Literary Self-fashioning in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Book excerpt: This is a close reading of selected poetic, dramatic, and prose works by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695), with the intent of elucidating ways in which this important colonial Mexican intellectual and literary figure created a textual self through her writing. The book analyzes Sor Juana's complex, varied, and strategic process of literary self-fashioning, the self-promotional and self-protective functions that it served, and its consequences for readers of her and subsequent generations. The book situates its readings of Sor Juana's work against the background of the arc of her career - its ascent in the 1680s, to its descent and disintegration in the 1690s. The book does not try to reassemble the life of a literary figure, rather, it explores the traces of that figure's process of literary self-fashioning contextually and over time. Illustrated.