Arcangela Tarabotti’s Heaven, Hell, and the Emotions of Forced Monachisation

Abstract

This article examines the emotional impact of forced monachisation through the writing of Arcangela Tarabotti, a seventeenth-century Venetian nun and outspoken critic of the common practice. Analysing Convent Paradise, Convent Hell, and Paternal Tyranny through the lens of Mark Seymour’s ‘emotional arena’ as well as William Reddy’s ‘emotional regime’ and ‘refuge’, it explores the divergent affective experiences of willing and unwilling nuns. It also introduces a new dimension to existing emotions theories: Tarabotti’s linkage of familial and conventual disorder. This article therefore reveals how involuntary enclosure shaped women’s capacity to belong within the emotional and social world of the cloister.