Teresa de Avila, lettered woman.

9780826516312

Teresa de Avila, lettered woman.

Mujica, Barbara Louise.

Vanderbilt University Press

2009

278 pages

$45.00

Hardcover

BX4700

In order to illuminate Teresa's (1515-82) life and struggles, Mujica (Spanish, Georgetown U.) draws more on letters by the Spanish nun than on near-contemporary biographies or even on her own autobiographical writing, which she wrote at the request of her superiors to assure them of her orthodoxy. She covers the transformation from Teresa de Ahumda to Saint Teresa, Teresa de Jesus as a woman of letters, God's warrior and her epistolary weapons, correspondence and correspondents, letter-writing as self-representation, and her letters as relics. Seven letters with original translations are appended.

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