as it mobilized vocabularies to structure an emotional language designed to create a link, based on humanitarian sentiment, of solidarity between readers and the suffering of people alien to their social reality.
KEYWORDS:
Enlightenment; humanitarian narrative; combat against the slave trade