Studies on Women’s Poetry of the Golden Age: Tras El Espejo La Musa Escribe

Women’s poetry of the Spanish early modern period.

This collection of fourteen scholarly essays on women’s poetry from Spain’s early modern period shows that women did indeed have a Golden Age, and that they were significant cultural actors in the realms of poetic production. Thestudies of secular verse demonstrate how female poets of this period devised strategies to confront the dominant masculine poetic discourse, while the essays on sacred poetry explore the multiple manifestations of female piety andmysticism. The women’s words are brought to life and modern readers helped to understand the socio-cultural, interpersonal, and aesthetic components of the poets’ oeuvre. The volume, a companion to Julián Olivares’ and ElizabethBoyce’s revised anthology ＂Tras el espejo la musa escribe＂ Lírica femenina de los Siglos de Oro, constitutes an authoritative critical enterprise focused on the recuperation of the female literary voice, and marks an important step forward in the battle to include women’s writing as part of Spain’s literary canon.
Contributors: Electa Arenal, Aránzazu Borrachero Mendíbil, Anne J. Cruz, Adrienne L. Martin, Rosa Navarro Durán, Julián Olivares, Inmaculada Osuna, Amanda Powell, Elizabeth Rhodes, Stacey Schlau, Lía Schwartz, Alison Weber, Judith Whitenack.

JULIAN OLIVARES is Professor of Spanish at the University of Houston and editor of Calíope, Journal ofthe Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry.