"La Araucana" revisada: "La Asinaria" de Rodrigo Fernández de Ribera como crítica de la propaganda aristocrática y de la actitud imperialista

Abstract

Rodrigo Fernandez de Ribera’s La Asinaria has only sparsely been analyzed in the context of literary investigations, indicating a rather scant aesthetic and cultural interest. By looking at the text in relation with its intertextual reference to Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana, which connects the discourse and practices of the aristocrat’s autorepresentation and of Spanish colonization with the work, the following article explores the text as satire expressing a critical attitude towards aristocracy and inconsiderate colonization. It will be argued that it proves to follow a humanist perspective objecting social elites, their habits, their behaviour and their forms of autorepresentation via propagandistic genres like the epopeya.