Construyendo el espacio teatral criollo: Los empeños de una casa de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

• Main Author: Agnieszka Komorowska
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Prof. Dr. Vittoria Borsò, Prof. Dr. Frank Leinen, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Yasmin Temelli, Prof. Dr. Guido Rings 2019-01-01
• Series: iMex. México Interdisciplinario/Interdisciplinary Mexico
• Subjects: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; Los empeños de una casa; Golden Age theater; baroque theater; creole theater in colonial Mexico; the baroque fold
• Online Access: https://www.imex-revista.com/xv-espacio-teatral-criollo/

The article analyzes the play and festejo Los empeños de una casa by the Mexican Golden Age playwright Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and claims that the play is a transcultural creation. In the play, the different “rooms” of the house, meaning the different parts of the festejo, allude to other cultural spaces, whether they be texts from the canon of Spanish Golden Age theater (for example by Calderón de la Barca) or Latin-American texts and spaces. The allusions to Latin-American spaces run throughout the festejo and frame it as a creole play by adapting the Spanish genre to the reality and the esthetic and epistemic context of Colonial Mexico. The article applies Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the baroque fold in order to understand the transcultural aspects of Sor Juana’s play in terms of the construction of semantic spaces. The interior and exterior spaces of Los empeños de una casa are interwoven: the house is a baroque labyrinth in which comic fortunes and misfortunes are expressed as an oscillating game between the visible and the invisible, the ephemeral and the stable. In a first step we will analyze the loa and its allegorical spaces. Secondly, we will focus on the comedia and its ironic and insightful way to challenge genre conventions. In a final step, we will read the Sainete Segundo as a commentary on creole theatre and its spaces.