Latin America's great poet rendered into English by the world's most celebrated translator of Spanish-language literature. Sor Juana (1651–1695) was a fiery feminist and a woman ahead of her time. Like Simone de Beauvoir, she was very much a public intellectual. Her contemporaries called her "the Tenth Muse" and "the Phoenix of Mexico," names that continue to resonate. An illegitimate child, self-taught intellectual, and court favorite, she rose to the height of fame as a writer in Mexico City during the Spanish Golden Age. This volume includes Sor Juana's best-known works: "First Dream," her longest poem and the one that showcases her prodigious intellect and range, and "Response of the Poet to the Very Eminent Sor Filotea de la Cruz," her epistolary feminist defense—evocative of Mary Wollstonecraft and Emily Dickinson—of a woman's right to study and to write. Thirty other works—playful ballads, extraordinary sonnets, intimate poems of love, and a selection from an allegorical play with a distinctive New World flavor—are also included.

The interest in Mexican Hieronimite nun, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695) is reaching extraordinary new levels. She has been the subject of plays, a feature film, scholarly conferences, books and articles. Nobel Laureate, poet Octavio Paz, has called her one of the great poets of the Spanish language and considers her Response to Sor Philotea de la Cruz to be the first intellectual autobiography in the Hispanic world. At her death in 1695, Sor Juana was an internationally-known poet, dramatist and religious writer. Today, she is still considered an exceptional lyric poet and one of the great writers of Spain's siglo de oro, its Golden Age of drama. Included here are: religious songs and devotional poetry; Sor Juana's sacramental drama and preface play, Divine Narcissus; two devotional works (first English translation), Devotional Exercises for the Feast of the Incarnation and Offerings for the Sorrows of Our Lady; a theological disputation, Critique of a Sermon/Athenagoric Letter and her autobiographical Response to Sor Philotea de la Cruz. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Selected Religious Works in the Classics of Western Spirituality Series is essential reading for those interested in great literary figures, religious studies and women's history.

A wealth of background and analytical material makes Sor Juana's proto-feminist writings, newly translated, all the more compelling.

Juana Inés de la Cruz was acclaimed in her time as the "Phoenix of Mexico", America's tenth muse; a generation later she was forgotten. Rediscovered 300 years later, her works were reissued and she is now considered one of the finest Hispanic poets of the seventeenth century. Her works speak directly to our concern for the freedom of women to realize themselves artistically and intellectually. This anthology contains a selection of her poems.

A wealth of background and analytical material makes Sor Juana's proto-feminist writings, newly translated, all the more compelling. 2014 PEN USA Literary Award for Translation Finalist This Norton Critical Edition includes: · Edith Grossman’s acclaimed translations of the Tenth Muse’s best-known works. · Introductory materials and explanatory footnotes by Anna More along with numerous images. · Additional works by Sor Juana, related writings by Ovid, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and Diego Calleja, and historical interpretations. · Seven critical essays by Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Irving Leonard, Octavio Paz, Georgina Sabat de Rivers, Yolanda Martinez-San Miguel, Emilie Bergmann, and Charlene Villasenor Black. · Diana Taylor’s interview with Jesusa Rodríguez about performing “First Dream.” · A Chronology and Selected Bibliography.

The contemporary English-language translation has been done by Margaret Sayers Peden, professor of Spanish-American literature at the University of Missouri, who is highly regarded for her literary translations of modern authors such as Carlos Fuentes, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Horacio Quiroga. Mrs. Peden's detailed introduction to the volume gives background information about the nun and the creation of her major writing.

CONTENT: Villancios and devotional poems -- Loa to Divine Narcissus -- Divine Narcissus -- Devotional exercises for the nine days before the feast of the most pure incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, our Lord -- Offerings for the rosary of the fifteen mysteries to be prayed on the feast of the sorrows of our Lady, the Virgin Mary -- Critique of a sermon of one of the greatest preachers, which Mother Juana called Response because of the elegant explanations with which she responded to the eloquence of his arguments -- Letter of "Sor Philotea" -- Response to the very illustrious "Sor Philotea".

In Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Feminist Reconstruction of Biography and Text, Yugar invites you to accompany Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a seventeenth-century protofeminist and ecofeminist, on her lifelong journey within three communities of women in the Americas. Sor Juana's goal was to reconcile inequalities between men and women in central Mexico and between the Spaniards and the indigenous Nahua population of New Spain. Yugar reconstructs a her-story narrative through analysis of two primary texts Sor Juana wrote en sus propias palabras (in her own words), El Sueno (The Dream) and La Respuesta (The Answer). Yugar creates a historically-based narrative in which Sor Juana's sueno of a more just world becomes a living nightmare haunted by misogyny in the form of the church, the Spanish Tribunal, Jesuits, and more--all seeking her destruction. In the process, Sor Juana "hoists [them] with their own petard." In seventeenth-century colonial Mexico, just as her Latina sisters in the Americas are doing today, Sor Juana used her pluma (pen) to create counternarratives in which the wisdom of women and the Nahua inform her sueno of a more just world for all.

Latin America's great poet rendered into English by the world's most celebrated translator of Spanish-language literature. Sor Juana (1651–1695) was a fiery feminist and a woman ahead of her time. Like Simone de Beauvoir, she was very much a public intellectual. Her contemporaries called her "the Tenth Muse" and "the Phoenix of Mexico," names that continue to resonate. An illegitimate child, self-taught intellectual, and court favorite, she rose to the height of fame as a writer in Mexico City during the Spanish Golden Age. This volume includes Sor Juana's best-known works: "First Dream," her longest poem and the one that showcases her prodigious intellect and range, and "Response of the Poet to the Very Eminent Sor Filotea de la Cruz," her epistolary feminist defense—evocative of Mary Wollstonecraft and Emily Dickinson—of a woman's right to study and to write. Thirty other works—playful ballads, extraordinary sonnets, intimate poems of love, and a selection from an allegorical play with a distinctive New World flavor—are also included.