Aurelio or epicureism. A critical Reading of Hernán Pérez de Oliva´s “Dialogue on the Dignity of Man” in its European context

Abstract

This article analyzes the speech of the character of Aurelio in the Dialogue on the Dignity of Man by Hernán Pérez de Oliva, considered in two related contexts: the European miseria hominis tradition and Epicurean theological anthropology, whose literary manifestation may be said to begin with some late fifteenth-century texts. The distinction between Christian penitential conceptions of human suffering and the merciless Epicurean ideas, which deny the existence of divine providence, compel us to reinterpret this dialogue and reconsider the unique place that Oliva’s work occupies within contemporary letters.