Espacios utópicos y utopía en la Edad Media: tres reescrituras de la Collatio Alexandri cum Dindimo per litteras facta

Abstract

In three rewritings of some passages from the Collatio Alexandri cum Dindimo per litteras facta, contained in the Libro de los ejemplos por a.b.c., the Cancionero d’Herberay des Essarts and Mandeville’s Libro de las maravillas del mundo, a model of society is presented which, because of the perfection of its members or its ideal organisation, has been related to utopia. This paper questions whether the mere description of an ideal society is sufficient to consider a text as utopian, and raises the importance of taking into account its formal aspects, as well as the context in which the text is inserted and the horizon of expectations of its recipients. These parameters contribute to understanding the extent to which a text, in addition to describing an ideal society, presents it as an inverted mirror of the readers’ society, thus endowing the description with the critical component that is fundamental to any utopian text.