Masochistic Ritual and Rebirth in Fernão Mendes Pinto's Peregrinação

In his study of piracy and parody in Fernão Mendes Pinto’s Peregrinação, Carlos Jorge Figueiredo Jorge makes the seemingly straightforward point that “[n]o fundo, uma das grandes aprendizagens do protagonista é a de que para sustentar os valores da vida são necessárias todas as humilhações, o espezinhamento de todos os códigos que pareciam fornecer um valor e um sentido à vida” (86). This statement may be read on one level as a reiteration of António José Saraiva’s thesis (shared, albeit significantly reworked, by Rebecca Catz) regarding the mordant social commentary that runs through the Peregrinação. As Saraiva has it, Mendes Pinto’s text is a picaresque work that seeks to develop an alternative model of morality based not on frameworks of institutional religion and social doxa but rather on the primary ethical responsibilities that emerge in settings of human contact and interaction. Catz would later raise the ante somewhat, setting aside Saraiva’s picaresque frame while characterizing Mendes Pinto as a “relentless satirist” (Sátira e Anti-Cruzada 27) and the Peregrinação as a “corrosive satire in which the author attacks all the religious and political institutions of sixteenth-century Portugal” (“Introduction” xv). Beyond the satirico-moral discourse that runs just below the surface of the Peregrinação, Jorge’s comments on humiliation, violence, values, and the grandes aprendizagens that