Female Writings

The first signs of editorial visibility of the feminine face of Portuguese writing were given by the literary production originated in the monasteries.
The explanation for this fact - still little understood by the history of Portuguese literature and culture - was the motivation and concern of this book, which runs through the dominant forms of poetry produced in the female monasteries, focusing on eight of the most representative women writers of  the 16th to 18th centuries and the diversity of religious orders: Carmelites, poor Clares, Cistercians, Dominicans, Augustinians ... The articulation of the texts produced with the environments in which they circulated (between the convent community and the court society) made it possible to suspect networks, perceive functionalities and ponder textual dialogues, which make the feminine compositions fertile fields of various intertextualities.
In short, the author tried to understand the impulse of these women for writing, within the framework of a society and an organization of religious life that, paradoxically, called for silence and recollection.

Os primeiros sinais de visibilidade editorial do rosto feminino da escrita portuguesa foram dados pela produção literária originada nos mosteiros.
A explicação para este facto — ainda pouco consciencializado pela história da literatura e da cultura portuguesas — constituiu a motivação e a preocupação deste livro, que percorre tem e formas dominantes da poesia produzida nos mosteiros femininos, focalizando-se em oito das escritoras mais representativas dos séculos XVI a XVIII e da diversidade de ordens religiosas da época: carmelitas, clarissas, cistercienses, dominicanos, agostinhas... A articulação dos textos produzidos com os ambientes em que circularam (entre a comunidade conventual e a sociedade de corte) permitiu suspeitar redes, perceber funcionalidades e ponderar diálogos textuais, que fazem das composições femininos campos férteis de intertextualidades várias.
Em suma, procurou-se entender o impulso destas mulheres para a escrita, no quadro de uma sociedade e de uma organização de vida religiosa que, paradoxalmente, as vocacionava para o silêncio e para o recolhimento.

This article focuses on the public writings of Muslim women in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Habsburg period. From the beginning of the twentieth century, several Muslim women, mainly schoolgirls and teachers at Sarajevo’s Muslim Female School, started for the first time to write for Bosnian literary journals, using the Serbo-Croatian language written in Latin or Cyrillic scripts. Before the beginning of World War I, a dozen Muslim women explored different literary genres—the poem, novel, and social commentary essay. In the context of the expectations of a growing Muslim intelligentsia educated in Habsburg schools and of the anxieties of the vast majority of the Muslim population, Muslim women contested late Ottoman gender norms and explored, albeit timidly, new forms of sisterhood, thus making an original contribution to the construction of a Bosnian, post-Ottoman public sphere.

Starting from an episode of gender violence suffered by the community of Franciscan tertiaries of Santa Maria de la Cruz de Cubas and caused by its prelates, we analyze here the denounce discourse formulated by these women in the biography of the visionary Juana de la Cruz and in her sermons. Possible change proposals in these texts are also evaluated. In order to do this, we review their concept of what the Church is and the relationship model between the sexes. The prophetic nature of this feminine discourse confers to its views an undoubted political weight.
Partiendo de un episodio de violencia de género sufrido por la comunidad de terciarias franciscanas de Santa María de la Cruz de Cubas a manos de sus prelados, se analiza aquí el discurso de denuncia que estas mujeres formularon en la biografía de la visionaria Juana de la Cruz y en sus sermones. También se valoran posibles propuestas de cambio en estos textos. Para ello, se pasa revista al concepto de Iglesia y al modelo de relación entre los sexos. El carácter profético de este discurso femenino confiere a sus planteamientos una indudable carga política.