La Voz Femenina Silenciada en los Textos Medievales: Una Carta de Teresa de Cartagena

Abstract

In the context of medieval society, the situation of women and, more specically, the situation of women who want to be a writer, presents a series of features that make their situation, social as well as emotional or intellectual, a complex network of conicts, both internal and external, all related to the assumption of some male role: the desire for self-affirmation, for being an authorial self, for having the property of his thoughts, for example. Understanding and deepening in these aspects becomes a task, in many moments, exciting. This article reviews those aspects contained in the letter entitled Admiraçion Operum Dey, by Teresa de Cartagena, which are related to the feminine universe. That is, those elements that become essential to inquire into the work written by a nun in a medieval, patriarchal and eminently misogynist context in which her status as (1) woman, (2)judeoconversa and (3) deaf provide her with a triple marginalization. These three elements, above all, are those that shape the worldview of Teresa of Cartagena in which self-consolation becomes a means of survival in her first work, Arboleda de los enfermos and in a more brutal tone, she made a true allegation to favor the right of women to access to culture and, more specically, to writing, in her second work that we analyze in this paper.