Sarra + Calderon = Juana

Hello Everyone,  Dennis sent this in... thought it would be good to share as a tie in between our work with Sarra Copia Sullam and Pedro Calderon de la Barca.  Don't blame him for the provocative post title... Thanks Dennis.  
 
This is Dennis and I just wanted to share something about another historical/ literary figure similar to Sullam. It has been in my mind for the past 3 weeks and then when I explained to my wife what we were working on she also mentioned her. This can also connect with our work with Life is a Dream a bit. The name of this writer is Sister Juana Ines de la Cruz or Sor Juana. Although born 10 years after Sullam's death and eventually residing in Mexico some of the similarities are striking:
 
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz" redirects here. For the telenovela, see Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (telenovela).

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, O.S.H.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Miguel Cabrera
Born	Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana 12 November 1651 San Miguel Nepantla, New Spain, Spanish Empire
Died	17 April 1695(1695-04-17)(aged 43) Mexico City, New Spain, Spanish Empire
Occupation	Nun, poet, writer
Nationality	Mexican
Literary movement	Baroque
Relatives	Pedro Manuel de Asbaje and Isabel Ramírez (parents)
Signature

Sister (Spanish: Sor) Juana Inés de la Cruz, O.S.H. (English: Joan Agnes of the Cross) (12 November 1651 – 17 April 1695), was a self-taught scholar and poet of the Baroque school, and Hieronymite nun of New Spain, known in her lifetime as "The Tenth Muse." Although she lived in a colonial era when Mexico was part of the Spanish Empire, she is considered today both a Mexican writer and a contributor to the Spanish Golden Age, and she stands at the beginning of the history of Mexican literature in the Spanish language.

Contents

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• 1 Life
• 2 Death
• 3 Posthumous
• 4 Works
  • 4.1 Other notable works
• 5 Influence
• 6 Sources
• 7 References
• 8 Further reading
• 9 External links

Life[edit]

A portrait of Juana during her youth in 1666, which states she was 15 at the time, when she first entered the viceregal court

She was born Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana in San Miguel Nepantla (now called Nepantla de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in her honor) near Mexico City. She was theillegitimate child of a Spanish Captain, Pedro Manuel de Asbaje, and a Criolla woman, Isabel Ramírez. Her father, according to all accounts, was absent from her life. She was baptized 2 December 1651 and described on the baptismal rolls as "a daughter of the Church". She was raised in Amecameca, where her maternal grandfather owned a hacienda.
Juana was a devoutly religious child who often hid in the hacienda chapel to read her grandfather's books from the adjoining library, something forbidden to girls. She learned how to read and write Latin at the age of three. By age five, she reportedly could do accounts. At age eight, she composed a poem on the Eucharist.^[1] By adolescence, she had mastered Greek logic, and at age thirteen she was teaching Latin to young children. She also learned the Aztec language of Nahuatl, and wrote some short poems in that language.^[2]

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Friar Miguel de Herrera (1700-1789)

