"Don Quijote dio su espíritu, quiero decir que se murió". Claves de la mentalidad tanática barroca castellana

Abstract

Don Quichot is a `metaphor of life as a theatre' (and of 'the dream of life') showing the culture and the world view of the baroque period. This model implies the final acceptance of the impressive role of Don Quichot and of the hard baroque Iesson of confronting death. For this reason, after studying the testament of Don Quichot, this article will focus on the complcx significance of popular agony through literature (moral, novels, satires) and painting of the period, in order to better understand the baroque kcys of the collective religiosity of Castile. In the same manner, the public impact of the honorary royal funerals, reaffirmed the collective mentality of the Counter-Reformation. The different opinions of forcign travellers also reflect, in a critical way, the sacralisation of life in Castile during the Seventeenth Century. In conclusion, control of death through a complex and varied array of funeral rituals was essential together with the search for sol idarity in the hereafter'. The Church controlled the fears of the population through a wholc system of sacralised merits. Even the answers to a 1901 questionnaire show the continuity of the rites on prevention, agony, burial, mortuary practices, cemeteries and the cult of the death.