If I again turn to the Gentiles, the first I encounter are the Sibyls, those women chosen by God to prophesy the principal mysteries of our Faith, and with learned and elegant verses that surpass admiration. . . . An Aspasia Milesia, who taught philosophy and rhetoric, and who was a teacher of the philosopher Pericles. An Hypatia, who taught astrology, and studied many years in Alexandria. A Leontium, a Greek woman, who questioned the philosopher Theophrastus, and convinced him. A Jucia, a Corinna, a Cornelia; and, finally, a great throng of women deserving
to be named, some as Greeks, some as muses, some as seers; for all were nothing more than learned women, held, and celebrated—and venerated as well—as such by antiquity. . . . 10
If, most venerable lady, the tone of this letter may not have seemed right and proper, I ask forgiveness for its homely familiarity, and the less than seemly respect in which by treating you as a nun, one of my sisters, I have lost sight of the remoteness of your most illustrious person; which, had I seen you without your veil, would never have occurred; but you in all your prudence and mercy will supplement or amend the language, and if you find unsuitable the Vos of the address I have employed, believing that for the reverence I owe you, Your Reverence seemed little reverent, modify it in whatever manner seems appropriate to your due, for I have not dared exceed the limits of your custom, nor transgress the boundary of your modesty.
And hold me in your grace, and entreat for me divine grace, of which the Lord 15 God grant you large measure, and keep you, as I pray Him, and am needful. From this convent of our Father Saint Jerome in Mexico City, the first day of the month of March of sixteen hundred and ninety-one. Allow me to kiss your hand, your most favored.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
Why do you think that Sor Juana addresses La Respuesta to a fictional sister instead of to the bishop who had criticized her?
Why does Sor Juana say that she studies? Why does she say that she writes?
According to Sor Juana, why did she enter religious life? What kinds of things did she sacrifice to do so?
Why does Sor Juana request that her mother allow her to dress in boys' clothing? What might this tell us about the culture in which she lived?
Sor Juana argues that one cannot understand the teachings of God (which women were encouraged to do) without understanding philosophy, science, history, mathematics, and nearly every other area of study. How does this claim affect her argument?
One of the most famous quotations from La Respuesta is the following: "Had Aristotle prepared victuals, he would have written more." What do you think she means by this? How is it related to her argument that one needs to study many things to understand one thing well?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
1. Compare Sor Juana's letter with that of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (p. 425). What common themes emerge in the two letters?
Compare Sor Juana's view of a woman's role in the church with Christine de Pizan's (p. 397) view of a woman's role in the state. Would you consider both positions to be early examples of feminism?
Is Sor Juana ultimately making the same argument that Virginia Woolf makes in "Shakespeare's Sister" (p. 46)? What are the main similarities between the two arguments? What are the main differences?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Analyze La Respuesta as a feminist argument. How does Sor Juana frame the issue of women studying? Are her arguments persuasive?
Compare Sor Juana's story of learning how to read with Frederick Douglass's experiences in Learning to Read (p. 24). How are they similar? How are they different?
Choose a field of study—either your major or a field that you would like to study— and explain how it connects to other fields. Do you think that Sor Juana is correct in arguing that studying theology requires one to understand many other things? Is this true of any field of study? Why or why not?
wayne booth
The Rhetorical Stance
[1963]
WAYNE BOOTH (1921-2005) was one of the most influential American literary critics of the twentieth century. Born in American Fork, Utah, Booth received his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in 1944 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago in 1950. In 1962, he joined the English faculty at the University of Chicago, where he taught until his retirement in 1992. At the time of his death in 2005, he was a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Chicago.
Booth's most important contribution to literary criticism—a field in the humanities concerned with the analysis and interpretation of literature—was to combine the study of literature with the study of rhetoric. For much of the twentieth century, literary criticism was dominated by the New Critics, who chose to view a literary work as an isolated unit that could be divorced from the intentions of its author and the historical background of its construction. In his landmark book, The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), Booth argues that narrative is always a form of rhetoric in which a specific author attempts to persuade a specific audience of a particular argument.
"The Rhetorical Stance" was originally given as an address to the College Conference on Composition and Communication and was published in that society's journal in 1963. In this speech, Booth argues that it is possible, but difficult, to teach the art of persuasion, which he sees as a combination of three factors: 1) mastery of the subject matter one is speaking about; 2) an understanding of the audience one is addressing; and 3) a concern with the voice and character of the communicator. For Booth, one who pays constant attention to all three of these factors is adopting "the rhetorical stance."
Booth contrasts the rhetorical stance to two other stances that writers and speakers can adopt, both of which ignore some part of the rhetorical equation. The first of these, the "pedant's stance," relies exclusively on mastery. Unlike the rhetor, the pedant attempts to persuade others with the sheer force of his or her knowledge, which invariably leads to resentment rather than persuasion. The second stance, "the advertiser's stance," seeks to persuade without knowledge or understanding. The person taking this stance resorts to attention-getting gimmicks and strong statements but does nothing to indicate understanding of the issues involved.
In "The Rhetorical Stance," Wayne Booth advocates a way of writing that keeps the different aspects of the rhetorical situation—the speaker, the audience, and the subject—in balance. He models this approach in his own writing by constantly invoking, or appealing to, the three different elements of the rhetorical stance.
Last fall, I had an advanced graduate student, bright, energetic, well-informed, whose papers were almost unreadable. He managed to be pretentious, dull, and disorganized in his paper on Emma, and pretentious, dull, and disorganized on Madame Bovary. On The Golden Bowl[85] he was all these and obscure as well. Then one day, toward the end of term, he cornered me after class and said, "You know, I think you were all wrong about Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy today."[86] We didn't have time to discuss it, so I suggested that he write me a note about it. Five hours later I found in my faculty box a four-page polemic, unpretentious, stimulating, organized, convincing. Here was a man who had taught freshman composition for several years and who was incapable of committing any of the more obvious errors that we think of as characteristic of bad writing. Yet he could not write a decent sentence, paragraph, or paper until his rhetorical problem was solved—until, that is, he had found a definition of his audience, his argument, and his own proper tone of voice.