| Summary: | As a basis for its argumentation, the article sketches a parallel between the imaginary<br />countries represented in Sannazaro’s <em>Arcadia</em> (1504) and More’s <em>Utopia</em> (1515). Taking<br />into account the two paradigms induced by these masterpieces in previous and posterior<br />literature, it claims that a century later Luis de Góngora designs in the <em>Solitudes</em> an<br />imaginary country that holds something of both models. The poem tells a story set in a<br />idealized rural region, along the lines of Arcadia. And at the same time it reflects an optimal<br />constitution of the republic or utopia, a model of collective happiness made possible<br />by the elision of all elements of social reality that involve misery and loss of freedom.<br />This representation in a highly learned and complex language is not merely poetic, but<br />responds to contemporary political proposals. On the one hand it echoes reform ideas<br />similar to that held by a famous Góngora’s friend, the humanist Pedro de Valencia. On<br />the other hand it suggests the rejection of certain contemporary messianic utopias, such<br />as those that the navigator Pedro Fernandez de Quirós linked to his project of Iberian<br />colonial enterprise in southern areas of the Pacific.<br />
|
|---|
