Sanctified subversives : nuns in early modern English and Spanish literature / by Horacio Sierra.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

As chaste women devoted to God, nuns are viewed as the purest of the pure. Yet, as females who reject courtship, sex, marriage, child bearing, and materialism, they have been the anathema of how society has proscribed, expected, and regulated women: sex object, wife, mother, and capitalist consumer. They are perceived as otherworldly beings, yet revered for their salt-of-the-earth demeanor. This book illustrates how both English and Spanish Renaissance-era authors latched onto the figure of the nun as a way to evaluate the social construction of womanhood. This analysis of the nun's role in th.

Early modern nuns in context -- Reclaiming Isabella, the queer virgin: celebrating Catholicism's opportunities in Measure for measure -- Convents as feminist utopias: Margaret Cavendish's The convent of pleasure and the potential of closeted dramas and communities -- The Sarao as conventual rhetorical space in María De Zaya's Desengaños amorosos -- Straddling the secular and spiritual divide: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's life and literature -- Extraconventual escapades: erstwhile nuns in Erauso's and Behn's fictions.

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