Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: a chiselled authorship

Abstract

After spanish presses confirmed certain “popular aura” of the mexican writer and nun sor Juana Inés de la Cruz with the publication of her first book, Inundación Castálida (Madrid, 1689), the second volume of her works had a different objective: it was no longer the introduction of an excepcional figure, but the overcoming and precise outlining of a more independent (but not autonomous) female authorship, whose texts now show a profoundly erudite authoral personality, a characteristic perceived and transmited by her panegyrists. In this article I will analyze the way in which some of the preliminary texts and paratexts of the Segundo Volumen (Sevilla, 1692) define a figure of author for sor Juana Inés de la Cruz very different from the one developed in her first book (by her and others). Patronage, female authorship, and the dialogue that’s established with the way the book itself is presented are some of the topics to consider in this second delivery and her most important book.