Western culture has exhausted itself inventing female monsters.
—Lauren Elkin, Art MonstersIn his poetic parody “Sor Juana y otros monstruos: Una ponencia en verso” (2013), the Mexican poet Luis Felipe Fabre highlights the prevailing academic consensus surrounding the “monstrosity” of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (ca. 1648–1695).Footnote 1 As Fabre (Reference Fabre2015, 5) notes, the famous colonial Hieronymite nun has consistently been associated with an aura of extraordinariness: “All the Sor Juana scholars concur that Sor Juana/was a monster.” To describe Sor Juana’s wit, Fabre avoids positive terms like genius or famous and opts for the more ambiguous monster, derived from the Latin monstrum, meaning “prodigy,” precisely because it aptly symbolizes critics’ preoccupation with Sor Juana’s supposed exceptional nature.Footnote 2 Additionally, he ironically points out, the figure of the monster is the focal point for the critics’ dissensus, as “where they differ/is/on what kind of monster she was” (11). Building on the divergences among sorjuanistas, Fabre’s poem persistently poses variations of the question “What kind of monster was Sor Juana?” (13). These inquiries include “Was Sor Juana a phoenix?” (11) and “What kind/of monster is it whose power/resides in language?” (15). Such repetitions parodically mirror the relentless infatuation of Sor Juana scholars with defining her identity—an obsession that, as Lauren Elkin (Reference Elkin2023, 16) suggests, generates new scholarship by perpetuating the Western tradition of “inventing female monsters.”
Fabre’s parody not only resonates with modern sorjuanismo but also aligns with the historical fixation of Sor Juana’s peers in both defining her persona and determining whether she was an exception to the norm.Footnote 3 Ultimately, Sor Juana scholars “concur/with what was said/about Sor Juana by Sor Juana’s contemporaries” (9). However, through the poem, Fabre eventually arrives at a potential and plausible answer to the transhistorical question posed by Sor Juana’s critics, both past and modern:
This metacritical turn propels my article to explore further the enigmatic and monstrous aura attributed to Sor Juana’s identity.Footnote 4 In response to Fabre’s challenge, I take up the gauntlet, aiming to build on the metaphor of late Sor Juana as a sphinx.Footnote 5 Specifically, this article elaborates on what I call a “poetics of dedication” identified within her final work, the Enigmas ofrecidos a la Casa del Placer (1695). Sent from Mexico to Lisbon, this collection of twenty poetic riddles was addressed to a devoted audience—a conventual academy of Portuguese nuns and noblewomen who gathered to interpret Sor Juana’s poems as if she were a sphinx presenting them with enigmas.Footnote 6 In turn, the collection of enigmas is preceded by a “homenaje a Sor Juana” (Sabat-Rivers and Rivers Reference Sabat-Rivers and Rivers1995, 677), featuring prose and verse compositions by eight Portuguese nuns connected to Sor Juana’s patron, the Countess of Paredes and former vicereine of Mexico. All these women were part of the so-called Casa del Placer. I argue that the Enigmas, inherently a transatlantic work, was intricately structured around the fundamental questions arising from the early modern debate on Sor Juana’s “monstrous persona” on both sides of the Atlantic.Footnote 7 This heated debate was strategically wielded as a weapon, not only by the nuns and noblewomen of the Casa del Placer but also by Sor Juana herself. The collection’s organization had a ritualistic nature, revolving around the central theme of enigma and anchored in the ceremonial practice of presenting and resolving poetic riddles dedicated to Sor Juana. As I show in the following pages, the women of the Casa del Placer present her with the answers to the riddles in the form of poems, showcasing the fruits gathered from a book of enigmas that Sor Juana had dedicated to them initially. In other words, I contend that the Enigmas ofrecidos a la Casa del Placer is a collection in which Sor Juana strategically leveraged and magnified the enigmatic and exceptional qualities her contemporaries attributed to her. To support this claim, I first demonstrate how the figure of the enigmatic monster was imposed upon her by her male peers and then examine the ways Sor Juana employed this enigmatic aura in crafting her Enigmas.
My article emphasizes that early modern and colonial poetry served as a social practice expressing shared subjectivities (Sierra Matute Reference Sierra Matute2021). Sor Juana’s Enigmas not only underscore the role of poetry as a practice articulating collective sensibilities but also delve deeper into her poetics of dedication. In this intricate framework, the nun’s relinquishment of personal agency transforms the lyrical poem into a manifestation that transcends individuality, embodying a collective “we” instead of an individual, lyric “I.” The poetics of dedication, in this case, serves as a transformative conduit, melding the distinct voices of the nuns into a unified expression. The subsequent evolution of this poetics takes on the character of a communal pursuit, wherein the shared interpretation of enigmas becomes a symbolically rich and ceremonious manifestation of intellectual devotion in the conventual academy. Consequently, the act of dedication goes beyond presenting poetry; it becomes a ritual that binds participants in a mutual pursuit of knowledge, thereby strengthening the thematic and structural unity of the collection.
Yes: Sor Juana was a monsterFootnote 8
Luis Felipe Fabre’s academic paper in verse is clearly founded on the well-established branch of Sor Juana studies that debates her as a “exotic, monstrous, New World marvel” (Echenberg Reference Echenberg2023, 18). The poem dramatizes how, from Sor Juana’s time to the present, criticism has relied on the figure of the enigmatic monster to build scholarship around her. Fabre transforms Sor Juana scholars like Stephanie Kirk, David Solodkow, and Margo Glantz into characters, adding a theatrical dimension to the academic discourse on her identity.Footnote 9 However, many other critics have commented on the nun’s identity.Footnote 10 This article focuses on where discussions about enigma and her exceptionality intersect—an intersection Sor Juana herself exploits in crafting her Enigmas. For example, the nun has been described as “una de las figuras más importantes y enigmáticas de la literatura hispanoamericana” (one of the most important and enigmatic figures in Latin American literature; Ventarola Reference Ventarola2017a, 7) and even “the ultimate Baroque monster, an inconceivable misbirth” (McSweeney Reference McSweeney2017). She has also been subjected to literary monsterization, closely tied to her dimension as a popular icon (Hind Reference Hind2017).Footnote 11 These characterizations highlight the mysterious aura attributed to Sor Juana in both literature and literary analysis, driven by the intersection of uniqueness and mystery, linking her figure to the obsessions of the baroque period and its fascination with both monsters and enigmas.Footnote 12 Indeed, the overlap between the discourses of monstrosity and enigma shapes the framework of Sor Juana studies.Footnote 13
The practice of scrutinizing Sor Juana’s life and body of work goes far beyond the contemporary scope of modern sorjuanismo. Its origins trace back to the alienating descriptions provided by her contemporaries, including a considerable number of Spanish “hombres doctos,” twenty ecclesiastic letrados who, from their learned chairs in Spain, expressed their opinions through legal texts, critiques, and laudatory poems, performatively endorsing the Segundo volumen of Sor Juana’s works (Pérez González Reference Pérez González2022, 200).Footnote 14 Unsurprisingly, these texts engaged with the topos of Sor Juana’s enigmatic aura, drawing analogies to the widely spread promise that the Spanish kingdom held of discovering valuable gold, treasures, and exotic materials suitable for extraction in the Americas.Footnote 15 Similarly, the well-known mythical anecdote recounts a supposedly crucial moment in Sor Juana’s youth when, at the age of seventeen, her intellect was challenged by a group of yet another forty wise men—a test she successfully passed (Calleja Reference Calleja1996, 16–17). Although the authenticity of this story is uncertain, its popularity underscores a recurring theme in Sor Juana’s life: From a young age, she was confronted with challenges to her intellect, often by men who doubted her and presented enigma-like tests to question her wit. Notably, this anecdote was documented by her first biographer, the Jesuit Diego Calleja, whose Vida de Sor Juana represents the earliest biographical approach to her work and forms the foundation of all subsequent discussions about her life (Pérez González Reference Pérez González2022, 196).
Published as a prologue to the Fama y obras póstumas del Fénix de México … (1700)—the collection that solidified the myth of the nun as a literary monster—Calleja’s biography begins with the most extreme scrutiny of Sor Juana’s life: “Cuarenta y cuatro años, cinco meses, cinco días y cinco horas ilustró su duración al tiempo la vida de esta rara mujer” (13). By delineating her lifespan down to the hour, Calleja exerts control over Sor Juana’s body.Footnote 16 This enumeration emphasizes the level of surveillance imposed on Sor Juana and underscores the attempt to regulate her existence within extremely narrow temporal confines. Calleja concludes the sentence with the label “rara mujer.” The labeling, reminiscent of the Latin expression “rara avis,” further reinforces the perception of Sor Juana as a monstrous entity.Footnote 17 Furthermore, with those echoes, Calleja anticipates a theme present throughout the whole biography, what he would have seen as “the New World strangeness of Sor Juana” (Dopico Reference Dopico2001, 213), a theme that was also discernible in the preliminary texts of the Segundo volumen and resonated in the Fama y obras póstumas itself. This motif hints at the contemporaneous Western perception of the Americas as an exotic and mysterious land. As Margo Echenberg (Reference Echenberg2023, 16) summarizes: “Her publications, her reputation as an American Tenth Muse and her negotiations with patrons and ecclesiastical hierarchs made Sor Juana a transatlantic celebrity in her own time. But so too did her oddity, her freakish exceptionality as a prodigy, a wonder of her sex and treasure of the feminized New World.” In this way, the intersection of discourses of monstrosity and enigma in Calleja’s depiction highlights the rare nature of Sor Juana, subjecting her to intense examination and contributing to the construction of her identity as an enigmatic transatlantic figure—one with whom the nuns and noblewomen of the Casa del Placer actively engaged.
Instead of adopting a passive stance, I contend that Sor Juana actively embraced and reappropriated both the transoceanic reach of her works and the enigmatic aura attributed to her by her contemporaries. As Kirk (Reference Kirk2021) has recently underscored, “her work bears explicit and implicit hallmarks of her Americanness, her gendered coloniality, her membership in a heterogeneous New World society, and a transatlantic and global consciousness fashioned by her status as an imperial subject” (25). Sor Juana’s proactive engagement with her supposed exceptionality significantly influenced the development of her final poetry, particularly her Enigmas ofrecidos a la Casa del Placer. The Enigmas was her last work, and it should be understood as a “obra conventual, colectiva, devota y protectora de mujeres literatas de la época que conocían la obra de Sor Juana, y como lazo de unión entre mujeres de esos dos mundos” (Sabat-Rivers and Rivers Reference Sabat-Rivers and Rivers1995, 277). The fact that Sor Juana chose a transatlantic collection of enigmas to close her career is a strategic move, aligning with her efforts to challenge societal expectations.
Sor Juana leveraged the concept of the female monster in the Enigmas to enhance her portrayal of mystery and exceptionality. She did so by capitalizing on the moments in her life when she faced public criticism—a constant theme throughout her existence.Footnote 18 For instance, five years before she wrote her last work, Sor Juana underwent “careful scrutiny as a poet and as a woman” (Lavrin Reference Lavrin1999, 61) during a heated exchange of accusations with the bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz. Disguised as the nun “Sor Filotea,” the bishop advised Sor Juana to forsake her intellectual pursuits, deeming them unfitting for a devout woman.Footnote 19 This epistolary exchange was an attempt to silence her. However, as Bárbara Ventarola (Reference Ventarola2017b, 27–28) has shown, rather than succumbing to discouragement in the face of these accusations, Sor Juana embraced her reputation for cleverness in her “Respuesta a Sor Filotea,” where she “aboga por el derecho femenino a la educación, a la enseñanza (sobre todo a otras mujeres) y a la participación en la esfera pública,” a mission that the Enigmas fully integrate. Given her supposed dual nature, Sor Juana was conceived by her contemporaries “as a ‘hybrid monster,’ a woman with ‘masculine intellect’” (Luciani Reference Luciani2004, 172). Although these characterizations may have been perceived as offensive by the nun, she chose to harness them throughout her life. For instance, in some poems, she ironically responds to several gentlemen who praise her masculine intellect and even directly request “que se volviese hombre.” In her reply, she declares:
In this poem, the lyric “I” rejects an association with the masculine or feminine gender and instead claims a neutral gender, in another of the many examples of “gender nonconformity and dissonance in Sor Juana” (Fiol-Matta Reference Fiol-Matta2003, 346). The statement showcases Sor Juana’s witty response to societal expectations by emphasizing the neutrality of her identity, blurring the conventional boundaries between masculinity and femininity.Footnote 20 This deliberate embrace of hybridity highlights a defiance of traditional gender norms.Footnote 21 She further elaborates on this gesture in her “Respuesta,” where she draws upon the classical tradition to assert the presence of a feminine intellect and suggests a close connection between ingenio and hermaphroditism (Ventarola Reference Ventarola2017b, 28–29). Both assertions, offered in response to men, underscore that Sor Juana not only welcomed her renown for wit and intellect but also reclaimed the symbol of the enigmatic monster.Footnote 22
An enigma who poses enigmas
The Enigmas ofrecidos a la soberana asamblea de la Casa del Placer is a handwritten collection of twenty poetic riddles. Composed in the metrical form of the redondilla—four octosyllabic lines with consonant rhyme—all are posed in the form of a question. Each enigma begins with the interrogative “¿Cuál?” and follows an identical structure and a similar style.Footnote 23 For example, this is the first enigma:
The collection concludes with an “Index de los sacrificios que ofrece la poetisa a los Sagrados oráculos que ilustrasen la oscuridad de los Enigmas” (Cruz Reference Cruz2019, 299), which enumerates twenty metrical forms—“una silva,” “una canción,” “unas liras” (299)—aligned with each of the twenty enigmas. The index encourages readers to employ designated metrical forms for the resolution of the respective enigmas.Footnote 24 For instance, the inaugural metrical form listed in the index, “un soneto” (299), aligns with the quoted enigma and, therefore, the riddle should be answered with a sonnet dedicated to the concept that resolves it.Footnote 25 Although scholars agree that it cannot be confirmed whether the enigmas were ever solved by the women of the Casa del Placer—any hypothetical texts containing the solutions have not survived—the “Index” demonstrates that the collection was conceived with the idea that Sor Juana’s Enigmas would act as a catalyst for generating poems in response to these twenty literary riddles, thereby fostering literary creation and exchange among women.
