Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, better known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (12 November 1648 – 17 April 1695), was a Hieronymite nun and a Novohispanic writer, philosopher, composer and poet of the Baroque period, nicknamed "The Tenth Muse", "The Mexican Phoenix", and "The Phoenix of America" by her contemporary critics. thumb Hacienda of Panoayan in Amecameca, residence of the Ramírez de Santillana family.There are two different baptism registrations that have been attributed to her, one under the name of "Juana" in 1648, and another one under the name of "Inés" in 1651, still a matter of academic research and debate. There is, nevertheless, agreement that she was one of the three children that Doña Isabel Ramírez de Santillana had out of wedlock with Don Pedro de Asuaje. Since Sor Juana's father left her life at an early age and remained largely unknown to her, Sor Juana's infancy occurred entirely around her mother's family in the hacienda of Panaoyan, in Amecameca, leased by her maternal grandfather, and home to the ample Ramírez de Santillana family. Among her relatives, several women with the name "Inés" have been noted, including her grandmother Inés de Brenes, her maternal-aunt Inés Ramírez de Santillana, and her first-cousin Inés de Brenes y Mendoza, married to a grandson of Antonio de Saavedra Guzmán, the first ever published American-born poet.

Later described as a child prodigy, Sor Juana was educated at home at the Hacienda de Panoayan, being exposed to Latin and Nahuatl,

During her childhood, Inés often hid in the hacienda chapel to read her grandfather's books from the adjoining library, something forbidden to girls. By the age of three, she had learned how to read and write Latin. By the age of five, she reportedly could do accounts. At age eight, she composed a poem on the Eucharist.

In 1664, at the age of 16, Inés was sent to live in Mexico City. She asked her mother's permission to disguise herself as a male student so that she could enter the university there, without success. Without the ability to obtain a formal education, Juana continued her studies privately. Her family's influential position had gained her the position of lady-in-waiting at the colonial viceroy's court, She turned her nun's quarters into a salon, visited by New Spain's female intellectual elite, including Doña Eleonora del Carreto, Marchioness of Mancera, and Doña Maria Luisa Gonzaga, Countess of Paredes de Nava, both Vicereines of New Spain, among others. Her criticism of misogyny and the hypocrisy of men led to her condemnation by the Bishop of Puebla, In November 1690, the bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz published, under the pseudonym of Sor Filotea, and without her permission, Sor Juana's critique of a 40-year-old sermon by Father António Vieira, a Portuguese Jesuit preacher. Although Sor Juana's intentions for the work, called Carta Atenagórica are left to interpretation, many scholars have opted to interpret the work as a challenge to the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church.

Along with Carta Atenagórica, the bishop also published his own letter in which he said she should focus on religious instead of secular studies. He published his criticisms to use them to his advantage against the priest, and while he agreed with her criticisms, he believed that as a woman, she should devote herself to prayer and give up her writings.

In response to her critics, Sor Juana wrote a letter, La Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz (Reply to Sister Philotea), in which she defended women's right to formal education. In 1691, she was reprimanded and ordered to stop writing after the exposure of a private letter in which she wrote of the right of women to education. In response, Francisco de Aguiar y Seijas, Archbishop of Mexico joined other high-ranking officials in condemning Sor Juana's "waywardness." In addition to opposition she received for challenging the patriarchal structure of the Catholic Church, Sor Juana was repeatedly criticized for believing that her writing could achieve the same philanthropic goals as community work. Her name is affixed to such a document in 1694, but the tone of the supposed handwritten penitentials is in rhetorical and autocratic, in contrast to her normally lyrical style. One is signed "Yo, la Peor de Todas" ("I, the worst of all women"). then an extensive library of more than 4,000 volumes, as well as her musical and scientific instruments. Other sources report that her defiance toward the Church led to the confiscation of all of her books and instruments, although the bishop himself agreed with the contents of her letters.

Of more than one hundred unpublished works, only a few of Sor Juana's writings have survived, which are known as the Complete Works. According to Octavio Paz, her writings were saved by the vicereine.

