Literature by Women in the Spanish Antilles (1800–1950)

Abstract

This chapter reveals how women represent, write, speak, remember, and affirm themselves and make requests in the complex sphere of the early Latin American colonial world. It provides an overview of women cronistas in addition to some biographical information and proposes using the figure of the female cronista to reconsider other discursive forms and other traditions in which the importance of orality and family (in terms of narration and social bonds) takes center stage. The chapter highlights the analysis of the legal-inquisitorial discourse. It focuses on the rhetoric of the legal-notarial discourse, which can be found in reports, ordinances, petitions, and probanzas. The chapter refers to letter writing, a crucial discursive form with regard to women's writing; this includes letters drafted for both the public sphere as well as the family sphere. It describes different subject positions, positions configured around diverse rhetorics: a rhetoric of silence/silencing, a rhetoric of request and claim, and a rhetoric of deviation.