Modern critical works on the seventeenth-century Extremaduran author Catalina Clara Ramírez de Guzmán are sparse, with the exception of recent interest manifested by a small group of feminist scholars in the United States. Apart from intermittent mentions of her poetry, she is virtually unknown among British Hispanists. This thesis seeks to fill many existing gaps in knowledge on her by providing a broader critical assessment of her surviving poetry than has been available thus far, particularly by situating it and its author within their historical, literary and social contexts and drawing thematic and stylistic analogies with works by other authors, male and female. Part I will concentrate primarily on historical aspects. It will establish the reputation enjoyed by the poet in her day and review references to her work in modern critical literature. It will also provide a detailed reconstruction of the poet's family antecedents and discuss the evidence of a literary community in her home city during the period in which she was active as a writer. Part II will focus on the poetry itself, specifically a consideration of the thematic content of a broad representative selection of Ramírez de Guzmán's verses, which were not published until nearly two centuries after her death, and an examination of her interaction with the genres of occasional verse, verse portraiture and burlesque and satirical poetry, all of which will be discussed against the background of their respective traditions.

Modern critical works on the seventeenth-century Extremaduran author Catalina Clara Ramírez de Guzmán are sparse, with the exception of recent interest manifested by a small group of feminist scholars in the United States. Apart from intermittent mentions of her poetry, she is virtually unknown among British Hispanists. This thesis seeks to fill many existing gaps in knowledge on her by providing a broader critical assessment of her surviving poetry than has been available thus far, particularly by situating it and its author within their historical, literary and social contexts and drawing thematic and stylistic analogies with works by other authors, male and female. Part I will concentrate primarily on historical aspects. It will establish the reputation enjoyed by the poet in her day and review references to her work in modern critical literature. It will also provide a detailed reconstruction of the poet¿s family antecedents and discuss the evidence of a literary community in her home city during the period in which she was active as a writer. Part II will focus on the poetry itself, specifically a consideration of the thematic content of a broad representative selection of Ramírez de Guzmán¿s verses, which were not published until nearly two centuries after her death, and an examination of her interaction with the genres of occasional verse, verse portraiture and burlesque and satirical poetry, all of which will be discussed against the background of their respective traditions.