Demons, nausea, and resistance in the autobiography of Isabel de Jesús (1611 1682)
By: Sherry M. Velasco.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Albuquerque
Language: eng
Number of pages: 133
Subjects: Isabel de Jesús, sor, 1611-1682; Nuns -- Spain -- Biography; Autobiography -- Women authors; Women's studies -- Spain -- Biographical methods; Women -- Spain -- History -- Modern period, 1600-; Demonology in literature
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes biliographical references (p. 119-126) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: self-representation and the metanarrative; title: Writing a nun's life; title: The devil, nausea, and "monjas embaucadoras"; title: Iconographic tradition and the demonic mouth; title: The dialectics of resistance: prowriting versus antiwriting; title: Disgust, nausea, and writing; title: Conclusion: Isabel's hidden tradition.