Title Disabled bodies in early modern Spanish literature : prostitutes, aging women and saints / Encarnación Juárez-Almendros

Published Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2017

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Description 1 electronic resource (viii, 201 pages) Series Representations: Health, disability, culture and society Representations (Liverpool, England) Contents Introduction -- The creation of female disability : medical, prescriptive and moral discourses -- The artifice of syphilitic and damaged female bodies in literature -- The disabling of aging female bodies : midwives, procuresses, witches and the monstrous mother -- Historical testimony of female disability : the neurological impairment of Teresa de Ávila -- Conclusion Summary "Examines the concept and roles of women in selected Spanish discourses and literary texts from the late fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries from the perspective of feminist disability theories. This study explores a wide range of Spanish medical, regulatory and moral discourses, illustrating how such texts inherit, reproduce and propagate an amalgam of Western traditional concepts of female embodiment. It goes on to examine concrete representations of deviant female characters, focusing on the figures of syphilitic prostitutes and physically decayed aged women in literary texts such as Celestina, Lozana andaluza and selected works by Cervantes and Quevedo. Finally, an analysis of the personal testimony of Teresa de Ávila, a nun suffering from neurological disorders, complements the discussion of early modern women's disability. By expanding the meanings of contemporary theories of materiality and the social construction of disability, the book concludes that--paradoxically--femininity, bodily afflictions and mental instability characterized the new literary heroes at the very time Spain was at the apex of its imperial power. Ultimately, as this study shows, the broken female bodies of pre-industrial Spanish literature reveal the cracks in the foundational principles of power and established truths."--Page 4 of cover Analysis Literature Literary Theory Literature History and Criticism Fiction Novelists and Prose Writers Literary Studies - c 1500 to c 1800 Hispanic and Latino Studies Spain Modern Period Women's Bodies Disability Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 170-194) and index Notes This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Description based on print version record; resource not viewed Subject Spanish literature -- Classical period, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism Women with disabilities in literature. Women in literature. Sex role in literature. Medicine in literature. Medicine in Literature Disabled Persons -- history Women -- history Body Image Literature, Modern -- history History, Early Modern 1451-1600 Literary theory. LITERARY CRITICISM -- Feminist. LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- Spanish & Portuguese. Medicine in literature Sex role in literature Spanish literature -- Classical period Women in literature Women with disabilities in literature SUBJECT Spain https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D013030 Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book LC no. 2019667540 ISBN 9781786940780 1786940787 9781786945013 1786945010

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