Resources

The Ngram Viewer (The n-graphics display) developed by Google is a bibliometric tool very useful at the moment for making a heuristic study of bibliographic sources or even of old forms. This is part of the digital universe developed for Google Books, which unfortunately has not properly cataloged or labeled the old prints: therefore it is hard to find some of these publications in cyberspace.

With this tool you can find books since the XVI century to date in several languages, including Spanish and Latin. Nonetheless, the specialized terminology, presented in thesaurus or other publications annexed, is absent. If you look for “Feminine writing between the year 1500 and 1700” you will not find any result. Instead, you can use the word “monastery” as a keyword.

There will appear a concentration of years in which this word was included in the publications. Only you should select the period shown at the end of the screen to obtain a list of the printings. If you do a search with more than one keyword you will obtain better results:

When adding the “religious” voice, the search will yield better results, perhaps closer to the expectations of those who thought of feminine writing associated with convents or monasteries.