El amor en la poesía de Sor Juana

by Juana Inés de la Cruz

La jerónima sor Juana Inés de la Cruz practicó todo tipo de composición, difíciles como son las propias del Barroco, aunque nunca permitió que la forma rebasara al fondo; esto es, nunca escribió poemas artificiosos vacíos, sino composiciones sólidas y sinceras apegadas a los recovecos de la rima, el metro y el ritmo.He aquí una oportunidad para disfrutar la palabra de una mujer auto-enclaustrada que liberó su vena amorosa a través de la palabra que ha llegado a nuestros días.La jerónima sor Juana Inés de la Cruz practicó todo tipo de composición, difíciles como son las propias del Barroco, aunque nunca permitió que la forma rebasara al fondo; esto es, nunca escribió poemas artificiosos vacíos, sino composiciones sólidas y sinceras apegadas a los recovecos de la rima, el metro y el ritmo. He aquí una oportunidad para disfrutar la palabra de una mujer auto-enclaustrada que liberó su vena amorosa a través de la palabra que ha llegado a nuestros días.

110 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2012

About the author

Juana Inés de la Cruz was born in a town in the Valley of Mexico to a Creole mother Isabel Ramírez and a Spanish military father, Pedro Manuel de Asbaje. As a child, she learned Nahuatl (Uto-Aztec language spoken in Mexico and Central America) and read and write Spanish in the middle of three years. Thanks to her grandfather's lush library, Juana Inés de la Cruz read the Greek and Roman classics and the theology of the time, she learned Latin in a self-taught way. In 1665, admired for her talent and precocity, she was lady-in-waiting to Leonor Carreto, wife of Viceroy Antonio Sebastián de Toledo. Sponsored by the Marquises of Mancera, she shone in the viceregal court of New Spain for her erudition and versifying ability. In 1667, Juana Inés de la Cruz entered a convent of the Discalced Carmelites of Mexico but soon had to leave due to health problems. Two years later she entered the Order of St. Jerome, remaining there for the rest of her life and being visited by the most illustrious personalities of the time. She had several drawbacks to her activity as a writer, a fact that was frowned upon at the time and that Juana Inés de la Cruz always defended, claiming the right of women to learn. Shortly before her death, she was forced by her confessor to get rid of her library and her collection of musical and scientific instruments so as not to have problems with the Holy Inquisition, very active at that time. She died of a cholera epidemic at the age of forty-three, while helping her sick companions. The emergence of Sor Juana De La Cruz in the late seventeenth century was a cultural miracle and her whole life was a constant effort of stubborn personal and intellectual improvement.