Author: Alison Weber
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691219621
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
Celebrated as a visionary chronicler of spirituality, Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) suffered persecution by the Counter-Reformation clergy in Spain, who denounced her for her "diabolical illusions" and "dangerous propaganda." Confronting the historical irony of Teresa's transformation from a figure of questionable orthodoxy to a national saint, Alison Weber shows how this teacher and reformer used exceptional rhetorical skills to defend her ideas at a time when women were denied participation in theological discourse. In a close examination of Teresa's major writings, Weber correlates the stylistic techniques of humility, irony, obfuscation, and humor with social variables such as the marginalized status of pietistic groups and demonstrates how Teresa strategically adopted linguistic features associated with women--affectivity, spontaneity, colloquialism--in order to gain access to the realm of power associated with men.
Author: Gillian T. W. Ahlgren
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801485725
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
Teresa of Avila, one of history's most beloved mystics, wrote during a time of intense ecclesiastical scrutiny of texts. The determination of the Counter-Reformation Church to dominate religious life and control the content of theological writing significantly influenced Teresa's career as reformer and writer. Gillian T. W. Ahlgren explores the theological and ecclesiastical climate of sixteenth-century Spain in this study of the challenges Teresa encountered as a female theologian and mystic. As inquisitional censure increased and the authority of women's visions and ecstatic prayer experiences declined, Teresa's written self-expressions became, of necessity, less direct. Her later writing was heavily encoded and scholars have only recently begun to decipher those protective codes. Ahlgren demonstrates how Teresa's rhetorical style and theological message were directly responsive to the climate of suspicion created by the Inquisition and how they thus constituted a challenge to sixteenth-century assumptions about women. The only female theologian to be published in late sixteenth-century Spain, Teresa sought to provide a clear defense of mystical experience, particularly that of women. Ahlgren suggests that the rhetorical strategies Teresa developed to protect women's visionary experiences were subsequently used by Church officials to rewrite aspects of her life and thought, transforming her into the model for official Counter-Reformation sanctity.
Author: Merry E. Wiesner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521778220
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
This is a major new textbook, designed for students in all disciplines seeking an introduction to the very latest research on all aspects of women's lives in Europe from 1500 to 1750, and on the development of the notions of masculinity and femininity. The coverage is geographically broad, ranging from Spain to Scandinavia, and from Russia to Ireland, and the topics investigated include the female life-cycle, literacy, women's economic role, sexuality, artistic creations, female piety - and witchcraft - and the relationship between gender and power. To aid students each chapter contains extensive notes on further reading (but few footnotes), and the approach throughout is designed to render the subject in as accessible and stimulating manner as possible. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe is suitable for usage on numerous courses in women's history, early modern European history, and comparative history.
Author: Margaret Arnold
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674989449
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
Prostitute, apostle, evangelist—the conversion of Mary Magdalene from sinner to saint is one of the Christianity’s most compelling stories. Less appreciated is the critical role the Magdalene played in remaking modern Christianity. Margaret Arnold shows that the Magdalene inspired devotees eager to find new ways to relate to God and the Church.
Author: Elena Carrera
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351197053
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
The Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila (1515-82), author of one of the most acclaimed early modern autobiographies (Vida, 1565), has generated a wealth of literary, historical and theological studies, yet none to date has examined the impact of textual models on Teresa's self-construction. In looking at the issue of the self, Carrera draws on revisions
Author: Lewis C. Seifert
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317097513
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
Today the friendships that grab people’s imaginations are those that reach across inequalities of class and race. The friendships that seem to have exerted an analogous level of fascination in early modern France were those that defied the assumption, inherited from Aristotle and patristic sources, that friendships between men and women were impossible. Together, the essays in Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France tell the story of the declining intelligibility of classical models of (male) friendship and of the rising prominence of women as potential friends. The revival of Plato’s friendship texts in the sixteenth century challenged Aristotle’s rigid ideal of perfect friendship between men. In the seventeenth century, a new imperative of heterosociality opened a space for the cultivation of cross-gender friendships, while the spiritual friendships of the Catholic Reformation modeled relationships that transcended the gendered dynamics of galanterie. Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France argues that the imaginative experimentation in friendships between men and women was a distinctive feature of early modern French culture. The ten essays in this volume address friend-making as a process that is creative of self and responsive to changing social and political circumstances. Contributors reveal how men and women fashioned gendered selves, and also circumvented gender norms through concrete friendship practices. By showing that the benefits and the risks of friendship are magnified when gender roles and relations are unsettled, the essays in this volume highlight the relevance of early modern friend-making to friendship in the contemporary world.
