5 - Mulier Doctaand Literary Fame

Summary

The profuse iconography of Saint Jerome portrays him as a hermit and a man of letters, surrounded by his writing tools, papers, books, a skull, and a lion. Like the saint, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz constructed her hermitage as a cloistered nun, surrounded by books, quill pens, notebooks, documents, and treatises. When referring to other women similar to her, Sor Juana used the syntagm mulier docta, in which docta is understood as "sabio, erudito, estudioso, versado en ciencias o facultades". In her time, from amid the authorship, publication, patronage, and market corresponding to the order of books, the figure of the author became increasingly clearer. However, female authorship was only just beginning in Spain, not to mention in the Spanish colonies, where the case in question involved a woman who was not only a criolla, but also a nun. The first volume of Sor Juana's work Inundacion Castalida gained her a literary recognition in the metropolitan sphere.