The Dantesque Journey and its Metapoetic Function in Santillana’s El sueño and the Infierno de los enamorados

Abstract

The Marqués de Santillana’s El sueño and Infierno de los enamorados are built upon Dante’s allegorical journey, as it is well known. It is striking, however, how highly concentrated its metapoetic resources turn out to be in comparison to how scattered they are in the Divine Comedy. This intensification of metapoetic strategies allows us to deduce the fundamental role that they would have as a key for the interpretation of the text. Thus, we will here try to develop the ways in which the actions of seeing, reading and writing articulate and connect themselves in order to conform a metapoetic system which would allow us to interpret Santillana’s dreamlike journey as a reading and writing journey as well.