''Los Sueños'' (''Dreams'' or ''Visions'') is a

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual arts, visual, literature, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently Nonfiction, non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ...

prose work by the Spanish Baroque writer

Francisco de Quevedo Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, Order of Santiago, Knight of the Order of Santiago (; 14 September 1580 – 8 September 1645) was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, ...

. Written between 1605 and 1622, it was first published in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

in 1627 under the title ''Sueños y discursos de verdades descubridoras de abusos, vicios y engaños en todos los oficios del mundo'' ("Dreams and discourses on truths revealing abuses, vices and deceptions in all the professions and estates of the world").Introduction to the English translation (''Dreams'') by R.K. Britton (Aris & Phillips, 1989) Due to the strict censorship of the time, which had already caused problems for Quevedo, in 1631 expurgated versions of the Dreams were published under the name Juguetes de la niñez. ''Los Sueños'' consists of five sections, each describing a satirical dream vision of the next world: #''El Sueño del Juicio Final'' ("The Dream of the Last Judgement") #''El Alguacil Endemoniado'' ("The Bedevilled Constable") #''Sueño del Infierno'' ("The Vision of Hell") #''El Mundo por de dentro'' ("The World from the Inside") #''Sueño de la Muerte'' ("The Dream of Death") Quevedo's pessimism, as befits the baroque, poses a divine justice closer to punishment than to grace. The stories oscillate between philosophical and moralistic disquisitions. He explains the types of men, how the human race is doomed and the nature of demons, and attacks the vices of his contemporaries.

References

Satirical books 1627 books Spanish books Spanish-language books {{nonfiction-book-stub