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The Answer / La Respuesta (Expanded Edition): Including Sor Filotea's Letter and New Selected Poems
“[The Answer] is eloquent, sardonic, learned and, particularly in its autobiographical part, of great freshness.”—The Times Literary Supplement “One of the landmarks of Renaissance literature and . . . in the history of intellectual freedom. . . . This is essential reading.”—Stephen Greenblatt, best-selling author and professor “Recommended for informed readers.”—Library J...more
Paperback, 232 pages
Published
June 1st 2009
by The Feminist Press at CUNY
(first published 1979)
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Rashaan
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EspÃritu Indómito
Only a century ago the gentler sex was encouraged to lead more simple and elegant lives free from study and occupation where they were expected to devote themselves to beauty, grace, family, and home. In seventeenth century New Spain, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz sought enlightenment through the convent, where she taught herself to read, write, and reason. Though frowned upon by the Catholic Church, which was, ironically, her artistic and intellectual refuge, with the ...more
Only a century ago the gentler sex was encouraged to lead more simple and elegant lives free from study and occupation where they were expected to devote themselves to beauty, grace, family, and home. In seventeenth century New Spain, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz sought enlightenment through the convent, where she taught herself to read, write, and reason. Though frowned upon by the Catholic Church, which was, ironically, her artistic and intellectual refuge, with the ...more
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Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was a self-taught student in the mid-seventeenth century at a time when the education of women was not encouraged or socially accepted. From an exceptionally young age she would read books from her grandfather's library, and according to the introduction to the book, followed her older sister to her school and tried to trick the teacher in teaching her as well with good results. She entered a convent at a reasonably early age, realizing from the start that it would be...more
In her lifetime, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz -- the "Tenth Muse", as she has been called -- won international recognition for her poetry and plays. But for 20th and 21st Century readers, whose patience for mystical and twisted forms of baroque poetic expression is (needless to say) comparatively diminished, it is this extended letter she wrote in defense of her right to not be ignorant that most resonates. That Sor Juana's arguments so closely align with those that would later, and perha...more
LJ user messyhair says, "I love this book smf. Sor Juana was a 16th-century nun in colonial Mexico who joined the church for the purposes of having access to books and education. The Answer is her response to a bishop (I think it was a bishop, anyway) who was protesting Sor Juana's pursuit of knowledge as being unwomanly and improper, and Sor Juana schools him with intelligent, feminist interpretation of Bible verses. It's a look at Western proto-feminism and I just adore it."
Made me wish that I'd known her in real life.
Sor Juana not only defended her views by writing this scholarly and witty reply to the Archbishop of Puebla. She also wrote a feminist treatise on the role of women in education and learning, and the right they had to both. Highly recommendable.
Xen
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Recommends it for:
all us ladies, and those few existent gentlemen.
A must for all women of Mexican descent; considered one of the first feminist documents in the Americas. Be not fooled by the excessive erudite language; it's an intense work but well worth the reading of it :)
The many struggles this woman faced! Silenced from having her ability to explore literature and education. A must read for modern feminists.
She takes on the Enlightenment assholes. Incredible rhetoric!
So much fun! A must-read!
Ali Nicole
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Also known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz or, in full, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz de Asbaje y RamÃrez de Santillana, was a self-taught Novohispana scholar, nun, poet, and a writer of the baroque school.
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