Author Archive

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 or 1651–1695) was a nun of the Order of St. Jerome in New Spain, now Mexico, and one of the major writers of the Spanish-language Baroque era. Born Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, she entered the convent of San Jerónimo in Mexico City, where she wrote poetry and drama and gathered a large library. Her works include the play Amor es más laberinto, written with Juan de Guevara, the allegorical play El divino narciso, and the Carta atenagórica, a critique of a sermon by the Jesuit António Vieira. In her Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz (1691) she defended women's right to study and learn, and she died in 1695 during an epidemic in Mexico City.

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