The Portuguese Version of the Diabo Coxo: From Satire to Moralism

Abstract

Centered on Portuguese baroque literature, and more specifically on narrative fiction of the period, this article aims to develop and conjoin two different vectors. For one, it wishes to demonstrate how fiction placed satire in a context which extends from the reader’s seduction to the transmission of moral and doctrinal content. Satire in fiction seems to follow the more general parameters of « fault finding ». For another, the essay seeks to introduce the reader to the unpublished manuscript, The Lame Devil, establish its filiation to the founding parameters of the motif, and show how the Portuguese version, which aimed to adapt the model to the Portuguese modus vivendi, appears to have opted for the subordination of satire and its irreverence to the established standards of sixteenth and seventeenth century moralist literary fiction.