A figura do gato como capa para considerações mais profundas : Lope de Vega, E. T. A. Hoffmann, T. S. Eliot

Abstract

Cats have traditionally been writers' favourite pets. And writers who love cats often write about them or in their names. Among many others, Lope de Vega, E. T. A. Hoffmann and T. S. Eliot did. It is fascinating to analyse how three very different authors, living centuries apart in distinct countries, and writing different kinds of poetry or prose, found a similar way to express their opinions or secret grievances about women's inconstancy and the fallacy of love vows. The three of them lent life and expression to communities of cats who acted as their mouthpieces in the development of their respective subjects, in a very literary but peculiar form. Lope de Vega re-wrote, in a new poem, the story of his ill-fated love experience; Marramaquiz, the hero of La Gatomaquia, is his disguised alter-ego. Hoffmann built one more of his fantastic semi-autobiographic tales, choosing this time a cat to take his own place and express his own thoughts in Lebensansichten des Katers Murr. T. S. Eliot created Growltiger in his Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats to tell a similar tale of feminine volubility and masculine defeat both in love and in self-assurance.