Acknowledgments

This research was carried out in the following libraries and archives:

In Madrid: Archivo de la Casa de Alba; Archivo de las Escuelas Pías de Castilla; Archivo Histórico Nacional; Archivo Histórico de Protocolos de Notarios; Archivo del Palacio Real; Archivo de la Parroquia de San Sebastián; Archivo de la Parroquia de Santiago y San Juan Bautista; Archivo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando; Archivo de la Real Academia de la Historia; Archivo de la Real Sociedad Económica Matritense; Archivo del Servicio Histórico Militar; Archivo de la Villa; Biblioteca de la Asociación de Sordos de Madrid (Santa María de la Cabeza); Biblioteca del Ateneo; Biblioteca Central del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; Biblioteca del Círculo de Bellas Artes; Biblioteca de la Confederación Nacional de Sordos de España; Biblioteca Nacional; Biblioteca del Palacio Real; Biblioteca de Pedagogía del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; Biblioteca General del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; Biblioteca de la Real Academia Española; Biblioteca de la Universidad de Comillas; Centro Público de Educación Especial de Sordos (formerly, Instituto Nacional de Pedagogía de Sordos); Centro de Educación Especial del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia; Hemeroteca Municipal; Hemeroteca Nacional; Instituto Municipal de Educación Especial; Instituto Nacional de Servicios Sociales.

Elsewhere in Spain: Archivo, General de la Administración Civil del Estado, Alcalá de Henares; Archivo del Colegio de las Escuelas Pías de Zaragoza; Archivo Diocesano, Lugo; Archivo Diocesano, Zaragoza; Archivo de la Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli, Seville; Archivo

General, Simancas; Archivo Histórico de Barcelona; Archivo Histórico Diocesano, Oviedo; Archivo Provincial de las Escuelas Pías de Aragón, Zaragoza; Archivo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos, Valencia; Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial; Biblioteca Pública del Estado de Cáceres; Biblioteca Universitaria de Granada; Biblioteca Universitaria de Salamanca.

In France: Archives Départementales des Bouches-du-Rhêric, Marseille, Archives Municipales de la Ville de Marseille; Bibliothèque Municipale, Marseille; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris.

In the United States: the various libraries of the University of California at Los Angeles; California State University at Northridge; Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C.

My most sincere thanks to the directors and staff of these institutions for allowing me access to their collections, and for their generous assistance.

My initial interest in this topic was sparked by Carlos Otero, who first brought to my attention Juan Pablo Bonet's 1620 Reduction de las letras y arte para enseñar a ablar los mudos, mentioning that a first edition exists in the Special Collections of the UCLA Graduate Research Library. I gratefully acknowledge the source of inspiration for this work.

I also wish to express my gratitude to the following friends, colleagues, and students, who assisted mainly in the area of research: María Jesús Almeida Pujadas, P. Francisco Javier Alonso Beato, María Dolores Alonso Roldán, Pedro Alvarez Lázaro, Miguel Batllori, Eloise Brown, Robert Burns, S.J., Angel Calafell, Luiza Carrano, Irene Caso Neira, Antonio Cecilia Tejedor, Moisés Cecilia Tejedor, P. Dionisio Cueva, Diane Davis, David L. De Lorenzo, R. Anselmo del Alamo, Francisco Javier Delicado Martínez, Caroline Fernández, Ana María Fisac de Lorca, Lawrence Fleischer, Audrey Freudberg, Ana García Hoz, Marguerite Glass-Englehart, Lourdes Gámez Monterde, Mary Greco, Margarita Guinart, Ulf Hedberg, Ivonne Heinz, Amparo Herrero Villanueva, Agustín Hevia Ballín, presbítero, P. Vicente Hidalgo, Edward Ingham, Marisol Jacas Santoll, Alexis Karacostas, Kurt Kemp, Teresa las Heras, Günther List, Jesús López Solórzano Arquero, Gustavo Angel Lorca Calero, Arturo Lozano, Nathie Marbury, Juan Luis Marroquin Cabiedas, Ana María Marroquín González, María Mercedes Martín-Palomino y Benito, José Martínez Millán, Marta Mejía, Joshua Mendel-son, Gonzalo Navajas Navarro, Olegario Negrín Fajardo, José Ignacio Nieto Benayas, Michael Olson, Inez O'Neill, Jorge Perelló, Félix-Jesús

Pinedo Peydró, Juan José Prat Ferrer, P. Manuel Quiroga, María Angeles Rodríguez González, Luisi Sanagustín Seser, Antonio Sánchez González, Gonzalo Sánchez Herranz, P. Francisco de Paula Solá, Francisco Tortosa Peidró, Beatriz Tseng, Luis Miguel Vicente García, P. Claudio Vilá, George Voyt, Begonia Wang, Doris Weiner, and Stacy Ziegenbein.