On , at the age of just 46, Sor Juana died after ministering to other nuns stricken during a plague. Sigüenza y Góngora delivered the eulogy at her funeral.

Works

Poetry

First Dream

First Dream, a long philosophical and descriptive silva (a poetic form combining verses of 7 and 11 syllables), deals with the shadow of night beneath which a person falls asleep in the midst of quietness and silence. There night and day animals participate, either dozing or sleeping, all urged to silence and rest by Harpocrates. The person's body ceases its ordinary operations, which are described in physiological and symbolical terms, ending with the activity of the imagination as an image-reflecting apparatus: the Pharos. From this moment, her soul, in a dream, sees itself free at the summit of her own intellect; in other words, at the apex of a pyramid-like mount, which aims at God and is luminous.

There, perched like an eagle, she contemplates the whole creation, but fails to comprehend such a sight in a single concept. Dazzled, the soul's intellect faces its own shipwreck, caused mainly by trying to understand the overwhelming abundance of the universe, until reason undertakes that enterprise, beginning with each individual creation, and processing them one by one, helped by the ten categories of Aristotle.

The soul cannot get beyond questioning herself about the traits and causes of a fountain and a flower, intimating perhaps that his method constitutes a useless effort, since it must take into account all the details, accidents, and mysteries of each being. By that time, the body has consumed all its nourishment, and it starts to move and wake up, soul and body are reunited. The poem ends with the Sun overcoming Night in battle between luminous and dark armies, and with the poet's awakening. Many of her poems dealt with the subject of love and sensuality. Colombian-American translator Jaime Manrique described her poetry thus: "her love poems are expressions of a complex and ambivalent modern psyche, and because they are so passionate and ferocious that when we read them we feel consumed by the naked intensity she achieves." One of Sor Juana's sonnets:

Soneto 173 Sonnet 173 in Edith Grossman's 2014 translation Efectos muy penosos de amor, y que no por grandes se igualan con las prendas de quien le causa ¿Vesme, Alcino, que atada a la cadena de Amor, paso en sus hierros aherrojada, mísera esclavitud, desesperada de libertad, y de consuelo ajena?

¿Ves de dolor y angustia el alma llena, de tan fieros tormentos lastimada, y entre las vivas llamas abrasada juzgarse por indigna de su pena?

¿Vesme seguir sin alma un desatino que yo misma condeno por extraño? ¿Vesme derramar sangre en el camino

siguiendo los vestigios de un engaño? ¿Muy admirado estás? Pues ves, Alcino: más merece la causa de mi daño. The very distressing effects of love, but no matter how great, they do not equal the qualities of the one who causes them Do you see me, Alcino, here am I caught in the chains of love, shackled in its irons, a wretched slave despairing of her freedom, and so far, so distant from consolation?

Do you see my soul filled with pain and anguish, wounded by torments so savage, so fierce, burned in the midst of living flames and judging herself unworthy of her castigation?

Do you see me without a soul, pursuing a folly I myself condemn as strange? Do you see me bleeding along the way

as I follow the trail of an illusion? Are you very surprised? See then, Alcino: the cause of harm to me deserves much more.

"You Foolish Men (Philosophical Satire)" Convent of Santa Paula (Seville)Sor Juana's Hombres Necios (Foolish men), written in the 1680s, is among the first proto-feminist literary works in the Americas to explore the double standards of men while also accusing men of trying to diminish a woman's honor. Society in seventeenth-century Mexico was heavily patriarchal, but Sor Juana nevertheless managed to publish this work, which only added to the backlash she would eventually face from the Church. The names of Thais and Lucretia are cited along with the concept of prostitution to stress how men use women and leave them helpless, facing only blame and hatred. Sor Juana's writing, in the Baroque literary style prevalent in her time, can be readily understood today. You Mulish Men, Philosophical Satire Poem 92 Translated by David Frye In the 1990s, Guillermo Schmidhuber found a release of the comedy that contained a different ending. He proposed that those one thousand words were written by Sor Juana. Some literary critics, such as Octavio Paz, Georgina Sabat-Rivers, and Luis Leal ) have accepted Sor Juana as the co-author, but others, such as Antonio Alatorre and José Pascual Buxó, have questioned the attribution.

