Sor Juana

Writing Assignment Maria Zuniga Book ReportDecember 9, 2005 Corrections Sor Juana is a biography of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz written by Octavio Paz and translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. It is a book of 470 pages divided in six parts that besides Sor Juanas life and work, cond 1 the difficulties of the time for an intellectual cleaning woman. It was published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1988. Reading this book gave me the best opportunity to know more astir(predicate) or soone that although has been very influential in my entire life, I didnt know only her accounting.My admiration and respect for Sor Juana started since I was a child and one of my sisters used to aver her poems. Through my literature classes I k newborn a little more about her and the admiration and respect continued growing. Sor Juana became for me a stereotype of intellect, power, femininity, exertion and freedom combined with the devotion to God. Her stor y makes me learn to follow my dreams, to be ambitious, and over all to never ever give up. Juana Ines de la Cruz was born in Mexico in 1648. She grew up in the Panayan Hacienda, which was run for her mother for more than thirty years although she never learned to read.Sor Juana started to take lessons at age or three. During a long period of her childhood, she didnt eat cheese because It made one slow-witted, and Desire for learning was stronger than the desire for eating. By the time she was six or seven, she knew how to read and write. As she couldnt go to the university (because she was a woman), she studied and read by herself. She used to cut-off several inches of her hair (when hair was considered one of the most important womanish features), as a challenge for new learning A head shouldnt be adorned with hair and naked of learning If she didnt sports meeting the goal, then she cut it again.Sor Juana was sent to Mexico City when she was eight to live with her grandfather, wh o had one of the biggest libraries of those times. By age 15, as one of the most learned women in Mexico, she was presented at court with the Viceroy and his wife (maximum authorities in Mexico). As a lady-in waiting, Juana Ines would become known at court for her wit and beauty as thoroughly as for her erudite intelligence. To ascertain the extent of her learning, the Marquise gathered together some of the most astute minds of the day, poets, historians, theologians, philosophers, and mathematicians.Juana Ines answered the questions and arguments directed at her, impressing them all with her mental prowess. At age 20 she entered the Convent of San Jeronimo, known for the mildness of its discipline. The convent was not a ladder toward God but a refuge for a woman who found herself but in the world. She lived in a two-storey cell where she read insatiably and amassed an impressive library while pursuing her writing and intellectual pursuits. She brought the elegance of the court wi th her by transforming the convent locutory into an intellectual salon.The next Viceroy, the Marquis de La Laguna and the Marquise Maria Luisa, the Countess de Pareda, were among the court society and literary devotees who came to talk and debate with Sor Juana. Sor Juana wrote sacred poems and erotic shaft poems, vocal music, villancicos performed in the cathedral, plays, secular comedies, and some of the most significant documents in the history of feminism and philosophical literature. Her use of language, though characterized by the Baroque style, has a modern essence.Her public face reveals the impiousness of an undaunted spirit who appears, not as a nun, but as an independent woman. One of Sor Juanas archetypes was Isis, Egyptian goodness inventor of writing, a symbol of intellect. She also identified herself with maidens of antiquity, poetically divinely inspired to produce poems and prophecies thinking There were not enough penalisation or reprimands to prevent me from co nstrue. The life and work of Sor Juana lines can be summed as knowledge is a transgression committed by a solitary wedge shape who then is punished.Not the glory of knowledge (denied to mortals) but the glory of the act of knowing. Sor Juana was a pivotal figure who lived at a unique point in history bound by two opposing world views one the closed universe of Ptolemy and of the Inquisition, which still held sway in Mexico/New Spain the other characterized by the new science of Copernicus, Newton, and Galileo. On her monumental philosophical poem Primer sueno/First Dream the soul is pictured as intellect, not a religious pilgrim. At the height of the journey, at the fullest understanding reason can attain, there was no vision.Instead, the soul drew back at the immensity of the universe and foundered in confusion. In 1690, requested by the Bishop, Sor Juana wrote her only theological criticism, which she insisted not for public view. However, the Bishop published and censured it wi th an imaginary name of Sor Philotea. In defiant response, Sor Juana wrote La Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Philotea de la Cruz, a feminist manifesto defending womens right to be educated and pursue learning, citing over 40 women who had made significant contributions passim history.This work ignited the churchs wrath. In a climate of intimidation and fear Sor Juana signed Protesta que rubricada con su sangre, hizo de su fe y amor a Dios a statement of self-condemnation in bloodShe renewed her vows and surrendered her musical and scientific instruments, as well as her library of 4,000 volumes, considered at that time to be the largest in Mexico. ii years of silence and penance followed. Then in 1695, while ministering to nuns struck by an epidemic, she herself succumbed and died.Sor Juana has been an inspirational model to follow through all the situations that she faced. She succeeded in a world that was completely against her. The lack of father, which was almost a crime in that time, the lack of freedom to study, to talk, even to think, and over all the prohibition to be herself were some of her obstacles. Every time I am facing an obstacle, I just recall her story and imagine the innumerable sacrifices she had made to get the freedom of learning.After reading her story, I see the world in a different way. Now I know that all those small decisions that I take every day, such(prenominal) as the cloth I wear, what to eat, to read, what to say, and even what to feel are privileges granted for marvelous people like Sor Juan Ines de la Cruz. I also know that all those people had to pay a high price for these privileges some of them pay with their lives. I feel not just impressed, but grateful to Sor Juana, her cultural heredity, and womans worth.