Authors: Juana Ines de la Cruz, Margaret Sayers Peden (Translator), Ilan Stavans
ISBN-13: 9780140447033, ISBN-10: 0140447032
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Date Published: March 1997
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695) wrote her most famous prose work, La Respuesta a Sor Filotea, in 1691 in response to her bishop's injunction against her intellectual pursuits. A passionate and subversive defense of the rights of women to study, to teach, and to write, it predates by almost a century and a half serious writings on any continent about the position and education of women. Moreover, notes Ilan Stavans in his introduction, it has become "a cornerstone of Hispanic-American identity ... at once a chronicle of the tense gender relations in the Western Hemisphere, a rich portrait of the social behavior that prevailed more than a century before independence from Spain was gained in 1810, and the very first intellectual autobiography written by a criolla in a hemisphere known for its solipsism, introversion, and allergy to public confessions. Also included in this wide-ranging selection is a new translation of Sor Juana's masterpiece, the epistemological poem "Primero Sueno," as well as revealing autobiographical sonnets, reverential religious poetry, secular love poems (which have excited speculation through three centuries), playful verses, and lyrical tributes to New World culture that are among the earliest writings celebrating the people and the customs of this hemisphere.
Translator's Note | ||
Introduction | ||
Suggestions for Further Reading | ||
A Note on the Text | ||
Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea De La Cruz | 1 | |
First I Dream | 77 | |
Romances | 131 | |
Prologue to the Reader | 133 | |
In Reply to a Gentleman from Peru | 137 | |
While by Grace I Am Inspired | 145 | |
Redondillas | 147 | |
A Philosophical Satire | 149 | |
Epigrams | 153 | |
Satiric Reproach | 155 | |
Which Reveals | 155 | |
A Much-Needed Eyewash | 157 | |
A Bit of Moral Advice | 157 | |
Demonstration to a Sergeant | 159 | |
Decimas | 161 | |
She Assures That She Will Hold a Secret | 163 | |
Accompanying a Ring | 163 | |
A Modest Gift | 165 | |
She Describes in Detail | 165 | |
Sonnets | 167 | |
She Attempts to Minimize the Praise | 169 | |
She Laments Her Fortune | 171 | |
Better Death | 173 | |
Spiritedly, She Considers the Choice | 175 | |
She Distrusts, as Disguised Cruelty | 177 | |
One of Five Burlesque Sonnets | 179 | |
She Answers Suspicions | 181 | |
Which Recounts How Fantasy Contents Itself | 183 | |
She Resolves the Question | 185 | |
Villancico | 187 | |
Fragment from "Santa Catarina" | 189 | |
Theater, Sacred and Profane | 193 | |
Loa for El Divino Narciso | 195 | |
Fragment from Los Empenos de Una Casa | 241 | |
Notes | 247 |