| Summary: | The motif of penance reveals itself as a very fruitful literary resource in the field of secular literature of the XV and XVI centuries, especially in chivalrous and sentimental fiction. This topic presents itself in different ways in all these works, but in all cases seems to respond to very specific literary procedures or patterns, always related with the development of the motif, such as the space in which the penance takes place, and with the function that it maintains in the narrative structuring of the whole account. In all the cases, the last purpose of this topic is nothing less but to insist on the necessary observance of the chivalrous or sentimental code, imprinting sometimes a strong didacticism, however with no kind of significant spiritual or devotional claims.
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