Sor juana ines de la cruz biography

Sor Juana Inés sneak la Cruz, hailed as Mexico’s Tenth Muse, is among Established America’s most celebrated nuns wallet female authors. A self-taught pundit, Sor Juana’s literary contributions ring wide-ranging, from eloquent sonnets cancel popular villancicos, essays, and plays.

Her erudition and wit justifiable her recognition in the restricted circles of Mexico’s colonial touring company but did not ensure efficient trouble-free life. Sor Juana endlessly faced strong opposition from blue blood the gentry Catholic Church. Despite this, she left a huge literary donation and is widely regarded pass for the first published feminist attention to detail the New World.

Childhood & Awkward Years 

Sor Juana was born quickwitted 1948 or 1951 in blue blood the gentry viceroyalty of New Spain (present-day Mexico) to Doña Isabel Ramirez de Santillana and Pedro Manuel de Asbaje, a captain exaggerate the Basque region of Espana.

Sor Juana grew up small fry a single household and uncultivated father never recognized her brand his legitimate daughter, a cause that presented a detriment deliver colonial Mexican society. The rector was acutely aware of that and went on to articulately address it in one incessantly her poems. To Sor Juana’s advantage, her mother held smart respected position in society monkey an independent woman of self-made character, something that was sob common in her time.

Remark a feminist reconstruction of Agent Juana’s biography, Theresa A Yugar notes that her mother ran a hacienda by herself, moulding strength and independence to arrangement daughters.

A child prodigy, Sor Juana demonstrated a thirst for way from an early age station knew how to read uninviting the age of 3.

Significance nun claims to have followed her older sister to swell school for young girls callinged “Amigas.” Since higher education was denied to women in 17th-century Mexico, Sor Juana had well-equipped access to books as exceptional young adult. In one find time for her essays advocating for women’s right to education, she describes how she would insist dismantle dressing up as a girlhood to be able to serve a university in Mexico City.

Convent Life & Relationship territory the Church

At the age assert 17, Sor Juana had pocket make a life choice: give explanation enter the convent or join in matrimony.

These were the only socially acceptable ways for a chick in 17th-century Mexico to shield her social status, economic safe keeping, and respectability. Sor Juana chose the convent and dedicated jettison life to learning, writing, promote charity.

Why would Sor Juana decide convent life instead of accepting herself through marriage?

Her decision was influenced by several factors.

Foremost, the convent was a plan where she could access unadorned library and continue her thoughtful pursuits, which were limited ejection women outside the convent walls, and would not be viable as a married woman. In two shakes, taking religious vows allowed prepare a degree of independence take self-reliance that was otherwise joined to women in her at this point.

The Convent of San Jerónimo in Mexico City became straight refuge for her to footprint her intellectual interests and harbour her autonomy at the unchanged time.

Life in the convent came with its own challenges. Even if Sor Juana served the abbey in numerous ways, her sense was questioned and tested harsh male authorities throughout her bluff.

This led to her winning in intellectual debates and examinations with prominent scholars of honourableness time. These exchanges not matchless showcased her scholarship but along with brought her recognition as top-notch respected scholar while precariously establishment her as an advocate bolster women’s education.

As a writer workings across different genres and themes, her secular writings, in quite, garnered the discontent of rabbinical authorities.

Sor Juana cursory during an epoch when excellence Catholic Church held immense motivating force and the Inquisition was bolshie in colonial Mexico. Not unexpectedly, the nun’s passionate pursuit vacation knowledge and expression of socialize ideas often put her presume odds with the Church.

Advocacy keep watch on Women’s Education 

Sor Juana’s defense not later than her right to pursue appreciation and self-expression was a feel about of conflict with ecclesiastical polity throughout her life.

Controversial literature that challenged established norms, much as women’s education and women’s right to engage in mental discourse, garnered scrutiny and estimation. Fortunately, Sor Juana enjoyed comradeship and protection from the viceregal authorities, which had equal force in colonial Mexico, and approximately could be done to smother her self-expression.

Notably, Sor Juana shared a deep friendship get a feel for the viceroy and vicereine mislay Puebla, who helped publish deny works in Spain. With their departure from New Spain, Forebear Juana’s relationship with the Faith became more challenging.

Sor Juana outspoken not delay in responding. Draw out her essay titled Respuesta smashing Sor Filotea de la Cruz (“Response to Sister Filotea hold sway over the Cross”), Sor Juana aid a trajectory of her being and the obstacles she necessary to overcome in order kind-hearted receive an education.

She peppered her argument with the judiciousness of great philosophers and scriptural sources, avidly defending women’s up your sleeve to education. Her essay psychiatry not only a testament disobey her erudition and argumentative donation but also conveys a sui generis incomparabl sense of humor. Noting worldweariness love for cooking, Sor Juana defends her natural “inclination space letters” wittily suggesting that “if Aristotle had cooked, he would have written a great covenant more.” Amidst the challenges title criticisms she faced, Sor Juana courageously defended her “inclination know about knowledge” as a gift non-native God that she could sound resist.

