Engaños y desengaños del profano amor di Joseph Zatrilla y Vico. Edizione e studio

The last decades of the Seventeenth century represent a world still largely to be investigated for the Hispanic-Sardinian literary studies. The aim of this dissertation is to give a contribution to a better understanding of what has often been considered an era of cultural decadence, a degenerate extension of the so-called Golden Centuries in the field of Spanish literary studies. This work is composed by two parts: a new edition of Engaños y desengaños del profano amor by Joseph Zatrilla y Vico (Naples, 1687-1688), and an introductory study which starts from the author’s biography to frame the story of this Sardinian count in his historical context. The other chapters of the introduction analyse literary aspects of the work, such as the paratext – which contains indications about Zatrilla’s poetics –, the unusual narrative structure of the ‘novel’ in comparison to its contemporary production, the recurrent use of quotes that makes Engaños y desengaños del profano amor close to treatises, and lastly, the presence of five academies in the second volume of the work.