Marie Hause, Victoria Reynolds Farmer, and Sarah Thomas dive into some of the villancicos of famed early modern Mexican writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Topics include Marian villancicos, polyvocality, and proto-feminism.

Knowing

Background on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Background on villancicos in general

Description of the villancicos focused on here: villancicos 221/42 “That shepherd lass”, 224/43 “The joyous Mexicans”, 258/44 “At the sacristan’s voice”, and 322/52 “I’ve a strange thing to sing you” in Alan S. Trueblood, trans., A Sor Juana Anthology

Reading

The treatment of Mary in these villancicos

Polyvocality in the villancicos

St. Catherine in 322/52 “I’ve a strange thing to sing you” in relation to Sor Juana’s pro-woman messages

Passing On

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, by Brant Pitre; Catechism in a Year podcast w/ Fr. Mike Schmitz

Sor Juana’s villancico 281/47 “Black is the Bride” in Alan S. Trueblood, trans., A Sor Juana Anthology and Sor Juana’s Primero sueño in Margaret Sayers Peden, trans., Poems, Protest, and a Dream

Image | Attributed to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Villancicos, que se cantaron en la Santa Iglesia Metropolitana de Mexico. En los maitines de la Purissima Concepcion de Nuestra Señora… (En Mexico : Por la Viuda de Bernardo Calderon, en la calle de San Augustin, 1676). ©John Carter Brown Library, Box 1894, Brown University, Providence, R.I. 02912 / Archive.org digitized. Image shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license via Archive.org.