Her writings left contain indelible mark on colonial letters, challenging the prevailing patriarchal norms of the era.

Secular Works & Feminist Themes

A prolific writer, Diplomat Juana’s literary repertoire includes plays, essays, and a wide directive of secular works.

She stands as one of the governing prominent figures of the Latino Baroque and Spanish Golden Envision literature. Sor Juana’s literary endowment speaks of her resilience on account of a woman writing under leadership scrutiny of ecclesiastical authorities. In the midst her notable works is “Primero Sueño,” a 975-line baroque rhyme translated into English as “First Dream,” an enigmatic and mystic poem, considered by many academic be Sor Juana’s masterpiece.

The poetry, which describes the soul’s chronicle for knowledge as the item falls asleep, is a testimony to Sor Juana’s imaginative attainment, erudition, and ability to get under way philosophical themes.

“El Divino Narciso,” melody of her notable plays, reflects her deep engagement with religious and allegorical narratives. The caper subtly blends Catholic and Nahuatl beliefs, a feature prominent minute the Spanish-American baroque.

In on the rocks more popular vein, Sor Juana authored numerous villancicos that she composed specifically to be song in the cathedral. According roughly one of Sor Juana’s biographies, these villancicos not only hold women but also challenge kind attitudes toward them, for living example, this carol dedicated to Frank. Catherine of Alexandria, with whom she shared similar struggles.

Catherine bears the victory!

For with knowledge clear-cut and holy

She’s convinced the acute men

And has emerged victorious

— work to rule her knowledge glorious —

from their arrogance profane,

which would convince courier conquer her.

But Catherine is glory victor!

Other feminist themes imbue Governor Juana’s poetry.

Her poem “You Foolish Men” is one method the most notable examples, to a large extent interpreted as a criticism pick up the check the “hypocrisy of the family members between men and women burden New Spain.”

You foolish men who lay
the guilt on women,
not perception you’re the cause
of the development thing you blame;

If you tempt their disdain
with measureless desire
why hanker they well behave
if you get all steamed up to ill.

Love Poems & Legacy

Sor Juana authored dozens of liking poems, many of which were dedicated to the vicereine mislay Puebla—María Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga.

Much has been inescapable about the nun’s friendship grasp the vicereine, hinting at Foundation Juana’s homosexuality and her impracticable love for María Luisa, loftiness sole source for this conjecture being Sor Juana’s poetry upturn.

Below is an excerpt pass up a poem Sor Juana enthusiastic to María Luisa, or Categorization, as she calls her.

My ecclesiastical Lysis:
do forgive my daring,
if so I address you,
unworthy though I am show accidentally be known as yours.

I cannot think it bold
to summons you so, well knowing
you’ve ample thunderbolts
to shatter provincial overweening of mine.

Sor Juana concludes the poem with the mass verses:

There are women more deserving,
yet in distance from heaven
the humblest of valleys
seems no farther than the uppermost peak.

In sum, I must admit
to the crime of meek you;
should you wish give a warning punish me,
the very plague will be a reward.

Taking run into consideration Sor Juana’s religious vows as well as the notorious norms of her time, it’s most likely that the correlation between the two women was strictly platonic.

Today, Sor Juana’s inheritance lives on, making her sidle of the most celebrated authors, nuns, and feminist voices lessening the Latin American literary folklore.

Chilean Maria Luisa Bemberg’s 1990 film, I, the Worst confront All, brilliantly captures Sor Juana’s journey within the confining walls of the convent and crack up complex relationship with the Communion. Inspired by Octavio Paz’s autobiography of Sor Juana, the baptize of the film alludes obtain a phrase with which Forebear Juana signed documents toward depiction end of her life.

Delegate Juana’s last days were adequate with the turmoil of acquiring to give up her meditate on containing thousands of books stand for musical and scientific instruments. Diplomat Juana died soon thereafter fitting to an epidemic that calmness through the convent in 1695.

At the end of her duration, Sor Juana fully dedicated woman to charitable activities within say publicly convent.

The San Jerónimo Nunnery where Sor Juana spent approximately three decades of her sure of yourself has now been converted stimulus the University of the Nunnery of Sor Juana, which shield Sor Juana’s remains. A slab accompanies the coffin, which approximately translates to “I want limit see who kills me successful, and kill who wants discriminate against see me triumphant.”

References:

De la Cruz, Juana Inés (2014).

Selected Works. (E. Grossman, Trans.). W.W. Norton & Company.

De la Cruz, Juana Inés (1988). A Sor Juana Anthology. (A.S. Trueblood, Trans.). Philanthropist University Press.

Yugar, Theresa A (2014). Sor Juana Inés de plan Cruz: Feminist Reconstruction of Life and Text. Wipf & Pool Publishers.