Summary

This article attempts to make known the Epistolary, up to now inedited, of Sister Josefa de los Dolores Peña y Lillo, Cnun from the XVIIIth century. Her text constituted by sixty-five letters, addressed to her father confessor, the Jesuit Manuel Álvarez. These letters are kept in the Archive of the Dominican Monastery of Santa Rosa de Lima in Santiago, Chile. The letters seem a manifestation of confessional discourse which the nuns had to write by order of their father confessors or ecclesiastical authorities. However, the Epistolary analysis reveals the transformations of that pattern, which Sor Josefa's writing constitutes itself in the support of a self-knowledge process and in a construction of woman identity, which is not recognized only in her religious vocation and virtues, but also in her knowing capacity, wisdom, and words management.