SOURCE: "Human and Divine Love in the Poetry of Sor Juana Inès de la Cruz," in Studies in Spanish Literature of the Golden Age, Tamesis Books, 1973, pp. 297-313.

In the following essay, Terry analyzes Juana Inès de la Cruz's treatment of divine and romantic love in her verse.

The "sincerity" or otherwise of Sor Juana's love poems no longer seems a crucial question; in the words of Octavio Paz [in Las peras del olmo, 1957]: "Poco importa que esos amores hayan sido ajenos ο propios, vividos ο sonados: ella los hizo suyos por gracia de la poesía". This should make it easier to see her work in relation to earlier seventeenth-century love poetry, and perhaps especially to that of writers like Polo de Medina and Bocángel who make a point of reproducing the kind of theoretical discussion which seems to have been common in the Academies of...