Special thanks go to Rubén Benítez, Eduardo Dias, Joaquín Gimeno Casalduero, Carroll B. Johnson, Efraín Kristal, Harlan Lane, Mary Elizabeth Perry, Mike Rose, Julio Ruiz Berrio, Paul Smith, and John V. Van Cleve, all of whom read the manuscript, either in its entirety or in part, and made valuable suggestions. I am particularly indebted to Anne Quartararo, who offered insightful observations and suggestions on every chapter, and to Leslie Johnson, who sacrificed much of her vacation in England to prepare detailed editorial comments that led to numerous improvements in the manuscript.

Special recognition is also due to to Craig Ball, who came aboard early on as my student and research assistant, and soon became a treasured friend and confidant.

Over a period of years Luis Silva Villar provided invaluable assistance with this research, which culminated in his preparation of the bibliography.

Robert C. Johnson of Gallaudet University graciously answered innumerable questions of an editorial nature, and Natasha Dalzell-Martínez, Mary-Louise Giunta, Heather Way, and Julie Wilson helped with preparation of the manuscript. The final version of this work benefited greatly from the comments of an anonymous referee for the University of California Press and the suggestions of my editor, Edith Gladstone.

The French abbé Charles-Michel de l'Epée, celebrated teacher of deaf children, referred to the works of the Spaniard Juan Pablo Bonet and the Swiss Johann Conrad Amman as "two torches, which have lighted me on my way," adding that "in the application of their principles I have followed the route that appeared to me the shortest and easiest." In a similar vein, I would like to acknowledge the work of Harlan Lane and John V. Van Cleve, two torches that have illuminated this investigation. In the end, however, like the abbé de l'Epée, I have had to find my own way.

This work would not have been completed without the friendship and support of María del Mar and Pilar Caso Neira and Irene Neira González, who welcomed my son and me into their family home dur-

ing our numerous and often lengthy stays in Madrid, and Ana García Hoz, with whom we shared, among other things, exquisite paellas and langorous days in Las Navas del Marqués. They have my most heartfelt thanks. I am grateful to María del Mar as well for her invaluable collaboration. A self-proclaimed member of the "mafia de bibilotecarias," she furnished me with a wealth of information, much of which, if left to my own devices, I would most likely have never encountered. Her contributions ranged from the news updates on the Spanish deaf community to lively anecdotes about historical figures appearing in this work. But above all I am grateful to Mar for her friendship, which I cherish beyond measure.

I would like to thank my parents, Paul and Paula Plann, for always being there.

And finally, I thank my son, Paul Navajas-Plann, who has shared the better part of his childhood with this project, and who cannot remember a time when I was not working on it. This book is dedicated to him.

This work was supported in part by numerous research and travel grants from the Academic Senate and the International Studies and Overseas Programs of the University of California at Los Angeles, by a UCLA Del Amo Faculty Fellowship, and by a research fellowship from the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars. It was completed during my tenure as the Powrie V. Doctor Chair of Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University (July–December 1994). This assistance is gratefully acknowledged.

Portions of this work have appeared previously in Das Zeichen 18, no. 5 (1991)—the English version in John Vickrey Van Cleve, ed., Deaf history unveiled: Interpretations from the new scholarship (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1993); in Renate Fischer and Harlan Lane, eds., Looking back: A reader on the history of deaf communities and their sign languages (Hamburg: Sig Verlag, 1992); and in Carol J. Erting, Robert C. Johnson, Dorothy L. Smith, and Bruce D. Snider, eds., The Deaf Way: Perspectives from the International Conference on Deaf Culture (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1994).

Map 1. The autonomous communities of present-day Spain.