In view of some Cervantistas’ recent reminder of Don Quixote’s original comic intent, we consider the laughter its reading should cause from the point of view of a psychosomatic involuntary reaction, whose characteristics force us to rethink the nature of literary experience. Laughter considered as such exhausts the meaning of our reading as it actualizes the author’s intention: a kind of short circuit between mind and body, it causes or manifests an unreasonable, if not irrational, understanding -an eclipse, or, etymologically, an abandonment of reason- contrary to, or at least different from, the usual literary understanding. A laughing reading of Don Quixote, such as the one proposed by P. E. Russell
et al.
, would turn out to be, we conclude, not only impoverishing but dangerous -as is shown, by way of example, with the reading of a passage as hilarious as the night fight in Juan Palomeque’s inn (I, 16).
Don Quixote subverts the codes of representation of the world. The parody of the books of chivalry leads to reification of the word, an extreme form of selfreferentiality. On many occasions the narrative produces a textual referent, a synchronic cut, a narrative icon that has its dénouement inscribed within it. This happens in the case of the different versions of the neverending story (that of the shepherdess Torralba, Cardenio’s story, Don Quixote’s adventures), where the word is materialized in its pragmatic energy, or even in a manuscript, or in the continuation of his adventures. It happens too in the interpolated narratives, almost all preceded by the appearance of a strangely dressed character whose function is to explain how he ended up that way; his costume thus becomes the tattoo of his own story; the narration of his ups and downs leads to his obtaining some material benefit: Cardenio hopes to be cured of his madness, Dorotea solves her amorous problem, the captive meets his brother, etc. If we may use an anachronistic term, Cervantes seems to follow a hypertextual method of organizing his narrative, based on the iconographic condensation of stories which he then gives the necessary space for their development.
Cervantes made of Don Quijote the «book of books» in its truest sense: the nobleman transformed into letter that is read and that one reads in its own graphic existence is one of the original inventions of the Cervantine escrivivir, subverting the thresholds that separate and unite literature and life. The labyrinth of metawriting that confronts characters (fictions of fictions) and people (fictions) in the narrative universe takes us back to the infinite chain of scribes of the world transformed into book, always a previous author’s writing (Borges). Cervantes made a bookish defense of the oldest of symbols: that which identifies, in a consummate life-letter, the world with an incessant, absolute, and permanent Book. The nobleman’s old dream charges sign in the graph that says him and writes him, in the circular metaphor of a writing of its writing. It is paradoxical that E. R. Curtius in his celebrated study (1984) mentions neither Cervantes nor Don Quixote in his itinerary of variants of the old topos metawriting.
Knowledge of the erotic vocabulary used by Spanish speakers of the Golden Age in ordinary conversation enables us to offer some highly suggestive interpretations of certain Cervantine passages. This article analyzes Cervantes’s figurative use of a word (pan) charged with multiple erotic connotations, and proposes some readings derived from that usage that attempt to clarify —both subtly and boldly— some obscure points which Cervantine critics have been hesitant to address.
The protagonists of El celoso extremeño and the Novela del Curioso impertinente are dominated by the same «sickness»: jealousy. However, the strategies used by Carrizales and Anselmo, intended to preserve the fidelity of their respective spouses, are opposite. Nonetheless, both characters, dishonored by adultery, die as victims of their afflictions after recognizing their foolishness. Anselmo’s impertinent curiosity leads him to employ Lotario as a double; Carrizales’s obsessive vigilance makes him resemble Loaysa. Both cases, which examine the sacrament of matrimony, present the three clinical stages analyzed by the physician and polygraph Francisco de Villalobos: the alteration of imagination under the effect of amor hereos, the dynamics of jealousy, and death caused by despair. Villalobos’s treatises (Sumario de la medicina, 1498, and Sentencias, 1515-1543), updated by those of Juan Luis Vives (De Anima et Vita, Instrucción de la mujer cristiana) and by the work of Huarte de San Juan (Examen de ingenios), appear to have influenced Cervantes in the creation of these characters, as is shown by our textual analysis.
