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[ vii ] Acknowledgments Friends, students, family, and colleagues have been the companions to this project over the last several years, and I am deeply grateful to them all for the frequent encouragement they have given me, often without knowing it. Conversations with several of my colleagues in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Berkeley—in particular, Estelle Tarica, José Luis Passos, José Rabasa, and Dru Dougherty—provided me with an early, much appreciated sounding board for ideas when they were still taking shape. Graduate seminars have been a stimulating forum of dialogue and exchange, and the energy and enthusiasm of undergraduates at Berkeley has been a source of inspiration. A Humanities Research Fellowship from the University of California afforded me invaluable time to finish the manuscript, and I feel privileged to work at an institution that foments intellectual inquiry in so many ways. At the same time, I would like to express my gratitude to my colleagues in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spanish studies across the country; the field is unique for the way it draws so many first-rate scholars who, as it happens, are also generous interlocutors. To Jesús in Montreal and to Charlotte in Portland , here it is. I would also like to thank Betsy Phillips, who supported this work from the time she first read it, and Vanderbilt University Press for its continuing commitment to the mission of academic publishing. I feel fortunate that my work has found such a wonderful venue. Finally, I would like to thank Debarati Sanyal, whose energy, brilliance, and companionship made the closing months of this project—and the days that have followed—an unexpected joy. ...

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