Latin America’s great poet rendered into English by the world’s most celebrated translator of Spanish-language literature.
Sor Juana (1651–1695) was a fiery feminist and a woman ahead of her time. Like Simone de Beauvoir, she was very much a public intellectual. Her contemporaries called her ‚the Tenth Muse‘ and ‚the Phoenix of Mexico, ‚ names that continue to resonate. An illegitimate child, self-taught intellectual, and court favorite, she rose to the height of fame as a writer in Mexico City during the Spanish Golden Age.
This volume includes Sor Juana’s best-known works: ‚First Dream, ‚ her longest poem and the one that showcases her prodigious intellect and range, and ‚Response of the Poet to the Very Eminent Sor Filotea de la Cruz, ‚ her epistolary feminist defense—evocative of Mary Wollstonecraft and Emily Dickinson—of a woman’s right to study and to write. Thirty other works—playful ballads, extraordinary sonnets, intimate poems of love, and a selection from an allegorical play with a distinctive New World flavor—are also included.
Über den Autor
Acclaimed for her best-selling translations of Cervantes, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa, Edith Grossman (1936—2023) received many awards including the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation.