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Teresa, my love: an imagined life of the Saint of Avila

Julia Kristeva
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Julia Kristeva

Teresa, my love: an imagined life of the Saint of Avila

In 2015 it was five hundred years from the birth of saint Teresa of Avila, one of the main spiritual figures of catholic reformation in the 16th century. The novelized biography of Teresa of Avila is in the original a French novel (Thérèse, mon amour) by the famous Julia Kristeva, a philosopher, feminist, literary criticist, psychoanalyst and sociologist of Bulgarian descent, who lives in France. Kristeva, a convinced atheist, who sees religion as an illusion, but also as an important phase in the construction of the self, felt strongly overwhelmed by the image of saint Teresa of Avila that she formed through her work and operation. Kristeva’s novel firmly sticks to Teresa’s words and simultaneously interprets both the feelings of the mysticism as well as of her personality. For Teresa it was typical that she despite distinctly unusual experience kept a strong sense of humanity and compassion as well as a strong touch with her own circumstances and at the same time with outer reality that she reformed and significantly actively influenced. (KKH)

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