Often labeled as “poesía menor” or “poesía de circunstancias” (Martínez López Reference Martínez López1968, 57), the Enigmas are one of the least studied works within Sor Juana’s literary corpus (Munguía Reference Munguía2019, 13). This collection of poetic riddles was discovered in the National Library of Portugal by Enrique Martínez López in 1968, yet it remained overlooked for three decades.Footnote 26 It was only in 1993 that Sergio Fernández transcribed them for publication in the newspaper La Jornada Semanal, and the inaugural critical edition, overseen by Antonio Alatorre, was not published until 1994. Although more academic works on the Enigmas are gradually emerging, they have yet to garner substantial scholarly attention, as they have often occupied a peripheral position in monographs about Sor Juana and have rarely assumed a central role as the main topic of academic books.Footnote 27 Beyond being Sor Juana’s final work, what distinguishes the Enigmas in her oeuvre is, as Verónica Grossi (Reference Grossi2019) has argued, its focused exploration of the epistemological dimension of poetry within a transatlantic female context.
Inspired by Sor Juana, the nuns and noblewomen of the Soberana Asamblea de la Casa del Placer deliberately contributed to shaping her monstrosity. Yet they did so with a different approach from that of their male counterparts.Footnote 28 The four preserved testimonies, all in manuscript form, provide a distinct entry into the Enigmas. They satirize the prevailing male literary culture of the time, including its formulas and technologies, particularly targeting the printing press. The women of the Casa del Placer, being admirers of Sor Juana, likely acquainted themselves with the printed volumes of her works. As mentioned already, these volumes featured an abundance of preliminary texts predominantly written by male authors. These kinds of preliminary texts were emblematic of the printed culture of the time. Consequently, the manuscript poems composed by the nuns of the Casa del Placer inherently satirize the patriarchal anxiety to “approve” of Sor Juana’s literary works.
The paratexts preceding the Enigmas, crafted for private use, playfully mock the printed circulation model. Approvals and censures are conveyed through handwritten poems by different nuns. Even the cover, designed to mimic prints, parodically carries a handwritten “imprint,” reading: “Por su más rendida y fiel aficionada sóror Juana Inés de la Cruz, Décima Musa. Lisboa. En la oficina del más reverente Respeto, y impresor de la majestuosa veneración. A costa de un lícito entretenimiento. 1695. Con todas las facultades que puede tener un rendimiento, que no llega a tocar la necedad de licencioso” (Cruz Reference Cruz2019, 247–48). While the imprint information carries a significant legal status in any printed book of the period—an aspect that would rarely be questioned—the handwritten covers of the Enigmas mock these details by replicating their jargon and visual layout. Free from the constraints faced by printed texts under censorship, they incorporate inside jokes: There is no tangible printer, no individual physically printing the text of the Enigmas. Instead, there is the portrayal of a personified “Most Reverent Respect.” Furthermore, what gets printed is not a literary piece but a textual embodiment of a “majestic veneration” for Sor Juana, the preliminary handwritten texts being the tangible product of that embodiment. In essence, right from the cover of the Enigmas, the Portuguese nuns parody the limitations imposed on them by a male-dominated knowledge production system, such as literary jargon and cliches, censorship, and the printing press.Footnote 29
In the preamble of the collection, the women of the Casa del Placer construct their own narrative around the figure of Sor Juana, engaging in a discourse in which the Mexican nun herself takes part. The Enigmas are preceded by two poems written by Sor Juana—an ode dedicated to the Casa del Placer and a sonnet addressed to the reader—along with four laudatory poems in Spanish dedicated to Sor Juana by nuns and the former vicereine of Mexico.Footnote 30 Sor Juana cultivated a close friendship with the vicereine, who is believed to have played a crucial role in facilitating Sor Juana’s connection with the Casa del Placer (Calvo and Colombí Reference Calvo and Colombí2015, 94). The collection also features as paratexts two prose censuras and three poetic approvals in verse, each signed by different nuns, all of which are written in Portuguese. With Sor Juana as their accomplice in the game, the women of the Casa del Placer also employed the theme of exceptionality in all the preliminary texts. For example, the ex-vicereine addresses Sor Juana, expressing that her book, a creation born of Sor Juana’s genius, surpasses even herself, stating, “A ti misma te excediste” (264), and deeming it a “Maravilla reservada/a tu ingenio” (Cruz Reference Cruz2019, 263, 265) because of its exceptional quality. Similarly, Sor Feliciana de Milão, a nun in the Convent of Odivelas, elaborates in her censura on Sor Juana’s enigmatic aura, characterizing the collection as a “breve e misterioso volume” (281), while Maria das Saudades, a nun in the Convent of Vialonga, declares herself an admirer of the “Décima Musa” (282). Sor Juana, like the monstrous sphinx, consistently resides at the heart of the enigma—within the Enigmas—serving as the focal point of the interpretive process required for the resolution of poetic riddles.
In addition to emphasizing Sor Juana’s exceptional qualities, the majority of the preliminary texts elaborate further on characterizing her as an exception by associating her nationality with the perceived exoticness of America during the period (Echenberg Reference Echenberg2023, 43). Sor Francisca Xavier, from the Monastery of La Rosa, refers to Sor Juana as the American “treasure” (274). In her poem, Sor Mariana de Santo Antonio, from the Monastery of Santa Clara, includes Sor Juana in the “apolíneo coro” of the Muses; when describing her “hermoso rostro,” she states:
With exaggerated hyperbole, Sor Mariana proposes a connection between Sor Juana’s perceived perfection in both beauty and discourse and the material wealth Spain gained through colonization (Echenberg Reference Echenberg2023, 150). Sor Mariana not only asserts that the kingdom would willingly trade its economic wealth for Sor Juana’s literary legacy but also hints later that the Enigmas imply an “influjo” (261), or transference of wit, from Mexico to the Iberian Peninsula, underlining this concept of trade.
Simoa de Castillo, from the Monastery of Santa Ana, further underscores Sor Juana’s transatlantic nature, noting that her works, like the sun, illuminate “a Españas dos” (280), referring to New Spain, or Mexico. If we take into account Sebastián de Covarrubias’s (Reference Covarrubias1611) definition of enigma as “una escura alegoría o cuestión y pregunta engañosa y entrincada” and “enigmático” as “lo que se propone con obscuridad” (353r), it prompts a reconsideration of Simoa de Castillo’s allegory of Sor Juana as an illuminating Sun. Curiously, this symbol seems to be the opposite of the Enigmas. In contrast to Sor Juana’s earlier works, where the objective might have been illumination, the Enigmas appear to revel in obscuring concepts rather than revealing them. In this case, true enlightenment occurs not during the initial reading but upon successfully solving the enigma. Alternatively, those who cannot decipher the enigmas may face a mortal fate, as explained by Covarrubias (1611) in his definition of esfinge:
ESFINGE. Lat. sphinx, fue un monstruo, cerca de la ciudad de Tebas, cuya cabeça, cuello, y pechos eran de donzella, el cuerpo de perro, con alas de ave, voz humana, uñas de león y cola de dragón. Esta dizen se ponía sobre un peñasco alto, cerca del camino real y pasagero, y a todos los que por allí pasaban les proponía un enigma, y no les respondiendo a él, ni declarándosele, los despedaçaba con las uñas; y el qué es cosa y cosa era este: “¿Cuál será el animal, que a la mañana anda en cuatro pies, y a medio día en dos, y.a la tarde en tres?” … Esto todo es fábula. Alberto Magno y otros autores dizen que la esfinge es un animal de especie de monas, cabellos largos, con dos tetas grandes a los pechos, con una cola larga, que tira en la color a negra. Son disciplinables y serán como los gatos pauses que traen de Indias, aunque mayores de cuerpo. (371r)
Covarrubias portrays the sphinx as an allegorical representation of the challenging process of solving enigmas. While the mythological aspects are acknowledged as fables, he introduces a crucial clarification—sphinxes are not entirely mythical. In a tangible reality, these creatures resemble a cross between monkeys and wildcats, akin to domesticable animals imported from the Americas. This portrayal by Covarrubias bridges the legendary and the real, accentuating the complexity of enigma-solving through an animalistic analogy. Engaging in a play of expectations, Covarrubias weaves a narrative that compels readers to consider sphinxes as real monsters. Covarrubias’s definition enhances the enigmatic aura surrounding the sphinx, subtly suggesting its existence and hinting at a potential origin from the Indies and places similarly perceived as exotic. By manipulating reader expectations, Covarrubias induces a sense of fear and monstrosity, expertly exploiting the mysterious allure of the sphinx.
