Julie Greer Johnson focuses on this aspect of her work. Not only could she intellectually outdo the Bishop, but Sor Juana was also a comedian. Sor Juana, writes Prendergast, represented “her intellect and curiosity as a natural gift from God.” Her scholarly knowledge was on display in La Respuesta, along with a lengthy list of women the Church itself praised for their intellectual abilities. The Bishop wrote his accusations under a female pen-name, pretending to be another Sor, or Sister. It was written in response to a Bishop’s criticism that she was too preoccupied with secular learning. This last was a passionately autobiographical defense of women’s intellectual rights and abilities. This includes poetry, particularly her masterpiece Primero sueño ( The Dream), comedies, dramas, and La Respuesta ( The Answer or The Reply). She had, however, already published the body of work that made her reputation. The Church did eventually force her to give up her library and writing in 1694. 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 to be audacious, blasphemous, and unbefitting a woman, let alone a cloistered nun. Patronage by these powerful allies resulted in the publication of her work in Spain, which circulated in a secular, often courtly, milieu. Ryan Prendergast writes that her influential secular allies allowed her “ to exist-at least textually-outside of the convent.” He writes: Once inside the convent-a life choice that was virtually the only alternative to marriage-Sor Juana ran a salon for the intellectual elite of Mexico City. Her brains and wit earned her renown in the royal court a group of forty scholars tested her and granted her the equivalent of a university degree (otherwise impossible for a woman to get). As an adolescent, she became a lady-in-waiting to the viceroy’s wife. Before joining the convent, she educated herself in a library inherited from her grandfather. Sure, she was brilliant and multilingual, writing in Latin and Nahuatl, but how did she do all this from inside a cloister? Good prep work, evidently. Condemned by the male hierarchy of the Catholic Church, she has since become a Hispanic/Chicana/Latina feminist icon and a founding mother of Mexican literature. A scholar, poet, playwright, philosopher, and composer, in her lifetime Sor Juana (1648-1695) was known as the Tenth Muse and the Phoenix of America. From a convent in New Spain, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz became one of the leading lights of the Spanish Baroque’s golden age.
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