To Keep the House and Shut One's Mouth

Throughout this recent treatise, published in Madrid, Spain in 2015 (Siruela), the great Spanish writer Clara Janés (poet, essayist, novelist) and esteemed member of the elite Spanish Royal Academy (2015), accompanies us on a journey throughout different cultures and moments of time, from early years up to the present period, focusing on relatively unknown but significant writings by women. 

In a series of essays published here, she highlights unstudied literary texts written by women beginning with the first feminine poetic voice, the Akkadian High Priestess Enheduanna, and then moving on to Sappho and female Greek and Roman writers, and subsequently to Arab-Andalusian, Medieval and Renaissance, and Castilian early women writers, finishing up with works of contemporary Afghan Women poets. 

This extraordinary text presents a significant achievement for Janés, for she establishes the importance of women writers throughout history, many of their texts completely unstudied but extremely valuable. Janés' work becomes a vehicle by which to diffuse this knowledge and also a means to propose a contemporary approach to analysis that helps us return to the past and incorporate it into present and future moments. In doing so, Janés opens up new paths of research and interpretation regarding women's writing and feminism, as she establishes a valid literary-historical perspective for the times. In her text she invites us to look back and examine ancient texts with new eyes and at the same time to discover other more recent ones that are equally valuable and pleasurable.