María Morrás, Rebeca Sanmartín Bastida, and Yonsoo Kim, Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain. The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, 79. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020, 296 pp.

Abstract

Abstract: Although there is much research on women’s writing and religious practices in the medieval and early modern periods, there are few studies on the place of exemplarity in hagiographies and secular biographies written about or by women. This book addresses this lacuna and presents eight chapters on issues of female exemplary textuality. It is divided into two sections. Part I, “Rewriting Models,” reflects the power and dangers of exemplarity that led to writing and rewriting the lives of St. Mary of Egypt, Mary Magdalene, Angela of Foligno, and Catherine of Siena. These women were saintly examples whose narratives were mostly composed by men. Part 2, “Inscribing Models,” treats the writings of Leonor de Córdoba, Teresa de Cartagena, Isabel de Villena, and St. Teresa de Ávila. Life accounts by these women writers are examples of women constructing their own identity and their roles as authors. Exemplarity is thus treated in a broad sense, one that includes the secular and the sacred by analyzing texts from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries in which women are subjects and authors.