Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) was born in a Mexican village as Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez. Bookish and precocious, she was taken to the viceroy’s court in Mexico City when she was still young; there she learned Latin and soon impressed scholars with her erudition. In 1669 she entered a Hieronymite convent—primarily, it seems, to avoid marriage and to be free to pursue her studies—and changed her name to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Sor Juana was a prolific author of religious, secular and love poetry, and a keen student of science (she corresponded with Isaac Newton). She was also among the first Spanish writers to experiment with Nahuatl, language of the Aztec Empire. Her Primero sueño is one of the most ambitious poems of the Spanish Golden Age, and one of the great works of world poetry.