“Este gran Dios de las cavallerías” [This Great God of Chivalric Deeds]: St. Teresa’s Performances of the Novels of Chivalry

Abstract

Teresa ofAvila is often represented book in hand.The book is not one she is reading, but one she is writing, with the Holy Spirit hovering over her quill pen to demonstrate that the words are not her own. Teresa (1515–1582) was in fact quite bookish, and quite well read for a sixteenth-century Spanish woman. In the words of Joel Saugnieux, author of an important study of popular and high culture in early modern Spain, “The entire existence of St. Teresa is organized around, depends upon, and proceeds from books.”¹