“Alternative” paradises in the literature of spirituality and prose fiction in Portugal (XVI-XVII centuries)

Abstract

The nostalgia for a lost Paradise, associated with the search for a Golden Age, with origins in classical antiquity, is reflected in several texts, which are inscribed in lines ranging from hagiography to prose fiction, produced in Portugal in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. Thus, in the context of the problematic of an “alternative” Paradise on Earth and of eternal salvation, this article seeks to draw attention to the ways in which the dimensions pointed out, especially in the literature of spirituality – such as the “Lives” of hermits, in the field of hagiography, or some texts that are inscribed in the literature of ascetic inclination, as Boosco Deleitoso – that can not be dissociated from an ideal of perfection which would ensure eternal salvation, and also in the prose of fiction – as for example the pastoral novels, whose action always develops in an idyllic environment, away from the vices and bustles of the secular world.