Colonial angels : narratives of gender and spirituality in Mexico, 1580-1750

Bibliographic Information

Colonial angels : narratives of gender and spirituality in Mexico, 1580-1750

Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela

University of Texas Press, 2000

  • : pbk

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Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

ISBN 9780292777477

Description

Spain's attempt to establish a 'New Spain' in Mexico never fully succeeded, for Spanish institutions and cultural practices inevitably mutated as they came in contact with indigenous American outlooks and ways of life. This original, interdisciplinary book explores how writing by and about colonial religious women participated in this transformation, as it illuminates the role that gender played in imposing the Spanish empire in Mexico. The author argues that the New World context necessitated the creation of a new kind of writing. Drawing on previously unpublished writings by and about nuns in the convents of Mexico City, she investigates such topics as the relationship between hagiography and travel narratives, male visions of the feminine that emerge from the reworking of a nun's letters to her confessor into a hagiography, the discourse surrounding a convent's trial for heresy by the Inquisition, and the reports of Spanish priests who ministered to noble Indian women.This research rounds out colonial Mexican history by revealing how tensions between Spain and its colonies played out in the local, daily lives of women. Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela is a Research Fellow in Hispanic Studies at King's College, Cambridge.
Volume

: pbk ISBN 9780292777484

Description

Spain's attempt to establish a "New Spain" in Mexico never fully succeeded, for Spanish institutions and cultural practices inevitably mutated as they came in contact with indigenous American outlooks and ways of life. This original, interdisciplinary book explores how writing by and about colonial religious women participated in this transformation, as it illuminates the role that gender played in imposing the Spanish empire in Mexico. The author argues that the New World context necessitated the creation of a new kind of writing. Drawing on previously unpublished writings by and about nuns in the convents of Mexico City, she investigates such topics as the relationship between hagiography and travel narratives, male visions of the feminine that emerge from the reworking of a nun's letters to her confessor into a hagiography, the discourse surrounding a convent's trial for heresy by the Inquisition, and the reports of Spanish priests who ministered to noble Indian women. This research rounds out colonial Mexican history by revealing how tensions between Spain and its colonies played out in the local, daily lives of women.

Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Moving Stories: New Spanish Hagiographies and Their Relation to Travel Narrative Chapter 2. Chronicles of a Colonial Cloister: The Convent of San Jose and the Mexican Carmelites Chapter 3. From the Confessional to the Altar: Epistolary and Hagiographic Forms Chapter 4. The Exemplary Cloister on Trial: San Jose in the Inquisition Chapter 5. Cacique Nuns: From Saints' Lives to Indian Lives Afterword Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Notes Bibliography Index

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