Abstract

RIOS ESPINOSA, María Cristina. Control Mechanisms in Female Conventual Life in New Spain. En-clav. pen [online]. 2021, vol.15, n.30, e408.  Epub Sep 06, 2021. ISSN 2594-1100.  https://doi.org/10.46530/ecdp.v0i30.408.

This research focuses on the various means of control in the lives of women conventual life in New Spain, particularly the one dealing with writing. To this end, we examine a sermon found in the Conventual Collection of the document archives at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City. In his Avisos espirituales que dio a sus hijas la seráfica doctora Santa Teresa de Jesús [Spiritual advice seraphic doctor St. Teresa of Avila gave to her daughters],2 the devout and illustrious Don Joseph Xavier Rodríguez de Arellano of Burgos (1764-1791), Archbishop of Burgos of His Majesty’s Council explains through speeches and dedicates the sermon to the venerable prelates and nuns of affiliated monasteries, Volume II, published in Burgos in 1780. In analyzing this sermon, we focus on the pastoral regulations on the correct use of poetry written by nuns, for which Rodríguez de Arellano uses two comparative writing models: that of St Teresa of Avila, the founder of the Order of Discalced Carmelites in the 16th century, and that of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a Novo-Hispanic Hieronymite nun of the 17th century. The aim is to determine the functions of writing and its guidelines established by pastoral authorities in spiritual treatises, devotional maxims and sermons for nuns so as to build ideals of virtuous behavior. Likewise, an analysis is made of the precedents on the role of 17th century Novo-Hispanic nuns’ writing as ordered by confessors as a means to exert control and oversight of their lives inside convents, as different forms of interiorized discipline.

Keywords : neuma-biopolitics; technologies of the internal; spiritual treatises; ascetical female life; convent writing.

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