Abstract

The castle of Las moradas, by santa Teresa, has attracted the attention of scholars, who have tried to guess its sources. Also some artists have been interested on it and have made graphical representations. This article analyses the mystical castle of santa Teresa as a labyrinth, a symbol with different meanings, specially in occidental culture. This allegorical building presents some of the most important characteristics of the labyrinths, specifically those ones with a only path: the significance of the centre, the difficulty of the access to it and the transformation of the walker —in this case, the human soul— until the achievement of his goal, the union with God.

Abstract

In baroques labyrinths it get consumed the perverse pleasure of artificious complexity, the enthusiasm for a virtual architecture able to metaphorise the endless trajectories of an inextricable universe. One of the evidents signs of neo-baroque crisis in Borges’s poetics is, without doubts, the presence of labyrinth’s geometrical metaphors. Also Escher, through his graphics representations of the unestable equilibrium between illusion and disillusion, between decryption and ontological doubt, between figures possibles and impossibles, ends enrolling himself in the scope of neo-baroque crisis.