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I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
The colonial period of Mexico was a mystery to me, so I turned to the ultimate source, this book by Paz. Surprisingly, I found that I did not agree with all of Paz’s conclusions about Sor Juana and the time she lived. He wrote from a male perspective, a middle-aged scholarly male perspective. Sor Juana was a young woman, a distinguished scholar in her own right. Had she written such a history, it would be quite different.
Sadly, there is no such book written from a woman’s perspective, so I invite you to join me in discovering what nuggets of wisdom you can in this book, truly the ultimate deep dive into Sor Juana’s life and times. Yes, I relied a great deal on Paz’s research. You will find it fascinating too.
Mexico's leading poet, essayist, and cultural critic writes of a Mexican poet of another time and another world, the world of seventeenth-century New Spain. His subject is Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, the most striking figure in all of Spanish-American colonial literature and one of the great poets of her age.
Her life reads like a novel. A spirited and precocious girl, one of six illegitimate children, is sent to live with relatives in the capital city. She becomes known for her beauty, wit, and amazing erudition, and is taken into the court as the Vicereine's protegee. For five…
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
This is, simply put, a lyrical conversation between two gifted poets. Westlake, like I did, knew that translations of Sor Juana’s poetry just did not do her justice. When writing about Sor Juana, we need to travel a different path; we need to listen to the whispers from centuries ago.
I listened and wrote a biographical novel; Westlake listened and shared the conversation with us. All I can say is “Yes!”
The poems in Unmade Hearts: My Sor Juana are a call-and-response. Part translation, part conversation, and part footnote, this collection considers how desire and divinity are intimately acquainted. Tactically, the experience of it is akin to reading someone's private text messages; on one side July Westhale's translations of Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz. On the other, Westhale's response to them. There is something about both the process of translation and the process of coming into wholeness within queer desire that is akin: the seams of both show. Meaning is made through iteration, then reiteration. Through intimacy with, and intimacy…
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
This lavishly illustrated story of the Virgin of Guadalupe is simply stunning. The authors committed themselves to extensive research, from the very first story of the Virgin's appearance through discoveries about the constellations on her robe, the images in the background, and even recent discoveries of the images in her eyes.
And still, the question remains: Why has this tulpa made of peasant’s cloth not deteriorated, like all other fabrics from that era? Now I understand why the Virgin of Guadalupe is the patron of Mexico City.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is the most beloved symbol of Mexican Catholicism, and devotion to her is widespread in the USA. While she has entranced and encouraged Mexican Catholics for several centuries, believers and even nonbelievers the world over are inspired and intrigued by her. Millions of pilgrims visit her shrine in Mexico City every year. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have travelled there to pray for her motherly intercession. And scientists from many disciplines have studied the amazing attributes of her mysterious image.
In this glorious, lavishly illustrated book, the renowned author- photographer team Grzegorz Górny…
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
Sor Juana wrote hundreds and hundreds of poems in all manner of styles, from short, spiffy, and even humorous ones to elaborate villancicos performed in a cathedral. Here is a brief collection in both Spanish and English, a few of her shorter love poems. The poems may have been written for her lover, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, or as a commission for a gentleman’s wife or lover. In any event, they are magnificent, such as:
Oh, how I went up in flames
In your lovely Sun!
Hungry for the bait,
I forgot the danger.
Reading these poems, I could not doubt the depth of Sor Juana’s passion.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and…
By Jorge Aguilar Mora, Josefa Salmón, and Barbara C. Ewell
Author
Why are we passionate about this?
As professors of Latin American Studies, with more than 35 years of teaching experience on these topics, and as Latin Americanists who have lived experiences in our countries of origin, we can connect to themes of social justice as well as the wonders that indigenous cultures can offer globally in the fight against climate change as well as social and racial injustices. When we were students in the US, these texts gave us ways to reconnect to our roots; as professors, they offered us ways to connect with today’s students searching for global justice and service to others. These books help us to realize that there are other ways of looking at the world.
