“La plus sainte des amantes et la plus amante des saintes”: Theresa of Avila in France between 19th and 20th Century

Abstract

The article aims to study the importance of St. Teresa and her function as a character, between fiction and hagiography, in French literature between 19th and 20th century. Her presence answers to a not edifying model, but allows a description of the saint as an example of intelligence, of love and of virtue, a marginal literary model, but constant and present in all the literary genres. The Spanish saint shows itself as a very exploitable literary model and becomes in the second part of 20th century and at the beginning of 21st century an example of an engaged women able to swing between her religious vocation and the worldliness.