“Timidly transferring from monster to eye”: A poetics of dedication
Much like the sphinx, depictions of Sor Juana seamlessly fused elements of legend with reality. For the nuns and noblewomen who likely constituted the Casa del Placer, Sor Juana posed a tangible and monstrous challenge—twenty profoundly complex enigmas. Beyond the riddles that form the core of the collection, a veil of mystery shrouds the Casa del Placer itself. Details regarding its members and its practices remain elusive, intensifying the enigma surrounding the entire phenomenon. Some critics assume that the Casa del Placer had a fixed location and held in-person meetings (Martínez López Reference Martínez López1968, 55), while others doubt the existence of such gatherings, suggesting that it might have been an ephemeral, epistolary, or even metaphorical academy (Munguía Reference Munguía2019, 29). In fact, the intrigue deepens when one considers that the most interesting texts may be the ones that are absent—the responses generated of found by the nuns and noblewomen as they unraveled the Enigmas. These poems, which we must distinguish from those included as paratexts, are the missing pieces that would provide a richer understanding of the intellectual and creative exchange within the Casa del Placer.
Critics and readers alike have labeled the Enigmas ofrecidos a la Casa del Placer as “unanswerable” (Munguía Reference Munguía2019, 214; Pluecker Reference Pluecker2015, 26). Yet this defeatist characterization does not negate the multitude of formal attempts made to unravel them.Footnote 31 In fact, the Enigmas represent a peculiar form of “textual inexhaustibility,” as defined in S/Z by Roland Barthes (Reference Barthes and Miller1974, 58, 132).Footnote 32 The performative act of exegesis generates new texts ad infinitum, underscoring the boundless quality of Sor Juana’s riddles. Indeed, the extreme difficulty of these enigmas might have made the process of interpretation exceedingly challenging for the women of the Casa del Placer. This obstacle could be linked to a pervasive theme across all the paratexts surrounding the collection, surpassing even Sor Juana’s exceptional status: the concept of dedication, the idea of offering oneself to the writing and interpretation of poetry.
Building on the notion of the Enigmas as an offering, in this final section of my article, I elaborate on what I call a poetics of dedication. This poetics, which permeates Sor Juana’s oeuvre, underscores the significance of dedication in her poems. While a poetics of dedication is present throughout Sor Juana’s work, her self-awareness of this commitment becomes more pronounced over time, culminating in the Enigmas. Instances of this reflection can be found in Sor Juana’s renowned declaration, “No me acuerdo haber escrito por mi gusto sino es un papelillo que llaman El Sueño” (Cruz [1691] Reference Cruz1997, 845), reinforced by the statement, “El escribir nunca ha sido dictamen propio, sino fuerza ajena” (829–830), both found in her “Respuesta a Sor Filotea.” In essence, the inception of all her poems, save one, was driven by her intention to dedicate them to others. A poetics of dedication is also present in the very title of the Enigmas ofrecidos a la Casa del Placer and recurrent in Sor Juana’s prologues, laudatory poems, and prose censuras that precede the collection. The concept of offering oneself for sacrifice permeates the collection and manifests in various forms, such as rendimiento (255, 267, 277), holocausto (267, 278), oblación (251, 278), ofrenda (259, 261, 262, 273, 279), and sacrificio (255, 266, 279, 282).Footnote 33 Adding to the description of Sor Juana in the title as “su más rendida y fiel aficionada” (247), all these formulas are connected to the author’s commitment to the academy and the mirroring interpretive process that its members are required to undertake.
