BREAKING BOUNDARIES, FORGING FRIENDSHIP.

The Convent and Women's Writing

in Seventeenth-Century Spain.

By

NANCY CUSHING-DANIELS

(Gettysburg College, USA)

As the keystone is essential to the structural integrity of the archways in the convent, the convent itself is the key to understanding the writing of women in seventeenth-century Spain.  Without the keystone, the archway at the entrance to the convent might remain intact for a short while, but it would eventually crumble under the constant force of gravity.  Similarly, without the convent itself, women writers in seventeenth century Spain might have experienced some success, but eventually they would have crumbled under the relentless pressure of male domination.  The convent provided the building blocks for what later became a corpus of literature written by women.

“Nancy Cushing-Daniels’ book addresses important issues in early modern women’s writing in Spain that are commonly ignored due to the frequent separation of secular writing from the convent context.  Given Cushing-Daniels attempt to bridge this gap (by studying the relationship and role of the convent in women’s lives both in and outside the cloister) her analysis will undoubtedly provide a worthy contribution to Golden Age cultural studies.”

                                                                                                                              Sherry Velasco, University of Kentucky

Nancy Cushing-Daniels received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in Romance Languages and Literatures. Currently she is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Gettysburg College.  Her previous publications include “Beyond Entertainment: the Story Behind the walls of Mariana de Carvajal’s Navidades de Madrid y noches entretenidas.”

ISBN 1-889431-60-5

$49.95

2003