A imaginação desenfreada ao serviço da Utopia: "História de las Cuevas de Salamanca", de Francisco Botelho de Morais e Vasconcelos, entre o pastiche e a paródia

Abstract

Expression of different manifestations of baroque spirituality, the História de las Cuevas de Salamanca, by Francisco Botelho de Morais e Vasconcelos, is a perfect example of the fictional prose of this period. Difficult as it is to clarify, as in it we find the use of fifferent literary models, it builds a universe of fantasy, the main theme of which is the dream of the best possible world. In this context, games of intertextuality with the romance of chivalry, with utopian discourse, with the historiography of the time and with moral comedy, in which the parody of well-known models is combined with the literary pastiche and the assemblage of identified quotations or others aspects, become the structural principle of the novel, in tune with the original purpose of the author: to deal merrily with the academic world of his own time and, at the same time, with the most recognized genres, everything organized according to the aesthetic codes of the picaresque novel. As the result of all this, an utopian model is achieved, magical, undoubtedly, as the one of the Cocanha or the other of the Golden Age, and far away from reality, but that will go on supporting the dreams of 18th century imagination.