Love and the Law in Cervantes

R O B E R T O G O N Z L E Z E C H E VA R R A

Love and the Law

in Cervantes

Yale University Press

New Haven &
London
Copyright 2005 by Roberto Gonzlez Echevarra.
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gonzlez Echevarra, Roberto.
Love and the law in Cervantes / Roberto Gonzlez Echevarra.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-300-10992-x (alk. paper)
1. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 15471616Criticism and interpretation.
2. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 15471616 Don Quixote. 3. Cervantes
Saavedra, Miguel de, 15471616KnowledgeLaw. 4. Love in literature.
5. Law in literature. 6. Law and literature. I. Title.
pq6351.g66 2005
863%.3dc22
2005041844
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my peripatetic brothers Howard (Bloch), Carlos (Hortas),
and Giuseppe (Mazzotta), in celebration of our
Sunday morning walks
Pensaba en los misterios de la letra escrita, en esas hebras negras
que se enlazan y desenlazan sobre anchas hojas ligranadas de
balanzas, enlazando y desenlazando compromisos, juramentos,
alianzas, testimonios, declaraciones, apellidos, ttulos, fechas,
tierras, rboles y piedras; maraa de hilos, sacada del tintero, en
que se enredaban las piernas del hombre, vedndole caminos
desestimados por la Ley; cordn al cuello, que apretaba su
sordina al percibir el sonido temible de las palabras en libertad.
Su rma lo haba traicionado, yendo a complicarse en nudo y
enredos de legajos. Atado por ella, el hombre de carne se haca
hombre de papel.
Alejo Carpentier, Viaje a la semilla, 1944

[He thought how mysterious were written words: those black

threads weaving and unweaving, and covering large sheets of
paper with a ligree of estimates; weaving and unweaving
contracts, oaths, agreements, evidence, declarations, names,
titles, dates, lands, trees and stones; a tangled skein of threads,
drawn from the inkpot to ensnare the legs of any man who took
a path disapproved of by the Law; a noose around his neck to
stie free speech at its rst dreaded sound. He had been betrayed
by his signature; it had handed him over to the nets and
labyrinths of documents. Thus constricted, the man of esh and
blood had become a man of paper.
Alejo Carpentier, Journey Back to the Source, 1944]
 Contents

Acknowledgments ix
A Note on Translation xi
Introduction xiii
1. The Prisoner of Sex (Quijote, I, 22) 1
2. Spanish Law and the Origins of the Novel 17
3. Engendering Dulcinea 35
4. The Knight as Fugitive from Justice: The Quijote, Part I 54
5. The Amorous Pestilence: Interpolated Stories in the Quijote,
Part I 75
6. Broken Tales: Love Stories in the Quijote, Part I 92
7. The Politics of Love and Law: The Quijote, Part II 112
8. A Marriage Made in Heaven: Camachos Wedding
(Quijote, II, 1921) 134
9. Love and National Unity: Ricotes Daughters
Byzantine Romance 156

vii
viii Contents

10. The Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories:

The Call of the Blood 175
11. The Bride Who Never Was and Her Brood:
The Deceitful Marriage 194
12. Cervantes Literary Will: The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda 213
13. The Novel after Cervantes: Borges and Carpentier 231
Notes 251
Bibliography 275
Index 287
 Acknowledgments

When Yale president Richard C. Levin asked me to deliver the spring

2002 DeVane Lectures, I immediately thought of the rst piece of advice Don
Quijote gave Sancho when he learned that his squire had been named gover-
nor of the Island of Barataria. The knight told Sancho not to attribute your
success to your own merits, to give thanks to Heaven for having disposed
matters so benecently in your behalf (No atribuyas a tus merecimientos la
merced recibida, sino que des gracias al cielo, que dispone suavemente las
cosas). I, however, would like to thank Rick for the honor, and for the quixotic
notion that I could follow the likes of Sidney Altman, Harold Bloom, Guido
Calabresi, Nancy Cott, Anthony Kronan, Jaroslav Pelikan, Jonathan Spence,
and so many other distinguished colleagues. I was fortunate to have had much
help in coping with the crisis in which I suddenly found myself.
I have been blessed with the encouragement and assistance of many col-
leagues at Yale who listened patiently when I tried out on them some of the
ideas that I developed in the lectures and later in this book. Without enlisting
them as accomplices or collaborators, I would like to thank Rolena Adorno,
Howard Bloch, Harold Bloom, Josena Ludmer, Oscar Martn (who provided
much help with medieval Spanish topics), Giuseppe Mazzotta, Mara Rosa
Menocal, David Quint, and Nol Valis. Another colleague, Mercedes Carre-
ras, who is also a Spanish lawyer, gave me valuable advice on legal issues.

ix
x Acknowledgments

Giuseppe Mazzotta attended every single one of the lectures and David Quint,
who was writing his own book on Cervantes, came to several. Fellow pilot and
Elizabethan scholar Lawrence Manley, from our English department, also
attended quite a few and offered valuable comments. My longtime friend
Cathy L. Jrade of Vanderbilt University read the entire manuscript and made
numerous corrections, as did Georgina Dopico Black of New York University.
The lectures and the book would not have been possible without the assis-
tance of Anke Birkenmaier, student, research assistant, interlocutor, critic,
editor, and stern advisor. She carefully read the entire manuscript and also
taught a section of undergraduates attending the DeVane Lectures for credit.
Isabel Jan-Portillo led the section taught in Spanish and made insightful com-
ments. Antonio Carreo Rodrguez, a teaching assistant in a more recent
version of the course, also made insightful comments; he also procured for me
a copy of the 1567 Nueva recopilacin. Eagle-eyed Charlotte Rogers had the
last look at the proofs. The graduate students who took the lectures as a course
and with whom I had a seminar session at the end were essential to the realiza-
tion of my project in their attentive reception. At that session, held at Beinecke
Library, we indulged in the fetishistic pleasure of fondling rst editions of
Cervantes books. Everyone registered produced a superb paper. The students
were David Assouline, Jos Crdenas, Gisela Guerenstein, Ana Mara Mutis,
Ryan Szpiech, Stephanie Tuttle, Mara Vzquez, and Estela Vieira.
I also would like to thank my wife, Isabel, who came to all the lectures and
endured my moods and odd behavior while preparing them. Finally, I would
like to express my appreciation to the people who attended the lectures, many
every single one of them. I was delighted to see a variety of ages in the au-
dience, ranging from Adriana Apter, a mere ten, to retirees looking for some-
thing to do on a Thursday afternoon. Robin DuBlanc, a model copyeditor, rid
the manuscript of the last remaining hispanisms and inconsistencies. Last but
certainly not least, I wish to recognize the invaluable assistance, unwavering
loyalty, and unqualied support of Mrs. Sandra Guardo, a true pillar of the
Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale.
 A Note on Translation

All quotations and references to the Quijote are to the following edition:
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de La Mancha, coordinated by Francisco
Rico (Barcelona: Instituto Cervantes, 1998); the companion volume, Volumen
complementario, to which there are occasional references, contains notes,
commentaries, and bibliography. I am using the 1755 Tobias Smollett transla-
tion (with occasional emendations to avoid archaisms) in the following edi-
tion: The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote (Ware,
Hertfordshire, U.K.: Wordsworth Editions, 1998). Although Smollett num-
bered the chapters in Part I according to the division of four parts, I use the
more conventional I or II for the 1605 and 1615 books, followed by arabic
numbers to indicate the chapters, and then give the page number from this
edition.

xi
 Introduction

The Yale College Catalogue states that the DeVane Lectures are a special
series open to the general public as well as to students and to members of the
Yale community. They were established in 1969 as part of the DeVane Pro-
fessorship, a position created in honor of William Clyde DeVane, Dean of Yale
College from 1939 to 1963. The DeVane Professorship was intended to pro-
vide an opportunity for a scholar to work beyond the boundaries of a particu-
lar specialty or department and to transmit the excitement of that study to
colleagues and students in other elds. Faced with the task of addressing
undergraduates, graduates, and a general audience, I chose Cervantes, think-
ing that it would be a subject of interest to all. Taking to heart the idea that the
DeVane professor should stray from his or her eld and experiment, I chose
the topic of love and the law in Cervantes. Because he sets out to impose justice
on the world, driven by his love of Dulcinea, Don Quijote seemed to embody
these two forces of love and the law, a topic worthy of detailed exploration.
With this I also intended to develop further the line of work I had begun in my
Myth and Archive (1990) and to continue examining the impact on literature
of Spains legal system during the Golden Age.
My purpose here is to propose that the novel as a genre and Cervantes work
in particular developed not only from the literary tradition but also from other
kinds of discourse, above all the legal. I want to offer an account of the origins

xiii
xiv Introduction

of realism different from that provided by Erich Auerbach in his classic Mime-
sis, and more narrowly by Alexander A. Parker in his Literature and the
Delinquent: The Picaresque Novel in Spain and Europe. Auerbachs magni-
cent book sees the emergence and evolution of realism in terms of the doc-
trine of styles; Parker sees the development of the picaresque from Spanish
doctrinal-moralistic literature during the second half of the sixteenth century. I
argue that the organization of a modern state in Spain, beginning in the reign
of the Catholic kings and the attendant growth of a patrimonial bureaucracy,
created a discourse dealing with criminals and common people that writers
found compelling partly because it also pertained to them as subjects of the
new polity. I wanted to show, moreover, that in ction the law dealt primarily
with conicts of love, a synecdoche for social strife and evolution. Love and
the law converge on marriage, the legal and religious institution at the founda-
tion of the body politic. I concentrate on love stories in the Quijote, the
Exemplary Stories, and The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda, the core of
Cervantes narrative work, but I believe that a similar study of his theater
could be carried out.
By focusing on stories involving the legal strife provoked by love, I try to
demonstrate how the law provides Cervantes with fresh narrative forms in
which to recast traditional stories and create new ones drawn from contempo-
rary life. I also show how legal situations and characters drawn from the
judiciary ll Cervantes work and how judicial terminology permeates his
prose. I demonstrate that the approach to the law evolves from Part I to Part II
of the Quijote, from the particular to the more abstract and general, and show
how, when read from the perspective of the law, both that masterpiece and
some of the Exemplary Stories disclose aspects heretofore ignored. These I
call unnarratable stories, subtexts dealing with the uncanny and/or the
horriblethe unlawful, in the deepest sense, because it includes the irrational
foundations of law itself. I wind up with a quick survey of the love-law dyad in
European and American ction and then home in on two major Latin Ameri-
can authors, Borges and Carpentier, who rewrite Cervantes in their quest to
nd the origins of American ction. In doing so they delve into the romantic
coupling of literature and the nation, the founding letters of the law and the
laws of the letter, in ctions such as Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote,
and The Harp and the Shadow. In the latter Carpentier has Columbus, the rst
European to write about the New World, engaged in a torrid love affair with
Queen Isabella of Castile, which allows me to loop back to my opening chap-
ters. Modern history and American ction are the issues of that union of love
and the law imagined by Carpentier. Stories not drawn from literary tradition
but from legal casesor like them, involving the tawdry underworld atmo-
 Introduction xv

sphere of criminalityemerge in Spain from La Celestina and the picaresque

on. Transgressions and their punishment are recorded in concrete detail. This
kind of writing not only strives to direct the attention of the reader outside of
literature, but its appeal is based precisely on the fact that it originates outside
of literature, a perspective familiar to his or her own reality.
The relationship of the legal background with narrative ction presupposes
that the literary imagination feeds not only on past-master stories still current
but also on the minor, contingent stories found in contemporary legal ar-
chives. These are tales lifted from the textual net that the law as creation of the
social mind throws over the transient; legal writing is the glue of the social
contract, the netting of the human, of the fallible in a signicant code. By
delving into the legal archive the pool of stories is increased and given an air of
the actual.
The advent of print and the growth, unication, and centralization of the
legal system in Spain led in two seemingly contradictory directions: one to-
ward enmeshing individuals in a web of restrictions. They are now more
subservient to the state and subject to its penal machinery; they are booked,
as it were. But at the same time printed law led toward democratization, or at
least toward a progressive leveling of social classes. The laws of the new state
eroded the personal, arbitrary power of noblemen, who are themselves now
not only subjects of the crown but must answer to its judiciary. The love-law
stories in Cervantes reect the social mobility or realignment resulting from
these contrary forces. Love conicts span the social gamut in Cervantes, from
whorehouse strife to struggles among aristocrats, but most importantly love
quarrels increasingly involve or reect social warfare. Characters from dif-
ferent social classes meet, clash, meet again, marry. Illegality, transgression,
corruption transform the system, rewrite the law, sometimes with blood, as in
the Camacho wedding episode in Part II of the Quijote. Marriage appears
often because it is the social contract that resolves conicts by taming desire
and directing it toward reproduction and restored social stability.
The written record of the law becomes increasingly important to literature
because it is the most extensive account of human interaction availableit is a
primary form of recording lifes variety, an inscription of behavior prior to
generalizations and formulas. It represents the raw contingency of the real.
Because of this it is an invaluable repository for the emerging novel, a treasure
trove of the vagaries of human conduct and misconduct. Deviantsthe sin-
ner, the criminal, the madmanwill be the novels most coveted gures, as
they are for the law.
Literature becomes an archive of the forbidden, counterbalancing the copi-
ous repository of the pious, generally the context that has been used to read
xvi Introduction

Cervantes because of its availability. The forbidden, on the other hand, tends
by nature to be scarce in its public displays and leaves a scant record. There is a
surfeit of information about the law, about how to suppress and punish crime
and sin, but scant contextual documentation about the allure and manifesta-
tions of desire. This is where Marcel Bataillon, Alexander A. Parker, and
Alban Forcione, scholars whose work I truly admire and from whom I have
learned a great deal, go wrong. They misrepresent the literary text by relying
solely on the overwhelming context of piety and interdiction. Literature is its
own best context in this regard, or perhaps Stuart Schwartzs work on Inquisi-
tion records, where the evidence of transgression is most readily available.
I am not interested in nding yet another orthodox Cervantes. I am looking
for the one who writes probing the forbidden, reveling in it, not because he is
allied to any given ideology or resentful group, but because he has discovered
that this is the mission of literature that pretends to be truthful in the deepest
sense. I fully agree with Jean Canavaggio when he writes in his excellent
biography of the author: The fact is that deviant, not to say perverse, atti-
tudes attract Cervantes attention as much as, if not more than, the amorous
ardor of seducers and fallen womenthe necessary ingredients of Golden Age
stories. Why would the Quijote and all of Cervantes important narratives
probe into the perversions of love, and what does this have to do with the
novel and with literature in general? Why is it pleasurable to learn such un-
pleasant truths abut the human condition? Because literature allows us to
enjoy vicariously and in relative safety the pleasures of the forbidden whose
call is within all of us. Or perhaps because, following Georges Bataille, inter-
diction gives the forbidden a value of its own that literature feeds on. It is
here, ironically, where Horaces dulce et utile meetonly that the sweet is
the sweetness of the proscribed and the useful the contemplation and self-
contemplation of the human predicament. Driven by misguided nationalistic
pride, Spanish criticism of Cervantes has recoiled from this aspect of his work,
and English-language critics have chosen a similar path, driven by their con-
ception of a Spain totally dominated by religious zeal and incapable of produc-
ing modern views of humankind.
Before the sixteenth century the intersection of love and its control had not
been cast as a conict between desire and the law in institutional and contem-
porary terms. In the past love had been checked by ethics, customs, or re-
ligious doctrine in Western society and literature. In Greek tragedy the stern
rules violated by the protagonists represent the collectivity but in an abstract
way. In the classical epic transgressions were also against broadly conceived
conventions such as honor, duty, the gods, and mostly fate. In the Middle Ages
love was regulated by religious doctrine, by canon law. Beginning in the six-
 Introduction xvii

teenth century, however, the law, as represented by an increasingly organized

judiciary and its attendant police, emerges in the Iberian Peninsula as a form
of control, curtailment, and channeling of desire that is set in written (and
printed) laws. This was due to the organization of the rst modern state in
Spain, aided by developments in moveable print, and by the effort to develop a
centralized legal system whose model was Roman, the Renaissance imperial
model. The continued compilations of laws in the Spain of the sixteenth cen-
tury are moving toward the unication of the legal system under the new
absolute monarchy, but curiously there is more of an accumulation of laws
than a systematization, because new laws do not invalidate previous ones and
there is resistance to unication because of the many fueros, or local exemp-
tions. Codication was made manifest in the practice of the patrimonial bu-
reaucracy more than in the actual written codes. In La Celestina (1499), the
picaresque (beginning in 1554), and Cervantes, the representation of the law
and its conicts takes on this new guise. An important new feature, with a
lasting effect on the history of the novel and the direct result of legal writing, is
the frequent appearance of the tawdry, drawn from notarial documents that
inscribe the everyday in all its unwieldy and irregular manifestations. An im-
portant feature is that the punishments provided by the law attempt to replace
private revenge by the injured party or his (or more often her) relatives. Private
vengeance obeys no codes, which is why the new Spanish judiciary tries to
suppress it and punish it. Individuals are now pitted against codes and police
forces representing the state, not personal enemies. Plots and their denoue-
ments differ from those of previous literature as a result. The well-known
plays of the Spanish Golden Age stage conicts between private vengeance and
public (legal) punishment as a result of these social and political changes. In
the new literature, in Cervantes, the religion of love charted by Denis de
Rougement meets the legal brief.
My approach tries to take into account the actual functioning of the legal
system at the time Cervantes wrote: not just the law in abstract terms, but the
law as it was actually written and applied in Spain in the second half of the
sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth. Literature nds a sense
of the concrete, the actual, the real in legal discourse that enters into conict
with narrative and stylistic conventions drawn from the stock of the European
narrative tradition. Individuals are now subject to a state that they view not
in the personal, traditional way relations with equals, subordinates, and
superiorsbut as a complicated set of laws that mediate between them and
the source of power. Heroism in the epic sense, even in the tragic sense, is now
seriously compromised by the limitations imposed on the individual by the
collective. This affects ones self-conception as well as ones conception of the
xviii Introduction

community within which one lives. Cervantes works are the rst sustained
record of this process in literature. They show an increasingly litigious society
because of the gradual erosion of social privilege that is leading to eighteenth-
century revolutions, to the Enlightenment, and eventually to bourgeois so-
ciety. It is this thatother than his geniusmakes him different from Dante,
Boccaccio, and back through the canon to Virgil and Homer.
In the love stories that I study here, a crime, punishable by law, is com-
mitted. There is a perpetrator, a victim, and a crime assessed in relation to a
legal code, not just to mores or customs. The crime is dened in terms of
current law and the culprit punished according to its stipulations. Plots are
affected because what sets them in motion is the perpetration of a crime, as in
The Call of the Blood, and the punishments and restitutions vary according
to the law. In The Jealous Extremaduran there is a reversal of the expected
ending and a drafting of a new legal document to seal it. So the law, I pro-
pose, inuences the narrativeand Cervantes in particularin the following
ways: (1) style (the concrete, legal terms); (2) plots (crime, punishment, re-
venge, or pardon); (3) the incorporation of subgenres from the legal (con-
fessions, depositions); (4) endings (resolution involves exculpation, punish-
ment or pardon, and legitimation); (5) an increase of stories involving the
question of marriage, which is the most tangible and textual level at which
love and the law intersect in Cervantes and in subsequent narrative ction;
(6) the proliferation of judges, lawyers, bailiffs in ction, particularly in Cer-
vantes; and (7) the inclusion of or allusion to legal documents in the ction and
the ction itself sometimes takes the form of one of them specically in the
picaresque.
The unnarratable stories that I tease out of some of Cervantes stories
result from the deep complicity of love and the law. The laws arbitrariness and
irrationality are like those of desire itself interdiction is not a given but a
construct of the human. The consubstantiality of law and literature results
from the common origin of both desire and interdiction in the irrational. This
is the buried, yet coeval, kernel of the love-law dyad in Cervantes and in
modern literature in general. The sadistic pleasure of the no meets the indul-
gent delight of the yes. The thou shalt not of our invented gods is fraught
in the pleasure of negation and the equally pleasurable threat of punishment if
transgression occurs. The irrational in love and in the law meet in a ritualized
fashion in literature as contrived performing opposites, while revealing at the
same time their secret afnity. This, I submit, is the literary, and the point
at which Cervantes leaves behind all piety. It is for this reason that I am
not interested in the philosophy of love in Cervantes, as Parker was in his
erudite book, but in love as the shaping force of ction, of narrative. To
 Introduction xix

deduce a philosophy from this is to abandon the literary in favor of the

discursive in its blandest manifestation. The engenderment of Dulcinea, as I
try to show in chapter 3 of this book, cannot be reduced to a set of ideas about
love and ideals of beauty.
Cervantes knowledge or acquaintance with legal matters and terminology
is so apparent in his works that some have claimed that he had been trained as
a lawyer or was in fact a great jurist. In a remarkable monograph, full of
insights and useful information, Quintiliano Saldaa stated that Cervantes
was a prodigious criminalist. More soberly, Rafael Salillas argues that both
the picaresque and the works of Cervantes, because of their detailed represen-
tation of criminal types, are at the origin of the science of criminology. Rafael
Alvarez Vigaray recalls how Cervantes refers to the legal profession in Voyage
to Parnassus as that grave ocio, and maintains his juridical knowledge can
be explained by his amateur readings of juridical works. More plausibly,
Horacio N. Castro Dassen adduces that many of the legal terms used by
Cervantes had slipped into common speech and he had learned others in the
painful school of life. Ivo Domnguez, whose study of the presence of the law
in Exemplary Stories is smart and measured, also attributes Cervantes juridi-
cal knowledge to the personal experiences with the law, which were the best
law professor that he could have had in his entire career.
Of course, Cervantes was not a lawyer or a legal scholar. The pervasive
presence of the law in his works is due in part, as Castro Dassen says, to the
contamination of everyday language by legal jargon because of the litigious
climate that the growth of the judicial and penal bureaucracy created. It is also
true, as Domnguez maintains, that Cervantes many clashes with the authori-
ties must have taught him quite a bit about the new legal system. These bitter
experiences include the irregular love life of the women in his family, which led
to the birth of illegitimate children, as did his own affairs, which produced a
daughter by a mistress who was married to another man. Cervantes own
marriage was marked by prolonged separations and recriminations by his in-
laws for his absences. His fathers life was spent one step ahead of his creditors,
who had him incarcerated more than once. In fact, as Canavaggio details,
Cervantes grandfather and father did time in the same Seville jail where he
was interned twice himself.
All of these experiences make Cervantes a representative citizen of the new
polity. What sets him apart, I believe, was his job as a commissary ofcer
collecting goods, mostly grain, to provision the Invincible Armada. Carry-
ing out his rather delicate and contentious duties led to legal entanglements
that got him excommunicated and put him in prison. As a commissary he was
part of the new patrimonial bureaucracy and its convoluted legal mechanisms
xx Introduction

and record keeping. These were the activities that immersed Cervantes in the
law as instituted and practiced in the Spain of his time: hands-on experience
with the process by which the new state put the population at the service of its
policies. He became intimately familiar with the workings of the judicial and
penal bureaucracy in matters concerning inheritance laws as well as the consti-
tution of estates and inheritance laws. Cervantes own civil and penal prole is
drawn from the so-called documentos cervantinos left from the legal cases in
which he was involved. They, and the experience as a commissary ofcer, left a
long and broad trail in his ctions.

I will plunge right into my topic without further theoretical and general prole-
gomena. I would like for the theory to become apparent in the course of my
work with the actual texts. So-called theory has had a withering effect on
literature and literary criticism: it makes them both boring. I also nd that
theory is more often than not an effort to make the strange familiar, to
domesticate the rare, the new, and the original, which are the essence of litera-
ture. In other words, theory is a way of reducing anything and everything to
what everybody is talking about at the expense of the specicity and difference
inherent in each tradition, author, and text. I believe that teaching involves
leading others to the unfamiliar, not making the unfamiliar like everything else
they already know. I want to give the reader a Cervantes en su propia salsa, in
his own sauce, not one rinsed out by theory or one whose peculiar avor is
smothered by some exotic or trendy seasoning. I will follow a Borgesian plan
in the unfolding of the book. No, I am not going to simply reprint the Quijote
and claim that it is mine, as Pierre Menard would like to do. I am thinking
more about Borgess The Aleph, which is based on a kabbalistic concept of
emanation. Nearly everything that follows will ow from this introduction
and the rst chapter; it will be like an expansion, a commentary, an amplica-
tion. This book is like a set of expanding concentric circles, with unavoidable
repetitions, some of them due to the pedagogical context in which it was
conceived, which also accounts for the presence of information that the spe-
cialist may consider common knowledge.
 1

The Prisoner of Sex (Quijote, I, 22)

More than chivalry or any other subject, the Quijote is about love.
Chivalry falls within the theme of love, not the other way around. Both parts
of the novel are like love laboratories, with samples of nearly every kind of
relationship conceivable, and specimens of almost every kind of lover. The
permutations seem innite, and the burgeoning accumulation of stories makes
the book sometimes seem like a baroque Decameron, held together by Don
Quijotes peculiar madness and bizarre adventures. The gallery of lovers spans
the entire spectrum: from damsels in distress to prostitutes, from would-be
courtly lovers to seducers and cheats, from women dressed as men to men
dressed as women and to a handsome young man dressed as a woman so as to
be less attractive to other men. The couples range from Sancho and Teresa,
peasants worried about marrying their children, to the duke and duchess, a
bored, aristocratic middle-aged pair looking for entertainment. Juan Palo-
meque and his wife run a busy inn, where travelers can have a meal, a bed, and
if the need arises Maritorness favorsshe the homely resident harlot whom
Don Quijote takes for the yearning and beautiful landlords daughter in the
dark of night. Even the languid, bony Rocinante falls in love, but his advances
to some mares are received with kicks and provoke a row in which his masters
are again badly pummeled.
Loves adversaries in the Quijote are not giants and wicked knights, but the

1
2 Prisoner of Sex

laws made to channel desire into social life, the laws that transform it into
continuity and renewal within an orderly community ruled by the state and its
codes, and embodied in the king and his representatives. In narrative ction
and the theater these laws lead young lovers to happy unions after a series of
comic adventures, and married couples to tragic results after a series of errors.
In Spanish Golden Age literature everything that happens before marriage is
the stuff of comedy, and everything that happens after marriage the stuff of
tragedy. Don Quijotes quest is the love of Dulcinea, as the pilgrims was that
of Beatrice in Dantes Divine Comedy. Every other goal is subordinated to this.
The knights love is what moves him and the plot and the overarching story
under which the multiple love stories unfold. Of course, Don Quijote is an
ageing bachelor and Dulcinea is essentially his invention. Besides, as a lover in
the courtly tradition, his desire is not to marry Dulcinea, and it would be
unlikely that as an hidalgo he would be willing to marry Aldonza Lorenzo, for
whom he seems to have felt a more worldly, if undisclosed, desire. Still, Don
Quijotes ardor is such as to make him into a criminal and fugitive from the
law. Why is love so important in the Quijote and why do its effects continually
make characters, not just the protagonist, run against or from the law? What is
the result of the interplay of desire and interdiction, between love and its legal
constraints in Cervantes?
There is no dearth of antecedents for this clash of love and the law, of
course, going back to the dawn not just of the West but of civilization itself.
The conict between desire and interdiction is enabling to each: love was made
for the law and the law to control love. One did not follow the other; they
emerge together as a dyad, each depending on the other for its existence. There
is, so to speak, no free love. Hence we have the myriad stories, from Genesis
on, about lovers transgressions. Human time, history, our fallen state, begin
with the breach and in the breach, and are fraught with the memory of the
infraction: Adam and Eve, Oedipus, all the rambunctious lovers in classical
tradition and literature. Denis de Rougement has shown how, in the courtly
love tradition to which Don Quijote is heir, love fabricates its own elaborate
set of interdictions. Courtly love feeds on those prohibitions and cannot exist
without suffering from them. There are harbingers in Boccaccio and Chaucer,
but, until we arrive at La Celestina in 1499, the law was an abstract, transcen-
dental, religious, or even aesthetic kind of prohibition in Western literature. It
did not take the form of actual laws and ministers of the law out to punish the
lovers by sanctions or by marriage. Even in a work of Cervantes time (around
1620, just a few years after his death), Tirso de Molinas El burlador de Sevilla
(translated as The Trickster of Seville), Don Juans punishment is eternal dam-
nation (this is the inaugural play of the Don Juan myth). His last words in the
 Prisoner of Sex 3

play, as he is pulled down to hell, are Que me quemo! Que me abraso! (I

am burning! I am being consumed!). In Cervantes, love is checked not by God
but by the Holy Brotherhood, not by Gods vicars but by the kings appointed
agentsbailiffs, sheriffs, judges, prosecutors, and the like.
The reasons for this change are historical. Cervantes wrote after the consoli-
dation of the rst modern European state, which resulted from the Catholic
kings unication policies, and internal changes that shifted the crowns man-
date from mostly judicial to executive. These policies included the establish-
ment of the Inquisition in 1478, and the Holy Brotherhood at the Cortes de
Madrigal in 1476, as well as the organization of an increasingly elaborate legal
bureaucracy, a process decisively assisted by the development of moveable
print. In his authoritative Imperial Spain, J. H. Elliott describes the Holy
Brotherhood thus: The Hermandad combined in itself the functions of a
police force and a judicial tribunal. As a police force, its task was to suppress
brigandage and to patrol the roads and countryside. The Inquisition and the
Holy Brotherhood were institutions whose jurisdiction did not respect re-
gional exemptions and immunities; they could cross boundaries that were
often beyond the reach of ordinary courts. The bureaucracy improved and
increased record keeping exponentially, which in turn led to the foundation of
the great archive at Simancas, the Archivo General del Reino, by Philip II in
1588. It was the rst state archive in modern Europe. Efforts to consolidate
Spanish law by the Catholic kings and their successors, which harkened back
to Alfonso el Sabios Siete partidas in the thirteenth century, were only par-
tially successful, in great measure due to the many local privileges ( fueros)
enjoyed by the fractious regions of the peninsula. (They may have seen the
Partidas as the imposition of Castilian law on them.) But the penal system was
strengthened, codied, and expanded, and the state bureaucracy began not
only to print old and new laws but also to print and collect myriads of docu-
ments involving cases of all sorts.
This process had a decisive impact on literary history. It was from that
archive that the picaresque novel emerged, creating a major new literary char-
acter and advancing the development of the modern novel and of literary
realism in general. Spanish Golden Age literature, particularly the theater or
comedia, fed on the conicts provoked by the intent and reach of the new
legislation, which was formulated to rein in the aristocracy and seal an alliance
between the crown and the common people. Typically these are cases in which
unruly noblemen take advantage of lower-class women, exercising their sei-
gneurial rights, only to nd that the laws of the kingdom do not protect them
any more and that the peasants can defend themselves. I am thinking of well-
known plays by Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Caldern de la Barca such
4 Prisoner of Sex

as Fuenteovejuna, Peribez, El burlador de Sevilla, and El alcalde de Zala-

mea. The new laws, centralization, and printing shifted the relations of power
and control; they unsettled traditional ones in which ancient privileges, un-
spoken and largely unwritten rules and patterns of sexual commerce prevailed
in isolated situations. There are stories of this sort in Cervantes work, par-
ticularly in the Quijote, that we shall see in some detail later. The collision
between love and the law is at the core of Spanish literature of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries.
In a society undergoing relatively rapid change, the conicts generated by
radical transition, be they economic, political, or social, are up in or are at
least symbolized by the turmoils of love, which are actually or potentially
violent and can only be channeled through the law, which transforms erotic
license into forced restraint. Through erotic violence or its transformation into
the threatened violence of judicial punishment groups are renewed and merge
with each other to forge new communities, and eventually a new state. Loves
wars are the re that keep the melting pot bubbling.
In the picaresque love appears only in the engenderment of the protagonist,
who will be too young throughout the evolving plot to engage in erotic adven-
tures. As in La Celestina, the pcaro emerges in a promiscuous low-class en-
vironment. Lzaros mother has a child out of wedlock with a black man,
Guzmns cannot ascertain which one of her lovers is the father of the protago-
nist, and Pabloss is notorious for her lasciviousness. This tawdry world will be
represented in the Quijote by the prostitutes at the rst inn and by Maritornes
in Juan Palomeques. This is lawless love, or love by the unwritten rules of the
whorehouse and the criminal gang. It is a signicant kind of commerce be-
tween love and the law in that it seems to be the least restrained, the closest to
the more base instincts and desiresthe truest, as it were. It is also the kind
that was most represented in the law and its establishments: the courts, the
prisons, and the archives. A magnicent document from the 1580s, Cristbal
de Chavess Relacin de la crcel de Sevilla, provides ample documentation on
all this, including the organization of sexual trafc in the jail itself, with its
ranks of unsavory pimps, prostitutes, and corrupt ofcials. This is love under
the law yet paradoxically outside of it. It is the penal side of the love-law
relationship. The other side is the one that leads to marriage. Prison and the
altar are the sites where love is captured in the net of the law.
Grisstomo and Marcela, Dorotea and Fernando, Luscinda and Cardenio
are all characters in the Quijote caught in complicated erotic predicaments
leading to marriage. The difculties are in some cases legal and reect social
and economic disparities similar to those found in the theater. Don Quijotes
 Prisoner of Sex 5

intervention in the imbroglios caused by Fernando, Dorotea, Luscinda, and

Cardenio results in a comedy-like nale with multiple marriage vows that
restore order. Later in the novel there are other, graver cases involving the
captive and Zoraida, and in Part II yet others, such as the one in which Ricotes
daughter is implicated. He is a morisco. In these cases the complications are
still legal, but the differences are not just of social and economic class but
of race and religion. In all, however, it is the presence of the law that gives
a modern hue, a contingent, historical cast to these stories, which will not
wind up with multiple murders, ascensions to heaven, or descents to hell. The
punishments and rewards are more worldly and always include marriage as
the ultimate solution and the provider of orderly closure to the narrative. The
conicts are not provoked by transgressions against morals or religious doc-
trine but by violations, or potential violations, of the law that need to be
resolved in that realm as well as in the erotic. The legalistic tone of the Quijote
is set relatively early in Part I, in chapter 22, when the knight and his squire set
free twelve galley slaves. The episode also pits love against the law, though this
has seldom (if ever) been noticed.

The chapter of the galley slaves has been the object of much commentary,
particularly the gure of Gins de Pasamonte, that picaresque author within
the ction who reappears in Part II as puppeteer Maese Pedro. (He is by
thenliterallya small-scale playwright.) Much has been made too of the
disparity between Don Quijotes sense of justice and that of the representatives
of the law who keep the galley slaves. But the episode has a dimension that has
gone unexplored and one minor character who has escaped attention, if the
pun be allowed.
This is the episode in which Don Quijote and Sancho meet the twelve galley
slaves being led to the coast by their guards, to be placed in the vessels where
they will toil as oarsmen for varying lengths of time. The knight is keenly
interested in the reason why these wretches are kept in chains, seeing this as an
opportunity to exercise his chivalric duty to take arms against abuses and
injustices. Ignoring the advice of the guards, but with their resigned acqui-
escence, Don Quijote begins to interrogate the prisoners about their individ-
ual crimes and punishments. It is like a court scene in which the knight plays
the part of the judge, and also like many a theatrical piece that uses the de-
vice, including Cervantes own interlude El juez de los divorcios (The Divorce
Court Judge). The scene is also reminiscent of various episodes in Dantes
Inferno in which the pilgrim asks the condemned about the nature of their sins
6 Prisoner of Sex

to understand their corresponding penalties. Don Quijote hears about six

cases, determines that the men have been unjustly or excessively punished, and
forces the guards to set them free with Sanchos reluctant assistance. Once they
are freed, Don Quijote demands that the men make a beeline to El Toboso,
where they are to throw themselves at the feet and mercy of his lady love, the
fair Dulcinea, to whom they will recount her suitors grand deed. The pris-
oners, not surprisingly, decline, citing various reasons, not the least of which is
that as fugitives of justice they must scatter and ee single and divided, and
each by himself endeavor to abscond within the bowels of the earth, in order
to avoid the Holy Brotherhood, which will, doubtless, come out in search of
us (p. 161) [solos y divididos, y cada uno por su parte, procurando meterse en
las entraas de la tierra, por no ser hallado de la Santa Hermandad, que sin
duda alguna ha de salir en nuestra busca (p. 246)]. Enraged, Don Quijote hurls
insults at them and they reply with a hail of stones that leaves the knight, his
esquire, and their mounts battered and humiliated.
The galley slaves ingratitude and Don Quijotes high sense of forgiveness
have been cited, the episode inviting all kinds of commentaries along ethical
lines, contrasting divine and worldly justice and Don Quijotes aristocratic
and obsolete conception of justice against the new judicial system that has
gradually become the law of the land since the Catholic kings. Richard L.
Kagan writes in his Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile: 15001700: By the
time Cervantes wrote about a pathetic knight setting out to preserve justice by
means of chivalric valor and courageous derring-do, most of his readers would
have equated justice with the world of lawyers, judges, and other men of the
law. In this legalistic world, the gure of Don Quixote was not so much a joke
as an anachronism. He represented a mythical age in which justice was possi-
ble without the help of lawyers and a bevy of legal briefs, but there was no
room for an aging knight errant in the labyrinth of Castiles courts.
The knights act of freeing the men, as Sancho rightly observes with alarm,
makes them, along with the former prisoners, fugitive outlaws. Theirs is a
serious caso de corte, for they have committed a crime against the crown,
setting free men condemned by the kings courts, whose representatives they
have fought and injured in the process. The guard explains to Don Quijote
that the prisoners are gente de su Majestad (p. 236) [slaves belonging to His
Majesty (p. 153)]. Don Quijotes are grave crimes, made worse by the act
having been committed in despoblado, or on the open road, far from cities and
the control of the law. As they go into the Sierra Morena, so that Don
Quijote can pine for Dulcinea and do proper penance for her, they are also in
ight from the authorities, most specically the Holy Brotherhood. Don Qui-
jote, a prisoner of love, takes to the hills to make himself worthy of Dulcinea,
 Prisoner of Sex 7

following chivalric models. But Don Quijote, who has freed convicted crimi-
nals by violent means, is now himself a common criminal. From now until the
end of Part I he will be sought by the authorities who, when they nally
capture him, release the sad hidalgo to the priest and barber, aware that, given
his mental condition, he would never be convicted. But Don Quijote is, none-
theless, sent home in a cage, a veritable prisoner of love and the law. This is the
large story within which the one I would like to analyze falls.

There is a galley slave who has eluded attention but is to my mind most
signicant in understanding the intertwined forces of love and the law in the
Quijote. I believe that he embodies and in a sense even performs (or enacts)
and goes beyond the limits of the love-law conict in the novel, and is an
example of Cervantes uncanny ability to create complex characters with an
astonishing economy of means. The limits are those beyond which it is impos-
sible to think or represent love and the law as forces generating recognizable
shapesthe intelligible, the readable, the narratable. He is the inenarrable,
the inexpressible, the uncannyand in fact his is a virtual story of which we
barely get a synopsis in the Quijote. It is a story about the story that cannot be
told, as it were. This galley slave is a Don Juan type, a serial seducer caught and
sentenced, not by divine law like Tirso de Molinas, but by the laws of the
kingdom. He is the only character in the Quijote tried, convicted, and sen-
tenced for a crime of love. This is why I call him the prisoner of sex, but also
because (apologies to Norman Mailer) he seems to have been the slave of
sexual passion, a compulsive sexual addict; at one point he is carrying on with
four women at the same time. Here is the scene:

Then Don Quixote addressed himself to the next [galley slave], who answered
his question, not with less, but innitely more vivacity, than that of the for-
mer; saying, I trudge in this manner, for having jested a little extravagantly
with two of my female cousins; and with two more, who, tho not related to
me, were in the same degree of blood to each other: in short, I jested with them
so long, that in the end, there was such an intricate increase of kindred as no
casuist could unravel. Every thing was proved against me, I had neither inter-
est nor money, and ran some risk of having my windpipe stopped; but they
only condemned me for six years to the galleys; I submitted to the sentence, as
the punishment of my crime: youth is on my side, life may be long, and time
brings every thing to bear: if your worship, Sir knight, will part with any small
matter for the comfort of these poor wretches, God will requite you in heaven,
and we upon earth, will take care to petition Him for long life and health to
your worship, that you may be as happy, as by your goodly appearance, you
8 Prisoner of Sex

deserve to be. The person who spoke in this manner, appeared in the dress of
a student, and one of the guards said he was a great orator and excellent Latin
scholar. (pp. 15657)

[Pas adelante don Quijote y pregunt a otro su delito, el cual respondi con
no menos, sino con mucha ms gallarda que el pasado:
Yo voy aqu porque me burl demasiadamente con dos primas hermanas
mas y con otras dos hermanas que no lo eran mas; nalmente, tanto me burl
con todas, que result de la burla crecer la parentela tan intricadamente, que
no hay diablo que la declare. Probseme todo, falt favor, no tuve dineros,
vame a pique de perder los tragaderos, sentencironme a galeras por seis
aos, consent: castigo es de mi culpa; mozo soy: dure la vida, que con ella
todo se alcanza. Si vuestra merced, seor caballero, lleva alguna cosa con que
socorrer a estos pobretes, Dios se lo pagar en el cielo y nosotros tendremos
en la tierra cuidado de rogar a Dios en nuestras oraciones por la vida y salud
de vuestra merced, que sea tan larga y tan buena como su presencia merece.
Este iba en hbito de estudiante, y dijo una de las guardas que era muy
grande hablador y muy gentil latino. (pp. 24041)]

The prisoners allusion to the corruption of the system, from which he was
unable to prot, shows how local custom (bribes, inuence peddling) is being
superseded by a system of centralized judicial practice. But this is not the only
detail in which Cervantes reects Spanish penal practice in the period.
In fact, Cervantes scene follows closely developments in Spanish penal law
in the second half of the sixteenth century. Philip II, rst in 1552 in the name of
his father, and then in 1566 in his own right as king, commuted the physical
punishment for thievery from ogging to a term in the galleys. The change was
not due to an increase in such crimes but to the need to provide galley slaves to
the navy on the eve of the 1588 Invincible Armada adventure. As Francisco
Toms y Valiente writes in his comprehensive El derecho penal de la monar-
qua absoluta, Since there was a need for arms to pull the oars, all these poor
men, all this riffraff . . . were considered fodder for the galleys . . . with no more
requirement than to have committed some theft and be older than twenty, or,
beginning in 1566, seventeen. Sentencing a criminal to the galleys also
removed him from regional jurisdictions and made him subject to the crown,
another measure in the direction of unication and centralization. Physical
punishment for crimes other than theft, such as rape and incest, as in the case
of our prisoner, could also mean a term of four and later six years as a galley
slave instead of ogging or hanging. The nobility was exempt from physical
punishment (called corporis afictiva), which was by nature public, in order
not to further tarnish their reputation. So our prisoner is a commoner, older
 Prisoner of Sex 9

than seventeen, who has saved his neck because the general need for oarsmen
has led to the commutation of his sentence to a six-year term as a galley slave.
There are four words in this passage that merit commentary: burlar, de-
clarar, parentela, and estudiante. (to fool around, declare, relatives, and stu-
dent). All four suggest to me that this galley slave is not just a student but more
specically a law student. Notice that he is the one who makes a plea on behalf
of his companions and that he states that his punishment ts the crime, as if he
were knowledgeable in the law. (He distances himself from his mates by refer-
ring to them as estos pobretesthese poor wretches.) I take declarar to be
a legal term meaning to give a deposition. The Diccionario de autoridades
states: declarar. Vale tambin en lo forense deponer, testicar, decir debaxo
de juramento el reo, testigo u perito en causa criminal o pleito civil (In the
forensic realm to depose, testify, to speak under oath a defendant, witness or
expert in a criminal or civil case). In Sebastin de Covarrubiass Tesoro de la
lengua castellana o espaola (1611), we discover that in the seventeenth cen-
tury it also meant to clarify as well, which is the general meaning of the
word here: declarar. Manifestar lo que de suyo estaba oculto, obscuro y
no entendido (To make manifest what was hidden, obscure and not under-
stood). The word retains both meanings today, but it favors the legal. In the
rst edition of the Quijote there is no devil who can gure out the genealogy,
but in later ones it was changed to sumista, an accountantSmolletts
casuist is good enough. This tilts the prisoners case in the direction of a
potential dispute about inheritance rights covered, of course, by testamen-
tary laws.
Parentela, even today meaning ones extended family, is dened precisely
by Covarrubias as los parientes de un linaje (relatives belonging to a lineage
or genealogy), which also has a legalistic ring. This genealogy is so entangled
that no one could unravel itbrothers who are each others cousins, nephews
who are also sons, and nieces who are also daughters. What the prisoner
suggests is that no one, not even himself with his superior language and legal
skills, could draw up the required document establishing legitimacy and set-
ting out a legacy, an estate: who would inherit what from whom in a legally
binding and clear fashion. (He has said that he has no money, so the whole
thing is a sham, of course.) The genealogical confusion would be the prisoners
worst crime, which he expresses with a legal term, as the inability to properly
declarar, to depose, to translate into legal discourse his actions and their
consequences. (At another, more literary, level, what he means is that his case
is unrepresentable, which is certainly true.) But allusion to the entangled prog-
eny may also be a subtle form of defense, for on the grounds of inheritance and
10 Prisoner of Sex

estates, his misdeeds would constitute a civil, not a criminal, case. The dis-
tinction was not explicit in Spanish law at the time, but it was implicit and
effective. We can detect in the text and subtext of his speech hints of the
prisoners legal training.
There is also historical evidence that suggests that estudiante means here
law student. This young man was a good Latinist and a good rhetoriciana
good talker, which inclines him to the law. But also the majority of students at
the time studied law, whatever else they wound up doing later. Law students
were known for their raucousness individually and in groups. Some appear
in Cervantes other works. So I am further inclined to believe that the prisoner
is a law student because of his rakish behavior. Notice his insolence and the
levity with which he refers to his actions, and mostly that he is the one who
attacks Don Quijote when the knight is felled by the stones his mates are
throwing at him: and no sooner had he fallen, than the student set upon him,
and snatching the basin from his head, made a most furious application of it to
the knights back, and then dashed it upon the ground with such force, that it
went into a thousand pieces (p. 161) [y apenas hubo cado [Don Quijote],
cuando fue sobre l el estudiante y le quit la baca de la cabeza, y diole con
ella tres o cuatro golpes en las espaldas y otros tantos en la tierra, con que la
hizo pedazos (p. 247)]. This is the last appearance of the lascivious lawyer-to-
be in the Quijote, as he loses himself in the wilderness, or the bowels of the
earth, eeing from the Holy Brotherhood.
Part of my evidence about the student would have to also come from the
next word I want to discuss, burlar, for law students were given to burlas,
or pranks, as already seen. They were notorious pranksters. But because of
Tirso de Molinas play, burlar is the most signicant word of the four I
am discussing. Burlar can only bring to mind El burlador de Sevilla, or The
Trickster of Seville. Our prisoner of sex is certainly a burlador. To fool
around is a good translation into contemporary English of what the prisoner
says and particularly the tone of what he says, which I have already shown is a
form of defenseSmolletts to jest is dated. In the recent Instituto Cervantes
edition of the Quijote that I am using here, coordinated by Francisco Rico, a
note on page 241 explains that in the slang of thugs, called germana, the verb
burlar meant to have sexual commerce with someone. This may very well be,
but the word, even in that specialized context, must have retained some of its
ordinary meaning (to trick), otherwise I doubt that Tirso would have used it in
his title. (Can you imagine Friar Tirso calling his play The F of Seville?)
Burlar a lguien means to fool or deceive somebody, which is the way the word
is used in Tirso de Molina, where it means to seduce someone by using trick-
ery, which is what Don Juan doespassing himself off for other men, falsely
 Prisoner of Sex 11

promising matrimony, and so on. It is a form of estupro, or rape, and was

condemned by Spanish law with varying degrees of severity. But notice that
the prisoner has avoided the transitive form of the verb; he has not burlar a,
tricked someone, but burlar con, fooled around with someone. He has turned
his actions into consensual sex with two sisters who were rst cousins of his,
and two others who were not, implying their complicity in the mnage trois,
or in this case mnage cinq. If we subject the ction to common sense and
experience, we will conclude that it would have been difcult to keep the
affairs secret from the various womenif they objected to sharing him, of
course. The prisoner seems to be saying that they were enjoying a couple of
happy triangles until the childrens intricate lineage got in the way. (This sets
him apart from Don Juan, who favored the one-night stand and did not father
any children.)
But, again, one should not miss the subtlety of this lawyer-to-be in charac-
terizing his crime. It is not that he fooled around with rst cousins of his, but
that he did so extravagantly. Notice the adverb he uses to qualify his actions:
demasiadamente, from the Latin de magis, de ms, too much, in ex-
cess. Except that the normal form then and now in Spanish is demasiado,
though the Diccionario de la Real Academia de la Lengua does carry an entry
for demasiadamente, an unusual way of adding emphasis to the adverb. It is
the equivalent of saying onliest in English. So it is not the misdeed in itself
but its reckless, prolonged, and excessive repetition that created the trouble
for the prisoner. Had he fooled around less, or a little more discreetly with his
cousins and the other girls, he would have found no trouble, he insinuates.
There is no mention, of course, of incest, because as a simple case of fornica-
tion the law was in the prisoners favor. Having sex with these four women
was not a grave offense at the time, supposing as we are allowed that they were
single, as was the prisoner, and willing. This is what was called in the legal
terminology of the period (here developed by the Inquisition, and one can hear
its Scholastic ring), simple fornication, or fornicatio simplex, in contrast
to fornicacin calicada. Simple fornication meant sex between two un-
married people of opposite sexes; the gravity of fornicacin calicada in-
creased if one or both partners were married, minors, or both of the same sex.
So the prisoner claims to have engaged in consensual simple fornication with
four women, from which there issued offspring whose family ties were difcult
to establish legally. The only intimation that incest could be an aggravating
factor is implied by the childrens consanguinity, but like everything else he
deals with it dismissively.
So we have a law student who has impregnated two rst-cousins of his as
well as two other sisters and has produced a complicated progeny. He accepts
12 Prisoner of Sex

his punishment as tting his crime, and declares that he is young (mozo soy)
and will have a life after the galleys, in a statement that recalls Don Juans
refrain, whenever he is warned about the consequences of his actions: Cun
largo me lo is (Thats very long-term credit you are giving me). But while
Don Juan is referring to death and eternal damnation, the prisoner is talking
about life on earth and punishment by penal institutions. He is optimistic
about the future, or at least boasts of fearlessness, a common trait among
imprisoned criminals then (and perhaps today). There is a levity to his tone, an
unconcerned posturing, that, again, may be part of a defense or a way of
deecting attention from the more serious aspect of his crime, which would, of
course, be incest. Behind the veil of laughter and merriment, as is his wont,
Cervantes has slipped in the more serious and damning trait of the character
and his actions.
The reader should not be fooled, along with Don Quijote, by this eloquent
and charming con man: the prisoner has been found guilty and convicted of
estupro, or rape, and incest, even if we believe his story about consensual
sex. The seduction of women by force or more subtle means, particularly
virgins, widows, and nuns, had been severely punished by Spanish law since
the thirteenth-century Siete partidas. The same body of law (still current in the
sixteenth century as a supplemental source of authority) denes incest thus: It
is the sin that in Latin is called incestus, which means a sin a man commits
by lying knowingly with his relative, or with his wifes relative, or the rela-
tive of another woman with whom he has lain, or lying with a relative four
times removed; or someone who lies with his stepmother, or his mother or
daughter, or with his sister-in-law or daughter-in-law; or someone who lies
with a woman belonging to a religious order, or with his goddaughter or her
mother. I think that the law is clear, particularly taking into account that
cuarto grado, or four times removed, is established as part of the consanguin-
ity punishable as incest. Technically, incest meant having sex with a relative
with whom it would be illegal to marry, which extended to cousins, though
dispensations could be obtained from the churchboth prohibitions and ex-
ceptions were laid out in canon law. In spite of his fancy rhetorical ourishes,
there is no question that (as he admits) the prisoner is guilty and his punish-
ment ts the crime. And his most serious crime is incest, not just fathering a
confusing endogamous clanthough that is, to be sure, what the prohibition
seeks to avoid. Incest is among the crimes that were still also considered sins
in the Spanish penal codes then, in spite of their gradual separation from
theologyit is called a sin in the text from the Siete partidas just quoted.
Cervantes, as usual, does not dwell on this theological aspect, but the sugges-
 Prisoner of Sex 13

