Review by Choice Review
An offering in the "Studies in Romance Languages" series, this volume presents the first exclusive examination of the secular plays of the Mexican baroque/mannerist author. In seven chapters, Schmidhuber provides background information and full analysis of the three dramas, with some comparison to Sor Juana's poetry. He presents evidence for her completion of the play The Second Celestina, left unfinished at the death of its original author, Agustin de Salazar y Torres. He investigates Sor Juana's coauthorship with Juan de Guevara of the drama L'amor es mas laverinto (Love Is Indeed a Labyrinth) and analyzes the one secular drama attributed to Sor Juana alone, The Trials of a Noble House. Schmidhuber highlights Sor Juana's interests in dramatic theory, style, allegory, popular language, women's rights, irony, cultural variation, and mythology, with possible influences from Lope, Calderon, and Moreto. He invites further research and reassessment of these plays, encouraging their modern staging. This is an important addition to the increasing Sorjuanian bibliography, complementing Patricia Peters and Renee Domeier's recent translation of her religious drama The Divine Narcissus (CH, Sep'98); Stephanie Merrim's Early Modern Women's Writing and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (CH, Jan'00); and Pamela Kirk's Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Religion, Art, and Feminism (CH, Jun'98). Graduate scholars, faculty. ; St. John Fisher College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
