Constructing an Icon: The Self-Referentiality and Framing of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Abstract

?Que pincel tan soberanofue a copiarte suficiente??Que numen movio la mente??Que virtud rigio la mano?[Whose was the peerless brushthat could rise copying you?What power could stir the mind?What strength the hand renew?]-Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Decima 103Esmera su respetuoso amor hablando a un retrato[She Adds Luster Her Respectful Love She Addresses a Portrait]1Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648?-1695) is the most famous and celebrated female writer and intellectual of the Hispanic Baroque who, this day, occupies a privileged place among both Mexican and, more broadly, Hispanic writers. A nun and prolific author from Colonial Mexico, Sor Juana gained favor with influential, secular individuals because of her authorial accomplishments, which enabled her exist-at least textually-outside of her convent. The subsequent patronage by these powerful allies resulted in the publication of her work in Spain, which circulated in a secular, often courtly, milieu. The relationships she established with the viceregal couples of New Spain assured her of protection from her detractors-most of them men of the cloth-who perceived her writing be audacious, blasphemous, and unbefitting a woman, let alone a cloistered nun. These individuals sought have her give up her extensive library and her writing in order dedicate herself more appropriate activities. While Sor Juana ultimately did succumb this pressure, she had already amassed a significant corpus of work that showcases her own interest in-and engagement with-questions of subjectivity and representation. Because of her unique subject position a Mexican writer who circulated largely in Spain, she occupies a most uncommon space both a representative of Colonial Latin America and a part of Spain's Golden Age of literature and cultural production.Despite a vast amount of scholarship on Sor Juana and her work, one question that still merits investigation is how her self-inscription and representation coincides with, challenges, or determines how she is framed and represented by others.2 This tension between how Sor Juana sees and represents herself and how others perceive and depict her is the crux of this study. Frederick Luciani posits that Sor Juana was particularly interested in the phenomena of seeing and may well have constructed images of herself to counter and transcend diverse images of her that were in circulation, and that she contemplates herself as a seen object in her writing (Literary 24- 25). The most famous portrait of Sor Juana is attributed Juan de Miranda and is frequently dated between 1680 and 1688. Miranda portrays Sor Juana in a way that diverges from the traditional depiction of nuns at the time. Instead of showing her crowned with flowers or holding candles or other symbols used in the ceremony of a nun's profession, Sor Juana is shown in her library, surrounded by books and with quill in hand. This type of portrait is reminiscent more of male prelates and literary figures than of nuns (Burke 354). Another portrait, a bust-length oval, which is part of the collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, has an inscription that states that it is a copy of an image made by Sor Juana herself. This has led many infer that all of the images of Sor Juana may derive from a self-portrait, yet there is no basis for this assumption (Burke 354-55). These and one other portrait of Sor Juana, from 1750 by Miguel Cabrera, are the most widely known portrayals of the Mexican nun. Comparatively little critical attention, however, has been given the role of visual representations of Sor Juana that accompanied her works when they were published in Spain. These portraits are the engraved frontispieces of the Segundo volumen de las obras (Seville, 1692) and Fama y obras posthumas (Madrid, 1700) editions of her works, which participate in many conventional forms of representation on frontispieces and title pages of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. …