Unlike many women of her era, she embarked on a voyage of self-definition that would propel her beyond the limits of the dominant culture of seventeenth-century Spain and to “where the world ends,” colonial Peru. Humans have long understood that edges-whether they be of countries, between the spiritual and the secular, and indeed between categories of classification and study-are, in 1 Hopkins, Renaissance Drama on the Edge, 106.Ĭatalina de Erauso was born in 1585 to a Basque noble family who deposited her in a convent when she was four. 1 This fluctuation, however, was not confined merely to political boundaries. In the early modern period, political borders were often in flux, and people were 'strongly aware of the potentially shifting, unstable nature of borders, which are arbitrary and political'. Erauso's Basque origin emerges as a key element for the understanding of her life, and her story becomes a privileged documentation of the Basque experience in America in the early modern era.

In Erauso, binary oppositions such as male/female, saint/sinner, Basque/ Spaniard seem to be subsumed.

Both the person and the text are characterized by their defying of categorization. Her autobiography replicates the fluidity of her gender assignment, showing elements from different religious and secular writings. Erauso fled from a convent at age fifteen from then on, she dressed as a man and lived a life of travel, violence, and adventure. This chapter discusses recent scholarship on Catalina de Erauso-'the Lieutenant Nun'-one of the more controversial figures of the early seventeenth century. Keywords: Gender translating issues transvestite Basque anachronisms I hope to prove that the English translation veers more towards sensationalism than to a deep and abiding respect for the nun’s misfortunes. To back my claims, I use Catalina's original text and contrast it with subsequent editions. I will also examine gender attitudes in the Renaissance, and later periods, and the role of the Church in curtailing women from attaining intellectual maturity. In my paper I will argue that the translation of the Stepto’s translation reflects a cultural bias and shows little effort at researching the nun's deeds and words. In 1996, an English translation of her memoirs was published. Unfortunately, the original manuscript was lost and the text which has survived is a copy, probably penned by an amanuensis. Dressed as a man for almost two decades, she travelled to the Colonies to test her luck in the army, where she made the grade of ensign. Catalina de Erauso was a Spanish nun-turned soldier-who lived in 17th century Spain.

Memoir of a basque lieutenant nun