The Guitar of God: Gender, Power, and Authority in the Visionary World of Mother Juana de la Cruz, 1481-1534 (Anniversary Collection) - Hardcover

Surtz, Ronald E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812282256 ISBN 13: 9780812282252

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection, 1990

Synopsis

Until recently, Spanish literary historiography has virtually ignored hundreds of women who wrote between 1500 and 1700. Most of them wrote to record, defend, and disseminate their spiritual visions, for despite the general disempowerment of Spanish women, female visionaries enjoyed considerable authority.

This book recovers and examines the visionary experiences of Mother Juana de la Cruz, the most famous of these women during her lifetime and for two centuries afterwards. Born of peasant stock, she became abbess of a Franciscan convent and a mystic who was visited not only by Cardinal Cisneros, but by Emperor Charles V himself. Ronald E. Surtz places Mother Juana's visions in the religious and social context of the age and discusses such pertinent biographical elements as the nun's own androgyny. His focus is on the questions of gender, power, and authority, so pertinent to our own age.

The Guitar of God will be of particular interest to scholars and students of late medieval Spanish culture, religion, and history, and women's studies.

About this title

About the Author:

Ronald E. Surtz is Professor in Spanish at Princeton University and the author of Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain: The Mothers of Saint Teresa of Avila, also published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Language Notes:

Text: English, Spanish

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0812282256
• ISBN 13: 9780812282252
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192