Playing on the enigmatic aura attributed to her, the Enigmas challenge two common and interrelated frameworks imposed on Sor Juana’s work: one that interprets her through a lyrical lens, defining it as a genre of “expression of interiority,” while the other portrays her biographically as a creative genius in solitude, adhering to romantic precepts. Embracing the so-called new lyric studies, as defined by Virginia Jackson and Yopie Prins, allows us to delve into not only Sor Juana’s poetry but also the sorjuanismo that surrounds her.Footnote 34 According to this field of study, contemporary critics and poetry consumers alike are limited in experiencing the full range of poetic subgenres from the past, a phenomenon Jackson and Prins (Reference Jackson and Prins2014) have labeled “the lyricization of poetry” (7). In the past, various poetic subgenres existed, including epistles, odes, elegies, and hymns, and lyric was just one of them. The lyricization of poetry is “the historical process by which different poetic genres began to be collapsed into an abstract idea of lyric in the course of the nineteenth century, [the process by which] various historical verse genres gradually became ‘lyric’ as reading practices shifted over the nineteenth century and were consolidated in the twentieth century” (14). In other words, Jackson and Prins argue that contemporary critics and poetry consumers struggle to appreciate the diverse poetic spectrum from the past. The lyric has progressively engulfed other subgenres, leading to a gradual inability to distinguish between them (86–92). This teleology narrows our poetic spectrum and forces us, as contemporary readers, to interpret every poem under the concept of lyric. Consequently, we often read poems that were not originally conceived as lyric works through the characteristics of the lyric—an urgent attempt to express the self. The lyricization of poetry has “reached its culmination in twentieth-century criticism” (7). In Sor Juana’s case, the process of lyricization of her Enigmas—and the rest of her poetry—has been exceptionally evident and extreme.
Sor Juana’s writing has often been interpreted within sorjuanista criticism as a technique of personal self-justification or a strategy to authorize herself in the face of dominant patriarchal discourse. This perspective views her work as a project aimed at constructing a strong subject, one capable of confronting and challenging authorized male voices. Contrary to this, my analysis of the Enigmas suggests that the nun’s discursive tactic does not seek personal authorization or legitimation of her knowledge. Instead, it adopts a diametrically opposed and, in my view, more intriguing strategy: Sor Juana problematizes all authority through the questioning of the enunciator’s “I”—or the lyric voice in the case of poetic texts.
The Enigmas conceive the text as the construction of a shared subjectivity. Through her writing, Sor Juana emphasizes the sacrifice of her own authority, consistently highlighting that the process of interpretation by nuns and noblewomen holds greater significance. The strategy of challenging agency, therefore, has a much more subversive nature than the appropriation of dominant discourses. In this approach, Sor Juana’s reader ceases to be a passive recipient and becomes responsible for interpreting the text, emerging as its primary agent. In other words, Sor Juana shares her authority with her readers. Sor Juana’s sacrifice of her own lyric self is evident in the two poems she writes as prologues to the Enigmas:
Sor Juana shifts the focus of the poetic voice from herself to the personified book, delegating lyric agency to her literary creation. If we consider the paratexts as a cohesive textual entity, then the dedication unfolds as a dynamic interplay within a triangular relationship: the nuns address Sor Juana, who, in turn, addresses the book, and the book communicates with the women of the Casa del Placer. This intricate triangle fosters a sense of community where the collective interpretation and coexistence of diverse perspectives take precedence over the identity of an individual poet. Sor Juana’s poetic approach fosters a community where collective interpretation and writing thrive, highlighting the solidarity among women and transcending traditional notions of individual creativity or solitary genius.Footnote 35
Expanding beyond the Enigmas, the blurring of the poetic self in Sor Juana’s works is a recurring theme in much of her poetic corpus. The majority of her poems, collected and published by the vicereine of Mexico, imply a relinquishing of agency. This aspect is crucial to understanding Sor Juana’s alternative discourse—a construction of a horizontal voice that advocates for the collective production of knowledge. Both in the Enigmas and throughout her poetry, Sor Juana’s emphasis shifts from self-glorification towards embracing collective writing, thus underscoring her commitment to a communal ethos in her literary pursuit for knowledge: a poetics of dedication.
To conclude, I explicitly illustrate how the poetics of dedication functions in the Enigmas ofrecidos a la Casa del Placer and how it directly connects to the discourses of exceptionality surrounding Sor Juana. In the Enigmas, this poetics of dedication operates in both directions and is rooted, perhaps paradoxically, in the very aura of monstrosity that envelops the nun. The women of the Casa del Placer regard Sor Juana as a female monster—a sphinx—who offers them a series of riddles, such as Enigma 19:
Every enigma by Sor Juana is crafted as a question with the poetic “I” completely absent. In other words, Sor Juana sacrifices her lyric “I,” transferring her agency to the women of the Casa del Placer. The poetics of dedication is, therefore, closely intertwined with the discourses of self-sacrifice that Sor Juana emphasized toward the end of her life.
