Colonial angels : narratives of gender and spirituality in Mexico, 1580-1750 / Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vera Tudela, Elisa Sampson, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mexican prose literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

Mexican prose literature.

Nuns' writings, Mexican--History and criticism.

Nuns' writings, Mexican.

Mexican prose literature--To 1800--History and criticism.

Literature and society--Mexico.

Literature and society.

Sex role--Political aspects--Mexico.

Sex role.

Women and literature--Mexico.

Women and literature.

Mexico--Church history.

Mexico.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (202 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin, Texas : University of Texas Press, 2002.

Summary:

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 Drawing on previously unpublished writings by and about nuns in the convents of Mexico City, she investigates such topics as the relationship between hagiography and travel narratives, male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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

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

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-292-74519-2

OCLC:

1280944486