O Grito Satírico da Alma: a dramaturgia Vicentina da Sociedade Portuguesa Quinhentista no Auto da Barca do Inferno.

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the dramaturgy of Gil Vicente, focusing on Auto da Barca do Inferno, as a critical and satirical expression of sixteenth-century Portuguese society. It investigates how laughter functions as an instrument of knowledge, resistance, and denunciation of historical and moral contradictions of the period. The study is grounded in the theoretical framework of Cultural History and adopts a comparative approach among different regimes of historicity, relating Vicente’s work to earlier and later comic traditions, such as those of Lucian of Samosata and Ariano Suassuna. Drawing on theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin, François Hartog, Michel de Certeau, Jacques Le Goff, and Roger Chartier, the research examines how laughter—expressed through satire and allegory—operates as a tool of social critique and reflection on death, faith, and human hypocrisy. Through textual and historical analysis, it demonstrates that Vicente’s theater transcends religious didacticism, configuring itself as a mirror of the tensions of a Portugal in transition between the medieval and Renaissance worlds. The study concludes that the comic dimension of Vicente’s dramaturgy not only moralizes but also destabilizes hierarchies, revealing the power of laughter as a symbolic and ethical mediator in the construction of collective consciousness.