«La dicha de poseer»: deseos y retratos en sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Abstract

In Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s love poetry the poems addressed to the Countess of Paredes enjoy a privileged place. Literary portraits and poems about real paintings of the wife of the former viceroy are of particular interest. This article studies the discourse of desire in three poems about real paintings: on the one hand, two of them (126 and 127) have hardly been studied, despite being of seminal importance; on the other, the eroticism that emerges from the recovery of the myth of Pygmalion has not been suficiently underscored in the third one (103). Finally, it proposes that the speaking «I» consummates desire not only by achieving physical possesion of the portrait itself, but above all by its capacity to control the discourse of the object of desire which is given voice.

Keywords

• Cruz sor Juana Inés de la
• lírica amorosa
• Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga María Luisa (countess of Paredes)
• poemas de retrato