A VAIN HALO AMONG SOR JUANA'S SONNETS TO THE ROSE

Abstract

By the 17th century, the age of Gracián, ingenuity was the faculty that reveals the secret relationships between things and ideas, expressing them in a unique form (Octavio Paz, 1991). Sor Juana embodied this by reducing the plurality of life into lyrical units filled with acuity. The Vanity of the Rose, captured in three sonnets, proved to be one of the nun's favorite topics to express her melancholic feelings in the century of widespread lies (Rodríguez de la Flor, 2005). Paradoxically, the rose, turned out to be an emblem of truth, a metaphor for disillusionment, allowing us to look beyond the viceregal court, that theatrum mundi that the New Spanish poet knew so well.