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  • The Life of Catalina de Erauso, the Lieutenant Nun. An Early Modern Autobiography by Pérez-Villanueva, Sonia
  • Benito Quintana (bio)
Pérez-Villanueva, Sonia. The Life of Catalina de Erauso, the Lieutenant Nun. An Early Modern Autobiography. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2014. 225pp. ISBN 978-1611476606, $85.00.

The life, story, and history of the seventeenth-century Basque Ensign nun doña Catalina de Erauso, a young cross-dressing novice who defected her order to enlist and fight in Spain’s conquest and colonization wars in the Americas, as recorded in Vida y sucesos de la Monja Alférez, doña Catalina de [End Page 441] Erauso, has incited various scholarly debates—among them, the historical existence of doña Catalina, the authorship of the text, and the year of publication. Thus, this unique first-person autobiographical narrative has been variously classified, critiqued, and dismissed over the last several centuries. At the center of the debate lies whether Vida y sucesos can or should be classified as an autobiography.

Even taking into consideration the changing limits and definitions of what constitutes an autobiography, Vida y sucesos has more often than not been dismissed as one. Frequently overshadowing most attempts at a close analysis of her text are, clearly, the remarkable characteristics of her protagonist, Catalina de Erauso. Memoir, novel with autobiographical characteristics, and historical autobiography have been some of the more common perspectives from which Vida y sucesos has been studied, not including various attempts to use the text to support political agendas. Vida y sucesos, then, is yet to be scrutinized as the autobiography that it is, and Sonia Pérez-Villanueva’s text embarks on such a task.

Based on research conducted for her doctoral dissertation, Pérez-Villanueva presents a comparative study of Vida y sucesos and several early-modern Spanish narratives that are often claimed to be, or used as examples of, autobiographical works. Across several chapters (seven in total), carefully and methodically the author builds a clear set of comparisons to support the central claim contained in her research. That is, that the first-person singular narrative Vida y sucesos is a unique example of an early-modern autobiographical text which clearly displays the characteristics of the genre more evidently than other texts that traditionally have been used to define an autobiography. Overlooking many details, critics have often dismissed for various reasons the autobiographical nature of Vida y sucesos, and Pérez-Villanueva, then, sets her aim to demonstrate how Vida y sucesos is quite likely one of the earliest examples of an autobiography. Throughout, Pérez-Villanueva’s arguments and analysis are well researched and strongly supported by textual evidence.

Given the remarkable life lead by Catalina, the broad range of ways in which she narrates her life and adventures, and the presence of fictional elements, Vida y sucesos is evaluated in Pérez-Villanueva’s research against some of the more canonical texts and literary genres with which it shares key characteristics. First, Pérez-Villanueva explores the different links and divergences between the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) and its protagonist Lázaro, as well as with Justina in López de Úbeda’s La pícara Justina (1605). Then, by looking at Catalina’s life as an Ensign, the scholar compares Vida y sucesos to soldier narratives and chronicles as exemplified in Naufragios (1536, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca), and Discurso de mi vida (1630–1633, Alonso de [End Page 442] Contreras). In all cases, the author demonstrates that Vida y sucesos is a unique text that encompasses a hybridity of literary characteristics that transgress traditional definitions, just like Catalina does with her life. The fluidity of the text and the life of Catalina, then, defy rigid categorizations while at the same time placing Vida y sucesos in a unique position of being one of the few Spanish early-modern texts that exhibit strong autobiographical characteristics, unlike other works of the period that scholars have often labeled as autobiographical.

Readers approaching Pérez-Villanueva’s text with the expectation of acquiring a deep knowledge of Catalina’s life as reflected in her autobiography Vida y sucesos...

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