On sandoval zapata’s lyric transformations

This article examines how the lyric poetry of Luis de Sandoval Zapata transforms different kinds of matter: literary, natural, and spiritual. It shows how Sandoval Zapata’s verse converges with novohispano festive culture, even as it serves as a subtle vehicle for pondering questions concerning mortality, temporality, and the mutable nature of substance. His sonnet dedicated to the Virgen de Guadalupe is read as resolving these questions. It is also compared to efforts by Miguel Sán-chez, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to represent María. Lyric distillation and encyclopedic dilation thus form a polarity that fuels seventeenth-century creole thought and expression.