Emblemática y bestiarios en El día de fiesta de Juan de Zabaleta

2014

ABSTRACT: This article seeks to compare emblematics with El dia de fiesta (1654/1660) by Juan de Zabaleta, a collection of portraits of manners and characters marked by an encyclopaedic feature that serves the pronounced degree of religious and moral didacticism of the text. It first recapitulates the epistemological basis that Zabaleta has in common with emblematics, namely analogical thinking (Foucault) and the belief in the ‘readability of the world’ (Blumenberg). Subsequently it analyses the allegorical function of certain animals –the panther and the octopus, the ape and the turtle– which Zabaleta refers to as examples of virtues and vices, especially hypocrisy, comparing it to the mea…