Dreams

The Dreams are satirical texts, written between 1606 and 1623. Of them abundant manuscripts circulated, although they were not printed together until 1627.
We speak here of trades and characters, always with a critical intention and almost journalistic denunciation. All this with a narrative scaffolding (including dialogues) in which there is a presentation, an exhibition of characters and facts and an epilogue.
The work was collected in a single volume for the first time in 1627. These are stories of Lucianesque inspiration in which it is ironized about various customs, trades and characters of the time.
The Doomsday Dream is perhaps the best example of the purpose of this book.
Francisco de Quevedo makes a satire of the different professions and social status. Here appear jurists, doctors, butchers, noblemen, poets, astrologers. The work even refers to the bad practitioners of the different religions, with allusions to Muhammad, Luther and Judas.
This edition consists of:

• “Dream of the Last Judgment” (also later called The Dream of the Skulls), appeared in 1606;
• “The Demonized Sheriff” (retitled The Sheriff Bailiff), appeared in 1607;
• “Dream of Hell” (or The Heroes of Pluto, in another version), appeared in 1609;
• “The World Within”, appeared in 1612;
• and the “Dream of Death” (also known as The Visit of the Jokes), appeared in 1621.

They stand out for their religious reflection, three stories that we find within the work, the “Dream of the last judgment”, together with the “Dream of hell” and “Dream of death”, directly allude to three of the last years (Judgment , Hell, Death).
The overarching theme, as stated above, is the satirization of vicious humans. What changes are the different characters that appear.
Quevedo is a critical and satirical spirit, and also a moralist, a censor who lives with anguish the Spanish decadence, which pushes him to create his own hell, but based on two classics: Virgil and Dante.
The full title of these pieces by Francisco de Quevedo, halfway between chronicle and narration, is Dreams and speeches of truths discovering abuses, vices and deceptions, in all trades and states of the World.

It seemed to me, then, that I saw a mancebo that running through the air gave voice of its breath to a trumpet, disfiguring with its force in part its beauty. He found obedience in the marbles and heard in the dead, and so to the point began to move all the earth and to give license to the güesos, who were already in search of each other; and as time passed, though it was brief, I saw those who had been soldiers and captains rise from the graves in anger, judging her by the sign of war; to the greedy with anxiety and sorrow, jealous some rebuttal; and those given to vanity and gluttony, with being rough the son, had it for a thing of sarao or hunting. I knew this in the countenances of each one and I did not see the noise of the trunk to the ear that was persuaded that it was a matter of judgment. Then I noticed how some souls came with disgust, and others with fear fled from their old bodies. Which one was missing an arm, which one was missing, and it made me laugh to see the diversity of figures and admired the providence of God in that being shuffled with each other, no one mistakenly put on the legs or the members of the neighbors. Only in a cemetery it seemed to me that they were destroying heads and that a scribe was not good for his soul and wanted to say that it was not his because he discarded it.