Author: Christopher M. Flavin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498592732
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
Christopher M. Flavin examines the ways in which late classical medieval women’s writings serve as a means of emphasizing both faith and social identity within a distinctly Christian, and later Catholic, tradition, which remains a major part of the understanding of faith and the self. Flavin focuses on key texts from the lives of desert saints and the Passio Perpetua to the autobiographies of Counter-Reformation women like Teresa of Ávila to illustrate the connections between the self and the divine.
Author: Mary Reichardt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313016623
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 457
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Book Description
Women have been writing in the Catholic tradition since early medieval times, yet no single volume has brought together critical evaluations of their works until now. The first reference of its kind, Catholic Women Writers provides entries on 64 Catholic women writers from around the world and across the centuries. Each of the entries is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography of the author; a critical discussion of her works, especially her Catholic and women's themes; an overview of her critical reception; and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Authors writing in all genres, including fiction, autobiography, poetry, children's literature, and essays, are represented. The entries give special attention to the authors' use of Catholic themes, structures, traditions, culture, and spirituality. The writers surveyed range from Doctors of the Church to mystics and visionaries, to those who employ Catholic themes primarily in historical and cultural contexts, to those who critique the tradition. An introductory essay places the writers within the historical and literary contexts of women's writing in the Catholic tradition, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.
Author: Mirabai Starr
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 9780834823037
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) is one of the most beloved of the Catholic saints. In 1562, during the era of the Spanish Inquisition, Teresa sat down to write an account of the mystical experiences for which she had become famous. The result was this book, one of the great classics of spiritual autobiography. With this fresh translation of The Book of My Life, Mirabai Starr brings the inimitable Spanish mystic to life for a new generation, with contemporary English that mirrors Teresa's own earthy, vernacular Spanish, and that presents us with—four centuries after Teresa's death—someone we feel we know: a woman intoxicated with God yet filled with an overflowing love for the world.
Author: Christopher Chadwick Wilson
Publisher: ICS Publications
ISBN: 0935216405
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 162
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Book Description
This issue of Carmelite Studies presents new insights into the lives and writings of individuals who knew Teresa of Ávila in life and who, after her death in 1582, worked to propagate and defend her legacy, including the illustrious nuns Ana de San Bartolomé, Ana de Jesús, María de San José, and Ana de San Agustín, and her close male confidant and collaborator, Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios. A further focus of the essays is the reception of the Teresian heritage by individuals outside the order, as mediated by these early Discalced Carmelites and by Teresa's published writings. More Information The essays were originally presented at the 2004 symposium "The Heirs of St. Teresa" at Georgetown University. That year marked the 400th anniversary of a pivotal moment in Discalced Carmelite history: the arrival in France of a group of six nuns, some of Teresa's most favored protégées, including Ana de Jesús and Ana de San Bartolomé, who traveled from Spain to inaugurate the order's first French convent. Motivated by devotion to their Founding Mother, amidst success and setbacks, these and other of Teresa's heirs strove to carry out her will with a resolute determination and to extend her reputation for sanctity throughout the world. ICS Publications is pleased to issue this volume in its series Carmelite Studies conjointly with the Institutum Carmelitanum of the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance in Rome.
