Abstract
This article examines the multiple ways in which meaning is made in female spiritual autobiography by studying a specific text, the Vida by the Colombian Poor Clare nun Mother Gerónima del Espíritu Santo, neé Jerónima Nava y Saavedra (1669–1727). First, it analyzes this life story as a socially constructed assemblage of written words that have been shown by critics to create agency (dominant reading). Then, the article discusses how the materiality of its N1 manuscript also makes meaning and creates agency (non-dominant reading). Using the work of Van Leeuwen, Björkvall, and Karlsson, the study offers valuable insight into the meaning-making of Early Modern script in New Granada, an area that until now has not been placed under this particular branch of semiotic analysis. It also studies how the social practices surrounding the penitent/confessor relationship in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the exigencies of reading and editing today are strong forces in shaping manuscript material into meaning. The article concludes that the materiality of the N1 Vida documents the shades and hues of agency that the language of the manuscript alone cannot.
References
Archivo General de la Nación (AGN; Bogotá). Fondo Conventos, Tomo 63, f. 111r–112v.Search in Google Scholar
Berenbeim, Jessica.2010. Script after print: Juan de Yciar and the art of writing. Word and Image26(3). 231–243.10.1080/02666280903403276Search in Google Scholar
Bilinkoff, Jodi.2005. Related lives: Confessors and their female penitents, 1450–1750. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.10.7591/9781501721007Search in Google Scholar
Bjorkvall, Anders & Anna-MalinKarlsson.2011. The materiality of discourses and the semiotics of materials: A social perspective on the meaning potentials of written texts and furniture. Semiotica187(1/4). 141–165.10.1515/semi.2011.068Search in Google Scholar
Borja, Jaime.2003. El cuerpo y la mística. Las representaciones del cuerpo barroco neogranadino en el siglo XVII. Bogotá: Museo Iglesia Santa Clara/Ministerio de Cultura.Search in Google Scholar
Borja, Jaime.2010. Voces autobiográficas en las biografías del siglo XVIII. Espiritualidad conventual en la Nueva Granada. In Carmen ElisaAcosta & CarolinaAlzate (eds.), Relatos Autobiográficos y otras formas del yo, 159–190. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores, Universidad de los Andes.Search in Google Scholar
de Grazia, Margareta & PeterStallybrass.1993. The materiality of the Shakespearean text. Shakespeare Quarterly44(3). 255–283.10.2307/2871419Search in Google Scholar
ElZafar, RuthAnthony.1994. Rapture encaged: The suppression of the feminine in Western culture. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel.1993. About the beginnings of the hermeneutics of the self: Two lectures at Dartmouth. Political Theory21(2). 198–227.10.1177/0090591793021002004Search in Google Scholar
Franco, Jean.1989. Plotting women: Gender and representation in Mexico. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/fran92330Search in Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart.1980. Encoding/decoding. In Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed.), Culture, media, language, 128–138. London: Hutchinson.Search in Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart.1997Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage & Open University.Search in Google Scholar
Hulme, Peter.1987. Colonial encounters: Europe and the native Caribbean (1492–1797). New York: Methuen.Search in Google Scholar
Ibsen, Kristine.1999. Women’s spiritual autobiography in colonial Spanish America. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.Search in Google Scholar
Janiga-Perkins, Constance.2011. Editing the spiritual autobiography of Gerónima Nava y Saavedra: The female search for wholeness at the end of the twentieth century. Letras Femeninas37(2). 117–138.Search in Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther.2001. Sociolinguistics and social semiotics. In PaulCobley (ed.), The Routledge companion to semiotics and linguistics, 66–82. New York & London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Mackey, Nathaniel.1993. Discrepant engagement: Dissonance, cross-culturality, and experimental writing. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Search in Google Scholar
ManuscriptMiscellany.2005. Folger Institute. http://www.folger.edu/html/folger_institute/mm/Glossary.html (accessed 18 January 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Morgan, Ronald J.2002. Spanish American saints and the rhetoric of identity 1600–1810. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Search in Google Scholar
Myers, Kathleen Ann. 2003. Neither saints nor sinners: Writing the lives of women in Spanish America. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195157239.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Myers, Kathleen Ann & AmandaPowell. 1999. A wild country out in the garden: The spiritual journals of a colonial Mexican nun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Nava y Saavedra, Jerónima. Vida. Manuscritos. Índice 17 Libro 14. Biblioteca Nacional, Sección Libros Raros, Bogotá, Colombia. [References to this manuscript will be designated N1.]Search in Google Scholar
Osorio, Betty.2000–2001. La escritura religiosa de Jerónima Nava y Saavedra: juego entre afirmación y obediencia. Cuadernos de Literatura6(12). 71–80.Search in Google Scholar
Palomino, Delia.1989. Manuscritos: Catálogos de la Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, vol. 1. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura.Search in Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew.2012. The new conquest history. History Compass10(2). 151–160.10.1111/j.1478-0542.2011.00822.xSearch in Google Scholar
Robledo, Ángela Inés.1994. Jerónima Nava y Saavedra (1669–1727) Autobiografía de una monja venerable. Cali: Colección Literatura Ediciones Universidad del Valle.Search in Google Scholar
Robledo, Ángela Inés.2000. La autobiografía de Jerónima Nava y Saavedra: historia de un yo fragmentado. Cuadernos de Literatura6(12). 81–89.Search in Google Scholar
Robledo, Ángela Inés. 2010. Jerónima Nava y Saavedra (1669–1727) Autobiografía de una monja venerable. http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/jeronima-nava-y-saavedra-1669-1727-autobiografia-de-una-monja-venerable/ (accessed 18 January 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Sidonie & JuliaWatson.2001. Reading autobiography: A guide for interpreting life narratives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.10.5749/minnesota/9780816669851.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Toquica, Constanza.2003. Las visiones de Jerónima: encarnados de amor místico. Las representaciones del cuerpo barroco neogranadino en el siglo XVII. Bogotá: Museo Iglesia Santa Clara/Ministerio de Cultura.Search in Google Scholar
Terdiman, Richard.1989. The mnemonics of Musset’s Confession. Representations26. 26–48.10.2307/2928522Search in Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Theo.2005. Introducing social semiotics. New York & London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203647028Search in Google Scholar
Weber, Alison.1985. The paradoxes of humility: Santa Teresa’s Libro de la Vida as double bind. Journal of Hispanic Philology9. 211–230.Search in Google Scholar
Werstine, Paul.1990. Narratives about printed Shakespeare texts: “Foul papers” and “bad” quartos. Shakespeare Quarterly41. 65–86.10.2307/2870802Search in Google Scholar
Zimmerman, T. C. Price. 1971. Confessions and autobiography in the early Renaissance. In A.Molho & J. A.Tedeschi (eds.), Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, 119–140. Florence: Sansoni Editore.Search in Google Scholar
©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton