The Fame of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz traces the meteoric trajectory of the Mexican Tenth Muse’s renown and studies how her worldly celebrity was altered posthumously by elegists in her Fama y obras póstumas [Fame and Posthumous Works] of 1700. In this study of a polyphonic, transatlantic volume, the didactic framework of early modern fame is pushed to its limits as panegyrists inscribe the nun into an evolving world-view that could trade in the fictions of the saintly exemplar, the Tenth Muse or a New World treasure, but could not preserve a woman’s renown on the grounds of authorship. Only by making her legible could she vie for the promise of posthumous fame. In flushing out the machinations of Sor Juana’s role as agent of her own celebrity as well as the negotiations of her contemporaries, this book opens new lines of inquiry in the study of early modern fame and print culture and the role of writers, panegyrists and editors as cultural agents in the transatlantic literary relationship between Mexico and Spain.
El pensamiento literario latinoamericano se ha tornado tan amplio, complejo e irregular como la geografía misma de las regiones que integran el continente. Se trata de una realidad atravesada por distintas modernidades, ideologías, idiolectos, costumbres, tradiciones, violencias, políticas, creencias o estéticas, que parece imposible en nuestros días agruparlas bajo un imaginario común, de modo similar al que hace medio siglo conformó el realismo mágico como una suerte de divisa aglutinadora para lo que significaba ser un habitante de América Latina en el mundo. Debido a esta prolífica diversidad, el libro que tenemos entre manos prefiere hablar de territorios de la crítica, más que de simples horizontes temáticos o intereses de grupo, pues, como se deriva del texto de Leticia Mora que sirve de introducción a esta cala en el pensamiento crítico universitario, la crítica literaria ha abierto sus puertas a nuevos derroteros, más cerca de lo social que de lo puramente lingüístico, “tan calificado de espurio en años anteriores”, lo que demuestra el inevitable auge de la conciencia crítica en este momento de grandes transformaciones en la cultura, el país o el continente.
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