This thesis is the first book-length study of the three autos sacramentales by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Sor Juana’s religious drama has received little attention, despite her status as one of the greatest figures of Mexican literature. She was also writing during a particularly significant period in Hispanic literary history: at the end of the Spanish Golden Age, and at the rise of a new class of intellectual élites in the New World, the criollos. I contend that Sor Juana’s autos sacramentales are crucial to understanding how she contributed to the formation of a criollo identity. In doing so, she engaged with the mentalities of two continents and two historical periods: Europe and the Americas, and the Baroque and the Enlightenment. To demonstrate this, I provide a study of each of Sor Juana’s sacramental plays, alongside the loa which was written to accompany them. My method combines close-text reading with a historical approach, and I pay particular attention to the theological function of the plays. In each chapter, I focus on the concurrent strands of thought in her works. I consider how the plays demonstrate the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, and how they engage with the aesthetic and theological mindset of the Spanish Baroque. I study how they incorporate indigenous Nahuatl theatrical traditions, and ask how they engage with the scientific developments of the Enlightenment. I conclude that in her autos sacramentales Sor Juana expresses a mindset that is both geographically and historically “between two worlds.” The influence of Nahuatl theatre on Sor Juana’s dramaturgy has never before been studied. The influence of Enlightenment thought on her works has been noted by a few scholars, but never considered in relation to her religious works. The demonstration of the interaction of Enlightenment and Catholic ideas challenges our notion of the Enlightenment as a secularising movement, and has potential implications for scholars of the period beyond the sphere of Sor Juana studies.

The present study is an investigation of acoustic correlates corresponding to the category [voice] in two dialects of Venezuelan Spanish. The Andean mountain dialect Mérida (MER) and Caribbean coastal dialect Margarita (MAR) are thought to differ systematically in the phonetic implementation of the Spanish phonological stop series along the lines of lowland and highland divides commonly reported for Latin American Spanish. Specifically, MER has been characterized by a greater percentage of occlusive pronunciations, MAR by more fricative and/or approximant realizations of phonological stops. To test what repercussions these differences in consonant articulation have on the acoustic correlates that encode [voice], a production experiment was run. Informants were 25 adult monolingual speakers of Venezuelan Spanish from the areas of El Tirano (Margarita Island) and San Rafael de Mucuchíes (Mérida state). The materials were 44 CV syllable prompts. Target syllables were analyzed with respect to the following: consonant closure duration, VOT, %VF, RMS, preceding vowel duration, CV ratio, F1 onset frequency, F0 contour, and burst. Statistical analysis using a linear mixed model ANOVA tested for fixed effects of voicing category, dialect and condition (speeded/unspeeded) and interactions of voicing category * dialect and dialect * condition. Results showed that the dialects MER and MAR vary significantly in RMS. In addition, the following correlates were significant for the interaction of voicing category * dialect: consonant duration, VOT, %VF, RMS, CV ratio and burst. Generally, the nature of the differences indicates a greater separation between [± voice] values in MER than in MAR (notably divergent are VOT and RMS). These results imply that while the same acoustic correlates of [voice] are operative in both fortis and lenis dialects of Spanish, [± voice] categories relate differently. Furthermore, with regard to prosody and rate of speech, most significant differences in condition occurred in initial position while most significant differences in the interaction of voicing category * dialect were linked to medial position. The results of this study are relevant to current research on the specifics of dialectal variation in consonant systems. They also have wider implications for the general mapping of phonetics to phonology in speech. / text

Esse trabalho analisa a palavra quilombo, de origem africana, integrada em duas variedades linguísticas latino-americanas: o português brasileiro e o espanhol do Prata. No Brasil o termo quilombo significa ‘comunidade de escravos fugidos’ e no Prata ‘prostíbulo’. Como explicar essa diferença? A partir do estudo de registros em dicionários, vocabulários e corpora, iremos discutir o caminho de integração do vocábulo assim como as definições e os comentários metalinguísticos e exemplos de uso encontrados em um conjunto de fontes lexicográficas e corpora das duas variedades linguísticas ibero-românicas. A análise do verbete e seus derivados, assim como a dos vocábulos relacionados, partem dos significados atribuídos à palavra nas fontes selecionadas. Analisam-se definições e comentários metalinguísticos, objetivando fazer uma reflexão crítica sobre as normas e os valores subjacentes às definiçoes nas fontes lexicográficas. Tudo indica que essas normas e valores, ou ideologias, estão por trás das acepções negativas que o vocábulo possui no Prata. / This study analyses an African-derived word, quilombo, integrated in two Latin-American linguistic varieties: Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish spoken in the River Plate region. In Brazil, quilombo means ‘maroon community’, but in Rio de la Plata it means ‘brothel’. How can we explain these differences? Through the analysis of its records in dictionaries, glossaries and corpora, this study discusses the ways in which the word was integrated as well as the metalinguistic comments, definitions and examples of use encountered in the selected lexicographical sources and corpora from the two Ibero-romance varieties. The analysis of the word entry and the derived and related forms in the selected sources is based upon the meanings ascribed to it. The metalinguistic comments and the definitions are analyzed aiming to critically reflect on the norms and values that the lexicographical sources express. The results indicate that these norms and values, or ideologies, are the reason behind the negative connotations of the word in the River Plate region. / Det här arbetet fokuserar på ett ord med afrikanskt ursprung, quilombo som finns i två latinamerikanska språkvarieteter: den brasilianska portugisiskan och spanskan från området kring Rio de la Plata. I Brasilien betyder quilombo ‘självständigt samhälle uppbyggt av förrymda slavar’, medan det i Rio de la Plata betyder ‘bordell’. Hur kan denna skillnad förklaras? Genom att analysera hur ordet registrerats i lexikon, gloslistor och korpusar diskuteras ordets väg in i språket samt de olika förklaringar, metalingvistiska kommentarer och användningsexempel som påträffats i ett urval lexikografiska källor och korpusar från båda de ibero-romanska språkvarianterna. Analysen av denna ingång och dess avledningsord och relaterade ord i de utvalda källorna utgår ifrån de betydelser som ordet tillskrivits. De metalingvistiska kommentarerna och betydelserna analyseras med med syftet att göra en kritisk reflektion kring de normer och värderingar som uttrycks i de olika källorna. Resultaten visar att dessa normer och värderingar, eller ideologier, kan vara anledningen till de negativa betydelserna av ordet i Rio del Plata området.