When they consult the “Index” to solve Enigma 19, the women of the Casa del Placer are instructed to resolve the riddle by composing “un epigrama” (Cruz Reference Cruz2019, 287). At that moment, the poetics of dedication becomes bidirectional, as the Casa del Placer, collectively, must now offer poems to Sor Juana—texts that provide the solutions she, as a sphinx, a female monster, has demanded. This bidirectionality of the poetics of dedication was explicitly articulated in one of the paratextual poems of the collection, written by none other than the vicereine of Mexico, the Countess of Paredes. Addressing Sor Juana and referring to the space of the Casa del Placer, she writes:
In sum, the Enigmas ofrecidos a la Casa del Placer exemplifies a poetics of dedication that both centers and decenters Sor Juana’s authorial presence. By positioning herself as a female monster—a sphinx who poses riddles to the nuns and noblewomen—the poet transfers her lyrical agency to her readers, encouraging an active engagement with her text that blurs the lines between author and audience. This dynamic is most evident in the bidirectionality of the poetics of dedication, where the Casa del Placer reciprocates Sor Juana’s enigmatic offerings with their own poetic responses. Notably, it is precisely this “female monster”—an identity shaped by the contemporary men who sought to define her—that Sor Juana reclaims and reshapes in her final work, turning it into a source of epistemological power. As highlighted by the paratextual poem by the Countess of Paredes, the act of writing becomes a mutual ritual of interpretation and dedication. The Enigmas not only invite but also necessitate a collaborative and performative process of meaning-making, demonstrating how Sor Juana’s self-fashioned monstrous aura serves as a vehicle for literary exchange among women, challenging conventional notions of authorship and intellectual agency.
Final thoughts
As this article nears its conclusion, one question persists without a definitive answer: Was Sor Juana a sphinx? This inquiry is not one to be lightly pondered, for like the riddle of the sphinx itself, both success and failure in addressing it may carry grave consequences. Why? Let’s revisit the myth as beautifully retold by Anna Shechtman (Reference Shechtman2024, 3–4):
The Sphinx poses a riddle, and she presents an enigma. In the myth of Oedipus, written by Sophocles and revived by Freud, the Sphinx is a hybrid figure. Part human, part lion, part bird, she’s as inscrutable as her words. She guards the entrance to Thebes, a threshold that Oedipus must pass if he is to return home and fulfill his prophesized fate…. If Oedipus fails to solve the Sphinx’s riddle, she will descend from her perch and devour him, as she has so many men before. But Oedipus solves it…. Oedipus prevails, and the Sphinx falls to her death. Or, in some tellings, she devours herself. The Riddle of the Sphinx, in other words, is a zero-sum game. It’s a contest for which there is only one victor, one victim, and one solution, which amounts to the death of the creature who is both a woman and not properly human at all. Language is the Sphinx’s doing and her undoing.
Yes, Sor Juana embraced the metaphor of the sphinx, particularly toward the end of her life, when she chose to socialize her access to knowledge at the cost of pushing the sacrifice of lyric agency, which her fame entailed, to the extreme. Does this mean that Sor Juana was a sphinx? No. Merely posing this question would be to repeat a gesture of judgment. In a final stage of life undoubtedly fraught with suffering, Sor Juana the person was overshadowed, contradicted, and ultimately pained by Sor Juana the writer, the phenomenon, the cultural icon. On her deathbed, before the God she loved, she declared herself “la más indigna e ingrata criatura” (Cruz [1695] Reference Cruz1997b, 874), a sentiment reiterated in her will: “He sido y soy la peor que ha habido” (Reference Cruz1997a, 876). Sor Juana, like the sphinx, devoured herself as a form of penance. But was Sor Juana a sphinx? Perhaps it is not for us to solve that riddle.
Acknowledgments
I extend my sincere thanks to Michael Solomon, Sonia Velázquez, and Jorge Téllez for their invaluable comments on an earlier version of this article. This text benefited from being workshopped on two occasions: first, during an invited talk at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University, and later at the Mexican Studies Research Collective. I am deeply grateful to the organizers and active participants of both events for their insightful feedback, particularly Pavel Andrade, Roberto Cruz Arzábal, Lourdes Dávila, Gigi Dopico, Gabriel Giorgi, Linda Grabner, Rebecca Janzen, Jo Labanyi, Jordana Mendelson, Ever Osorio Ruiz, Alejandra Rosenberg Navarro, and Patricia Saldarriaga. Special thanks go to Cristina E. Pardo Porto for her unwavering support throughout all stages of the article’s development. I also thank the editors of Latin American Research Review and the three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive suggestions.
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