ENG150Y1 Chapter Notes - Chapter All: The Woman Question, Gender Bender, Experiment
Document Summary
02/08/2016: context: sor juana writes a learned critique of a revered portuguese jesuit"s sermon on divine love. Without her permission, the bishop of pueblo published this treatise in 1690. He follows this up with a letter addressed to her in which he asks her to relinquish her secularism and to devote herself to fulfilling her vows in appropriate forms of worship. This letter is signed sor filotea de la cruz: this pseudonym is not gender bending but a warning against transgression. However over this exchange, with its subtlety and indirection, is a powerful, institutional threat: form: apology (apologia) or self-defence with strong autobiographical component; a theological treatise; political pamphlet as a defence of the rights of women. Church hierarchy and thus the holy office of the inquisition, which, since the. Reconquista had been obsessed with purity of blood and purity of doctrine: sor juana finally succumbs to pressure from the church and renounces all human letters.
