Alan Deyermond's pioneering work on medieval Hispanic women writers began in the 1970s with the medieval volume of his A Literary History of Spain:

This article combines the study of one woman writer with another of Deyermond's areas of expertise, his many studies of biblical allusions in Hispanomedieval literature (1989, 1996, 1999). That I here address, without apology, one of the major women writers of the Iberian Peninsula, Sor Isabel de Villena, is a fitting tribute to Deyermond's work. Interest in female religious authors has been growing since the 1970s and there is no need to justify examining the work of Sor Isabel de Villena, a noblewoman and religious writer, the illegitimate daughter of Enrique de Villena, who was related to Isabel la Católica through her father's family.