Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe [Paperback]

Paz Octavio (Author)

Book Description

Series: Seccion de Lengua y Estudios Literarios | Publication Date: January 1, 1995

Estudio de la vida y la obra de sor Juana Inés de la Cruz en el marco de la sociedad aristocrática de la Nueva España del siglo xvii, además constituye un verdadero alegato, una apología única en favor de la mujer y su reivindicación frente al poder. Una contribución fundamental a la historia de México y a la de la literatura hispánica.

Product Details

• Paperback: 658 pages
• Publisher: Fondo de Cultura Económica (January 1, 1995)
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN-10: 9681612116
• ISBN-13: 978-9681612115
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #472,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #50 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Untranslated > Spanish
  • #55 in Books > Libros en español > Biografías y memorias > Memorias

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the book to read if you want the real thing, November 30, 1999

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"imaginaria" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe (Paperback)

Octavio Paz, Nobel laureate, poet and one of the best writers of essays in the Spanish language, can give people seriously interested in learning about Sor Juana invaluable information in this beautifully researched book. Everything that is really known about her biography (not anachronistic twentieth-century storytelling and fantasy) is here; and, very importantly, authoritative background information on Colonial Mexican history and culture, social organization, religious practices and norms, and reading materials and habits. Sor Juana is a complex woman, a great reader and thinker that has to be understood in context. This book provides this, and also a sensitive and informed reading of her work. It is also a very good read. Modern-day fictional accounts are deceptive and will short-change you. Don't fall for them. This book is the real thing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Language of Passion, April 5, 2010

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Books Furnish the Mind (Mississippi) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe (Paperback)

Several years ago, the great Peruvian novelist, critic, and sometime Presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa entitled a colelction of his essays from the 1990s "El Lenguaje de la Pasion," the title he had given to an essay that he wrote on the occasion of the death of Octavio Paz. Paz, who wrote the book in question here--Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz--was perhaps Mexico's preeminent man of letters during the twentieth century, a writer who well deserved the Nobel Prize he won in 1990.

This book on Juana Ines de la Cruz is his best book of prose, in which he unites his sensitivity as a writer of poetry with his deep love for Mexico and his interest in its past. Add to this his genuine insightfulness as a critic--and one who can speak to an average educated adult, not one who speaks only to the specialist--and one has an important, vibrant book, not just about poetry, nor yet about Sor JuanaSor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe, but about literature, art, and life in general.

This text is in Spanish, but Paz' Spanish is so clear that it is readily comprehensible even to the non-specialist. Just keep a dictionary at hand: you'll need to consult it only once or twice a page so transparent is Paz' prose. In the end, though I have read quite a bit of literary criticism, I would have to say that this is one of the four or five best books of criticism I have read, not least because it ranges widely beyond its subject and connects what is often the arcana of literary study to life in general. It is a wise, deeply learned book which wears its learning lightly and, as Vargas Llosa suggests, speaks with passion about life in general.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars transported in time, December 3, 2004

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S. Martins (Amerika) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe (Paperback)

I'm not a particular fan of history or biography but couldn't put this book down. For all the information it offers the reader it's an incredibly un-dull read. It paints such a vivid picture of her life that I felt like I was there. Details were always fascinating, never tedious.