Performing (Female) Masculinity in the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World: An Analysis of the Mujer Varonil in Gender and Genre

The following dissertation on the trope of the mujer varonil employs bibliographical research in literary criticism and historiography to identify and describe socio-historic attitudes about gender. In particular, this dissertation examines gender as communicated by texts that use the mujer varonil, or "masculine woman", characterization to either praise or vilify exceptional female subjects in ways that highlight normative limits for masculine and feminine gender expression. Four texts are examined: a male author writes each and each represents a literary genre that was significant in early modern Spain and Spanish America. These genres are the hagiography, the relacion, the inquisition proceeding, and the comedia. These texts communicate important attitudes about gender-bending that are associated with cultural limits for gender expression, which inform boundaries that demarcate three normative gender roles: male, female and third gender.;The selected texts are didactic because they communicate limits for gender-bending by exceptional females that ultimately reinforce an androcentric social structure and its associated normative gender roles. These texts use the mujer varonil trope to portray their subjects in ways that communicate the limits for female agency. Simultaneously, the texts allow for some agency by praising certain forms of transition to a male identity by people identified as female at birth. The texts and genres explored in this dissertation thus raise important questions about socio-historic limits for normative gender expression in early modern Spain and Spanish America while also providing answers that resolve the ambiguities that they explore. They do this in ways that support the imperial project and the social stability necessary for its success.