As a Latin American woman, a university professor, and a scholar, I have, at times, found myself having to prove my expertise, and Sor Juana’s book presents this same challenge in 17th-century Mexico (New Spain), giving me the strength to follow her example. Sor Juana fought for recognition in her lifetime, only later to become one of Latin America’s most important thinkers and writers, most notably for her challenges to patriarchal authority, both in her life and in her remarkable writings. In one of the texts ofA Sor Juana Anthology, “Reply to Sor Filotea,” Sor Juana set forth a series of brilliant arguments for maintaining her intellectual space, which was threatened by the Church at that time. I recommend this book because it taught me how to reverse an argument intended against you, to transform it in your favor, and how to overturn the gender hierarchy, without negating…
Here is a new voice-new to us-reaching across a gap of three hundred years. Sor (Sister) Juana Ines de la Cruz was acclaimed in her time as "Phoenix of Mexico, America's Tenth Muse"; a generation later she was forgotten. In our century she was rediscovered, her works were reissued, and she is now considered one of the finest Hispanic poets of the seventeenth century. She deserves to be known to English-speaking readers for another reason as well: she speaks directly to our concern for the freedom of women to realize themselves artistically and intellectually.
I’m a historian of early modern Europe. I have a particular interest in the history of violence and social relations and how and why ordinary people came into conflict with each other and how they made peace, that’s the subject of my most recent book Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe, which compares the entanglement of everyday animosities and how these were resolved in Italy, Germany, France and England. I’m also passionate about understanding Europe’s contribution to world history. As editor of The Cambridge World History of Violence, I explored the dark side of this. But my next book, The Invention of Civil Society, will demonstrate Europe’s more positive achievements.
I love this book because on the one hand it tells an incredible story of adventurous derring-do – how a few hundred men conquered a vast empire – and other hand is a testimony to the brutality and savagery that accompanied European colonization.
Diaz is crucial to understanding our present condition. I admire it because it helps us to understand why Europe emerged as the most important region in world history and reminds us of the terrible consequences that conquest had for indigenous people.
2020 Reprint of the 1963 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Díaz took part in the campaigns against the Mexica, later called the Aztec Empire. He was a highly experienced member of Hernán Cortés's expedition. During this campaign, Díaz spoke frequently with his fellow soldiers about their experiences. These accounts, and especially Díaz's own experiences, served as the basis for the recollections that Díaz later told with great drama to visitors and, eventually, in a book entitled Conquest of New Spain. Therein Díaz describes many of the 119 battles in which he…
I started out like most travelers, attracted to new places and to meeting people whose worlds were different from my own. Typically, this meant tried-and-true destinations in Europe until a book project required me to visit an utterly daunting place, the West African nation of Liberia during a civil war. I was in no way prepared for the experience and it changed everything. Seeing how people behave when faced with extreme circumstances profoundly altered my view of the world. Everything was magnified. Though I still enjoy a cup of espresso on the Piazza Navona, there is nothing like traveling to a forbidden zone and meeting someone destined to be a lifelong friend on the roof of a bombed-out building. It opens the world in ways that are challenging and scary, but also incomparably rewarding.
Any account of dangerous travel holds the potential for unexpected revelation, but this one taps a motherlode of rare insights and observations. Part of the reason is that Diaz, a twenty-something soldier of fortune in Hernán Cortés’ 16th-century expedition to the New World, became enchanted by the Aztec civilization that he and his compadres had come to pillage and destroy. Diaz writes vividly and lyrically, with a keen eye for graphic detail, and is unsparing in his accounts of the remarkable brutality on both sides. Five centuries later, his account remains illuminating and disturbing, and shows it’s not always necessary to like your traveling companion to gain insight into a perilous, previously unknown world.
