| Chapter 1: | Intellectual Appetites |
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de la Santa Cruz, and using the pseudonym Sor Filotea de la Cruz, Sor Juana wrote a critique of the sermon of the commandment on the love of Christ by well-known Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Viera. The Archbishop disapproved of what she wrote and urged her to follow Santa Teresa’s example and to limit her writings to religious topics.
In her “Respuesta,” Sor Juana uses anecdotes from her own life, her vast knowledge, and a fine sense of irony to argue her case to the Archbishop. Argentine critic Josefina Ludmer argues that aware of her subordinated position, the nun also utilizes certain “tricks”:
Sor Juana deliberately brings up eating and cooking to defend her views. She first mentions food in the anecdotes of her childhood, ironically emulating Santa Teresa of Avila’s writings, as she had been asked to do by her superiors. She explains that as a young child she refrained from eating cheese once she heard that eating it would make people stupid. Her remarkable tenacity and her insatiable appetite for learning differentiate her from other children:
Later, during her subsequent life in the San Jerónimo Convent (a period of three months when an abbess had forbidden