Number 70 of THÉMATA. Revista de Filosofía includes an article by Alicia López Latorre, "La influencia del pensamiento medieval en el imaginario de Juan Eduardo Cirlot: lo “historial” y el mundus imaginalis con relación a la alquimia y la caballería":
This article demonstrates the relevance that different aspects of the Middle Ages acquire in the thinking of Juan Eduardo Cirlot. Firstly, his critique of historicism, in which he defends both archaeologism and the concept of the “abstract man,” can be explained through two concepts that Henry Corbin rescues from medieval tradition: the historical and the mundus imaginalis. Secondly, his claim of pro-gress as divine punishment, associated with William Blake, is linked to the de-fense of creation as it was conceived in the Middle Ages. This rejects the triumph of quantity in Guenonian terms and is understood as the process of spiritual sublimation of qualitative values. Third-ly, the deep interest in medieval image-ry is highlighted in two aspects of his work. On the one hand, in the symbolic language of alchemy, which represents a technique of spiritualization specific to this period. On the other hand, in his fixation on the ideal of chivalry, as seen in the influence exerted on the author by the figure of the knight and the film “The War Lord” (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1965), set in the eleventh century.
Alicia López Latorre is an academic at Universidad de Granada.
"La influencia del pensamiento medieval en el imaginario de Juan Eduardo Cirlot: lo “historial” y el mundus imaginalis con relación a la alquimia y la caballería" is available from the THÉMATA. Revista de Filosofía (open access, Spanish).