El divino Narciso
1689
First Published
3.65
Average Rating
104
Number of Pages
Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz, known as The Tenth Muse of America, has been widely anthologized as a poet, intellectual, and defender of womens rights. Her calling as a nun, often denigrated or overlooked, is clear in The Divine Narcissus/El Divino Narciso, the finest extant example of the auto sacramental, a medieval genre similar to mystery plays. Autos presented a blend of poetry, instrumental and choral music, dance and special effects and were intended to provide theological instruction to a broad audience. The Divine Narcissus is an allegory ostensibly written to explain Christian concepts to the Aztecs whose plight under colonization it also dramatizes. It reveals a scintillating display of sacred and secular knowledge. Scholars and students in Spanish literature, colonial history, and womens studies will welcome this drama by Americas first feminist in its original Spanish and first English translation.
Avg Rating
3.65
Number of Ratings
243
5 STARS
21%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
27%
2 STARS
10%
1 STARS
3%
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Author
Juana Ines de la Cruz
Author · 23 books
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.
