Anatomía comparada de la representación de la muerte en la literatura española transatlántica durante el ocaso de la edad media y el Renacimiento

The main goal of this project is to dissect how death is represented during the Late Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the beginning of the phenomenon of colonization of America carried out by the Spanish Empire, all of it by means of reviewing the representations in Spanish literary works of those times. This is accomplished by comparing works diachronically in order to reveal the main thematic variations between them. To that effect, representative models are taken from the literary canon in Spanish that involves texts since the Late Middle Ages until the first modernity, also known as the Renaissance. This is done by delving into the corpus, understanding literature as a raw material, which is possible to work through, and examining in detail those essential components to reach a reasonable and sound conclusion. The corpus in which this task is based expands from the XV Century with the Dança General de la Muerte until the XVII Century with the chapter entitled “De la estraña aventura que le sucedió al valeroso don Quijote con el carro o carreta de «Las Cortes de la Muerte»” and concludes with the second part of Don Quixote, pointing out the narrative and stylistic newnesses in the process of representing death. Other canonical works which serve as examples are La Celestina, Naufragios and La Araucana, along with some additional chapters from Don Quixote