Voice in El divino Narciso

Abstract

The highly complex, ornamented auto sacramental by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz achieves its didactic ends through spoken words. With song, chanting, paraphrase, retelling, listening, and hearing, the playwright sensitizes her audience to higher meaning in the allegory that it sees onstage. Sor Juana uses the device of utterance not only to teach her spectators how to approach her play, but to urge in them a particularly loving response to Christ, the Word.