From El Cariño Perfecto (1798) to La Serafina (1802 and 1807): three versions of a novel by José Mor de Fuentes

Abstract

The novel entitled La Serafina, as offered to the reading public by José Mor de Fuentes in 1807, is the third version of a work which had two previous incarnations: El cariño perfecto (1798) and La Serafina (1802). Until now only the 1807 version was known to scholarship and has provided the text on which all studies of the novel have been based. The present article reveals the discovery of copies of the two earlier editions and offers the first comparative analysis of their contents. In a complex creative process the author expanded the 33 letters of the first edition into the 69 of the second version before arriving at a definitive text comprising 145 letters. The present study analyses how, while maintaining the Basic novelistic structure of the love story of Alfonso and Serafina, Mor de Fuentes expanded not only the time scale, spatial dimensions and number of characters in his work, but also amplified the descriptive and discursive elements, in a literary re-configuration which, in addition to the composition of new letters, involved a re-working of both the plot and major narrative and stylistic features in each successive version. The discovery of the 1798 and 1802 texts for the first time allows the creative process which led to the fully elaborated 1807 version of La Serafina to be viewed in a new light, revealing the consummate skill of Mor de Fuentes in transforming a short romantic story into a social portrait of the Spain of his time.