Biography of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz was an exceptional seventeenth-century nun who set

precedents for feminism long before the term or concept existed. Her "Respuesta" is a maverick work outlining the logical sense of womens education more than 200 years before Woolfs "A Room of Ones Own." Her poetry, meanwhile, states in bold language the potency of the feminine in both love and religion. Juana Ins Ramirez was born out of wedlock to Isabel Ramirez and Manuel de Asbaje in a small village in Mexico, New Spain. Manuel soon abandoned the family, so mother and child spent a great deal of time with Juanas grandfather, Pedro Ramirez. It was in Pedros book-filled house that Juana learned to read. (Girls of her time were rarely, if ever, formally educated.) The door to learning then burst open -- the young prodigy would embark upon a life shaped and shaken by intellectual inquiry. She quickly gained renown in society and became a lady-in-waiting in the court of the Spanish viceroy. Yet she soon left the court for the nunnery; practically speaking, this was the best way for an illegitimately born woman to secure the time and resources for scholarship. But Sor Juana did not shut herself away in an ascetic cell. She started out as a novice in the Carmelite order, but the order's predilection for little sleep and self-flagellation repelled her after a few months. Eventually she found a sect that was more her speed as a lady of letters and a former courtier: the order of San Jernimo gave her an entire suite of her own, complete with bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, library, and servant. Her library -- which held Mexicos largest book collection -- developed into a meeting-place for the intellectual elite. Those who frequented the salon included future viceroy Marquis de La Laguna and the Countess de Pareda, known to her intimates as Maria Luisa. Maria Luisa and Sor Juana embarked on a passionate friendship that may have crossed the boundaries of the propriety of the day. In any case, it produced decidedly amorous poetry. Sor Juana wrote, "That you're a woman far away is no hindrance to my love: for the soul, as you well know, distance and sex don't count." Whether she was a lesbian by modern-day standards is unclear, and probably irrelevant. What is clear is that her poetry expresses a spiritual solidarity with women, a sublime affinity that transcends sex. That this solidarity excluded men is apparent in her anti-male work -- in "You Men," the accused are a sniveling bunch "adept at wrongly faulting womankind." However, it was not the Sapphic content of her verses that upset Sor Juana's contemporaries. Rather, she drew fire after a private letter criticizing a member of the clergy was published without her permission. When the Archbishop of Mexico tried to silence her, she wrote a defense entitled "La Respuesta." This letter is her defining work -- and the instrument of her downfall. Sor Juana turned around the logic used by the Church to justify her oppression and subverted it into a magnificent defense for women's intellectual rights and education. Though the letters tone is superficially humble, Sor Juana forcefully insists that women have a natural right to the mind. Her use of biblical evidence to support her call for strong, educated women is downright clever -- and has earned her recognition for her rhetorical skills. Naturally, "La Respuesta" brought indignation from the Church and unwanted attention from the Inquisition. To save herself, Sor Juana was forced to stop writing and to give up her books. She died a nuns death in 1695, succumbing to illness while caring for the poor during an epidemic.

YOU MEN
Silly, you men-so very adept at wrongly faulting womankind, not seeing you're alone to blame for faults you plant in woman's mind. After you've won by urgent plea the right to tarnish her good name, you still expect her to behave-you, that coaxed her into shame. You batter her resistance down and then, all righteousness, proclaim that feminine frivolity, not your persistence, is to blame. When it comes to bravely posturing, your witlessness must take the prize: you're the child that makes a bogeyman, and then recoils in fear and cries. Presumptuous beyond belief, you'd have the woman you pursue be Thais when you're courting her, Lucretia once she falls to you. For plain default of common sense, could any action be so queer as oneself to cloud the mirror, then complain that it's not clear? Whether you're favored or disdained, nothing can leave you satisfied. You whimper if you're turned away, you sneer if you've been gratified. With you, no woman can hope to score; whichever way, she's bound to lose; spurning you, she's ungrateful-succumbing, you call her lewd. Your folly is always the same: you apply a single rule to the one you accuse of looseness

and the one you brand as cruel. What happy mean could there be for the woman who catches your eye, if, unresponsive, she offends, yet whose complaisance you decry? Still, whether it's torment or anger-and both ways you've yourselves to blame-God bless the woman who won't have you, no matter how loud you complain. It's your persistent entreaties that change her from timid to bold. Having made her thereby naughty, you would have her good as gold. So where does the greater guilt lie for a passion that should not be: with the man who pleads out of baseness or the woman debased by his plea? Or which is more to be blamed-though both will have cause for chagrin: the woman who sins for money or the man who pays money to sin? So why are you men all so stunned at the thought you're all guilty alike? Either like them for what you've made them or make of them what you can like. If you'd give up pursuing them, you'd discover, without a doubt, you've a stronger case to make against those who seek you out. I well know what powerful arms you wield in pressing for evil: your arrogance is allied with the world, the flesh, and the devil!

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 (baptised) 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.[1] He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, two epitaphs on a man named John Combe, one epitaph on Elias James, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnetand Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. It was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as "not of an age, but for all time." Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the 20th century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

Bridal Song
ROSES, their sharp spines being gone, Not royal in their smells alone, But in their hue; Maiden pinks, of odour faint, Daisies smell-less, yet most quaint, And sweet thyme true; Primrose, firstborn child of Ver; Merry springtime's harbinger, With her bells dim; Oxlips in their cradles growing, Marigolds on death-beds blowing, Larks'-heels trim;

All dear Nature's children sweet Lie 'fore bride and bridegroom's feet, Blessing their sense! Not an angel of the air, Bird melodious or bird fair, Be absent hence! The crow, the slanderous cuckoo, nor The boding raven, nor chough hoar, Nor chattering pye, May on our bride-house perch or sing, Or with them any discord bring, But from it fly!

William Blake (28 November 1757 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself". Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England indeed, to all forms of organised religion Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French andAmerican revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Bhme and Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised him as a "glorious luminary," and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".