Sor Juana's Villancicos: Context, gender, and genre

Western Folklore, Fall 2001 by Underberg, Natalie

Beginning in the mid-seventeenth century, the villancicos began to be organized into "suites" of eight or nine sets for inclusion in the Divine Office in monasteries and convents Quana Ines de la Cruz 1951). By the seventeenth century, when Sor Juana wrote her literary works, the villancico had evolved into a fundamental aspect of the liturgy in the churches of Spain and New Spain (St. Amour 1940). Noemi Atamoros de Perez Martinez (1975) notes that villancicos were constantly solicited by the bishops of both Puebla and Mexico City during these years, and Arenal and Powell (Arenal and Powell in Juana Ines de la Cruz 1994) point out that Church officials sought Sor Juana out to compose villancicos for religious services because of her "empathetic" voice.

PERCEPTION/RECEPTION OF THE VILLANCICO

Now that we have delimited the development of this genre, what can we know concerning the attitudes Sor Juana's contemporaries had toward this form? The texts of her villancicos, in particular the ones for St. Catherine, are at times assertively pro-woman. A number of scholars have noted (Arenal and Powell's introduction in Juana Ines de la Cruz 1994) that by the seventeenth century villancicos came to refer to sung compositions performed in churches on holy days and were considered a minor art, that is, not cultured poetry. In addition, Martha Lilia Tenorio notes that: "Esta indiferencia era propia de la epoca; la composition de villancicos era una practica tan com'n, tan extendida, que no ameritaba atencion alguna. Para Sor Juana, como para sus contemporaneos . . . los villancicos eran solo ejercicios de versificacion" ["This indifference (toward the villancico) was typical of the period; the composition of villancicos was a practice so common, so widespread, that it did not merit the least (cultivated) attention. For Sor Juana, as for her contemporaries ... the villancicos were only exercises of versification"] (Tenorio in Sara Poot Herrera 1995:450; my translation from the Spanish). In other words, the villancico was identified as a vernacular genre. Due to the attitude of others toward the form, then, the author could compose with more liberty than if employing more formal genres.

These vernacular compositions were clearly viewed as entertaining. The villancicos, as descendents of medieval religious folk drama, continued to retain within their form a "space" for subversive elements (see Esther Hernandez Palacios's prologue in Pastorelas 1994 for a discussion of Mexican folk drama's potential for social critique). The inclusion of jocular, even carnivalesque aspects in some villancicos (as is also the case with the genre of the pastorela) provided a way for Sor Juana to assert her pro-woman vision in a way that largely escaped Church censure. Villancicos and mystery plays shared a common connection in folk religion (Richard Leighton Greene 1935, cited in St. Amour 1940:104). Central to both was song, and the musical portion of the folk dramas often took the form of the villancico itself (Manuel Pelaez del Rosal and Jose Maria Ocana Vergara 1986). Mendez Plancarte notes (in Juana Ines de la Cruz 1951; here paraphrased in English by Stevenson): "After each of the responsories, a villancico served as entr'acte, diverting the people. Better to enliven these entr'actes all kinds of licenses were allowed-comic characters, actors singing rustic, provincial, Gypsy, Indian and Negro dialects, or even burlesque skits. In the early 1700s moralists such as the Benedictine Feijoo castigated the light opera and tomfoolery trend, but in the late 1600s both music and poetry of the villancico-suites greatly profited from their contact with the earthier aspects of Peninsular and New World social life" (Stevenson 1974:5).