Abstract

LAVRIN, Asunción. An Attempt at Autobiography: the Truncated Aspiration of Sister María Ignacia del Niño Jesús. Relac. Estud. hist. soc. [online]. 2017, vol.38, n.150, pp.13-45. ISSN 2448-7554.  https://doi.org/10.24901/rehs.v38i150.293.

In the early 19th century, a nun at the Convent of Santa Clara de Querétaro sat down to write her autobiography. This little-known document, which only got as far as narrating the first seven years of her life, offers information on daily life in that provincial home, into which she was adopted by an indigenous family. Equally important is her attempt to reconstruct her childhood as if she had been predestined for the spiritual life that, she wrote, developed from earliest infancy. This nun's interest in representing herself as one of God's chosen at such an early age speaks to us of an attempt -both literary and spiritual- to reconfigure her person. Though the process was truncated by her death, her writings broaden our vision of the autobiographical genre.

Keywords : autobiography; childhood and infant care; visions; religious practices; spiritual life.

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