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The sense in which Spanish authors in the Baroque period employ the word ‘labyrinth’ presupposes an evolution, from ancient understanding of it, which the present article aims to outline. For Classical authors the word had the physical sense of a ‘complex construction’, although it could also be used metaphorically. But already in certain texts (Virgil, Ovid), the narration of the Cretan myth invited a moralizing interpretation which is given further prominence in late medieval and Renaissance texts. A further elaboration sees the labyrinth converted into a theological symbol representing deceit, offering an erroneous path which the Christian must avoid. Once these and other parallel lines of development have been traced, it becomes possible to see how complex is the use Calderón makes of the concept in El laberinto del mundo. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a letter to Sandoval dated on March 1635, Quevedo told him that he had finished «a long, political and ethical» work, titled Teatro de la Historia. This work was among those listed as not returned to our author after he was liberated according to Pablo Tarsia. Yet although Quevedo keeps trying to recover other confiscated texts in 1639, he does not talk of Theatro after 1643. Instead in his report to Felipe IV, Chumacero refers to a certain Desengaños de la historia, that could have been the same work, though designated with a different title. It is possible to conjecture, however, that both were former versions of Quevedo's last Menippean satire, La Hora de todos. Had he been able to get another manuscript copy, it would have been unnecessary to continue asking for this particular work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]