‘¡No encubras, Silva, tu gloria!’: Revealing the Lyric Subject

The startling details of the life story of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, in particular the missionary work she undertook in London between 1605 and her death in 1614, has attracted much of the recent critical attention to which she has been subjected. The reconstruction of this resolute figure has understandably intrigued historians and feminist scholars alike, and has been facilitated by a relative abundance of extant writings. During the period Carvajal spent in England she corresponded with prominent members of the Spanish elite, among them Rodrigo de Calderón, page to King Philip III’s court favourite, Francisco Sandoval y Rojas, Duke of Lerma. The recent translation of her writings by Anne Cruz reflects the editor’s desire to make her work known beyond the Spanish-speaking world, and to restore a sense of her ‘dignity, vivacity and strength’. Glyn Redworth’s biography of Luisa de Carvajal, foregrounds her singularity and her adept negotiation of societal constraints; while Carvajal roundly denied that her missionary endeavours sprang from any desire for worldly fame, the recent resurgence of interest in her life and work mirrors an early interest by contemporary biographers. Carvajal produced a small body of verse in which pastoral is a sustained presence. Carvajal’s ‘Silva’ appears alongside Christ in rustic guise, together with fleeting references to other individuals from her own life; for example a companion, Inés, appears as Nise, witness to the divine revelation the verse depicts. Together with this poetic corpus and her copious correspondence, Carvajal also produced an abundance of autobiographical writings. It is now widely acknowledged that the genre of female spiritual autobiography was at once facilitated and impeded by the requirement to write, as Baranda Leturio and Marín Pina have recently indicated: