Other Literary Forms
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is better known for her poetry and one celebrated prose work than for her dramatic output. Though Sor Juana wrote more than four hundred poems—including sonnets, romances (eight-syllable lines with assonance in even lines), redondillas (four eight-syllable line verses with an abba rhyme pattern), décimas (ten eight-syllable line verses rhymed abba-ac-cddc), and villancicos (church carols)—her fame rests on a relatively small number of poems; she is probably best known for her sonnets. Although her poems are Baroque in style, many of them are beautifully lyric and clear; they frequently treat the subjects of love and disillusionment.
Primero Sueño (first dream), her long poem of almost one thousand lines, is in imitation of Luis de Góngora y Argote’s Soledad primera (1613; First Solitude, 1964). In this dream narrative, her soul ascends to heavenly exaltation, but then descends to devote itself to scholarly pursuits and methodical knowledge. It has been described by the critic Francisco López Camara as “a hymn to the awakening of the spirit of investigation or research, and an unsuspected forerunner of the poetry of the eighteenth century Enlightenment.”
Her most famous prose work, Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz (1700; reply of the poetess to the illustrious Sister Filotea de la Cruz), written March 1, 1691, is invaluable for the light it throws on Sor Juana’s life. In 1690, she had written a criticism of a sermon by the famous Portuguese Jesuit priest Antonio de Vieyra. The Bishop of Puebla was so impressed by it that he had it printed and then wrote her praising the work but suggesting that she limit herself to theological discussions and avoid secular matters; he signed the letter “Sor Filotea de la Cruz.” Sor Juana’s lengthy prose reply provides a wealth of biographical information concerning her material existence as well as her mentally tortured life.
Achievements
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is regarded as the most important writer of colonial Latin America. Daughter of a Basque father and Creole mother, she inherited physically from both continents. This heritage was enhanced by broad religious and secular study and development, so that she was a literary fusion of Spain and her native Mexico.
Seventeenth century Spain was the heyday of the Baroque, and it is in this vein that most of Sor Juana’s writings were couched. Yet her style is not stilted, nor even as intricate in many cases as that of her master, Góngora, nor of the dramatic author Pedro Calderón de la Barca, many of whose writings she imitated. She demonstrated extraordinary skill in handling Baroque conventions, infusing her delicate language with feminine vision and sensitivity. This sensitivity and poetic beauty won for her the title among her contemporaries of “the tenth muse”; she is considered the last great lyric poet of Spain and the first great poet of America. Many of her sonnets and shorter lyric poems are distinguished by their transparent clarity and exquisite beauty; she stands out as the supreme poet of her time in Castilian Spanish.
Sor Juana spent most of her life within the confines of the convent, although the nun had previously enjoyed courtly life in the viceroyalty of Mexico. Her yearning for knowledge and her acute interest in secular matters did not, however, discourage her devotion to the religious life; she was neither a reformer nor a critic. Her writings display a spirit in conflict: an awareness of, and attraction to, both the religious and the secular. Both her poetic and dramatic works frequently express encontradas correspondencias (triangular...
(This entire section contains 603 words.)
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antitheses) wherein A loves B, but B does not reciprocate; C loves A, but A does not love C. This structure is exemplified in her famousromance in which the poetess loves Fabio, who does not love her; and Silvio loves her, but she does not reciprocate his love. At times her penchant for logical structures and argumentation dominates her verse: Her preoccupation with ideas may seem greater than her concern for artistic creation.
As a poet of the New World, Sor Juana was aware of native culture and sympathetic to it, while being basically and deeply Christian. Native culture is interwoven into her writings, especially the dramatic works. This characteristic can be seen in Loa for The Divine Narcissus. Occident, when urged to become Christian, explains that the native Indians have their Communion just as the Christians do. Her empathy for the indigenous peoples of America appears elsewhere as well.
Sor Juana was a passionate scholar as well as a poet. Her scholarly pursuits were always within the bosom of the Church; her works show a deep familiarity with the Christian Scriptures and Catholic canon, while revealing a scholarly cognizance of history. They demonstrate her awareness of new discoveries and scientific thinking and include praise for scientific knowledge and method. This is exemplified in Echo’s observation in The Divine Narcissus that the darkening of Earth at the time of Narciso’s (Christ’s) death could not be the result of a real eclipse, since neither sun nor moon was in proper position for this to occur.
Some critics consider Sor Juana’s drama to be superior even to her poetry, although her drama is far less well known, doubtless because it falls outside the bloodlines of modern drama: Her secular plays are modeled on the seventeenth century cloak-and-sword genre, while her religious plays combine the allegorical intent of medieval drama with the rhetorical extravagance of the Baroque.
Other literary forms
The most readable prose work of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (WAH-nah ee-NAYS day lah krews), Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz (1700; The Answer, 1994), is an appealing autobiographical defense of her precocious interest in learning, an emotional plea for acceptance as a woman and a scholar, and an obsessive declaration of faith. Sor Juana tries to convince her superiors that, despite her lifelong curiosity about the material world, theological concerns are still the most important to her.
El divino Narciso, pr. c. 1680 (The Divine Narcissus, 1945), a religious one-act play, is a tasteful and imaginative treatment of divine love in which Narcissus, as a figure of Christ, falls in love with human nature as a reflection of himself. With this short play, the fantasy of desire that takes so many forms throughout Sor Juana’s work finds its ultimate synthesis of eros and agape.
Achievements
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a Mexican literary virtuoso who was called the tenth muse during her lifetime and who is generally considered the most important writer of colonial Spanish America. Although she wrote more than four hundred poems, twenty-three short plays, two full-length comedias, and various prose works, Sor Juana’s reputation rests on a handful of poems (about two dozen in all), The Divine Narcissus, and The Answer. Although a reassessment of her works begun in the 1950’s promises a more extensive list of her most important writings, it is likely that, with the exception of her extremely complex First Dream, the few pieces that earned her the admiration of Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo one hundred years ago will continue to be the ones that will ensure her a place of prominence in Spanish letters.
At her best, Sor Juana was able to manipulate the often unwieldy and intricate language of the Spanish Baroque, with its rich heritage from the Golden Age, into expressions of delicate, feminine vision and sensibility. Her aesthetic documentation of the search for knowledge, love, and God is the most complete personal and artistic record of any figure from the colonial period. Sor Juana’s love poetry appears to reflect frustrating and painful experiences before her entry into the convent at about the age of seventeen. Few of the poems are concerned with fulfillment or the intimate communication of personal feelings; most are, instead, variations on the themes of ambivalence and disillusionment in love. Sor Juana’s philosophical poems are linked to her amatory verse by a sense of disenchantment. An exception to her general pessimism is First Dream, in which the poet takes delight in depicting the joys and dangers of her intellectual explorations. More of Sor Juana’s writings bear witness to her theological concerns. Although some of her religious lyrics express the same kind of anguish about God’s love that she expressed about human love, she clearly attempted in her villancicos to use her poetic talent in the service of the Roman Catholic Church.
Discussion Topics
Point out some of the ways in which the themes of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz reach far beyond the scope one might expect from a seventeenth-century Mexican nun.
What themes in Sor Juana’s work have generated the interest of readers in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century?
Consider First Dream as a poem on the life of the mind.
Are the “foolish men” in the poem so titled all men or just some men? How effective is this poem more than three centuries after it was written?
Sor Juana was, and had to be, an obedient member of a religious community. In what ways was she a truly independent woman?
Bibliography
Flynn, Gerard. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Boston: Twayne, 1971. A very readable book. Introduces the reader to Sor Juana and her work. The first chapter gives biographical information, and the others review her poetry and drama. A discussion of the criticism of several authors is included, as are a number of quotations from Sor Juana’s work with English translations provided by Flynn. Contains a selected bibliography of mainly Spanish-language sources.
Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sister. A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Translated with an introduction by Margaret Sayers Peden. Salisbury, Conn.: Lime Rock Press, 1982. Contains a translation of Sor Juana’s defense of her life, Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz. Also contains a list of basic sources at the end.
Kirk, Pamela. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Religion, Art, and Feminism. New York: Continuum, 1998. An examination of Sor Juana’s role in the church as well as her literary efforts. Bibliography and index.
McKenna, Susan M. “Rational Thought and Female Poetics in Sor Juana’s ‘Primero sueno.’” Hispanic Review 68, no. 1 (Winter, 2000): 37-42. Clear and informative scholarly article includes detailed analysis of the imagery in “Primero sueno,” Sor Juana’s major work. Explains the rational and scientific influences of René Descartes on Sor Juana’s thought and how she veiled these influences in metaphor to elude, for a time, the censure of conservative church authorities.
Merrim, Stephanie. Early Modern Women’s Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999. Situates the work of Sor Juana within the field of seventeenth century women’s writing in Spanish, English, and French. The protofeminist writings of Sor Juana are used as a benchmark for the examination of the literary production of her female contemporaries. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Merrim, Stephanie, ed. Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. A collection of essays by important literary critics and translators of Sor Juana. Discusses her life, time, and work in the context of feminist criticism.
Montross, Constance M. Virtue or Vice? Sor Juana’s Use of Thomistic Thought. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981. Examines Sor Juana’s use of Scholastic doctrine and methodology, specifically the ideas of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The author analyzes the combination of belief and questioning in the Carta atenagórica, the Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz, and “Primero sueño.” Extensive bibliography and the Spanish text of “Primero sueño” is included.
Paz, Octavio. Sor Juana: Or, The Traps of Faith. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. A biography of Sor Juana by a leading Mexican poet, essayist, and cultural critic. Paz emphasizes Sor Juana’s uniqueness as a poet and focuses on her struggle for her intellectual and creative life. Historical settings and traditions are detailed. Included are illustrations, among them portraits of Sor Juana, and a helpful listing of Spanish literary terms.
Paz, Octavio, ed. Mexican Poetry: An Anthology. Translated by Samuel Beckett. Reprint. New York: Grove Press, 1985. Contains a discussion of the place of Sor Juana in Mexican poetry as part of Paz’s introduction to the history of Mexican poetry. Within the anthology itself are translations of twelve of Sor Juana’s poems.
Pedén, Margaret Sayers, trans. A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Salisbury, Conn.: Lime Rock Press, 1982. One of the premier translators from Spanish renders Sor Juana’s memoirs in English.
Royer, Fanchón. The Tenth Muse: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Patterson, N.J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1952. A good introductory source. Each chapter is introduced with a translated quote from Sor Juana’s work and traces the basic facts of her life along with interpretive commentary. An appendix includes some selected poems in Spanish as well as a short bibliography of Spanish-language sources.