She presented her thoughts on the duties of heads of state to their subjects in Allegorical Neptune, just as Bartolomé de las Casas had a century before her. In addition to these intellectual accomplishments, Sor Juana displayed an interest in the indigenous groups of New Spain by composing a few pieces in Nahuatl and by offering a limited defense of indigenous cultures and religions in her Loa (prologue) to Divine Narcissus. Though her philosophical work is not presented in conventional forms such as treatises or dialogues, some of her poetry (in particular, the epistemological poem First Dream, which is considered her masterpiece) and her letters (the Letter Worthy of Athena and the Reply to Sor Filotea ) offer novel suggestions regarding the relationship between dreams and knowledge, the connection between the natural and the divine, and original arguments supporting the right of women to study and be educated. However, one aspect of Sor Juana’s polymathy that has received comparatively little attention is her engagement with philosophical questions. Her poetry and her plays have been the object of dozens of scholarly studies and monographs, all of which recognize her immense literary talent and her amazing poetic abilities. In spite of all these tensions and contrasts, Sor Juana’s life and writings have continuously fascinated many people, both in her homeland and beyond. Praised and celebrated by many as “the Phoenix of Mexico” during her lifetime, she was nonetheless forced to recant her works at the end of her life. Indeed, while Sor Juana defends in some pieces her right to study and be educated, she demurs in others from certain intellectual pursuits, writing “ También es vicio el saber” (“Knowledge is also a vice”). Just as her personal and social life was marked by tensions between her marginal status as a nun and the central role she played in the cultural and intellectual life of New Spain under the patronage of two successive Vicereines, her writings are often marked by tensions and contrasts between competing aspirations. For most of her life, she maintained close friendships with many members of the political and cultural elite of New Spain, and she achieved a series of literary and intellectual feats that led one of her admirers to describe her as “Madre que haces chiquitos a los más grandes ” (“a Mother who makes the greatest so small”). Although it may have been possible for Sor Juana’s choices and life circumstances to destine her for a life of opprobrium and relative obscurity, given her birth out of wedlock, her oppressive and hierarchical colonial context, and her membership in a religious order, she ultimately became one of the most famous polymaths of the 17th century. Both her life and her writings are marked by a series of tensions and contrasts. “But who has prohibited women private and individual studies? Do they not have a rational soul like men? … What divine revelation, what determination of the Church, what dictate of reason made for us such a severe law?” -Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, in Autodefensa Espiritual (translated from Tapia Mendez 1993).īorn at the end of the Spanish “Golden Century,” Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is, in many senses, the perfect embodiment of the Baroque spirit. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Portrait of Sor Juana attributed to Nicolás Enriquez de Vargas (18th century)
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