The assignment for your second paper is to examine Catalina de Erauso’s life after she leaves the convent. You are to analyze it in terms of one of the three themes discussed here: how Erauso embraced contradictions (faith/violence, patriotism/lawlessness, self-awareness/detachment); how her life was shaped by religious reform and exploration; or how she constructed a masculine persona. Craft a thesis and support it with abundant evidence from the memoir. Include secondary sources for context where appropriate. Do not consult or include any reading or lecture material that was not assigned in class.

Five double-spaced pages. No outside sources should be included in the essay.

Make sure you refer to the memoir as a memoir, a specific genre. It is not a novel.

Catalina de Erauso

Your primary source — and the text you will analyze for your second unit paper — this time is a memoir by a woman named Catalina de Erauso. She titled her memoir Lieutenant Nun, a deliberate contradiction (members of the army and nuns were separate groups). You will see many contradictions in this memoir, including the commingling of religious faith with violence, patriotism with lawlessness, and self-awareness with emotional detachment.

In other words, a wholly early modern text! In our modern world, we tend to categorize things in separate boxes. In the early modern world, people’s understanding of nature, themselves, the universe, the spiritual world — everything was flexible and mysterious. 

The early modern sensibility we witness in Erauso’s memoir is one useful aspect of it. A second is that it illuminates two important and connected themes, the subjects of unit 2: religious reformations and exploration. Finally, because Erauso experienced life as a nun and as a conquistador, we see her embody very specific forms of 17th-century femininity and masculinity, consciously perform masculinity (sometimes taking extreme measures), and forging an identity that makes room for both.

The assignment for your second paper is to analyze her life in terms of one of the three themes above: how she embraced contradictions (faith/violence, patriotism/lawlessness, self-awareness/detachment); how her life was shaped by religious reform and exploration; or how she constructed a masculine persona. Craft a thesis and support it with abundant evidence from the memoir. Include secondary sources for context where appropriate. Do not consult or include any reading or lecture material that was not assigned in class.