Antonio/ Catalina de Erauso (1592-1650): a vida, o escrito, a hibridade e o fantasma

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze the historical trajectory and written production attributed to Antonio/ Catalina de Erauso (1592-1650), known as the Monja Alférez, from the articulation between life and text, investigates their heritages before embarking and their participation in the Andean world, interweaving their grammatical constructions with the Spanish colonial context. The critical editions of Erauso’s writing from 1829 and 1992 take the place of sources, which handle together with an articulation between historiography, literary theory and gender studies to think about his adventures in Latin America and mobilize concepts such as masculinity, identity and memory. It starts from the idea that his text can’t be understood as a conventional autobiography, but as a hybrid text, situated at the intersection between soldiers chronicles, picaresque novels and autobiographies, in which the lived experience is narrated from strategies of survival and negotiation with the imperial order and gender. It is also maintained that the figure of Erauso, constitutes a point of instability that disturbs fixed categories, but at the same time transits through its gaps and uses its mechanics in your favor. Thus, the dissertation demonstrates that its narrative operates as a negotiation space between gender norms, imperial projects and forms of individual agency, which becomes fertile ground for its own construction as La Monja Alferes, revealing a figure formed in a relational and strategic way. It is also evident that its ghost crosses different temporalities, its history is revisited in different contexts, by specific historical, literary, political and artistic discourses, confirming its power as a destabilizing symbol.