Juana Inés de la Cruz: life of the week

Welcome to the History Extra podcast. She led a life that really in many ways shouldn't have been possible. So says historian Paul Gillingham on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. This 17th-century polymathan nun challenged conventions in so many ways. earning through her extraordinary books and poems a place in the pantheon of great Mexican literary figures, and directing more than a few barbs at the patriarchy along the way.

Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Paul discusses the life of a woman he describes as the Spanish Shakespeare. So Paul, we're here today to talk about the life of Suorjana Inez de la Cruz, a Mexican poet, dramatist, scholar and nun who lived in the second half of the 17th century. Now my guess is that a lot of our listeners won't know a lot about her, so I wonder if you could begin by giving us a quick introduction to this remarkable woman. Who was Juana Inés de la Cruz in a nutshell? So she was born in central Mexico, just underneath the volcano Popo Catepetl, next to Mexico City, in either 1648 or 1651, we're not sure.

Her mother was the owner or the family of an hacienda, so a large estate. Her father Depends which variant you take was a Spanish rogue who got Dona Isabel, her mother, pregnant, not once but three times, but then disappeared each time. And so you have in Sor Juana a child of privilege, but she's Spanish, born in Mexico, which makes her a Creole, a second class citizen. And she's illegitimate.

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