Double Exemplarity of Women in Mexican Religious Discourses of the 17th Century

Abstract

The presence of women in religious discourses is a well-studied issue, although more important emphasis has been placed on the powerful misogynistic topics that guide their representation, and less on their positive assessments. This article presents the re­sults of a brief rhetorical study of female representations in Mexican Colonial religious discourses, from one of the places of discourse where it is possible to observe more clearly its ideological dimension: the argumentatio, the place of proofs. Quintiliano had estab­lished three ways in which the exemplary comparison could take place in the discourse: in relation of similarity to the cause, in relation of dissimilarity, or the opposite example; most of the religious misogynistic topics —whose observation has been dominant in the studies in this regard— correspond technically to exemplary uses contrary to their cause, but this does not includes all the possibilities of female representation because there is a lack of important series of representations used as straight or similar examples, which no longer show the vices of women but their desirable virtues and social utility. In any case, the spaces for feminine virtue that we find in similar examples remain asphyxiating and unfair to women, although its observation allows to complete the framework of possibili­ties of female representation in religious discourses, and also allows to determine another way of rhetorical realization of these representations.