Nuns' stories, nuns' voices: Resistance at the margins of patriarchal ideology

Nuns' ambiguous position within patriarchy makes them particularly interesting subjects for a feminist study on power, resistance and representation. This work starts out by putting the concept of nun into historical perspective and by analyzing the act of becoming a nun as a particular practice of womanhood. Chapter I looks at female religious communities and analyzes their ideological meaning, i.e., their importance as separate female spaces. It considers different historical representations of nuns and convents and emphasizes the gap between the way nuns and convents are represented by patriarchal historical texts and the way they are reinterpreted by feminist historians as they take into account female subjectivity.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Comparative Literature

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Mourao, Maria Manuela Martins

Contributors dc:contributor

• Smarr, Janet L.

• Literature, Comparative
• Literature, Romance
• Religion, General
• Women's Studies
• Literature, English

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1990 Mourao, Maria Manuela Martins

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9114353
(UMI)AAI9114353

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/19343