Escribiendo desde el margen de la colonia. La autobiografía de Sor Catalina de Jesús Herrera

The spiritual autobiography of Catalina de Jesús Herrera, a Spanish-American cloistered nun, was written in 1758. This dissertation is a much-needed base study of that text. I revise traditional readings of spiritual autobiographies, opening up the text to economic, political, and social notions of the time. I contend, based on the work of authors such as Josefina Muriel, Asunción Lavrin and Jenny Londoño, that these kinds of texts, although written by cloistered nuns, allow us to see broader issues in society and not simply those of women within the convent. I address the issue of margin in colonial studies, commonly understood as those areas or individuals that are geographically, racially and/or economically on the fringes of centers that hold political and economical power. Spain and Spaniards were the center in the colonial situation of Spanish America, and the indigenous peoples of the New World became the margins. I broaden this concept to include colonial subjects who lived on the fringes of colonial centers within the colonized territories regardless of their origin, whether indigenous, Spaniard or, in the case of Catalina de Jesús Herrera,  Criollo . This revises the over simplified dichotomy of the colonizer/colonized in colonial situations. Finally, I include a limited analysis of her discourse and her construction of an authoritative voice in text within the context of the male hierarchy of the Spanish Catholic Church.