Josefa De Los Dolores Peña Y Lillo Barbosa
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Sister () Josefa de los Dolores Peña y Lillo Barbosa, OP (also known as sor Josefa de los Dolores or sor Dolores Peña y Lillo, 12 March 1739 – 29 August 1823) was a Dominican
nun A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service and contemplation, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 5 ...
and a self-taught writer of the Chilean Colonial period ascribed to Catholic confessional discourse produced by Indian nuns in South American cloisters during the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. She cultivated the epistolary genre, but also rarely wrote poetry. She entered the religious life in 1751 against her parents' wishes, and began her literary production in 1763 probably by own choice. She is considered today "the best existing sources for the study of the Spanish language that was spoken during the Chilean Colonial period" and the most reliable source for
diachronic linguistics Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical li ...
. Despite her humble origins, she achieved great influence in the political world of the nascent Republican Chile, especially within
government ministers A minister is a politician who heads a ministry, making and implementing decisions on policies in conjunction with the other ministers. In some jurisdictions the head of government is also a minister and is designated the ' prime minister', ' p ...
during the Independence, who consulted her regularly. Alongside the autobiography of Ursula Suarez and collections of poems by Juana López and Tadea de San Joaquín, the epistolary production of Sister Josefa is included today within the first female literary records in Chile that identify and express themselves "in the literate territory of the city and culture of eighteenth-century Chilean colonial society". This is not to say that during that period there were no more written texts by nuns, but probably many of them are gone by authors' request.


Biography

There are little biographical data available on Josefa de los Dolores, most of which are available in the monastery's records where she lived, some
hagiographic A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an wiktionary:adulatory, adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religi ...
publications, and her own confessional handwritten letters. She was born on 25 March 1739; and according to the clergyman and historian José Ignacio Eyzaguirre Portales, her parents were Ignacia Barbosa and Alonso Peña y Lillo, both of humble origin, who was sent her to "Beaterio Dominico de Santa Rosa de Lima"—latter named "Monasterio de Dominicas de Santa Rosa de Lima de Santiago de Chile"— aged seven, to pursue music studies. On 18 December 1751, aged 12, she decided to enter the convent as a
postulant A postulant (from , "to ask") was originally one who makes a request or demand; hence, a candidate. The use of the term is now generally restricted to those asking for admission into a Christian monastery or a religious order for the period precedi ...
without her parents' permission, made a vow of perpetual chastity at 15 and on 15 October 1756, she made her formal profession as a white veil nun under the tutelage of the Prioress Maria Antonia Wandin, thereby becoming a fully recognized member of the religious community. She lived in the monastery until her death in the first half of the 1820s: the historian Eyzaguirre in his 1850s "Historia eclesiástica, política y literaria de Chile, Tomo II" (Ecclesiastical, Political, and Literary History of Chile, Volume II) indicates that it was on 29 August 1823, while Raïssa Kordic, the editor of her work, indicates that she died on 27 August 1822, aged 83.


Literary work


Historical context

Nuns' writings in colonial convents were a common practice in South American
subcontinent A continent is any of several large geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria. A continent could be a single large landmass, a part of a very large landmass, as in the case of A ...
, not only because it allowed to reinforce
faith Faith is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept. In the context of religion, faith is " belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion". According to the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, faith has multiple definitions, inc ...
or because it was done "for confessional
mandate Mandate most often refers to: * League of Nations mandates, quasi-colonial territories established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, 28 June 1919 * Mandate (politics), the power granted by an electorate Mandate may also r ...
", but also because it allowed "to express some concerns or dissatisfactions against the lived reality" for including issues related to material and spiritual life that they had within the convent. In this context, literary works by nuns were framed and developed in Chilean convents and monasteries during the colonial period until the 19th century; these included spiritual letters, diaries, autobiographies and epistolaries. Highlighted in these genres Tadea de San Joaquín,
Úrsula Suárez Úrsula may refer to: * Úrsula (character), a protagonist of the 2006–07 Mexican sitcom ''Skimo'' * Úrsula (name), a Spanish feminine given name {{disambig ...
and Josefa de los Dolores, whose works became the best known of its kind in the South American region, along with those of Capuchin Sister Maria Jacinta from cloister of Our Lady of the Pillar in
Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...
, possibly dating back to the 1820s.


Characteristics of her work

Her literary output was based on a series of epistolary letters sent to her confessor Manuel José Álvarez López (1701–1773) of the
Society of Jesus The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 ...
—with whom the convent remained a close connection—probably in a period between 15 March 1763, and 7 March 1769, or such later date (as several letters contain no precise data). In 1923, the existence of these manuscripts was first mentioned by the historian
José Toribio Medina José Toribio Medina Zavala (; October 21, 1852 - December 11, 1930) was a Chilean bibliographer, prolific writer, and historian. He is renowned for his study of colonial literature in Chile, printing in Spanish America and large bibliographies s ...
in ''History. Letters of women in Chile, 1630–1885'' (), but without a
philological Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...
or linguistical point of view and with a short, imprecise descriptive character. Their rescue, analysis and publication started in the 2000s thanks to funding from the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research,
CONICYT CONICYT is a Chilean government agency responsible for coordinating, promoting and aiding scientific research in the country. The name is an acronym of ''Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica'' meaning "National Commi ...
.


Genre

According to its
literary technique A narrative technique (also, in fiction, a fictional device) is any of several storytelling methods the creator of a narrative, story uses, thus effectively relaying information to the audience or making the story more complete, complex, or engag ...
,
tone Tone may refer to: Visual arts and color-related * Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory * Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color * Toning (coin), color change in coins * ...
, content or length, her literary work is considered part of the epistolary genre, and constitutes "the only so far known in Chile, of significant size, that remains whole", while the
subgenre Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
is the letter. Several investigators "undearscore the letter's value as a 'technique' of confession, guided self-analysis, self-knowledge, self-development, and management of the cloistered nuns' inner life". In the case of Sister Josefa de los Dolores, such writings have enabled to know their discursive production, and have allowed to include her in the group of the first female literates in Chile.


Corpus

The letters were discovered in the archives of the monastery by the researcher and theorist Raïssa Kordic, who rescued over a hundred
epistles An epistle (; ) is a writing directed or sent to a person or group of people, usually an elegant and formal didactic letter. The epistle genre of letter-writing was common in ancient Egypt as part of the scribal-school writing curriculum. The ...
"written in tiny italics, and developed in booklets of four to eight pages" that probably do not constitute all of her written work. Such correspondence was held by the Jesuit priest Manuel Álvarez until his departure from Chile in unspecified date due to the
expulsion of the Jesuits The suppression of the Society of Jesus was the removal of all members of the Jesuits from most of Western Europe and their respective colonies beginning in 1759 along with the abolition of the order by the Holy See in 1773; the papacy acceded ...
; those missives passed into the hands of the Bishop and his successors until 1861, when the Prioress of the time requested them: their content was partially censured and then were returned to the monastery. In the early 2000s, an academic group from the
University of Chile The University of Chile () is a public university, public research university in Santiago, Chile. It was founded on November 19, 1842, and inaugurated on September 17, 1843.
began a rescue process. Then in 2008, an edition containing 65 letters was published under the title of the "Epistolary of Sister Dolores Peña y Lillo (Chile, 1763–1769)" () that included a critical analysis.


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pena y Lillo, Josefa de los Dolores 1739 births 1823 deaths Catholic poets Chilean women poets 18th-century Chilean women writers Chilean Roman Catholic religious sisters and nuns 18th-century Chilean writers Chilean Dominicans Chilean non-fiction writers Chilean Roman Catholic writers