What is it about?
Extramuros (Premio Nacional de Literatura, 1978) by Jesús Fernández Santos (Madrid, 1926 – Madrid, 1988) is a contemporary novel written with a first person confessional tone that thoughtfully examines and describes the circumstantial nature of sanctity, sexuality and power. Set in a very impoverished cloistered convent in 16th-century Spain, the novel recounts the romantic and intimate relationship between two nuns. The main plot begins with the miracle of the wounds of Christ that appear, by the divine grace of a knife, on the hands of one of the sisters; a transgression that attracts devotees and donations from outside the walls of the convent. In this religious setting, the female body is thus shaped as a locus of power and secular authority –through a series of technologies of resistance such as the imagination itself and performance–, highlighting its multiple possibilities of re-appropriation and re-signification.
Featured Image
Perspectives
Starting from a feminist and queer theoretical framework, this paper aims to examine two fundamental aspects of the novel Extramuros: on the one hand, the narrative construction of eroticism and spirituality mediated by the confessional tone of the heterodox female narrator and, on the other hand, the fictional representation of the hidden violence, repressed sexuality and growing theological mysticism that characterises the period portrayed.
Ana Rita Gonçalves Soares
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Incarnating Sanctity: Forms of Female Spirituality in Contemporary Religious Fiction, August 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004738683_013.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
