Formas de abandonar un laberinto: sor Juana y la figura <i>sorjuanina</i> del escritor americano

Abstract

Traditionally, sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) occupies a central place in Latin American –Mexican in particular– literature and criticism. Unequal woman and nun, incomparable poet and “American intelligence”, from the beginning her figure has created a myth around her work that veils or unveils the paths to the heart of her singular literature and also of her tempestuous history. Strangely but not casually, the Mexican poet discouraged more than once those images and ideas in her poems and letters, images and ideas that also correspond with a certain concept of writing and reading. Therefore, this article aims to delineate this problem’s boundaries –the problem of the Sorjuanian myth and the demythification of sor Juana– in order to define the (inseparable) aspects of such phenomenon, namely, the critical reading and also the publishing and establishing of her texts, as well as the idea and practice of literature in Latin America in one of its inaugural moments –XVII century– through one of its most elusive figures: sor Juana.