The History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a new abridgement of Diaz del Castillo's classic ""Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva Espana"", offers a unique contribution to our understanding of the political and religious forces that drove the great cultural encounter between Spain and the Americas known as the 'conquest of Mexico.' Besides containing important passages, scenes, and events excluded from other abridgements, this edition includes eight useful interpretive essays that address indigenous religions and cultural practices, sexuality during the early colonial period, the roles of women in indigenous cultures, and analysis of…
Hussein Fancy is a Professor of History at Yale University where he teaches medieval history with a particular focus on medieval Spain and North Africa. His research, writing, and teaching focus on the entwined histories of not only Jews, Christians, and Muslims but also Latin and Arabic in the Middle Ages. He has traveled and lived extensively in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Among the wonders of medieval Spain is the appearance of the first Hebrew secular poetry since Biblical times. In this masterful and unparalleled set of translations by Peter Cole, we witness the profound, pious, chauvinistic, and indeed, sensual traditions of secular poetry over centuries. A fusion of Arabic and Hebrew traditions, in and of themselves, these poems stand as a metaphor for the Jewish community itself as well as its dynamism and endurance under Muslim and then, Christian rule.
Hebrew culture experienced a renewal in medieval Spain that produced what is arguably the most powerful body of Jewish poetry written since the Bible. Fusing elements of East and West, Arabic and Hebrew, and the particular and the universal, this verse embodies an extraordinary sensuality and intense faith that transcend the limits of language, place, and time. Peter Cole's translations reveal this remarkable poetic world to English readers in all of its richness, humor, grace, gravity, and wisdom. The Dream of the Poem traces the arc of the entire period, presenting some four hundred poems by fifty-four poets, and including…
Now retired after a full life, I grew up with a passion for history and the people who made it, being very fortunate during over thirty years at sea to visit many locations around the world where the characters I read about lived. I am also fortunate now to write the history novels I like to read.
I enjoyed this from the very first page because it brought to me the nostalgia of a past era. It is so well constructed and a refreshing subject that brings the Madrid of 1868 to life.
Jaime Astarloa is the aging, old-school fencing master and survivor of duels who prides himself on loyalty and honor with an obsession to create the perfect sword thrust but is now aware of his physical decline.
When the cunning Adela de Otero appears as a worthwhile opponent who wants to learn from Jaime, he finds himself caught up in political intrigues where his old-time values have no substance. I found it hard to put it down.
Fencing is not a game but a science. The outcome is invariably the same: triumph or disaster, life or death...
It is 1868; Spain teeters on the brink of revolution. Jaime Astarloa is a master-fencer of the old school, priding himself on the precision, dignity and honour of his ancient art; his friends spend their days in cafes discussing plots at court, but Jaime's obsession is to perfect the irresistible sword thrust. Then Adela de Otero, violet-eyed and enigmatic, appears at his door. When Jaime takes her on as a pupil he finds himself embroiled in dark political intrigues against…
I am an avid Hispanist and have for a long time been fascinated by the mix of cultures in medieval Spain. Soon after 9-11, I was forced to take part in a barefoot ritual of security checks on arriving at Zaragoza airport to see something of the Moorish heritage there, and it hit me how important the way we tell the story of ‘Moors and Christians’ is to our own times. My own experience as a linguist and of living abroad made me particularly interested in people who are able to see both sides of a story and transfer between cultures. This is what I researched further in my Ph.D. in relation to the demise of Muslim Granada.
This is Andalusia at its most picturesque, with its castles and craggy mountains and a story with all the colour and brio of a medieval costume drama. It’s actually seriously researched history but written in the style of a romantic novel.
It was written in the mid-nineteenth century out of a fascination, which I share, for the story of the demise of the last Muslim kingdom in medieval Iberia. It’s full of heroic deeds, foolhardy escapades, chivalric episodes, and emotional scenes, all based on documentary evidence.
But what I especially like is the ironic stance the author achieves on the bigotry and intolerance characteristic of the victors in the conflict through the conceit of pretending his tale is written by a Spanish monk. It made me think about how history is written, who writes it, and how often we take for granted narratives that first emerged from political propaganda.
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 - November 28, 1859) was an American author of the early 19th century. Best known for his short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle (both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon), he was also a prolific essayist, biographer and historian. Irving and James Fenimore Cooper were the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving is said to have encouraged authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving was also the U.S. minister to Spain 1842-1846.
