Abstract

Abstract Sor Juana's 1680 arch, designed and written in her role as professional writer for Church and state, consisted of commissioned words, art, and performance to celebrate the arrival of the new viceroy. It is significant as the remaining trace of a seventeenth-century female exerting high-level political influence on the closed, patriarchal society of New Spain. Reading and writing about the arch presents multiple challenges, including lack of the full "text" for what was an ephemeral event as well as a problem in recent feminist criticism, which insists on seeing Sor Juana as only a rebellious iconoclast. I argue that the work, and Sor Juana herself, must be read as having both a conservative, hegemonic agenda and radical critique of dominant ideology. This "both/and" move, which I position as necessary for a robust feminist approach, helps us better understand the complexity of Creole identity and belonging in colonial Mexico. Notes 1This is the only English translation of Neptuno alegórico, cited henceforth as "AN." I have consulted both the Spanish text and English version. Sor Juana's baroque Spanish is difficult, and this translation is often too literal and doesn't always make sense. It also renders the verse of the Explication in prose form. When necessary I provide my translation of the Spanish text from the fourth volume of Sor Juana's Obras completas (OC). 2 Obras completas vol. IV and Vincent Martin and Electa Arenal's recent edition of Neptuno alegórico contain select contemporary art work portraying the mythical themes Sor Juana uses, suggesting what the paintings may have looked like or drawn from. 3I'm indebted to Martínez-San Miguel's excellent discussion of criollismo and Sor Juana. 4In fact, the vicereine who was about to arrive was instrumental in fostering much of Sor Juana's subsequent work and was responsible for its publication in Europe. 5All translations of scholarship in Spanish are my own. 6Cf. Bacon, e.g.,: "Some praises come of good wishes and respects, which is a form due, in civility, to kings and great persons, laudando praecipere, when by telling men what they are, they represent to them, what they should be." 7Sor Juana may have copied many passages from a Spanish treatise on mythology without attribution, probably to foreground her Latin (over Spanish) knowledge and boost her affiliation with classical European learning (McNichols 6, 68–77). 8 Non is a negative meaning "not"; plus means "more"; and ultra can mean "beyond," "to an extent or degree exceeding," "on the farther side," and "on the other side." 9See Proverbs 31:10, which praises the virtuous (not strong or valiant) wife. I thank Thomas Hall for his assistance in translating this passage and identifying the source.