“The Most Virile of Monks”: Gender (and) Transformation in the Mystical Writings of Teresa of Ávila.

This paper traces the patterns of gendering in the writings of the Castilian mystic St. Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582). Teresa’s four mystical texts (her Libro de su Vida, Camino de Perfección, Meditaciones sobre los Cantares, and Las Moradas del Castillo Interior) not only offer contradictory commentaries upon questions of femininity and masculinity but speak of her soul’s experience of mystical transformation in(to) the seemingly male Divine. Drawing upon Hélène Cixous’s notion of écriture féminine, this article traces two interwoven layers within Teresa’s gender dynamics: (1) patterns of gender non-conformity in her teaching and experience, and (2) the gendered implications of her transformation in(to) the Divine. Attending to the queer and transgender resonances of her experience, the article follows the weaves of Teresa’s gender continuum performance as she constructs a hyper-feminine voice to defend women whilst simultaneously lamenting her own womanliness, proclaiming her masculinity, and calling upon her daughters to follow her model. This gender continuum performance is then situated within the function of writing within Teresa’s mystical transformation, considering the implications for a gendered voice produced through a soul that is irrevocably intertwined with the male Divine. By bringing these two layers into dialogue, I argue that Teresa presents not only an inherently critical attitude towards gender, but that her writings weave a tangled web of gender multiplicity which reflects that which she encounters in the Divine.