The Routledge Research Companion to Early Modern Spanish Women Writers ed. by Nieves Baranda and Anne J. Cruz (review)

LITERARY STUDIES OF EARLY MODERN SPANISH WOMEN writers have expanded at a remarkable pace. In little more than thirty years, the field has gone from a few scholars working on a handful of female writers to a booming field of scholarly production that requires twenty-two essays to barely scratch the surface of the current scholarship. In their Routledge Research Companion to Early Modern Spanish Women Writers, Nieves Baranda and Anne Cruz have compiled a critical resource that is not only an important compendium of the growing number of early modern Spanish women writers, but also a guide to the breadth and depth of feminist scholarship on those creative women.

On the first page, Baranda and Cruz note that they intend to move beyond the traditional focus on individual writers and instead trace women's "history as writers as a collective endeavor" (1). Thus, they have divided the collection of essays into six sections that focus on women in groups rather than on particular writers or genres. Section 1, "Women's Worlds," lays out the historical context within which most of the writers lived and worked. Grace Coolidge examines women's legal rights, Anne Cruz provides an overview of women's education and literacy, and Emily Francomano situates the scholarship on women in the context of the early querella de mujeres. The rest of the collection consists of a diverse set of scholarly interventions. Some of the essays are traditional literature reviews, some provide literary analyses of women's works, and still others explore the issues collectively faced by groups of women writers. The chapters in section 2, "Conventual Spaces," consist of examinations of autobiography by Isabelle Poutrin, of chronicles and hagiographies by Mercedes Marcos Sánchez, of nuns' correspondence by María Leticia Sánchez Hernández and Nieves Baranda, and of convent theater by María del Carmen Alarcón Román. These chapters reveal the ways that religious women's writings expressed women's individuality while being shaped by male intervention and the priorities of their religious orders. Stacy Schlau's review of the literature on religious poetry neatly complements the other essays.

The next two sections, "Secular Literature" and "Women in the Public Sphere," underscore the myriad ways that women writers participated in public discourse. María Dolores Martos Pérez probes women's poetic voice as female authors moved beyond masculine literary structures and language. Inmaculada Osuna Rodríguez's chapter in the section on secular literature and María Carmen Marín Pina's in the section on the public sphere—which treat women in academies and tournaments and women in public poetry respectively—pair well; together, they demonstrate that literary women were in no way bound to the domestic sphere, nor were they inevitably marginalized from public displays of cultural production. Shifra Armon analyzes how gynocriticism, a renewed interest in popular genres, and New Historicism have expanded scholarly interest in early modern Spain's female novelists. In addition to Amy Williamsen's chapter on women playwrights (discussed more below), Emilie Bergmann's contribution reminds us that female humanists like Oliva Sabuco de Nantes, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Luisa Sigea unabashedly asserted their ability and right to engage with the finest intellectuals of their time. Nieves Romero-Díaz closes out the section with a broad exploration of issues of women and power, arguing that scholars need to re-center women and their written works, especially those that attempted to influence political decisions.

The chapters in section 5, entitled "Private Circles," examine the degree to which female authors were writing for an audience even when they were dealing with intimate issues and family matters. Rosilie Hernández analyzes women as authors of didactic texts, noting how they positioned themselves before other women as knowledgeable and authoritative purveyors of information and expectations. Gwyn Fox takes on the familial lyric as a genre that allowed...