Recovering Spain's Feminist Tradition

Feminist scholarship has entered an age of internationalism during the past two decades, as is evident in the wider range of cultural and national traditions now included in historical and literary studies. 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."" Hoping to redress this neglect, the editor of Recovering Spain's Feminist Tradition has gathered nineteen completely 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 emphasise 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 Jesús and María de Zayas to Emilia Pardo Bazán and Montserrat Roig. The last three essays in the volume focus on Spain's ""double minorities"": Catalan women writers. This fascinating and insightful collection merits a place in the libraries of students and scholars of world literature, Spanish history, and women's studies.