Poética del silencio en la respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz

Abstract

The Respuesta is analized as an abyss search for interlocutors to answer to (the detractors of the Carta Atenagórica) and for the answering theme (the possible crimes of Sor Juana). The afore mentioned search generates a profound unfolding in the author (learned-nun), which conducts her to write from the poetic of silence, which is understood as the "label" of what stops being said. The label, at the same time, consists in the gloss that Sor Juana makes from San Pablo’s imposed silence to women (I Corintios, XIV, 34). The Respuesta places the novohispanic polemic in manifest about the nun’s silence: ‘say nothing’ (according to Núñez de Miranda and Fernández de Santa Cruz, amongst others prelates) versus ‘reading, studying and writing’ (according to Sor Juana). Anticipating the events that led her to the "final silence", her epistle explains what she keeps to herself: the world that made her life and work possible, that same world makes them impossible.