In 1664, aged 12, Juana 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. Not being allowed to do this, she continued her studies privately. She was a lady-in-waiting at the colonial viceroy's court,^[3] where she came under the tutelage of the Vicereine Leonor Carreto, wife of the Viceroy of New Spain Antonio Sebastián de Toledo. The viceroy (whom Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography names as the Marquis de Mancera), wishing to test the learning and intelligence of this 17 year old, invited several theologians, jurists, philosophers, and poets to a meeting, during which she had to answer, unprepared, many questions, and explain several difficult points on various scientific and literary subjects. The manner in which she acquitted herself astonished all present, and greatly increased her reputation. Her literary accomplishments garnered her fame throughout New Spain. Her interest in scientific thought and experiment led to professional discussions with Isaac Newton.^[4] She was much admired in the viceregal court, and declined several proposals of marriage.^[1] In 1667, she entered the Monastery of St. Joseph, a community of the Discalced Carmelite nuns, as apostulant. She chose not to enter that Order, which had a strict discipline, and later, in 1669, she entered the monastery of the Hieronymite nuns, which had a more relaxed rule. She chose to become a nun so that she could study as she wished, saying she wanted "to have no fixed occupation which might curtail my freedom to study." ^[5] In the convent and perhaps earlier, Sor Juana became friends with fellow savant, Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, who visited her in the convent's locutorio.^[6] She stayed cloistered in the Convent of Santa Paula of the Hieronymite in Mexico City from 1669 until her death, where she collected a large library of books, studied, and wrote. ^[7] The Viceroy and Vicereine of New Spain became her patrons; they supported her and had her writings published in Spain. ^[8]
One noted critic of her writing was the bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, who in November of 1690 published Sor Juana's critique of a 40-year-old sermon by Father António Vieira, a Portuguese Jesuit preacher. ^[9] In addition to publishing this without her permission (albeit under a pseudonym), he told her to focus on religious instead of secular studies. ^[10]
In response to critics of her writing, Juana wrote a letter, Respuesta a Sor Filotea (Reply to Sister Philotea), in which she defended women's right to education. In response, the Archbishop of Mexico joined other high-ranking officials in condemning Sor Juana's "waywardness". By 1693, Sor Juana seemingly ceased writing rather than risk official censure. However, there is no undisputed evidence of her renouncing devotion to letters, though there are documents showing her agreeing to undergo penance. Her name is affixed to such a document in 1694, but given her deep natural lyricism, the tone of these supposed hand-written penitentials is in rhetorical and autocratic Church formulae; one is signed "Yo, la peor de todas" ("I, the worst of all women") She is said to have sold all her books,^[1] then an extensive library of over 4,000 volumes, and her musical and scientific instruments as well. Other sources report that her defiance toward the church led to all of her books and instruments being confiscated. ^[11]Only a few writings have survived, which are known as the Complete Works. According to Octavio Paz, her writings were saved by the vicereine.^[12]

Death[edit]

She died after ministering to other nuns stricken during a plague, on 17 April 1695. Sigüenza y Góngora delivered the eulogy at her funeral.^[13]

Posthumous[edit]

An early translation of Sor Juana's work into English is Ten Sonnets from Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz [sic], 1651-1695: Mexico's Tenth Muse, published in Taxco, Guerrero, in 1943. The translator was Elizabeth Prall Anderson who settled in Taxco. One musical work attributed to Sor Juana survives from the archive at Guatemala Cathedral. This is a 4 part villancico,Madre, la de los primores.

Works[edit]

Statue of Sor Juana in Parque del Oeste, Madrid, Spain

Modern interpretation of the portrait of Sor Juana by Mexican artist Mauricio García Vega.

Arguably the most important book devoted to Sor Juana, written by Octavio Paz, Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith (translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, 1989), is a work contemplating Sor Juana's poetry and life in the context of the history of New Spain, particularly focusing on the difficulties women then faced while trying to thrive in academic and artistic fields. Paz describes how he had been drawn to her work by the enigmas of Sor Juana's personality and life paths. "Why did she become a nun? How could she renounce her lifelong passion for writing and learning?"^[14] Paz knew that such questions could be answered only in the context of the world in which she lived, and so he begins his study with a portrayal of the cultural, political, and ideological forces of New Spain, wherein the subjugation of women was absolute.

First part of Sor Juana's complete works, Madrid, 1689.

In his book, Paz makes a thorough analysis of Sor Juana's poetry and traces some of her influences to the Spanish writers of the Golden Age and the Hermetic tradition, mainly derived from the works of a noted Jesuit scholar of her era, Athanasius Kircher. Paz analyses Sor Juana's most ambitious and extensive poem, "First Dream" ("Primero Sueño") as largely a representation of the desire of knowledge through a number of hermetic symbols, albeit transformed in her own language and skilled image-making abilities. In conclusion, Paz makes the case that Sor Juana's works were the most important body of poetic work produced in the Americas until the arrival of 19th-century figures such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

The former Convent of St Jerome inMexico City.

The 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 ^[15] falls asleep in the midst of quietness and silence, where 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,^[16] 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 own pyramid-like mount, which aims at God and is luminous.^[17] There, perched like an eagle, she contemplates the whole creation,^[18] 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 Aristotelic method of ten categories. 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 a straightforward battle between luminous and dark armies, and with the poet's awakening.”^[19]

Other notable works[edit]

• Loa to Divine Narcissus, (Spanish "El divino Narciso")
   

 
 
The work we are doing reminded me of a one person show that I saw years ago...I believe some of you were probably just babies. It was based on her work The Dream/ Sueños and done by Mabou Mimes/ Ruth Malechek.