The journey to the otherworld in López Pinciano’s Pelayo: classical configuration and Christian allegory
Abstract
In Alonso López Pinciano’s Pelayo the protagonist’s journey to the otherworld is told (books 10 and 11). The hero sails to Cilicia and descends to the underworld through the Corycian Cave, where he is received by a metamorphic divinity. There he learns his future and the arcana of the beyond. The setting of the adventure combines the description of this cave in Pomponio Mela’s De Chorographia and of the Dream’s abode in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The literary pattern of the journey to the netherworld’s theme is emulated according to the major epic models, the Homeric Nékyia and the katabasis of Aeneas. A literary and comparative analysis of the episode is proposed in order to elucidate how these literary references are reworked, combined and adapted to the Christian context by Pinciano through the practice of allegory, according to the postulates in his Filosofía antigua poética.
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