tion is clear. Besides, if we continue to extrapolate and ponder the fate of the
prisoners children and their mothers, we can see the gravity of his crimes.
The prisoner, we have been able to observe, lives up to the guards descrip-
tion; he performs with gallarda, with brio, and proves to be a great hablador,
or orator. He is self-assured, addressing Don Quijote with impudence, though
their class differences are clear to him (he calls the knight Seor caballero,
Sir knight). Given his record as a seducer of many women he must also be
handsome and attractive. He is unrepentant, light-hearted, and has condence
in his future. There is something of the narcissist in him, to judge by his
behaviorhe is wearing his student gown to aunt his superiority over his
mates and even the guards. He is a braggart. I think that his narcissism is a clue
to the darker side of the prisoner and what he means in the economy of love
and the law in the novel. It is here that incest reveals unforeseen dimensions.
There is in incest a narcissist element in that it involves desire for another who
is part of oneself; the desiring I seeks to perpetuate itself with a minimum of
difference. The other narcissistic element is the desire to create images of
oneself, as would be the results of incestuous love, the children. There is also in
incest a hint of perverse self-knowledge, if we mean knowledge in a broad
biblical sense. It is a going back up the family tree to nd and merge with ones
originssort of like making love to oneself. There are truly twisted elements
to the prisoners aberrations; in his cousins he may have seen images of his own
mother and desired them, if we continue to speculate. Taken to its ultimate
consequences there is no extended story here because narcissism is a collapse
of the self onto itself, which is what the classical myth suggests by having
Narcissus drown in his own image. It is a narrative circumvolution that leads
to silence, to self-cancellation, a form of representation that winds up as an
impossibility.
The prisoner takes to the extreme the relationship between love and the law
by violating the fundamental taboo at the foundation of social life, the incest
prohibition, which leads to the exchange of sexual partners and to the mixing
of people from different clans or groups. Without it, reproduction within a
social order would disintegrate, and the human would regress into the chaos
of nature. Civilization would cease to be without that initial No, that rst law.
This is Oedipuss tragedy. In the passage that I have been analyzing chaos is
represented by that tangled genealogy beyond the control of the law that
cannot be reduced to legal writing to enter into the social and political econ-
omy of the state. Having been trained to make the law intelligible, readable,
the prisoner has made a mockery of it by acting in a way that resists writing
and reading. That he is shackled when we rst meet him shows that societys
14 Prisoner of Sex

guardians are aware of the dangers he poses. They carry with them the docu-
ments in which the prisoners story has been recorded, where he has been
enmeshed in the net of legal writing: the sentence where his crime and punish-
ment are laid out. Says the guard: Though we have got along with us, the
register and certicate of the sentence of each of those malefactors, we have
no time at present to take it out and give you the reading of it (pp. 15354)
[Aunque llevamos aqu el registro y la fe de las sentencias de cada uno
destos malaventurados, no es tiempo ste de detenerles a sacarlas ni a leellas
(pp. 23637)]. This is a story we never get to read but to which the prisoner
has given his seal of approval, to then proceed to give his own version, his own
reading. It is, in fact, an unreadable story because in its horror it exceeds the
limits of the representable, and like narcissism, it is a narrative that folds onto
itself, so it remains tucked in the guards bag and what we get is the prisoners
self-serving account of it. The transition from stark legal document to literary
text is represented by the process taking place in the spatial and temporal gap
of rewriting by which the original is recast and left behind in the archivein
this miniaturized version the distance between the guards bag and the pris-
oners speech.
But for all his braggadocio the prisoner is unable to understand the pro-
found appropriateness of his punishment, which is meted out in a realm that
transcends the law itself as written and practiced. He is sent out to sea, away
from all women, to a world of men. An outcast from heterosexual society, the
prisoner will be unable to engender any more images of himself. In order to
vent his desires, he would have to take the next step in his own narcissistic
fantasies and give in to homosexuality, another fornicacin calicada that
was the most severely punished by Spanish law. This is the harshest aspect of
his punishment, the one with the deepest correlation to his crime: to be exiled
to a male world, without sexual variety. This is, again, the unrepresentable, the
unreadable story that remains hidden not just in the guards bag but even in
the very text of the prisoners sentence. It is an ominous future, a possible
ending to his story that looms before him as the most perverted kind of trans-
formation. But he is freed by Don Quijote, for whom love could never be
bound by the laws of the state, and he escapes we know not where. He escapes
from the book, too, for unlike other characters like Andrs and Gins, he
never reappears. His disappearance is also signicant.
In the prisoner of sex Cervantes has anticipated a gure that would not
emerge fully mature until a century later: the libertine. He is totally amoral,
bent on satisfying his desires and contemptuous of law or custom. His non-
chalant demeanor shows he is unconcerned with the consequences of his ac-
tions: he practices a freedom unrestrained. Even when convicted and punished
 Prisoner of Sex 15

he approves of his fate and even pretends to turn it into something compliant
with his own wisheshe is willing to serve a sentence that he decrees is
commensurate with his crime. What is most signicant here is that he admits
no constraints, not even of time; he boasts that he will have plenty of time to
enjoy his life after the galleys. Because he does not fear time, the prisoner is not
bound by the rules of succession or the teleology of nality. His life and
desires, which are one, have no termthey will proliferate limitlessly like his
progeny. This is the reason we never hear from him again. In the wilderness he
will be lost in the shapelessness, the unreadability of his libertinism, of his
unrestricted freedomsubject to no code. There can be no recurrence because
there can be no sense to the ending of his story. Just as there is no free love,
lawlessness cannot be envisioned, cast into language.
With few exceptions, love stories in the Quijote have closure. After twists
and turns the peripeteia, the adventures, lead to some sort of nale. In the
intertwined stories of Part I, the conclusion is the traditional comic one in
which the characters exchange marriage vows. In the Curioso impertinente
(The Novel of Impertinent Curiosity) the story has a tragic ending. Love and
the law provide a cycle, a pattern, a shape. Not so in the case of the prisoner,
whose story, being one of absolute lack of restraint, can have no closure, no
ending. His story melts down into formlessness because in it no law is recog-
nized, much less obeyed. The prescribed ending provided by the sentence, the
six-year term in the galleys to which he says he was condemned, has been
abolished by Don Quijotes actions. The prisoner is not going to the galleys,
from which he may or may not return alive, but his fate would in either case be
recorded, made a part of the archive. Instead he just ees and fades, leaving the
reader with the memory of his sarcasm, his boastful unconcern, his mockery of
the law.
The most important love story without closure in the novel is Don Quijotes.
The knight is no libertine (in fact, there is no evidence that he ever had sexual
relations, but none to categorically deny it either), but his pursuit of the ideal
lady can have no satisfactory ending because it takes place in his imagina-
tion. Dulcinea multipliesAldonza Lorenzo, the peasant girl enchanted by
Sancho, the page dressed as her in the Pageant in the Forestyet remains the
same. This is not unlike the prisoners proliferating women, anonymous in
their own serial generality. Dulcinea, like them, is Woman, all women, the
object of a diffuse desire beyond the physical, hence beyond the law. Don
Quijotes love, like the prisoners, has no temporal limit, except for that of his
madness and his death. This is, I believe, the deep reason why Don Quijote
releases the prisoner. He has found a kindred spirit. Like him he is a slave of
desire. The prisoner is his correlative other, his inverted image. Perhaps this is
16 Prisoner of Sex

why the prisoner beats up the knight, reverting to a primal violence against his
kin not unlike the one he perpetrated against his girl cousins. Don Quijote
envisions, like Cervantes, a world of freedom, but unlike his creator, he is not
aware of its dangers, and he does not have to write a story that an idle or busy
reader (like me) could understand.
The criminalization of loves transactions provided Cervantes with new
inections to old storiesand even some new stories. Hoarding, authoritar-
ian, all-encompassing, the archive became an alternative, competing compen-
dium of narratives, a canon enmeshed by writing within the new body politic.
Some of the new stories manage to even escape the archive to form a constella-
tion of impossible tales that Cervantes could not yet tell. They are also exem-
plary stories, but because of their virtual, liminal nature, they pointed to a
literature that was yet to come.
 2

Spanish Law and the Origins of the Novel

A measure of the uniqueness of Spanish law, of its kinship to literature,

and eventually its role in the emergence of the novel, is how the epic hero,
Rodrigo Daz de Vivar, El Cid Campeador, reacts to an outrage perpetrated
against his daughters, Doa Elvira and Doa Sol. This is the episode known as
The Affront at Corpes in the twelfth-century Poema de mo Cid, considered
in conventional literary history as the Spanish national epic. In the Corpes oak
grove, the Cids daughters are ogged and stomped upon by their husbands
(wearing boots with spurs), the infamous infantes de Carrin, Don Diego and
Don Fernando. Instead of swiftly and harshly punishing the offenders, the Cid
appeals to King Alfonso VI, who has them brought to court at Toledo. Don
Diego and Don Fernando are tried and sentenced to do battle against the Cids
lieutenants, who dutifully dispose of them. Doa Elvira and Doa Sol are
remarried, to the infantes of Navarra and Aragon respectively, a form of
restitution to their father for his injured honor.
It is remarkable that the victor of so many battles against Moors and Chris-
tians, wielding his feared sword Tizona, did not simply behead the cowardly
infantes. It may be argued that with his restraint the Cid was demonstrating
the depth of his loyalty to the king by abiding by his laws, even after being the
victim of such an extreme offence. His relationship to Alfonso VI, who had
sent him into exile, is central to the plot of the Poema. But the whole episode

17
18 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel

also reveals to what extent Castilian, and peninsular law in general, was per-
vasive, fragmented, and also at the very core of the incipient literary tradition.
Castilians, as Ramn Menndez Pidal argued in his elegant La epopeya cas-
tellana a travs de la literatura espaola, were, of all the Germanic peoples in
the peninsula, the only ones who inherited the Visigoths heroic poetry. But at
the same time, and in apparent contradiction, Castilians were at odds with the
Visigothic codes, which, because they were thoroughly inuenced by Roman
law, forbade ingrained Germanic customs, such as the right to private revenge,
which was precisely at the foundation of their epic poetry. Castilians retained
both poetry and customs, and their incompatibility with the law accounts for
the Cids astonishing behavior. King Alfonso VI was originally the ruler of
Len (he was now also of Castile), a region where legislation was profoundly
Romanized and less likely to allow for the personal settling of scoresthe
riepto, or challenge to a duel to settle a dispute. (Riepto actually meant to
recount the offense, which was done publicly in court, followed by the chal-
lenge.) The Cid, therefore, made a grand gesture by not taking the law into his
own hands, as everyone would have assumed he would, including probably
the listeners or readers of the Poema de mo Cid. The issue, at bottom, is how
both the hero and the poem respond to the lawwhat the outcome of the
conict will be. In both cases it is contrary to expectations.
The poems overall plot concerning the Cids exile (a particularly Roman
punishment), penance, and return to the good graces of the king, pivots on a
judicial contest, within which the episode just recounted falls. The Affront at
Corpes is the only incident in the Poema with an erotic tinge, for Rodrigo is
the faithful husband of Jimena, herself a bastion of wifely virtues. The das-
tardly infantess spousal abuse is obviously driven by a psychosexual perver-
sion stemming from their own deciencies and resentment against their father-
in-law. The beating also followed the consummation of their marriages in their
tents at the oak grove, a suggestive coincidence clearly linking love to violence
and crime. Be that as it may, the resolution of the Poemas plot is brought
about by a juridical context, a discord between legal codes from different
regions and between a vassals rights and the laws of the kingdom. The poems
climax is a trial scene such as those that will continue to appear in Western
literature until the present and such as that Cervantes will use in his theater
and in Part II of the Quijote when Sancho is ruler and judge in the Insula
Barataria. The infantess sexual crime was committed in despoblado, the wil-
derness, a siteas already seensingled out by Spanish law as an aggravating
circumstance because it is outside the reach of the law and of potential help.
Love and the law intermingle in this, the kernel of Spanish narrative, which
will develop through the Libro de buen amor, La Celestina, and the picaresque
 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel 19

to Cervantes. The relation of the individual to the state through its written
laws is central in that development, which produces the modern novel. But the
association of law and literature has a longer history.

In what John A. Alford and Dennis P. Seniff have called the seminal study of
the relationship between literature and law, Jacob Grimm, the German ro-
mantic, argues for the common origin of both, citing linguistic evidence as
proof. He mentions many examples to underscore the poetic character of
primitive legislation: its use of tropes, rhyme, and alliteration, for instance. As
in the Poema de mo Cid, law and poetry commingle. In fact, at the time of the
Poemas writing, Colin Smith avers, Lawyers wrote, by habit, a special for-
mulaic language in documents of every kind, in Latin which was often rhyth-
mical, alliterative, and rich in binary and balanced phrases. The order law
seeks to implement is akin to that of the literary text, which is its representa-
tion in language, Grimm maintains. In many societies law, religion, and poetry
are one in their founding texts, which often wind up as their holy books. This
bond appears inevitable because the law is the most basic system regulating
human transactions, the code that founds the social. Hence it could be taken
as the origin of all social codes, including or even beginning with the linguistic,
and reaching all the way up to the religious and the aesthetic, as Grimm argued
and I am willing to believe. Is there, in the pith of human thought, a grammar
of both language and the law, a law of language, as it were, that regulates all
others? It is a daunting proposition that has found many adherents. There is
no question that grammar is at the foundation of the law and grammar con-
stitutes the rst tool to interpret the law. But being a romantic like Grimm, I
favor more the poetic than the grammatical spark at the origin. Mere grammar
cannot antecede or contain the creative will.
In the Judeo-Christian West, perhaps everywhere, the law emerges with
Gods no, His injunction in Genesis not to eat from the tree of knowledge. In
the Greek world (that other origin) the founding prohibition seems to be that
of incestOedipus. This is not clearly the case in the Garden, for Adam and
Eve were kin in the most material sense possible. In any case, the law origi-
nates in a prohibition and a need for order: something that stops the ux, the
chaos, the meaningless noise of untrammeled desire. The founding no is
coeval in its emergence with desire, with love, with the yes that it opposes
Mollys yes at the end of Joyces Ulysses. Desire is movement to which the
law gives direction and form. This is why love stories are fraught with poten-
tial or actual violence, as in the Affront at Corpes. Poetic language is lodged
in that dyad of the yes and the no, of desire and the law; rhyme, alliteration,
20 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel

