LITERATURE AND IMAGINARY: literary sources and conceptions about medieval beyond in centuries XII and XIII

Abstract

To Jacques Le Goff, the fundamental sources for the study of the imaginary are the artistic and the literary ones. Because of that, to understand the mental system in the centuries 12th and thirteenth related to the search for salvation, we will observe The Vision of Tnugdal, an exemplum, a short religious narrative with a moralizing purpose, in which a sinner passes by the three places of the Beyond grave (hell, purgatory and paradise), and after that repent himself of his sins. We can also find other elements about the concern with the after death life in The Queste of the Holy Grail, chivalry romance with religious-mystic elements, where the figures of God and the Devil are in constant contact with the characters of the narrative, clearly showing the elected and non elected to the Celestial Kingdom.