Poems, Protest and a Dream: Selected Writings ANNOTATION
"This en face annotated edition of selected writings of the Mexican poet includes the Respuesta to the Bishop of Puebla (1691) and a broad selection of her poetry and dramatic texts: nine love sonnets; segments from Primero sueﾽno, Villancico VI to Saint Catherine, and Loa para el auto sacramental de el divino Narciso; and Leonor's speech from the play Los empeﾽnos de una casa. Peden's 'Translator's Note' explains her translation strategy of 'moving backwards' towards the poet's place and time, which skillfully captures the full flavor of the baroque past. Stavans' extensive 'Introduction' and 'Suggestions for Further Reading' provide orientation to Sor Juana's masterpieces and their social and intellectual contexts. Highly recommended for classroom and general use"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695) wrote her most famous prose work, La Respuesta a Sor Filotea, in 1691 in response to her bishop's injunction against her intellectual pursuits. A passionate and subversive defense of the rights of women to study, to teach, and to write, it predates by almost a century and a half serious writings on any continent about the position and education of women. Moreover, notes Ilan Stavans in his introduction, it has become "a cornerstone of Hispanic-American identity ... at once a chronicle of the tense gender relations in the Western Hemisphere, a rich portrait of the social behavior that prevailed more than a century before independence from Spain was gained in 1810, and the very first intellectual autobiography written by a criolla in a hemisphere known for its solipsism, introversion, and allergy to public confessions. Also included in this wide-ranging selection is a new translation of Sor Juana's masterpiece, the epistemological poem "Primero Sueno," as well as revealing autobiographical sonnets, reverential religious poetry, secular love poems (which have excited speculation through three centuries), playful verses, and lyrical tributes to New World culture that are among the earliest writings celebrating the people and the customs of this hemisphere.
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