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UNTOLD SISTERS: HISPANIC NUNS IN THEIR OWN WORKS. By Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau. Translations by Amanda Powell. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. Pp. 450. $39.95 cloth, $20.95 paper.)
FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ. Edited by Stephanie Merrim. (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Pp. 189. $21.95.)
JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ AND THE THEOLOGY OF BEAUTY: THE FIRST MEXICAN THEOLOGY. By George H. Tavard. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Pp. 239. $29.95.)
SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ: AMOR, POESIA, SOLEDUMBRE. By Victoria Urbano. Edited and introduced by Adelaida Lopez de Martinez. (Potomac, Md.: Scripta Humanistica, 1990. Pp. 227. $43.50.)
YO, LA PEOR DE TODAS. Film directed by Maria Luisa Bemberg. (Argentina, GEA Cinematografica, 1990. Spanish, color, 110 minutes.)
During the past few years, scholarship on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695) has burgeoned, and there will likely be more to come with the three-hundredth anniversary of her death occurring in 1995. Interest in Sor Juana has been sparked by two main factors: the explosion of scholarship in colonial Latin American studies and the continuing impetus of feminist-oriented studies in women's literature. In the charged field of gender politics, Sor Juana has become an icon. Octavio Paz's 1982 biography did much to focus attention on her, as well as unleashing some predictable polemics.(1) As was the case with Frederick Jackson Turner in his day, one can agree with Paz or refute him, but one cannot ignore him. Another contributing factor is that Sor Juana's works have now become more accessible in English translation.(2 )This review essay will examine four recent books on Sor Juana and her world and a feature-length color film.
Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau's Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works brings together examples of nuns' writing from Spain and Spanish America. Such writing includes autobiographies, religious plays, letters, descriptions of mystical experiences, prayers, chronicles of the founding of convents, and the like. Although some of these texts were published previously, most were not readily available. Others are appearing in print for the first time.
Untold Sisters does not deal with Sor Juana per se but provides a context for her writing that enables scholars to judge her...