Precursor of feminist criticism? Who was Juana Inés de La Cruz?

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to think over Sóror Juana Inés de La Cruz’s work and also to link the literary language and the sociological interface, mainly in relation to Genre studies and Literature. For this reason, this paper describes the poetess’s historical-social context that went on beyond the time. Her studies caused effects not only in Mexican society in the XVII century, but it also begins the feminist thought, that enlarges the woman’s civil and political rights. To enclose the foresaid theme, Octavio Paz’s material will be used as source named “Sóror Juana Inés de La Cruz”, some work that doesn’t reach not only the poetess’s biographical aspects, but it also focuses on the hystorical and anthropological character and literary review of all the poetess’s work. Authors such as Freud (1969), Cassirer (2013), and Eliade (2016) subsidized this construction.The social critic’s theory and methodological reference, just like the Comparing Literature that has an excellent tool that makes the register of material analysis, causing a useful dialogue between the poetess and theorical reference of Psychoanalysis. Instead of speaking about the other, Juana Inés de La Cruz made a useful space to be expressed and it became not only the first literary outcoming figure of the period, but also it brought about the building of new ways to the woman and her existence.