tropes are the incantatory expression of this dance of contraries, based as they
are also on rules that constitute them, and with them allow for meaning. Guilt
and a yearning for exculpation are deeply embedded elements of this original
drama, expressed in the doctrine of original sinthere can be no desire with-
out prohibition and therefore no action without transgression. All other viola-
tions are repetitions of this original one, ritualized in religion and literature.
Psychoanalysis, of course, is the modern, fallen version of all this because it
has left behind the poetry at its source.
The recurrent convergence of law and literature through history results
from these shared originsor, better, from this original oneness. Could a
nostalgia for that unity motivate such convergences? It is a oneness in differ-
ence, or a difference that makes oneness. This is so because the pair must not
be seen as a binary opposition equating the law with the rational and love with
the irrational. The source of the law, of the nofear, the will to power, hos-
tility, guiltmay be as irrational as love itself. To that no one can always
answer why not? which is what literature often dares to ask, as with the
prisoner of sex. The idea that the law emanates from God covers with a veil of
goodness and sense the irrational drive behind interdiction.
I am interested here in the recurrence of this dialectic that takes place in
Spain during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and in de-
velopments leading up to it. The formal history of the law and literature
association that culminates in Cervantes and whose beginning I have just
sketched in the Poema de mo Cid, really begins in Bologna, with the birth of
modern legal study and a revival of the Roman law tradition. The renewal in
Bologna, which culminates a process begun in Pavia, according to Radding,
occurs in the thirteenth century when the work of Aristotle is being rediscov-
ered and the rst universities founded. In Bologna, as in Paris, Oxford, and
Salamanca, the study of law was part of a broad humanistic curriculum within
which literary texts and the teaching of what we consider today independent
literary practices was common. This humanistic bent in the study of law con-
tinued until the present in Europe, including Spain and its overseas possessions
that became Latin America. These are the areas where Roman law is the
foundation of the judicial system. In England (and consequently in the United
States) a rift between law and literature occurred in the sixteenth century and
continues today. But everywhere the afnity between the study of law and
literature is based on the need to use words in strict, precise, and self-conscious
fashion, and in the common medium of expression: language ruled by gram-
mar and rhetoric. It has to do also with the careful reading of texts for mean-
ing, coherence of argument, and ultimately the conveyance of the truth in a
persuasive and even beautiful fashion. As John A. Alford writes, in an infor-
 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel 21

mative essay on Literature and Law in Medieval England: In earlier times a

legal education was less technical, more humanistic, as much a preparation for
the world of practical affairs as for the bar itselfin sum, as compatible with a
literary avocation as any other training might have been. For most of its early
history, of course, the study of law was closely connected with that of rhetoric.
Writers and lawyers both live by words, and pleading a case or drafting a
judicial decision requires no less art than writing a narrative poem. Stendhal
once remarked that the only perfect example of prose known to him was the
Code Napolon. (Stendhal also said that he read the code every night to
sharpen his prose).
Alford goes on to mention numerous English writers from the medieval
period and beyond who were trained in the law and to show how legal terms
and court scenes appear in major works such as The Owl and the Nightingale,
Chteau dAmour, and Piers Plowman. The relevance of the law in Shake-
speare is well known, and legal matters occupy prominent roles in such plays
as The Merchant of Venice and King Lear. The same can be said for Spanish
literature, particularly the Poema de mo Cid, the Libro de buen amor, and La
Celestina, which closes the medieval period in 1499. Colin Smith has force-
fully argued that Per Abat, author of the best-known version of the Poema de
mo Cid, was trained in the law, and it is known that Fernando de Rojas, the
likely author of La Celestina, was a lawyer.
It is not just because of merely linguistic and poetic afnities that law and
literature shared the humanistic curriculum of medieval universities. Both,
after all, are deeply concerned with justice, under whose aegis fall the major
issues of human life, such as fate and freedom, good and evil, right and wrong,
truth and falsehood, and below these more mundane matters like restitution,
revenge, forgiveness, birth rights, marriage, innocence and guilt, legitimacy
and legacies, public and private debts, loyalty and treason. In both law and
literature all of these questions emerge initially as stories cast in gurative lan-
guage, whose coherence has to be restored and gauged to evaluate their truth-
fulness: who did what to whom, where, when, under what circumstances, and
deserving what punishment or reward. Beginning with Bologna the stories had
to be written up following the rules of the notarial arts then developedthe
art of crafting legal documents. The vehicles of these stories can be con-
fessions, depositions or briefs, but also narrative poems, dialogues, plays, and
later novels of varying lengths. Their trappings may vary but the core of the
stories does not change from law to literature and vice versa. Their rhetoric
and tropes are often quite similar. This is the reason Grimm reaches back to
linguistic commonalities to plead for the original oneness of law and litera-
ture, more specically of law and poetry. But the prose stories as such have
22 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel

common plots that are, if not independent of language, a kind of narrative

grammar in its own right, with sequences involving crime and punishment,
climaxes and resolutions in court-like scenes, and with characters of various
typesperpetrators and victims, judges and advocates, policemen and execu-
tioners. The law captures in its nets the most interesting of characters because
they deviate from it: scoundrels are more appealing than law-abiding citizens,
as we know. They are compelling to literature for the same reason. Only the
picaresque, which emerges in the sixteenth century, because of its relation to
the law, is as capacious as the law itself to incorporate these gures and the
ambiance of delinquency in which they live.

For my purposes, the relevant history of Spanish law begins at the time of the
Poema de mo Cid, which is roughly the same as that of the monumental Siete
partidas, drafted by Alfonso X of Castile, known as the Wise, around the
middle of the thirteenth century. (El Cid died in 1099 and the Poema as we
have it is from around 1140; the Siete partidas were drawn up from 1256 to
1276.) The beginning of this history can be traced back to the signicant fact
that the Visigoths, who occupied Spain after the breakup of the Roman Em-
pire, were the most Romanized among the Germanic peoples who swept over
Europe. One of the consequences of this, as Angel del Ro proposed in his
beautiful and still valuable Historia de la literatura espaola, was the preserva-
tion in Spain of one of the greatest creations of Roman culture: its laws. Del
Ro writes: The Lex romana visigothorum, whose inuence extends even-
tually to the Fuero juzgo, is the most important compilation of Roman law in
the West after the empires fall, leaving out Byzantium. (By Byzantium he
means, of course, Justinian and his code.) The Fuero juzgo was the most
widely inuential set of laws among the various regions into which the Visi-
goths settled and formed independent kingdoms. Fuero juzgo is the name
usually given to the Visigoths Liber iudiciorum, thus called because some of
its redactions, named Lex visigothorum vulgata, were given the title Forum
judicum, from which Fuero juzgo. But only the Romance versionsCastilian,
Galician, Leoneseshould properly be called Fuero juzgo. The word fuero
derives from the Latin forum, marketplace or place where justice is admin-
istered. But in Castile, the word foro, derived from forum and meaning
the same thing, soon turned to fuero following normal evolutionary pat-
terns from Latin to Castilian, and came to mean, from the ninth and tenth
centuries on, right, freedom from, exemption, or immunity, as ap-
plied to the particular laws of a region, town, or village. Colin Smith felici-
tously translates fuero as local charters.A feature of those kingdoms, as
 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel 23

seen in my brief discussion about the Poema de mo Cid, was precisely their
independence and fractiousness, a feature that was exacerbated by the Arab
invasion of 711, which pushed them back to the northern areas of the Penin-
sula. The following eight centuries of warfare and coexistence, of reconquista
and convivencia, did nothing if not help to solidify the autonomy of some of
those kingdoms (a drive that survives today) and their clinging to their own
version of Romanized Visigothic law. Each region, each village almost, cher-
ished its fueros, refusing to recognize centralized rule. This is the tension
reected in the struggle between the Cid and the king. The clash between
centralized and local authority, which already existed in Roman law, remains a
constant in the history of Spanish jurisprudence and is at the center of the story
I am sketching. It is conspicuous in the episode of the galley slaves.
Each of those codes, in spite of their differences, was derived from Roman
law and was anchored in the overarching doctrine of natural law. This was the
theory that there were immutable laws that were derived from the reason with
which God endowed humans and that were embodied in the person of the
king. These laws were indisputable principles, understandable to all, and
against which there was no recourse. Anything that went against them was by
denition unlawful. Natural law was the foundation of the Siete partidas
and all subsequent Spanish legislation. The Siete partidas, by the way, were
more like a legal encyclopedia than an actual code, and were used mainly as a
supplement to existing laws, endowed with a traditional philosophical or
doctrinal authority until the eighteenth century. However, their imposition as
ruling general law was resisted by the kingdoms brandishing their fueros. The
Siete partidas is a treasure trove of information about medieval Spain, and a
great literary work in its own right, as its supple, archaic Spanish names the
real in all its minute manifestations. The Siete partidas is the rst instance of
and monument to the emergence of a literary vernacular reecting and ex-
pressing a current reality, as opposed to the epic, which dealt with a heroic past
in verse and in an elevated style. In this sense the Siete partidass conjunction of
the law and the representation of life in a vernacular language is a signicant
antecedent of the novel.
The inuence and very existence of the Siete partidas point out the signi-
cant association of the law with writing and the production of books contain-
ing legislation. If the common origin of law and poetic language is irretriev-
ably lost in the mysteries of orality, there is no question about the alliance
of literacy, and later printing, with the law. Rules beget or are begotten in
writingwriting is the handmaiden or warden of order and control. Nowhere
is this better expressed than in the Libro de buen amor, written less than a
hundred years after the Siete partidas by the ribald Archpriest of Hita, ever
24 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel

aware of the consequences of transgression and its delights. (The book was
composed between 1330 and 1347.) The Archpriest writes:

In his kingdom, the king has the power, its a certainty,

To grant exemptions, make laws and give rights:
He has books and primers drawn up with all this,
So that he who commits the crime knows his penalty.

[Cyerto es que el rrey en su regno h poder

De dar fueros leyes derechos fazer:
Desto manda fazer libros, quadernos componer,
Para quien faze el yerro qu pena deve aver.]

Books, primers, written laws proliferate in the various kingdoms as the recon-
quest advances and the yearning for the unication of the Peninsula under
Christian rule intensied in some quarters. This, as we all know, will be accom-
plished by the consolidation of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon brought
about by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469. Our story proper
really begins with that communion of love and the law in the Catholic kings
matrimonial chamber. (Tanto monta, monta tanto, Isabel como Fernando,
is this couples rhyming mottoOne is tantamount to the other or Each
can mount the other).
The unication of the crowns of Castile and Aragon was the beginning of
the organization of a modern state in Spain because both of these kingdoms,
particularly Castile, had already developed some of their important features.
The six main elements of the modern state are, according to Jos Antonio
Maravall: (1) the tendency toward drawing natural frontiers, like the Pyrenees
or the sea; (2) the development of an incipient feeling of patriotism, or sense of
community, often fostered in sharp distinction and contrast from others, such
as Castiles from the Arabs; (3) an effort to constitute closed political units
such as the unied kingdoms under Ferdinand and Isabella; (4) a move toward
mathematical calculation in economic matters; (5) the organization of a state
bureaucracy whose ranks were lled by competence and efciency rather than
lineage; (6) an overall conception of the state as a work of art, not in the
aesthetic sense but in that of craft. Maravall gives the feeling of community
as the main drive in the case of Spain, citing the Catholic kings practice of
naming people from their own region to the most inuential positions in their
localities, and particularly their effort to make the church a national church
rather than one dependent on the Vatican, which they viewed as just another
foreign power. An example of this was the patronato real, extracted by
Ferdinand and Isabella from the pope, by which the Spanish crown was em-
powered to make ecclesiastical appointments in its American empire. In short,
 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel 25

a modern state is one in which the various institutions are centralized but
function according to their own inner systems, which are presumably based on
reason, efciency, and the pursuit of coherence and synchronization of all
spheres. In Spain and its overseas possessions this meant the creation of a
bureaucracy along the lines of what Max Weber has called a patrimonial
bureaucracy. This is an organization whose workings follow its own rules,
predicated on competency, whose ofcers were chosen on the basis of their
capabilities, not their social status, but in which ultimate authority rested with
the rulerhence patrimonial. All this reached its highest degree of efciency
and magnitude during the reign of Philip II, of course. We have an example of
the systems integration in the episode of the galley slaves. Many punishments,
including death, were commuted to service in the galleys, where the prisoners
supplied the motive force for those vessels that carried out the crowns inter-
national policiesforeign affairs and the judiciary cooperating toward the
common goal of strengthening and defending the state. Such unication in-
creased as Spain took on the role of bastion of the Catholic faith against the
rise of Protestantism.
Two examples of this unication during the early years of the Catholic kings
reign are the creation (or re-creation) of two very signicant institutions of
state control: the Holy Ofce of the Inquisition and the Holy Brotherhood.
Seen from a purely systemic perspective, the Inquisition was a form of thought
police. It sought to check not so much what subjects of the crown did as what
they thought and expressed, verbally and in writing; as historian Carlos Eire
often tells me, the most serious offence was not to commit a sin, but to state in
public that doing it was not a sin. Foucault credits the Inquisition with being
at the origins of modern (that is, posteighteenth century) forms of state
controlStalins Soviet Union, Hitlers Germany, and Castros Cuba are its
progeny. If one thinks of Catholicism as the ideology of the Spanish state,
then the role of the Inquisition reveals itself not as a product of obscurantism
and atavism but rather what it was: an institution charged with checking the
subjects fealty to the crown. The Holy Brotherhood, about which there is
much more in future chapters, was a transregional police force made up of
local vigilantes organized at a national level. It was, though in a larval way,
what a federal police force would be today. Because of the local fueros, or local
and regional exemptions and immunities, it was easy and it appears com-
monplace for criminals to seek sanctuary in towns or districts beyond the juris-
diction of the place where they committed the misdeed and were sought by the
authorities. The Holy Brotherhood, as it was reorganized from older vigilante
groups (such as the Toledo Brotherhood mentioned in the Quijote), respected
no such boundaries, and also policed rural areas (despoblado), which were
26 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel

largely unpatrolled, and in which bands of brigands could rule at will. They
also patrolled the highways, which were under the supervision of the crown.

