Honoured during her lifetime as the "Tenth Muse," Mexican author and intellectual Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) earned a reputation in the twentieth century as the "First feminist of the Americas" thanks to her impassioned defence of a right to education for women.


This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the brilliant wit and erudition in Sor Juana's love poetry, her secular and religious theatre, and her bold defence of women's right to intellectual pursuits. It places her work not only within the intellectual and political contexts of the Latin American Baroque but also the critical perspectives that reveal her contemporary significance, including sound and visual studies. From the 1970s and especially the 1980s, studies of her poetry, prose, and theatre have flourished far beyond Mexico. There has also been a broad audience for fictionalizations of the scant details of her life in novels, operas, film, and a television series. Addressing Sor Juana's fame as a brilliant, defiant woman aware of her status as an anomaly, the book invites readers to engage with the lively poetic wit and daring intellectual exploration that made her a legend in her own time, as well as an inspiration for the popular fictions that surround her status as a twenty-first-century international feminist icon.