Between Desire and Passion: Teresa de Cartagena

Teresa de Cartagena endured confinement as a nun, affliction as a deaf person, and isolation as an outcast, but she was finally able to dedicate herself to writing and to voice her suffering in her Arboleda de los enfermos. Her second treatise, Admiracion operum Dey, offers a defense against her male detractors and demands recognition by men and her society arguing that women had the intellect to write. To illuminate Teresa’s distinctiveness as an author and a woman, the book locates her place in a line of European women intellectuals, and presents an indispensible dialogue among female European authors of the early modern age. By tracing her predecessors’ literary and philosophical achievements, we can appreciate the multifaceted characteristics of Teresa’s writings.