3 - Light from the New World: Posthumous Praise for an American Mind

Summary

Abstract: This chapter contemplates how the Fama y obras pósthumas honors Sor Juana’s enduring fame as Tenth Muse or exotic New World marvel. Sor Juana’s posthumous fame could be associated to her intellectual prowess if framed within the familiar discourse in which she is brokered as a New World “treasure,” a commodity caught up in the dynamics of male exchange. To make her intelligible to European readers, her Mexican panegyrists write her into the language of American abundance and debate whether her sexless soul, her manliness, or her otherworldliness was responsible for her surprising ingenio. Another transatlantic line of inquiry examines the role that the writer’s birth in Mexico plays in her European posthumous imaging as well as in her role as icon of New World culture.

Keywords: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; Juan Ignacio Castorena de Ursúa; Creole patriotism; Fama y obras póstumas; American abundance; New World treasures

“Toda ventaja en el entender lo es en el ser.” [Any advantage in wisdom is also advantageous to the self].

— Baltasar Gracián, Realce I “Genio y ingenio [sic],” El discreto (1646)

“México [cría] hermosura peregrina, / Y altísimos ingenios de gran vuelo, / Por fuerza de astros o virtud divina.” [Mexico is blessed with rare beauty and great minds, be it thanks to the stars or Providence].

— Bernardo de Balbuena, La grandeza mexicana (1604)

The depletion of the silver and gold mines of the New World in the early seventeenth century coincided with two other significant changes in New Spain: the shift in emphasis from the conversion of the indigenous communities to the dissemination of charismatic Catholicism, and the growing importance granted to a distinctively Mexican cultural identity. It was notably as the precious metals of the colony became increasingly scarce that the religiosity of the inhabitants of the New World was bequeathed to Spain as a new form of tribute, literally a new kind of “gold.” No longer working primarily to evangelize the indigenous peoples, the clergy redefined their role by “emphasizing their traditional vocation as exemplars of Christian perfection and effective agents for the salvation of others, tasks to which attention was called by publicized miracles of holy persons drawn from the ranks of the orders and the convents” (DeStefano 1977, xi).