An approach to Antonio Ruiz de Montoya´s "Conquista Espiritual" discourse through the study of benevolent images

Abstract

the natural human geography, living together with supernatural creatures, is often narrated as ordinary in the chronicles of towns foundations, evangelization and the defense of the communities from Guayrá, Paraná, Uruguay, and Tape. The Jesuitic missions, strongly separated and delimited from the outside, appear to be, for father Montoya, as the very specific space for interaction between men and God. The heavenly figures will guide Indians to live according to the dogma and will be the priests’ helpers. These figures of «rescue» (among which stands out especially St. Thomas the Apostle) appear in the story as an instrument to liberate the Indians from Evil, forming thus a hopeful message. Our goal is to offer a linguistic and structural approach, together with an hermeneutic reading. The aim is also to reveal the narrative structure of the Jesuit, the actants, the nodal tensions and the isotopies networks, in order to think in the semantic content of the message that shows the state of the art in the very symbolic universe of Ruiz de Montoya.