«Goloseado en las butillerías de la mitología»: la poética neoplatónica y erudita de Ventura Travada en "El suelo de Arequipa convertido en cielo" (c. 1750)

Abstract

In this article, we study the Baroque poetics of an Andean regional historian, Ventura Travada (1695-1758), a Parish priest in Indian villages in Arequipa, Viceroyalty of Peru. He was the author of El suelo de Arequipa convertido en cielo (ca. 1750), first important historiographical work in that Peruvian region. Travada’s understanding of the historian’s duties reflects a peculiar Baroque world in which erudition, literary images and mythological references, on a Neo-Platonic background, serve as unavoidable resources in a mission far beyond historiography.