The Blind Woman of Manzanares. Poetry and Consciousness: A 19th-Century Voice. María Francisca Díaz Carralero Rodelgo

The blind-woman of Manzanares. Poetry and Consciousness: A 19th-Century Voice is an attempt to recover and systematically study the poetic work of María Francisca Díaz Carralero Rodelgo—a figure traditionally remembered more for her biography and extraordinary gift for improvisation than for her actual texts. The volume seeks to shift the focus from the persona to the poetry itself, gathering and comprehensively examining a corpus that has hitherto been scattered and unevenly transmitted.

The work is approached with respect for its essentially oral, situational, and social nature. The poems were conceived to be spoken and heard in public squares, on roads, in drawing rooms, at ceremonies, and during specific gatherings, and were addressed to particular audiences. Their diversity—spanning religious, civic, autobiographical, moral, and satirical verse, as well as expressions of gratitude or supplication—reveals a sustained practice and a level of technical skill that transcend the reductive image of a mere improviser.

Particular importance is accorded to her blindness, understood not merely as a biographical circumstance but as a symbolic element linked to knowledge, dignity, and the contrast between light and darkness. Added to this is the historical significance of a female voice situated between the popular and the learned, between oral tradition and the written word.

This edition—deliberately open-ended rather than definitive—thus aims to restore María Francisca’s status as an author and to recognize her poetry as a legitimate and significant manifestation of 19th-century literary creation.