As can be imagined, the judiciary came in for revamping and unication under
the centralizing efforts of the Catholic kings. The judiciary was the principal
institution in the patrimonial bureaucracy and the one in which reading and
writing played the most prominent roles. Kings make laws and have books
containing them written up, said the good Archpriest of Hita, and Ferdinand
and Isabella were not remiss on this score. On the contrary, they set in motion
a process for making the Spanish legal system homogeneous and coherent.
They and their successors did not even come close to achieving this, to be sure,
but they did organize a judiciary and penal system that were much more
thorough than ever before. So much so that Spain became a litigious society,
and what took place in its judiciary was a legal revolution, as its best stu-
dent, Richard L. Kagan, has exhaustively proposed in his Lawsuits and Liti-
gants in Castile: 15001700.
The Catholic kings method for unifying the laws of the Peninsula was
cumulative, a procedure that continued during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Instead of drafting new codes that would bring about a synthesis of
all previous ones, which would be superseded, they ordered compilations of
previously existing legislation. The new laws would not invalidate the old
laws, but were included alongside them, in what became a huge legislative
tangle that was pervasive by extension rather than by cohesivenessby accre-
tion more than by codication. The rst such compilation and revamping
under Ferdinand and Isabella were the Ordenanzas de Madrigal of 1476,
followed by the Ordenamiento de las Cortes de Toledo, 1480, and the most
important Ordenanzas reales de Castilla, also known as Ordenanzas de Mon-
talvo, issued in 1484. In 1505 there was a collection called Leyes de Toro,
containing eighty laws, many dealing with important matters of property and
inheritance. In the sixteenth century, when Cervantes was already twenty
years old, and during the reign of Philip II, there was the 1567 Nueva recopila-
cin. An idea of the cumulative nature of this legislative process is provided
by the laws issued to rule over the American dominionsthe so-called Leyes
de Indias. By the time of the Recopilacin de 1681, the Spanish crown had
drafted an average of a law per day, not counting Sundays, since the discovery
of the New World in 1492. A growing population of judges, magistrates,
lawyers, law clerks, notaries, scribes, and all manner of legally trained individ-
uals sprang up to draft, interpret, and apply this cumbersome mass of laws.
Many such individuals appear as characters in the picaresque and in Cer-
 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel 27

vantes works. Kagan offers a very revealing graph about the growth of litiga-
tion in the years covering precisely Cervantes life.
It would be a mistake to see this society as possessing the capabilities to
supervise and punish that Foucault has brilliantly described and analyzed
because, as he himself argues, such capability did not develop until the eigh-
teenth century and after, which is the period that he studies. But the Spain of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a harbinger of things to come. In
Cervantes time, as Francisco Toms y Valiente has written, it was a veritable
catastrophe to fall in the net of the lawoften, he says, the only recourse was
to ee, as many, including Don Quijote, Sancho, the galley slaves, and Car-
denio do. The judiciarys paper ow and its ability to gather, transmit, and
store information grew exponentially, leading to the foundation in 1588 of the
rst modern state archive, the Archivo de Simancas, during the reign of Philip
II (although documents had been stored there since the 1540s, during the reign
of Charles V). A beautiful renaissance castle near Valladolid, which had
earlier served as a prison for notable individuals, safeguarded and classied a
veritable deluge of documents. Improvements in printing were instrumental in
this development of state supervision, legitimation, arbitration, and control.
The guards taking the galley slaves to the boats have with them documents
relevant to each case, as we saw. The limited information we have about
Cervantes the man we owe to this judicial bureaucracy, which kept records of
his various scrapes with the lawfrom the accusation of his wounding a man
in a duel early in life to the documents attesting to his imprisonment for
irregularities in his accounts when he was collecting taxes to nance the 1588
Armada. The litigiousness that Kagan speaks about is certainly borne out by
this largely insignicant but not overlooked hidalgo and soldier. The docu-
mentos cervantinos that we so avidly pore over in search of clues of his
exceptional nature mostly attest to his having been a common subject, subject
to the laws of the kingdom.
A most signicant feature of the centralization and systematization of the
judiciary was the development of legal writing in style, range, and volume:
that is, the control, supervision, and direction of drafting legal documents.
This process began in Bologna, as I said, and involves the production and
dissemination of primers of notarial arts, or artis notariae. The grammarian
Antonio de Nebrija (14441522) protests in his 1495 Vocabulario espaol-
latino that he did not go to Italy, as others did, to obtain church subsidies or
para traer frmulas de Derecho civil y cannico (to bring back with me
formulas of civil and cannon law) but to study the classics. The primers
brought to Spain gave instruction and provided examples geared to the educa-
tion of the ofcers who made the evolving legal system function. Lawyers,
28 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel

judges, and others higher up in the bureaucracy would, of course, be guided by

the rhetoric taught at the universities, which was part of the overall humanistic
curriculum. But the ordinary documents in which the rst contact between
reality and writing took place followed the formulas of the artis notariae. It
was this writing that netted the criminal, as it were. Just as reading primers
were sent to the New World to teach the natives how to read and write
Spanish, notaries had to be instructed in the art of drafting documents. Read-
ing and writing were at the core of state formation and control, and language
itself, as Nebrija famously put it in the prologue to his 1492 Gramtica,
addressed to Queen Isabella, is the handmaiden of empire (he has the Ro-
man one in mind, of course).
It is in the context of this proliferation of laws, state control, and the pur-
suit, description, classication, and punishment of criminals that the modern
novel emerges in the picaresque. As I have argued before in Myth and Archive
and other publications, the rhetorical vehicle that the rogue uses to make his
confession is a relacin, a report, brief, or deposition that he addresses to
higher authority, probably a judge in the case of Lazarillo. The criminal cloaks
himself in an aura of legality and legitimacy by following a legal kind of
formulaic, bureaucratic writing. This rhetoric is the tool he uses to protest his
innocence or proclaim that he is the victim of societys corruption. His story is
like those of the criminals described in the Relacin de la crcel de Sevilla,
most of which was written in the 1580s by Cristbal de Chaves, a lawyer, in
which the life of that prison is detailed. Sevilles prison house is of particular
interest to us because, according to Cervantes, it was while doing time there
that he rst had the idea to write the Quijote. The prison is the hospital where
the modern novel is born, and its temper will linger in the genre until the
present. Writing and criminality, printing and prisons are its midwives and wet
nurses. Its mother, to abuse the metaphor, was La Celestina, rst published in
1499, as I said before, at the peak of Ferdinands and Isabellas rule.
In La Celestina, the citypurported to be Salamancais governed from
the whorehouse: Celestina, the madam, controls magistrates and ecclesias-
tics. Insights into the depths of love in La Celestina bring out all of the
hypocrisies of social exchange. Customs and laws are denuded (valga la pala-
bra) of their veil of virtue. But La Celestina, for all its incomparable grandeur,
lacked one element that would be seminal in the origins of the novel: narrative
itself, a narrator author or a narrator representing an author. Its brilliant
dialogue was unique and remains so in literary history. But it strikes us today
as an awkward medium imposed by the orthodox humanism of its author and
timesstill an imitation of classical models. This changes with the emergence
of the ironic mock confession of Lzaro de Tormes, his mimicry of legal rhet-
 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel 29

oric in the deposition telling his lifea clear precursor of the prisoner of sexs
speech. We now have the delinquent recounting his story, persecuted by the
law but at the same time given substance and a voice as an individual by
the law.

The effects of these social and political changes on literature are very sig-
nicant. In narrative ction, plots will no longer be drawn exclusively from the
literary or even the oral tradition but from legal cases or stories like them,
featuring a tawdry underworld atmosphere of criminality. Transgressions
and their punishment or potential punishments are recorded in these stories,
which seem pulled from police records. This kind of writing makes a claim to
truth and authenticity not only from outside of literature but because it is from
outside of literature. The nonliterary is favored because it is not tainted by art
or buttressed by the past. This is a new kind of literature that generates its own
poetics as it develops free from, though not oblivious to, the classical tra-
ditionits repository or source is now the penal archive, the prison house of
legal documents. The relationship of all this legal background with narrative
ction presupposes that the literary imagination draws not just from the mas-
ter stories but also, perhaps principally, from the minor, contingent stories
from the textual net that the law as creation of the social mind throws over the
transient and the tangible, to which author, characters, and readers belong.
This is the gist of Cervantes prologue to Part I of the Quijote. The friend he
makes up as his interlocutor tells him to fabricate his sources, to draft a bogus
index of illustrious predecessors to lend legitimacy to his work. In other words,
that he should dispense with tradition and authorities or deal with them with-
out reverence. Cervantes archive draws its stories from other, less exalted
sources; namely the criminal cases he has heard or read about and his own life.
Why this turn to the legal, other than because of the long reach of the law?
Because it is the enmeshing of the human, of the fallen and fallible, in a
language that is contemporaneous to authors and readers. Both have become
important because of the lawit enfranchises them. The delinquent, the trans-
gressor, represents the individual, the self, the author, given both freedom and
restraint by the law, to which they are tied by the medium of writing.
The pool of plots is augmented and their nature changed, as we saw with the
stories the galley slaves tell about themselves: one is a horse thief, another a
pimp and sorcerer, and still another, the one I have analyzed above, is a sexual
predator. The written record of the law is the most extensive account of hu-
man action and interaction available, and it is present, current, concrete, avail-
able to the human senses in a here and now that includes the author and his
30 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel

characters. It is a primary, even primitive form of recording lifes variety of

deviances, a codication of behavior prior to abstractions and formulas: a
kind of writing that antecedes the code. The code will be drafted to classify the
criminal and apportion punishments. The written record represents the raw
contingency of the real in the most immediate way possible. This is why it is an
invaluable repository for the emerging novel, a treasure trove of the vagaries
of human conduct. Deviantsthe criminal, the insanewill be the novels
most coveted subjects, as they are for the law. The contingency and specicity
of the crimes and criminal types in the emerging novel are drawn from legal
writing, wherein they are inscribed, and from the penal institutions in which
they are circumscribed. Literary tradition, precisely because of its aura of
pastness, lacked substance in the details, in the roughness of the present.
Fictional characters will now exhibit distinguishing features, often deformities
due to accidents of nature or to the violence prevalent in their world. Gins de
Pasamonte is cross-eyed, Juan Palomeque, the innkeeper in the Quijote, is left-
handed (he is known as El Zurdo), Maritornes is ugly in every detail, Sancho
has a belly, Altisidora has bad breath, Monipodio limps, Aldonza smells, and
in Part II the duchess has open sores on her thighs. Some of these are the kind
of features low-life types would have, not a mark like Ulysses scar that Auer-
bach makes so much of in a beautiful chapter of his classic Mimesis. As
opposed to that heros hidden scar, the physical defects in the new ction
tend to be obvious and dening. They give the characters a distinctiveness
that identies them and often leads to their nicknames, like Palomeque and
MonipodioLefty and One Foot. Notice that Gins de Pasamonte is angered
when the guard brings up his nickname (Parapilla). Quintiliano Saldaa writes
that most criminals in Cervantes time had nicknames that appeared in the
legal records to identify themJuan Prez El Tuerto, Damiana Sosa La
Caballona Machona, Antonio El Borgon, and so on.
Legal writing specied, detailed, and individualized the deviants, provided a
record of their contingent and accidental physical features and nicknamesit
was a way of identifying that would allow apprehension, as when the ofcer of
the Holy Brotherhood laboriously reads the description of Don Quijote con-
tained in the warrant for his arrest, stopping after every word to look up and
see if it matches a trait of the knights face (I, 45). The guards accompanying
the galley slaves have details of each of their crimes and of their proclivities
and personalities. One expounds on Ginss and his record at some length.
Underworld, criminal types become protagonists in the new literary stories:
pimps, prostitutes, cardsharps, a whole panoply of jailbirds. Toms y Valiente
insists on the casuistry of Spanish law and I believe that this is crucial in the
origins and development of the novelcasos in picaresque novels, concrete
 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel 31

cases, not general narrative patterns, make up the plots, and Don Quijotes
own story is referred to in the novel as a caso. It is the case of the hidalgo
who went mad and committed a number of punishable offenses after giving
himself a name not unlike those that the criminals sport.
Casuistry entails a whole program of representation that is more detailed,
technical, and stringent than the one inherited from traditional literary sources
and practices. Originally a branch of moral theology, casuistry involves the
consideration of cases of conscience against laws. Applied to the Spanish legal
system, it meant the proliferation of cases, each of which had to be seen in
relation to the applicable laws. Because of the cumulative evolution of Spanish
law and the existence of all the fueros or local charters, the process was
laborious and difcult. The key element, of course, is the case. A caso,
according to Covarrubias, Vale suceso que aya acontecido; y assi los juristas
llaman caso la ocasin o proposicin sobre que se funda la determinacin de la
ley o decreto; y en los pleitos lo primero en que se concuerdan es en el caso o en
el hecho, que es todo una cosa. Which could be translated as An event that
has already taken place. Hence jurists call a case the actions or propositions
upon which the applicability of the law or decree is grounded; and in a legal
dispute the rst thing upon which jurists agree is the case or fact, which are one
and the same thing. A caso is not just what happened but the denition and
agreement by both parties of what actually happened relevant to the law, or
agreement to which specic laws or decrees can by applied. Etymologically,
caso, like the English case, derives from the Latin casus, literally a fall.
A case is an accident, something that has occurred at a given time and at a
given place, an event or set of circumstances. In legal terms, then, a caso or
case is the denition, the naming and in a sense the translating into legal
discourse of this event. In short, the caso is what is representable within legal
discourse: that portion of the real, including actions and their consequences,
that can be circumscribed by the law. It is a distinct entity involving people,
things, and actions that constitute a whole over whose interpretation lawyers
can argue about but on whose existence they agree. It is the real as dened by
the law. For the incipient novel, as well as for stories such as those included in
collections like Il Novellino, the Decameron, and the Conde Lucanor, a case is
a distinct narrative unit involving a concurring set of events, often centering on
the commission of a crime.
Casuistry has had a bad name in English because it became associated with
priests making too ne distinctions to prove that an act in question did not
conict with a given law with which it could be plainly seen to clash. A
discipline or practice that involves considering individual cases of conscience
in relation to the law, casuistry was originally called upon to pass judgment
32 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel

