Teresa de Cartagena

Abstract

Teresa de Cartagena was a medieval Spanish nun and woman writer who boldly and vehemently defended her right to the act of writing, as well as the author of the only known first-person account of a deaf person in premodern Christendom. Her two treatises, Arboleda de los enfermos (Grove of the Infirm) and Admiraçión operum Dei (Wonder at the Works of God), are unprecedented documents of the late fifteenth century medieval Spanish literary landscape, whose significance and relevance cannot be overstated. These treatises constitute examples of marginalized discourse. Cartagena was marginalized on account of her gender, her deafness, and her status as a conversa. (She is a member of prominent converso or converted Jewish Cartagena/Santa Maria family.) Arboleda is a medieval Spanish spiritual autobiography and a consolatory treatise. It is the only book written from the perspective of a deaf or impaired person in premodern Christendom. In it, Teresa recounts her trials and tribulations caused by her deafness in a time when being deaf caused isolation and misery. Admiraçión is a defense or apology of Cartagena as the author of Arboleda. The negative reception of the Arboleda compels Cartagena to write Admiraçión. Teresa was the first woman writer in the Iberian Peninsula to defend her right to the act of writing. Hers is the only female, medieval Spanish voice in the Querelle des Femmes, the literary, academic, and historical debate in which the inferiority of women is debated, providing arguments for or against it.