Comedies The former Convent of St Jerome in Mexico City.Scholars have debated the meaning of Juana's comedies. Julie Greer Johnson describes how Juana protested against the rigorously defined relationship between genders through her full-length comedies and humor. She argues that Juana recognized the negative view of women in comedy which was designed to uphold male superiority at the expense of women. By recognizing the power of laughter, Juana appropriated the purpose of humor, and used it as a socially acceptable medium with which to question notions of men and women.

Pawns of a House

The work was first performed on October 4, 1683, during the celebration of the Viceroy Count of Paredes' first son's birth. Some critics maintain that it could have been set up for the Archbishop Francisco de Aguiar y Seijas' entrance to the capital, but this theory is not considered reliable. The protagonist of the story, Dona Leonor, fits the archetype perfectly.

The plot takes on the well-known theme in Greek mythology of Theseus: a hero from Crete Island. He fights against the Minotaur and awakens the love of Ariadne and Phaedra. Sor Juana conceived Theseus as the archetype of the baroque hero, a model also used by her fellow countryman Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. Theseus's triumph over the Minotaur does not make Theseus proud, but instead allows him to be humble.

Propiedad es de natura que entre Dios y el hombre media, y del cielo el be cuadrado junto al be bemol de la tierra. (Villancico 220)

Second, Professor Sarah Finley argues that the visual is related with patriarchal themes, while the sonorous offers an alternative to the feminine space in the work of Sor Juana. As an example of this, Finley points out that Narciso falls in love with a voice, and not with a reflection.

Other notable works

One musical work attributed to Sor Juana survives from the archive of Guatemala Cathedral. This is a 4-part villancico, Madre, la de los primores.

Other works include Hombres Necios (Foolish Men), and The Divine Narcissus.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote a letter to her Confessor, Antonio Núñez de Miranda, titled Autodefensa Espiritual (Spiritual Self-Defense) in 1690, ten years before she severs ties after sending the Respuesta a Sor Filotea. However, unlike the Respuesta, the Autodefensa has much more biting and frank language used. In the Autodefensa, Sor Juana defends her intellectual pursuits and criticizes the restrictions placed on women's education and opportunities to pursue knowledge. She argues that women have the same rational souls as men and should be able to study and engage in intellectual pursuits. In the Autodefensa letter, Sor Juana uses this more forceful and confrontational language to reprimand and dismiss her Confessor. This has led scholars to suggest that the Autodefensa was a rehearsal for the arguments she would later make in the Respuesta. In both letters, Sor Juana defends her right to pursue knowledge and critiques the restrictions placed on women's intellectual development.

Feminist analyses and translations

Scholars such as Scout Frewer argue that because Juana's advocacy for religious and intellectual authority would now be associated with feminism, she was a protofeminist. In the twenty-first century, Latin American philosophers and scholars generally interpret Sor Juana as a feminist before the time of feminism.

For instance, scholars like Rachel O'Donnell argue that Sor Juana occupied a special place in between socially acceptable and socially unacceptable roles in seventeenth century Mexico. By examining Sor Juana intersectionally, they prioritize the context of New Spain, specifically the influence of religion, race, and social norms, in understanding Sor Juana as a female theologian and poet.

According to O'Donnell, in colonial Mexico, education was an undertaking reserved for men, especially activities like writing and reading. Entering the convent also meant that Sor Juana could read and write about religion despite the barriers to formal education for women. O'Donnell argues that Sor Juana was called a rare bird because although theology was only an acceptable pursuit for men in the Catholic Church, she actively studied religion.

Luis Felipe Fabre criticized 'Sorjuanista' scholarship as a whole, arguing that the discourse is binary rather than complex and multilayered.

