Women Readers and Writers in Medieval Iberia: Spinning the Text by Montserrat Piera

Abstract

Reviewed by: Women Readers and Writers in Medieval Iberia: Spinning the Text by Montserrat Piera Connie L. Scarborough Piera, Montserrat. Women Readers and Writers in Medieval Iberia: Spinning the Text. Brill, 2019. 483 pp. ISBN: 978-90-04-40037-5. In this ambitious project, Piera focuses on women’s production and reception of texts and on how women’s interaction with other forms of material culture has, or has not, been woven into the historical record. From the outset, the author recognizes the complexities of studying women’s participation in the literary as well as the socio-economic spheres due to the nature of the documentation and sources available. Despite this acknowledgement, she skillfully navigates existing materials and presents a coherent thesis. The book is divided into two main sections: women as readers and women as writers. The latter consists of two subsections: women writing in the court and those writing in the convent. In the first part, Piera points out that reading for women heretofore often has been viewed as a challenging endeavor due to the widely-accepted paradigm of the virgin-prostitute dichotomy so prominent in literary texts. But she disputes this divide, noting that women were capable of seeing this dichotomy as an abstract one and she examines other material sources available to them, such as oral instruction or the visual arts, which would have presented them with more nuanced forms of knowledge. While the author devotes an extensive chapter to the works of preachers and moralists, she focuses on the fact that not all women would have internalized their teachings about the inferiority and rightful place of women in society. In discussing their interaction with secular texts, for example, works of courtly romance or querrelles des femmes, she notes that women readers would have been exposed to the principle of sic et non and thus would have participated in active engagement with these texts —intellectually questioning, criticizing, and resisting them. In the section on women writers associated with the court, Piera devotes one chapter to the writings of Violant de Bar, Queen of Aragon, and another to Leonor López de Córdoba. She asserts that they “could be as close to [the] epicenter of power as men and that they were capable of employing a variety of tactics to ensure that they would remain in that valued position . . . writing was one of the most advantageous and indispensable of such tactics” (176). The author’s analysis of Violant’s writings and other performative acts calls into question some earlier evaluations [End Page 181] of the queen as vain, overly ambitious, or meddling in the affairs of state. In her study of the Memorias of López de Córdoba, she challenges the usual interpretation of this work as female autobiography and places it in its historical context, participating in revising Trastamaran efforts to legitimize the reign of Enrique II and seeking to obtain her own political and social advancement. The author’s reassessment of the Memorias highlights one of the central purposes of her book —to recognize the resistance element in women’s writing and in their interaction with written texts and other forms of cultural production. Turning her attention to women writing in the convent, Piera examines Constanza de Castilla’s Libro de devociones y oficios. Rather than simply analyzing Constanza’s treatise as a private devotional or as a spiritual aid intended for the nuns of the convent Santo Domingo el Real, she sees it as part of larger sensorial and emotional experiences that included illuminations, songs, and reenactments. The author also postulates new readings for two works by Teresa de Cartagena —Arboleda de los enfermos and Admiraçión Operum Dey. With regard to Arboleda most critics have evaluated it as autobiography and as a consolation text in the tradition established by Boethius and Pedro de Luna. She stresses that Teresa is not “writing about her own self as a modern subject might in an autobiography but to bond with her readers and listeners, particularly those who suffer illnesses, which, incidentally, is what gifted preachers would also do in order to emotionally reach his listeners . . .” (334) Admiraçión, in which Teresa defends...