Academic literature on the topic 'Theresa of Avila'

The concept of the ‘Female’ Baroque, derives from Julia Kristeva; the chief objective of this study is to examine the distinctive contribution of women writers and artists, thus addressing a recurring omission in previous scholarship. This chapter discusses major models for women: the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalen, and the ideal Petrarchan Mistress. Along with the historical realities of patriarchal exploitation of women in the early modern period, I explore the emergent energies of women’s writings, examining whether there were distinctive ‘female’ experiences articulated through early modern discourse. Kristeva’s emphasis on St Teresa of Avila provides a model of the Female Baroque; her concept of ‘intimate revolt’ and her important distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic also inform this discussion.

There is more to rivers than what we see. They flow in pockets underground as well as above. This hidden area of a river’s flow is its hyporheic zone, a subterranean ecosystem with its own forms of life—fungi, insects, and crustaceans that may never see the light of day. This lends the river an added mystery, seen in the Lost Creek Wilderness of Colorado—a stream that surfaces, then disappears again, eleven times on its way through the Rockies. Teresa of Avila was fascinated by water as a symbol of renewal in the spiritual life, offering four ways of watering a garden in dry terrain. “I don’t find anything more appropriate to explain some spiritual experiences than water,” she said. “I am so fond of this element that I’ve observed it more attentively than any other.” For her, the divine presence was alternately visible and invisible, revealed and hidden, an elusive yet ever-running river flowing through the high desert country of her life. It might go for years without breaking the surface, then erupt into effusions of indescribable joy.

The Iberian Peninsula is one the most mineralized parts of Europe, with a long history of metal mining from prehistoric and Roman to modern times. The earliest evidence for copper metallurgy dates to the fifth millennium BC; however, distinctive Chalcolithic metalworking traditions did not emerge in most regions until 3000 BC onwards. There are widespread occurrences of copper mineralization in Spain and Portugal, including many areas with deposits of lead, tin, silver, and gold. Copper deposits occur in the Galician and Cantabrian mountain ranges of northern Spain, extending east to the Pyrenees. They are also numerous in central Spain, in the provinces of Madrid, Avila, Salamanca, and Segovia in the Central Range, and also in the Toledo and Betic mountains of Cordoba. Farther south, there are major copper deposits in the so-called Pyrite Belt, extending from Seville to Huelva into southern Portugal, and also in the Penibetic range from Cartagena to Malaga crossing the sierras of Almeria (Rovira 2002: fig. 3c; see Delibes de Castro and Montero Ruiz 1999 for regional surveys of copper deposits and indications of early mining; also Gómez Ramos 1999; Hunt Ortiz 2003). The widespread availability of ore deposits was a significant factor in the establishment of copper metallurgy in Iberia. How early is contentious, as is the means by which the new technology first developed in different parts of the peninsula. The older explanation of metal-seeking colonists from the east Mediterranean introducing this technology to southern Spain was replaced in the 1960s by a model that emphasized autonomous development (Renfrew 1967, 1973; Montero Ruiz 1994). This was based on the apparent antiquity of copper mining and metallurgy in Iberia and the distinctive technological processes that developed there relative to other parts of Europe. The earliest indication of copper metallurgy in Iberia may come from the settlement of Cerro Virtud in Almeria, south-west Spain. A single sherd from a metallurgical crucible used to reduce oxidized copper ore was discovered in a layer dated to the early fifth millennium BC (Montero Ruiz and Ruíz Taboada 1996; Ruíz Taboada and Montero Ruiz 1999).