Caminos hacia la felicidad: las narraciones caballerescas espirituales en tiempos de reformas

• Main Author: Emma Herrán Alonso
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Presses universitaires du Mirail 2014-07-01
• Series: Criticón
• Subjects: Soria Fray Alonso de; Vitoria Francisco de; Hernández de Villaumbrales Pedro; Sampedro Jerónimo de; Spiritual literature; Spiritual chivalric narrative
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/criticon/668

This article aims to draw attention to the constant renewal of the genre of spiritual chivalric narrative throughout the sixteenth century in the light of various spiritual movements that occurred in the Peninsula. This heterogeneous group of stories relates, from the commonplaces of the homo viator and miles Christi, the various adventures and misadventures experienced by a pilgrim knight, usually a man, in his path in search of the way to salvation. The literary genre, in its variants, spans the century echoing the different ideological and spiritual formulas which offered to man the path to follow in his quest for happiness. This study examines the paradox of works such as Libro intitulado Peregrinación de la vida del hombre (1552), Libro de caballería celestial del pie de la Rosa fragante or Libro del Caballero Peregrino (1601), the authors of which, although using identical narrative, rhetorical and thematic practices, promote, through them, divergent spiritual presuppositions and, sometimes, even opposite effects in accordance with the ideological evolution of the tumultuous times between the reforms and the Counter-Reformation.