El «Libro quinto de las prosas y versos del Arcadia» de Lope de Vega : una apoteosis emblemática sin imágenes

Recourse to emblematic expressive modes is a constant throughout the literary production of Lope de Vega. His pastoral romance Arcadia, especially, occupies a privileged position with regards to allusions and references to emblems, imprese and hieroglyphics (hieroglíficas), as Lope calls them on several occasions. In this respect, the end of the «Fifth Book of the Arcadia» constitutes an authentic emblematic construction with its description of twenty-one imprese painted on tablets in the Temple of Disillusionment (Templo del Desengaño), described by shepherds and shepherdesses on the occasion of an amorous disappointment endured in the course of their lives. This study analyzes the origin of those imprese and seeks to discern the different narrative, autobiographical, polemical and aesthetic functions that can accrue to this extremely long ekphrasis that concludes in an original manner a romance in which Lope included many elements not only from his own life, but also from that of his protector, the Fifth Duke of Alba. Finally, this homage to the cultural transcendence of Víctor Infantes de Miguel ends with a brief allusion to the pictographic seventeenth century vanitas titled «Et in Arcadia ego», by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri and Nicolás Poussin. KEYWORDS: Víctor Infantes; Arcadia; Lope De Vega; Emblematics; Narrative Function.