Selected Poems and The Answer to Sor Filotea

Introduction

Sor Juana is the last great master of the Spanish Baroque and the greatest poet of colonial America. Her poems are exquisitely crafted, full of wit and reflection; the most famous of them, 'Foolish men', sharply rebukes men who seduce women and then condemn them for their weakness: 'Foolish men who accuse women without reason, not seeing that you are the cause of the very thing you blame.' The long poem First Dream describes the soul leaving the body at night and trying to comprehend the whole universe, her most ambitious philosophical poem. In 1690 a bishop, writing under the pen name 'Sor Filotea', published an open letter urging her to give up secular learning and devote herself to religion. Her famous reply tells of her love of knowledge since childhood and, citing the example of outstanding women through the ages, defends women's right to learn; it is regarded as the first feminist manifesto of the Americas.