Didactic and entertainment mirrors? The reception and function of the short story in the moral, catechetical and hagiographic literature in Portugal in the seventeenth century

Abstract

Developed since the Middle Ages – Horto do Esposo being an example – but widely spread through ancestral oral circulation, the tale knows in Portugal a very significant success, with the edition of Contos e Histórias de Proveito e Exemplo (1575), by Gonçalo Fernandes Trancoso, which, as is well known, reflects, to a large extent, the reception and influence of the Italian “novella”, especially those written by Boccaccio or Bandello. Despite the fact that during the XVII th century, in Portugal, no collection of short stories, like that by Trancoso, was published, this does not mean that the genre has fallen into disuse or oblivion. In this sense, trying to show the continuity of the tale in the written discourse, this article seeks to draw attention to the ways in which this genre continued to be cultivated, although sometimes presenting different nuances, tributaries of a clear intertextuality, from the perspective of their role to teach and to entertain, in works such Casamento Perfeito (1630) by Diogo Paiva de Andrada, Baculo Pastoral (1624), by Francisco Saraiva de Sousa, Paralellos de Principes (1623), by Francisco Soares Toscano, or Agiologio Lusitano (1652-1666), by Jorge Cardoso.