DOCTORS, APOTHECARIES AND THE UNTRANSLATIBILITY OF SATIRE

QUEVEDO IN SUEÑOS Y DISCURSOS

Abstract

This article examines the representation of medicine in the satirical literature of Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas (1580–1645), focusing on the collection Sueños y discursos (1993), which uses visions of the afterlife, journeys to hell and eschatological judgments as a pretext to criticize the society of his time. The work, marked by a grotesque imagination and forcefulness, repeatedly attacks doctors and apothecaries, figures associated with greed, hypocrisy and ineffectiveness in this scientific field. More than caricatures, they symbolize the critique of medical knowledge, highlighting its links to death, profit and moral corruption. The analysis dialogues with scholars of satire and Quevedo, such as Nolting-Hauff (1974), Hodgart (1969), Hansen (2004) and Schwartz Lerner (1986). Within this approach, Barbara Cassin’s (2022) notion of untranslatability is highlighted, according to which certain terms demand continuous translation and reinterpretation, a useful perspective for understanding Quevedian satire, which is rich in puns, semantic ambiguities and acoustic devices. Complementarily, Haroldo de Campos’s (2013) reflection on creative translation as transcreation is employed, allowing for a consideration of how Quevedo’s puns, metaphors and neologisms can be reinvented without losing their critical force. The study argues that Quevedo’s medical satire reflects the prejudices and debates of his era, while simultaneously demonstrating the untranslatable character of Baroque language, whose effectiveness depends on polysemy and ambiguity. It is demonstrated how medicine becomes a privileged target of Quevedian corrosive laughter, closely related to death, corruption and greed, offering, even today, reflections on the links between science, power and discourse, as well as problematizing the relationship between healing, commerce and the word.