In this article I propose a new perspective for the study of Cervantine picaresque, based on an historical analysis of the procedures Cervantes used in his novels related to that genre, without entering into the polemics over whether or not certain Cervantine productions actually belong to the picaresque genre. I apply this perspective to Rinconete y Cortadillo. The novelette is shown to be a stage at which Cervantes discovered ‘his’ pícaro par excellence: the happy and carefree Carriazo. It is also worthwhile to consider Rinconete y Cortadillo in the light of Ginés de Pasamonte’s famous declarations in Don Quixote 1, 22; there are in fact important lexical and poetic parallels. Indeed, the chain of galley slaves appears to be the logical conclusion to Rinconete y Cortadillo. Ginés, Rincón, and Carriazo constitute consecutive, linked stages in Cervantes’s understanding of Alemán’s fiction.
In Cervantes’s two great novels, Don Quixote and Persiles y Sigismunda, the female protagonists Dulcinea and Sigismunda double with their alter egos, Aldonza Lorenzo and Auristela. Despite obvious differences, in both cases Cervantes resorts to the creation of doubles that fragment these female characters and make them more complex from the viewpoint of other characters and readers alike. In Persiles the construction of the character Auristela/Sigismunda goes far beyond the given double identity. This character is portrayed pictorially many times throughout her journey. The painted image of Auristela provokes more incidents than she herself does, such that the portraits of her act as autonomous shadows that continuously follow her, precede her, and intercept her path. Through analysis of six different portraits, we see how Cervantes explores the idea of the sublime by means of the contruction of the character Auristela.
In Cervantes’s works there are many cases of women who attempt to exercise «freedom of choice». These women, without obtaining paternal consent, consummate a clandestine marriage -a love match- which they accomplish thanks to a deft alternation of silence and word: a silence that hides, and a word that comes to represent an irrevocable state of affairs. I have reached these conclusions through the analysis of some feminine figures, such as the protagonists of El laberinto de amor, La gran sultana, or some of the characters in Persiles who, even today, surprise the reader with their impressive decisiveness when it comes to choosing a lover and taking pleasure with him. Hence, it is not sufficient to explain these situations by labeling these women varoniles, as has often been done.
The theme of air in Cervantes’s writing is the subject of a project on which I have been working for over a year. The El Toboso conference has given me the chance not only to address this theme from a literary perspective but also to examine the possible influence of the religious, philosophical, and popular beliefs articulated with regard to the binomial air/soul. My analysis focuses on Chapter XIV of Book III of Persiles, where the classical topos of the portrayal of the soul departing the body, and the corresponding ritual kinetics, appear. My study of the theme is organized in two stages: 1) individuation of sources -examination of filters/modalities of reproposition in the Cervantine novel; 2) reflection on the configuration of the episode by means of two literary topoi: «apparent death» and «deceiving the eyes».
Juan Goytisolo is among many contemporary writers who have reflected on Cervantes in some of their works. We find these reflections not only in his creative writing but also in his essays, where his interest in different facets of the Islamic world is evident. It is noteworthy that Goytisolo relates to Cervantes both in his own poetics and in his existential choices. On the one hand, his works aim to destroy Spain’s historical and literary tradition, but on the other, thanks to Cervantes, they recover a bond with Spain and his roots. The genetic bond that links Goytisolo with Cervantes was developed in an essay in his Crónicas sarracinas (1981), chronologically contemporary with his novel Makbara (1980). In both works Goytisolo elaborates on the problematic relationship between the Islamic world and the West. The two aspects analyzed here are: the political one, in which a parallel is drawn between the «Grand Turk»/Christendom dichotomy and the two contemporary ideological blocks; and the vital one, because both Cervantes and Goytisolo have had direct experience of the Islamic world.