Eleonora and Joseph. Passion,Tragedy, and Revolution in the Age of Enlightenment

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2023 Hollywood Book Festival

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Julieta Almeida Rodrigues

As the novel opens, aristocratic Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel pleads with the High Court of Naples to be beheaded instead of hanged
like a criminal. One of the leading revolutionaries of her time, Eleonora contributed to the establishment of the Neapolitan Republic, based on the ideals of the French Revolution.

Imprisoned in 1799 after the return of the Bourbon Monarchy, and while waiting to be sentenced, she writes a memoir. Here, she discusses not only her revolutionary enthusiasm, but also the adolescent lover who abandoned her, Joseph Correia da Serra.

While visiting Monticello many years later, Joseph discovers Eleonora’s manuscript in Thomas Jefferson’s library. Now retired, Jefferson is committed to founding the University of Virginia
and entices Correia with a position in the institution, once it opens. As the two philosophes explore Eleonora’s writing through the lens of their own lives, achievements, and follies, they
share many intimate secrets.

Told from Eleonora and Joseph’s alternating points of view, the interwoven first-person narratives follow the characters from the elegant salons of Naples to the halls of Monticello, from the
streets of European capitals such as Lisbon, London, and Paris to the cultured new world of Philadelphia and the chic soirées in Washington.

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