This is a position paper about a subject position.
There are 26 extant manuscripts of the Book of the City of Ladies, plus 22 of the Trésor de la Cité des Dames, which she also completed in 1405.
Some of the readings on this list, suggested by Professor Yonsoo Kim for the preparation of this session of Iberian Connections, deal, precisely, with necessary reassessments of the work of Teresa as a writer, and the life of Teresa within and outside the walls of the convents in which she lived.
The (known) works of Teresa de Cartagena are preserved in one single manuscript:
Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial, h.III.24
This manuscript refers to these works as tratados that were commanded by Juana de Mendoza.
“To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.” (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1011b25)
Medieval Women’s Writers
Since 1950 there has been an effort on the part of critics to revalorize marginal writers of the Middle Ages, predominantly women authors.