The Answer.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

A canonical work is forever fresh and new, offering each succeeding generation insights germane to its concerns. Sor Juana's Answer to the Most Illustrious Sister Filotea de la Cruz was a powerful feminist statement when it was written three hundred years ago, and it speaks eloquently to today's readers as well. Although the Mexican nun's works have been translated into English many times over the centuries, Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell have given The Answer a distinctly feminist reading, focusing, as Sor Juana did in the original, on issues of gender. Through their introduction, notes, and carefully worded translation, they convey the complexity of Sor Juana's thought as well as her immense frustration.

A prodigiously talented adolescent in an age in which intellectual women were considered fascinating aberrations, Sor Juana taught herself rhetoric, theology, literature, and science, and astounded the court with her knowledge. In 1668 she entered a convent in order to devote herself to intellectual pursuits, according to Arenal and Powell, although other scholars have advanced different theories. The cloister afforded her with the opportunity to continue studying and writing on secular as well as religious subjects, and the recognition she achieved from the ruling elite including from the new viceroy and his wife - soon provoked the wrath of the ecclesiastical authorities. Father Antonio Nunez de Miranda was so contemptuous that Sor Juana relieved him of his duties as her confessor.

Colonial convents were often thriving social and artistic centers. Living in a posh cell and attended by several servants and a slave, Sor Juana continued to cultivate her interests - poetry, music, science, theology - and to entertain influential guests. Her celebrity grew in educated circles, not only in Mexico, but also in Spain. However, churchmen such as Nunez were unrelenting in their criticism, for Sor Juana not only wrote "unchaste" love poems, but also meddled in theology - an unseemly activity for a woman.

In a conversation at the convent, Sor Juana became engaged in a complex theological discussion, which was witnessed by her longtime friend, Bishop Manuel Fernandez de Santa Cruz, who requested that she commit her thoughts to writing. Sor Juana believed that the text would be seen only by him, but he treacherously delivered it to the press, appending a letter signed "Sor Filotea" as a preface. This purportedly friendly letter, with its pretense of...