The Eremitic Actant in the Novel The Prodigious Desert and Prodigy of the Desert by Pedro Solís y Valenzuela as a Transcendent Universe of the Cultural and Religious Ethos in New Granada in the 16th-17th Centuries

Abstract

In this paper, I propose to identify the links between literary fiction and history that took place in colonial times, specifically in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the configuration of the cultural, literary, and religious ethos of New Granada (Colombia) in the light of the eremitical ideal, which in my opinion is the basis of the novel The Prodigious Desert and Prodigy of the Desert. The novel was written by the neo-Granadian criollo Don Pedro Solís y Valenzuela (1624-1711) around the year 1650 and is considered the first neo-Granadian novel written in the lands of America. In the light of the Greimasian category of actant, it is identified that the main inspiring hero of the novel, as of the historical life of the real characters that were part of the literary universe of Solís, was the ideal of ere- mitical life that converges and marks the life of the historical subjects that inspired the novel, as in the plot of the novel itself. © 2024, Instituto de Estudios Auriseculares (IDEA). All rights reserved.