ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a biographical and historical introduction to Maria Gertrudis Hore and her intellectual world in Cadiz. It also discusses a reading of a selection of her poetic writings to examine how Hore attempted to blend both her religious and poetic vocations as she explored Neoclassic poetic trends and Enlightenment thought from behind the cloister. Fellow writers, historians and literary critics took an interest in the life and work of Hore even during her lifetime. Morand agrees that, given the unusual nature of her religious profession while still married, it is logical that adultery was the reason for Hore becoming a nun. Marshall Brown traces the popularity of the Anacreontic form to the sixteenth-century humanist Henri Estienne's discovery of what he thought to be a collection of poems by the Greek poet Anacreon. Brown traces the evolution of Anacreontic poetry throughout Europe, identifying in it the "roots of Romantic lyric."
