1. Sor Juana's birthdate is disputed. In his biography of Sor Juana (I700), Father Diego Calleja gives her birthdate as November 12, 1651. Since the celebration of her tercentenary in 1951, a certificate of baptism has been found to support her birthdate as 1648, which Octavio Paz regards as "almost certain." Octavio Paz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; O, Las trampas de la fe (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1982), 96-97.

2. Rosario Casteilanos, Mujer que sabe latín (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1973, rpt. 1984), 19-20: "Para elegirse a sí misma y preferirse por encima de los demés se necesita haber llegado, vital, emocional o reflexivamente a lo que Sartre llama una situación límite. Situación límite por su intensidad, su dramatismo, su desgarradora densidad metafísica.

"Monjas que derriban las paredes de su celda como Sor Juana y la Portuguesa; doncellas que burlan a los guardianes de su castidad para asir el amor como Melibea." (Throughout this essay, English paraphrases are mine unless otherwise indicated.)

3. Both Rosario Castellanos and Marie-Cécile Bénassy-Berling cast Sor Juana in the role of Virginia Woolf's imaginary "Shakespeare's sister." Bénassy-Berling, however, compares the Mexican nun, with her unique and irresistible vocation for learning, to other successful women writers of the period: Christine de Pisan, María de Zayas, and Aphra Behn. See Castellanos, Mujer que sabe latín , 43; Bénassy-Berling, Humanisme et religion chez Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: La femme et la culture au XVII ^e siècle (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, Editions Hispaniques, 1982), 74.

4. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras corapletas , ed. Alfonso Méndez Plancarte (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura. Económica, 1951-1957), Vol. 4, Comedias, sainetes, y prosa , ed. Alberto G. Salceda (1957), 37-38. break

5. "Habiendo conocido [ . . . ] lo singular de su erudición junto con su no pequeña hermosura, atractivos todos a la curiosidad de muchos, que desearían conocerla y tendrían por felicidad el cortejarla, solía decir que no podía Dios enviar azote mayor a aqueste reino que si permitiese que Juana Inés se quedase en la publicidad del siglo." Cited in Paz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz , 12.

6. Electa Arenal, "The Convent as Catalyst for Autonomy," in Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols , ed. Beth Miller (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1983). See also: Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989).

7. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras completas 4: 458, 460.

8. Obras completas , 4: 441-442. Translation by Margaret Sayers Peden in A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Salisbury, Conn.: Lime Rock Press, 1982), 18-20. Josefina Ludmer also addresses the permutations of "callar" and "decir" in this passage in "Tretas del débil," in La sartén por el mango: Encuentro de escritoras latinoamericanas , ed. Patricia Elena González and Eliana Ortega (Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Huracán, 1984), 47-54. See also Paz, Sor Juana , 16-17.

9. Paz, Sor Juana , 12, 92-5, 172-173.

10. Ibid., 91, citing Dorothy Schons, "Some Obscure Points in the Life of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz," Modern Philology 24, 2 (1926): 10-162.

11. Estela Portillo Trambley, Sor Juana and Other Plays (Ypsilanti, Mich.: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, 1983). Also, Electa Arenal, This Life Within Me Won't Keep Still , a play based on the lives and works of Sor Juana and Anne Bradstreet, performed in New York, fall 1979 and spring 1987.

12. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras completas , vol. 1, Lírica personal , 228. Translation by Muriel Kittel in Angel Flores and Kate Flores, eds., The Defiant Muse: Hispanic Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: Feminist Press, 1986), 21-23.

13. Paz, Sor Juana , 472-486; Georgina Sabat-Rivers, El "Sueño" de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Tradiciones literarias y originalidad (London: Tamesis, 1976); and Luis Harss's introduction and commentary in Sor Juana's Dream (New York: Lumen Books, 1986), 23.

14. John Beverley, Aspects of Góngora's "Soledades" (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1979).

15. Jean Franco, "Sor Juana Explores Space," in Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 33-38.

16. Obras completas , 1: 337; translation by Luis Harss, Sor Juana's Dream , 32, commentary 76.

17. Obras completas , 1: 353-354; translation by Luis Harss, Sor Juana's Dream , 60-62.

18. Michel Beaujour, Miroirs d'encre: Rhétorique de l'autoportrait (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 7-23.

19. Obras completas , 1: 171-173.

20. Alan S. Trueblood, A Sor Juana Anthology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 51.

21. Obras completas , 1: 320-330. break

22. Paz, Sor Juana , 136-138.

23. Bénassy-Berling, Humanisme et religion , 97, takes issue with Pfandl's depiction of Sor Juana's pursuit of knowledge as self-contained and devoid of any interest in teaching. Trueblood, A Sor Juana Anthology , 6, says she taught in a school associated with the convent.

24. Obras completas , vol. 2, Villancicos y letras sacras , 170-172; translation by Kate Flores, The Defiant Muse , 24. break