Entre Arcadia y Utopía: el país imaginado de las «Soledades» de Góngora

Abstract

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