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Representations of gender in the writings of St. Francis Xavier: an interdisciplinary approach

dc.contributor.authorSantos, Clara
dc.date.accessioned2012-09-10T09:16:02Z
dc.date.available2012-09-10T09:16:02Z
dc.date.issued2009
dc.description.abstractFrancis Xavier’s Letters and Writings are eloquent narratives of a journey that absorbed the Saint’s entire life. His experiences and idiosyncrasies, values and categorizations are presented in a clear literate discourse. The missionary is rarely neutral in his opinions as he sustains his unmistakable and omnipresent objective: the conversion of peoples and the expansion of the Society of Jesus. Parallel with this objective, the reader is introduced to the individuals that Xavier meets or that he summons in his epistolary discourse. Letters and Writings presents us with a structured narrative peopled by all those who are subject to and objects of Xavier’s apostolic mission, by helpful and unhelpful persons of influence, and by leading and secondary actors. What is then the position of women, in the collective sense as well as in the individual sense, in the travels and goals that are the centre of Xavier’s Letters and Writings? What is the role of women, that secondary and suppressed term in the man/woman binomial, a dichotomy similar to the civilized/savage and European/native binomials that punctuate Xavier’s narratives and the historic context of his letters? Women are not absent from his writings, but it would be naïve to argue in favour of the author’s misogyny as much as of his “profound knowledge of the female heart”, to quote from Paulo Durão in "Women in the Letters of Saint Francis Xavier" (1952), the only paper on this subject published so far. We denote four great categories of women in the Letters and Writings: European Women, Converted Women, Women Who Profess another Religion, and Women as the Agents and Objects of Sin, the latter of which traverses the other three categories. They all depend on the context, circumstances and judgements of value that the author chooses to highlight and articulate.por
dc.identifier.doi10.18848/1833-1882/CGP/v02i04/52366pt_PT
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/655
dc.language.isoengpor
dc.subjectSinpor
dc.subjectOrientpor
dc.subjectRepresentationpor
dc.subjectGenderpor
dc.subjectXavierpor
dc.subjectReligionpor
dc.subjectConversionpor
dc.subjectEscritospor
dc.subjectCartaspor
dc.subjectLetterspor
dc.titleRepresentations of gender in the writings of St. Francis Xavier: an interdisciplinary approachpor
dc.typejournal article
dspace.entity.typePublication
oaire.citation.endPage448por
oaire.citation.startPage441por
oaire.citation.titleThe International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciencespor
oaire.citation.volumeVolume 2, Issue 4por
person.familyNameLaranjeira Sarmento e Santos
person.givenNameClara Maria
person.identifierhttps://scholar.google.pt/cita
person.identifier.ciencia-idD418-D6F8-7D49
person.identifier.orcid0000-0001-7010-2908
rcaap.rightsclosedAccesspor
rcaap.typearticlepor
relation.isAuthorOfPublication04dc91bb-3a04-49c4-b618-99880b767602
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery04dc91bb-3a04-49c4-b618-99880b767602

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