Cervantes y la escritura de senectute (en torno al Viaje del parnaso)

Abstract

This article applies the critical concept of de senectute writing, coined by Rozas, to Lope’s work, in the analysis of Viaje del Parnaso as the axis of a cycle and an authorial posture. It starts from the textual references to the old age in this autobiographical fiction and its creative environment. These are related to a sense of melancholy, which also connects the Viaje character with the attitude of the author. This attitude manifests itself in the revision of his work and life; a revision through which Cervantes contemplates the literary field, and sorts the narrative movement of the text. The round trip reveals his intent to recover a lost splendour, which materialises on the lyrical level in Naples, and is evoked, in the epic, with Lepanto, both key moments in Cervantes’s biography. Following the features pointed out by Rozas, this study shows that those features are present in the Cervantine cycle before they make their appearance in Lope.