Book Description
Feminist scholarship has entered an age of internationalism during the past two decades. Yet, as Lisa Vollendorf points out in her introduction to this volume, "Spain is one of the countries that remain on the margins of the debate. Despite a growing number of feminists in all regions of Spain, Spanish women do not appear either as authors or subjects in anthologies of feminist thinking and criticism published in English." To redress this neglect, the editor of Recovering Spain's Feminist Tradition has gathered nineteen new essays on women writers who either call themselves feminist or deal with feminist issues in their work. Hailing from the medieval period to the present and representing a broad range of genres and topics, these women -- court writers, nuns, housewives, journalists, politicians -- trace the historical roots of Spain's feminist consciousness and emphasize its rich intellectual traditions. The contributions provide a balance between writers well known in Spain and those who have only recently received critical attention -- from Santa Teresa de Jesus and Maria de Zayas to Emilia Pardo Bazan and Montserrat Roig. The last three essays in the volume focus on Spain's "double minorities": Catalan women writers.