Words Made Flesh

Language, Body, and Conversion in Colonial Latin America

Caroline Egan

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English

University of Pennsylvania Press
26 November 2025

Historical & comparative linguistics; Literary studies: post-colonial literature; History of the Americas; Religious institutions & organisations

Series: The Early Modern Americas

Examines the role of the body in Indigenous-language religious texts from colonial Latin America

Words Made Flesh examines the role played by corporeality in a series of missionary linguistic and poetic projects from Brazil, Peru, and Mexico in early colonial Latin America. Caroline Egan analyzes how works produced in Indigenous languages for the purpose of evangelization were shaped by and, in turn, transformed native understandings of embodiment.

Egan follows the trajectories of specific understudied words in the colonial corpus, tracing their usage through grammars, dictionaries, doctrinal translations, and hymns in Tupi, Quechua, and Nahuatl. These words, however, might not be the first to come to mind when thinking about missionary projects in the colonial world—such as God and trinity, heaven and hell, angel and demon. Instead, the book examines words like the Tupi îuká (to kill) and manõ (to die); the Quechua sunqu (now often translated as ""heart""); and the Nahuatl chōca (to weep), cuīca (to sing), and ihuinti (to get drunk). With complementary emphases on regional specificity and comparative ramifications, Words Made Flesh argues that the changing fortunes of these words speak to significant areas of dialogue and debate between Indigenous communities and missionary writers in the late sixteenth century.

By: Caroline Egan
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781512828467
ISBN 10: 1512828467
Series: The Early Modern Americas
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 26 November 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Caroline Egan is Assistant Professor of Colonial Latin American Literature at Northwestern University.

Reviews for Words Made Flesh: Language, Body, and Conversion in Colonial Latin America

""Words Made Flesh is refreshing and ambitious in its scope, examining across five languages authors who represent different geographical and historical moments in the Iberian Americas. The book provides an innovative, exciting approach that contributes to a turn in literary studies toward new ways in which texts can reflect on embodiment, whether through performance, biopolitics, or the sensorial.""-- ""Anna More, author of Baroque Sovereignty: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora and the Creole Archive of Colonial Mexico""