ABSTRACT
Around 1613, the fame of Don Luis de Góngora (Córdoba, 1561–1627) suddenly shifted due to the circulation of two poems, the Polifemo [Polyphemus] and the Soledades [Solitudes], that involved a stylistic complexity never seen before. The literary milieu based at the Court of Madrid became a battlefield for some decades, and at the same time, many writers began to conspicuously imitate Góngora not only in Madrid but also Seville, Granada, Zaragoza, Valencia, and Barcelona, as well as in Lisbon, Lima, Mexico, Santa Fe, Bahia, and Manila. Focusing on the case of New Spain, it is mainly from the second half of the seventeenth century onward that Góngora was eminently present in Mexico’s literary world as the undisputed holder of literary excellence. The most famous colonial writer, the Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, was perhaps what many thought impossible: a true imitator of Góngora, precisely because she did not simply follow him. She responded to the Andalusian poet’s wealth of lively thoughts and spiritual allusions with perfect understanding but from an entirely different experience, that of a woman, a lover of knowledge, and a free mind in a cloistered body.
