O Lugar Da Literatura Monástica Feminina No Cânone Barroco Português
Women’s Monastic Writing Within the Portuguese Baroque Canon.

Summary/Abstract: Women’s Monastic Writing within the Portuguese Baroque Canon. This article aims to approach Portuguese female monastic literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in terms of its relationship with the Baroque literary canon. Shaped at the border that separates voice and silence, the visible and the spiritual universe, the cult of moderation and the desire to assert, this literature outlined a new type of discourse, which hinted at the intense conflict between suppression and authority, which, in turn, gave rise to a permanent dialogue between the feminine ethos, the controversial character of the Baroque and the always oscillating essence of the canon. We will show, that, during the last centuries, the works of some famous female writers, such as Sóror Maria do Céu, Sóror Violante do Céu and Sóror Madalena da Glória, or of other female authors who remained in the shadows, have been differently and unequally absorbed by literary critics and historians and by great anthologists. Their writings have not ceased to be represented as preferential places of dispute, of the uninterrupted dialogue between silence and affirmation, between center and margin, which generally regulates the literary canon.

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