Concertando el alma: La reticentia en el Libro de la vida de Santa Teresa de Jesús

St. Teresa writes her Life to defend her controversial practice of recollection promoted by Francisco de Osuna and other innovators of Renaissance Catholic faith. Since Fray Luis de Leon, the first editor of Vida in 1588, critics have debated if and how Teresa employed rhetorical tropes and topics to capture the goodwill of her readers or if she wrote in a simple, rustic manner as she often claimed. This article demonstrates how Teresa consciously organizes her writing with different types of rhetorical reticentia to disguise, cover up, and alter what she says or does not say in Life . In this way, she avoids the suspicion of the Inquisition; engages her readers, and manages to say much more than what would have been otherwise possible.