Demons, nausea, and resistance in the autobiography of Isabel de Jesús, 1611-1682 / Sherry M. Velasco.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Velasco, Sherry M. (Sherry Marie), 1962-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Isabel de Jesús, sor, 1611-1682.

Isabel de Jesús.

Nuns--Spain--Biography.

Nuns.

Women's studies.

Spain.

Autobiography--Women authors.

Autobiography.

Women's studies--Spain--Biographical methods.

Women--Spain--History--Modern period, 1600-.

Women.

History.

Demonology in literature.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

x, 133 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

Summary:

Isabel de Jesus was a seventeenth-century Carmelite nun who manipulated traditional religious rhetoric in the manner of St. Teresa to express resistance to a misogynistic tradition. Her fascinating autobiography provides a rich source for examining strategies employed by women religious writers. Velasco discusses Isabel's extraordinary ability to articulate the double binds women writers faced, her multiple symbolic uses of nausea and vomiting, and her use of the voice of the Devil as a spokesman for traditional male views. This important in-depth study illustrates how Isabel reshapes symbolic logic in ways that permit her to defend her authority as a writer. Literary scholars will find the discussion of rhetorical strategies and metanarrative discourse engaging as will specialists in religious studies, women's studies, and early modern history.

Contents:

Introduction: self-representation and the metanarrative

Writing a nun's life

The devil, nausea, and "monjas embaucadoras"

Iconographic tradition and the demonic mouth

The dialectics of resistance: prowriting versus antiwriting

Disgust, nausea, and writing

Conclusion: Isabel's hidden tradition.

Notes:

Includes biliographical references (pages 119-126) and index.

ISBN:

0826316646

OCLC:

32237797