The Answer / La Respuesta (Expanded Edition). Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
of this document. The text itself follows, in both Spanish and English, with accompanying notes. The annotations clarify particular points and refer both to Sor Juana’s sources and to other scholars’ reflections on the work. Finally, a sampling of poems in Spanish and in English translation offers a sense of the poet’s literary power and the woman-centered vision that inspired it.
1 The author’s dates are 1648 (or, by her account, 1651) to 1695. “Sor” means “sister”; she is known by her convent name.
2 Dorothy Schons was the first to coin this oft-repeated characterization. See Schons, “The First Feminist in the New World” (1925). In 1974, with public pomp in Mexico, Sor Juana was awarded the title of “First Feminist of America.”
>3 See Arenal and Schlau, Untold Sisters.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Contributions from several sources assisted this project, including a Scholar’s Incentive Award from the College of Staten Island/ City University of New York, travel grants from the Center for Feminist Research/University of Bergen (Norway), and a publication subvention grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. A Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellowship Award and the Centrum Artists-in-Residence program in Port Townsend, Washington, provided essential support for the translation.
An edition of this sort is made possible by the work of dozens of scholars who have come before us. Many colleagues and friends helped directly in its preparation—more of them than we can list. We thank them all. To Florence Howe, who first envisioned this as a Sourcebook, and to Susannah Driver, our editor, who assured its realization, our deepest gratitude. Charles Purrenhage accomplished the complicated tasks of copyediting with ease and elegance.
Barbara Roseman read through many times with acuity and insight. Stacey Schlau, who at times lent both a hand and a shoulder, helped in the initial shaping of the introduction. Ruth El Saffar and Frederick Luciani wrote detailed recommendations, which won further support and gave helpful guidance. Mary Giles and Kathleen A. Myers have given visionary succor and bibliographic counsel. Barbara Bowen, Robert Chiles, Sister Teresa Lamy, and Kathryn Kruger-Hickman read and responded with enthusiasm and corrections. Kristin Natvig Aas, Rebecca Lippman, and Helen Kierulf Svane provided research assistance, and Matthew Lyons helped put the chronology and bibliography all the way through to their final form.
For helpful suggestions and information along the way we thank Helene Farber de Aguilar, María Isabel Barbeito Carneiro, Magda Bogin, Kari Elisabeth Børresen, Thomas Cohen, Ragnhild Finnestad, Jean Franco, Naomi Goodman, Joan Hartman, Anne Michelini, Elías Rivers, Georgina Sabat de Rivers, Nina Scott, Vita C. Shapiro, Steven Shankman, Maya Thee, Martha Thunes, and Marcia Welles.
Members of the Los Angeles writing group—Sally Cragin, Dianne Dugaw, Rachel Fretz, and Jayne Lewis—especially abetted any grace and vigor found in the translated Answer. Generous observations by Elizabeth Davis and Richard Saez, and the astute eagerness of Norma Comrada and the Eugene, Oregon, translators’ gathering, have greatly helped the Englishing of selected poems. Students in the undergraduate/graduate seminar on Sor Juana at the University of Oregon (summer 1992) put the draft manuscript to an edifying test-run.
Lively personal and familial gratitude go to these sine qui non: the Powells, Freda Wright, Lynn Fogus, Lita Newdick, Bartholomew, and H.P. Most deeply, no part of this book could be what it is without the wit, passion, and scholarly perspective of Dianne Dugaw.
For intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and practical support every step of the intercontinental way, thanks to Martha T. Zingo.
Collaborative work requires imagination, forbearance, and affection; thanks to ourselves for seeing it through.
ABBREVIATIONS
| BAC | Sagrada Biblia, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos |
| B.C.E. | Before the Common Era (Before the year “0”; otherwise known as “B.C.”) |
| BLQ | Book of Latin Quotations |
| C.E. | Common Era (Otherwise known as “A.D.”) |
| CCE | Concise Columbia Encyclopedia |
| DCLL | Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend |
| DRA | Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española |
| LCD | Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary |
| NCE | New Catholic Encyclopedia |
| OC | Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras completas (Méndez Plancarte and Salceda; references are in this format: volume. page: lines [i.e., OC 4.37: 292–93]) |
| OED | Oxford English Dictionary |
| SJ | Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz |
CHRONOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
I. Sor Juana’s Life and Work
Juana Ramírez / Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 1648/51–1695): A Life Without and Within
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, author of the Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz (as the Answer is titled in Spanish), is a major figure of Hispanic literature, but still little known to readers of other languages.1 Her poetry, plays, and prose move within and reshape the themes and styles of Renaissance and Baroque Spain and its far-flung empire. Indeed, she is considered the last great author of Spain’s Golden Age (Siglo de Oro), during which an extraordinary number of outstanding writers and artists were active.2 The emergent, differentiated, and multicultural New Spain—Mexico’s telling name during the colonial period—was fertile soil for Sor Juana’s imagination. In turn, her influence helped create a Mexican identity, contributing to the consciousness and sensibility of later scholars and writers.
Sor Juana’s prodigious talent, furthered by intense efforts that began in early childhood, produced a serious intellectual while she was still in her teens. She taught herself the forms of classical rhetoric and the language of law, theology, and literature. At every turn, from her courtly and learned yet marginalized standpoint, she contradicted—or deconstructed—artistic, intellectual, and religious views that would refuse her and others like her the right to express themselves.
The stratagems Sor Juana found useful for artistic and intellectual survival were so subtle that, given the continuity and pervasiveness of patriarchal values up to the present, the magnitude of her reinterpretations has often been missed or distorted even in our time. Sor Juana’s power reaches us today both in her revolutionary reversal of the gender identifications typical of her culture and in the beauty of her expression. With most aspects of the