Luis Felipe Fabre , a Mexican writer and scholar, ridicules other scholars, whom he collectively calls Sorjuanistas, who idolize Sor Juana. As well, Peden is credited for her 1989 translation of Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith. Unlike other translations, Peden chose to translate the title of Sor Juana's best known work, First Dream, as "First I Dream" instead. Peden's use of first person instills authority in Sor Juana as an author, as a person with knowledge, in a male-dominated society. Peden also published her English translations of Sor Juana's work in an anthology called Poems, Protest, and a Dream. This work includes her response to authorities censuring her, La Respuesta, and First Dream.

Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell An equally valuable feminist analysis and interpretation of Sor Juana's life and work is found in The Answer/La Respuesta by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Electa Arenal, a Sor Juana scholar who is recognized among feminists who changed America, and Amanda Powell, a poet and translator. The original publication, released in 1994 by The Feminist Press, was re-released in an updated second edition in 2009, also by The Feminist Press. The bilingual publication includes poems, an annotated publication of Sor Juana's response to Church officials and her impassioned plea for education of women, analysis and a bibliography. The Answer applies a valuable gender lens to Sor Juana's writings and life. In their feminist analysis, Powell and Arenal translate the viewpoint of Sor Juana's writing as gender-ambiguous. Released in an updated second edition in 2009, also by The Feminist Press, the bilingual publication includes poems, an annotated publication of Sor Juana's response to Church officials and her impassioned plea for education of women, analysis and a bibliography.

Yugar aims to understand why individuals in Mexico in the twenty-first century have more knowledge of Frida Kahlo than Sor Juana.

Education The San Jerónimo Convent, where Juana lived the last 27 years of her life and where she wrote most of her work is today the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana in the historic center of Mexico City. The Mexican government founded in the university in 1979.

Political controversy While Sor Juana was a famous and controversial figure in the seventeenth century, she is also an important figure in modern times.

During renovations at the cloister in the 1970s, bones believed to be those of Sor Juana were discovered. A medallion similar to the one depicted in portraits of Juana was also found, with Margarita López Portillo, the sister of President José López Portillo (1976–1982), taking possession of the relic. During the tercentennial of Sor Juana's death in 1995, a member of the Mexican congress called on Margarita López Portillo to return the medallion. Portillo returned the medallion to Congress on November 14, 1995, with the event and description of the controversy reported in The New York Times a month later. Whether or not the medallion actually belonged to Juana, the incident sparked discussions about Juana and the abuse of official power in Mexico.

Contribution to feminism

Historic feminist movements Amanda Powell locates Sor Juana as a contributor to the Querelles des Femmes, a three-century long literary debate about women. Central to this early feminist debate were ideas about gender and sex, and, consequently, misogyny. Yugar uses Sor Juana's criticism of religious law that permits only men to occupy leadership positions within the Church as early evidence of her religious feminism. Based on Sor Juana's critique of the oppressive and patriarchal structures of the Church of her day, Yugar argues that Sor Juana predated current movements, like Latina Feminist Theology, that privilege Latina women's views on religion. For example, parts of Sor Juana's Villancico 224 are written in Nahuatl, while others are written in Spanish. signified her own autonomy, but was also a way to engage in the masculinity expected of male-dominated spaces, like universities. According to Paul Allatson, nuns were also required to cut their hair after entering the convent. These ideas, Allatson suggests, are echoed in Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait titled Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, or Autorretrato con el pelo corto.

Official recognition by the Mexican government In present times, Sor Juana is still an important figure in Mexico.

In 1995, Sor Juana's name was inscribed in gold on the wall of honor in the Mexican Congress in April 1995. Between 1994 and 2020, she appeared on the 200 pesos C, D, D1, and F family bills. She currently appears on the 100 pesos G bill, which has been in circulation since 2020. The town where Sor Juana grew up, San Miguel Nepantla in the municipality of Tepetlixpa, State of Mexico, was renamed in her honor as Nepantla de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Veneration In 2022, the Episcopal Church of the United States gave final approval and added her feast to the liturgical calendar. Her feast day is April 18.