prior to the execution of an act, whose potential unlawfulness it seeks to

establish in advance. In Spanish law casuistry means applying the law to a
specic act or circumstances a posteriori to determine rst its very existence in
legal terms, and later to test its potential criminality. In both senses, casuistry is
founded on a particular, specic action involving individuals in concrete cir-
cumstances. The specicity, uniqueness, and particularity of actions, people,
and circumstances is of the greatest relevance to novelistic discourse, which
will derive from legal cases all of these characteristics to project an aura of the
real and of contemporaneity that the reader can recognize. Colin Smith al-
ready ascribed to the legal tendency in the Poema de mo Cid the poems well-
known realism: Some of the rightly lauded verismo of the Poema may also be
owed not merely to the authors temperament but to his legal training. Law-
yers have to be hard-headed, concerned with detail, with property and its
value, with the social status of clients. I select one aspect of verismo, the
geographical. Both the picaresque and the Quijote favor such geographical
precisionde Tormes, de la Mancha.
A case circumscribes, names, and brings into high relief what is unusual and
therefore worthy of attention in a set of actions and people. Only those people
possessing characteristics that make them unique enter novelistic discourse,
and the denition and display of those traits, which are both physical and psy-
chological, constitute the story. This is the reason why the picaresque emerges
from the repository of legal cases that I have called the archive. A character
such as the prisoner of sex is worthy of being included in the Quijote because
of his unusual attributes, as are Gins de Pasamonte and so many other char-
acters who people Cervantes ctionas the hero reviews each of their cases
he is practicing casuistry. Their inclusion in literature depends on those char-
acteristics that make them stand out, even or because they are at odds with the
lawit is the oddity that turns them into cases and which often, as seen
above, gives them new names tting their traits and habits. The identication
of such individuals was carried out according to the arts of the notary, which
supplied the rhetorical devices, hackneyed as they may be, to name them, list
them, and connect them to constitute a character. This intrusion of the legal
into narrative ction supplants the generally stereotypical features attributed
to literary characters since the classical epic. The notarial arts stand at the
foundation of novelistic discourse.
It is probably because of this casuistry of the Spanish legal system that the
picaresque novel rst developed in Spain. The prose, the prosaicness of the real
world underlies the whole new discourse of the novel because of its association
with the prose of the law. This casuistry makes way for the concreteness of the
new literature, focused on individuals, specic events, objects, and settings,
spurning not just received literary but also philosophical traditions. The new
 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel 33

narrative is inimical to abstractions and refuses to be read allegorically against

a set system of ideas or doctrines. When this happens, as in the Guzmn de
Alfarache, there is an unresolved mixture of narrative and doctrine, unalloyed
discourses incapable of blending successfully. The contingency of the case, the
specicity of this individual and this circumstance is not reducible to a legal
code as it is not reducible to abstract ideaseach is a case.
An ancillary but not unimportant effect of all this is the proliferation of legal
documents and terms in the new ction. Mention is made of contracts, arrest
warrants, licenses of various sorts, and wills. The picaresque will assume the
form of one of those documents, the relacin, as I said before. Another pe-
ripheral but also signicant effect is that ctional proseCervantesis stud-
ded with legal terms. Horacio N. Castro Dassen has actually drawn up a list he
entitles Indice de trminos jurdicos y temas o pensamientos de derecho tra-
tados en El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Index of Judicial
Terms, Themes, or Thoughts Pertaining to the Law in Don Quijote) that
covers over three tightly printed, double-column pages. Ignacio Rodrguez
Guerrero has compiled a two-volume list of criminal types in the Quijote, and
several others have written about the law in Cervantes. A parallel effect is the
appearance of characters related to the legal profession, be they lawyers or
students (as we already saw in the rst chapter) or those charged with the
enforcement of the law: judges, sheriffs, bailiffs, ofcers of the Holy Brother-
hood, and others. In some stories, like The Dialogue of the Dogs, a lawyer
is the reader in the text. He occupies our position as reader because he is
a trained reader, presumably better able to discern the truth of the text in
question.
Among the crimes committed by all these characters, those involving love
play a leading role. Love conicts span the gamut from whorehouse strife to
struggles among aristocrats who are imbued with the rhetoric of the courtly
love tradition. Lazarillo de Tormes, protagonist of the rst picaresque novel, is
involved in a sordid menage trois with the mistress of an archbishop. Guz-
mn de Alfaraches mother confesses that, after careful calculations, she can-
not tell which of her lovers was the boys father. Pabloss mother, in Francisco
de Quevedos El buscn, is so well known for her loose morals that many
poets have written ribald verses about her (it says that they have done things
on her). I already mentioned La Celestina, the source of all this, in which the
protagonist is a whorehouse madam and go-between, surrounded by pimps,
prostitutes, and thugs. As the sixteenth century progresses, love stories in-
creasingly involve or reect social strife and mobility, the social unrest that
Kagan speaks about when he writes that the tide of litigation was symptom-
atic of a society in which the traditional bonds of loyalty and fraternity were
weakening as a result of the numerous changesdemographic, economic,
34 Spanish Law and Origins of Novel

social, legal, and politicalthat rapid growth and development in the six-
teenth century had engendered. Violence and crime are the agents of social
change and development, as basic values, customs, and laws come under sus-
picion. Characters from different social classes meet, clash, meet again, often
marry. Marriage as a form of closure appears frequently because it is the
contract that resolves conicts by taming desire and directing it toward repro-
duction and restored social stabilityalso because it is a sacrament through
which differences are erased in what is, according to doctrine, literally a com-
munion of the esh. The core of Spanish Golden Age literature involves social
clashes manifested in erotic confrontations resolved through recourse to vio-
lence and the law. The prime examples are Lope de Vegas Fuenteovejuna,
Tirso de Molinas El burlador de Sevilla, and Caldern de la Barcas El alcalde
de Zalamea, which I mentioned before. There are others, like Lopes El castigo
sin venganza and A secreto agravio secreta venganza by Caldern, as well as
his other honor plays.
This social agitation is also represented in Cervantes ction in erotic strife
resolved through violence and inevitably the judiciary. Even the issue of Sancho
Panzas daughter and her prospects for marriage enter here, as do of course all
those stories about young couples on their way to the altar. The evolving legal
system makes possible solutions to these disputes that were inconceivable
before. The law is above the harsh honor code and its promotion of private
revenge, even with the atrocities that the law itself allows from todays perspec-
tive. The crowns laws protect the weak against the powerful, especially since
the time of the Catholic kings, which is why the pcaro is entitled to write about
his life and Cervantes ction has a strong autobiographical component (as in
the captives tale). This whole movement can be seen as part of an incipient
social leveling leading toward bourgeois society, of which the novel will be an
integral part. The law and the transformations it brings about in life and
literature are the mold, the style, the rhetoric of an emerging order. Cervantes
work, particularly the novellas variously inserted in both parts of the Quijote
and several of his Exemplary Stories, offers prime examples.
 3

Engendering Dulcinea

Dulcinea is Cervantes boldest and most bafing creation. She is a com-

plicated reply to the courtly love tradition, a radical take on the evolution of
love in the early modern period, and a profound statement on desire and the
imagination. Unlike Dantes Beatrice, who is associated to the religious sub-
stratum of courtly love, Dulcinea is a secular conception, which is precisely
why she is so original and closer to us. Beatrice dissolves in the sublime vi-
sion at the end of Paradiso. Dulcinea, without really having a part within the
novel, is both imagined and corporeal. We recall her pungent body odor from
Sanchos construction of her in Part I, or her taking a quick sprint to leap onto
her mount from behind in Part II, when she is impersonated, unwittingly, by a
peasant young woman. We marvel at her touch in salting porkaccording to
a marginal note in the original Arabic manuscriptand are astounded by
her incarnation as a transvestite in Part II, where she appears to reach the very
limits of representation. Dulcinea does not give the impression of being distant
and literary; rather, she seems current with our modern conceptions of love,
fraught as they are with nagging doubts about loves spirituality, and con-
scious of its dubious source in dark drives beyond our control.
Don Quijote is an active protagonist in the novel, one of many characters
who speak, ght, love, ee, or go insane. Dulcinea is his and other characters
inventiona product of their desires, their imaginations, their prevarications,

35
36 Engendering Dulcinea

or their creative wills. She has no lines in the book. Yet she attains an actuality
that is the equal of any other gure in the Quijote. In spite of her potential for
vagueness she still ranks among the great lady loves of Western literature: not
just Beatrice but Helen, Circe, Dido, Laura, and Molly Bloom, to name a few.
Don Quijotes love for Dulcinea is the grandest force in the book; it is the drive
that keeps together the heros sense of selfhis insane selfand gives mean-
ing to his quest in spite of the many defeats. If the juridical cast of the main plot
leads to the heros arrest at the conclusion of Part I, his quest for Dulcinea is a
thrust toward sublime fulllment that has no ending except when he regains
his sanity at the close of Part IIwhich is no ending at all because, once he is
sane, Dulcinea simply vanishes. Hers is the overarching love story that con-
tains the others in the Quijoteit is their reference as source and contrasting
backdrop. Although not obvious at rst, Don Quijotes relationship with the
nonexistent lady has much in common with those stories, not the least simi-
larity being the presence of the law. There is a virtual story, a potential conict
behind Don Quijotes quest for Dulcinea, that does not unfold but that deter-
mines the heros idealization of her and informs the various images of the lady.
This is the story that I hope to tease out here.
The elements out of which Dulcinea is engendered are an unstable mix
obeying a formula that varies according to her inventor and the contingency of
the invention. One has to keep in mind that once the knight makes her up,
others, notably Sancho and the butler at the dukes mansion, reinvent her for
various purposes. In Don Quijotes case the literary sources are clear: the
courtly love tradition as manifest in poetry going back to Provence, the dolce
stil nuovo, Dante and Petrarch, and in Spain cancionero poetry, the chivalric
romances, particularly the Amads de Gaula, and the work of Garcilaso de la
Vega. This is Dulcinea as knight errants lady and as object of poetic inspira-
tion. But Dulcinea also appears to Don Quijote as the peasant woman Sancho
claims is the knights beloved, but enchanted, and again in the guise of Sanchos
invention in Montesinoss Cave, to which Don Quijotes subconscious adds a
gruesome but signicant detail when she asks him for a loan that he cannot give
her for lack of funds. Sancho, for his part, who knows the real Dulcineathat
is, Aldonza Lorenzo, his neighbors daughtersupplies the only details about
her actual physical features and life. She is of peasant stock, strong as an ox,
somewhat smelly, and utterly lacking sophisticationshe is hardly a lady with
inteletto damore, to recall Dante. The butler who stages the elaborate pageant
in the forest in Part II draws his Dulcinea from the literary tradition as a
complicated, bisexual gure, who may stand for desire in the purest and most
general state but is also a sharp probe into Don Quijotes love.
The most profound Dulcinea is the one whom Don Quijote wills to life in
 Engendering Dulcinea 37

his imaginationthe one he needs to complete his own persona as knight

errant. Here Dulcinea is the projection not just of desire but of the very urge to
be, and the one who is a reply to the great ladies of the literary tradition: again
Beatrice and Laura, and in Spain Melibea, Calixtos beloved in La Celestina,
Amadss Oriana, and Garcilasos Isabel Freyre. She stands for the timeless
conceptions of love, whose real objects are necessarily at a remove from their
creations by the lovers; hence they are the purest and most general products of
the literary imagination, even in our everyday lives. (When in love we are all
poets by necessity and create our beloveds.) The commonality of this emotion
is the reason love is the most elusive aspect of Cervantes work and of Cer-
vantes timeit is transhistorical, intimate, ercely individual yet shared by
all, secretive and devious by its very nature. The law leaves a trail of texts and
even buildings: from codes and compilations to myriads of documents, from
courthouses and state archives to jails, from pillories to scaffolds. There are
professionals who deal with the law, but no reputable ones, until very recently,
in charge of love. With love, the most private expression of the human, the
record is necessarily less visible, and literature is a better archive than those in
which laws and legal documents are housed. Love knows no specic space,
and when it takes place in the boudoir, it is in the most hidden and least public
of enclosures. Love leaves a documentary trail only in its transgression and
proscriptionits documents tend to be furtive and fugitive. Only through
transgression or its avoidance does love generate public texts and rules. Some,
like Stuart Schwartz, nd a paradoxically rich record of erotic misbehavior in
the papers of the Holy Ofce of the Inquisition, in which the sanctioning of
love and its practices led to sophisticated classicationsa kind of scholastic
eroticism, as we saw in chapter 1.
There is also good old Andreas Capellanuss codication of Eross rules in
his deliciously ironic twelfth-century The Art of Courtly Love (really a seduc-
tion manual), whose counterpart in poetry constitutes one of the monuments
of the Western literary tradition. I refer, needless to say, to courtly love poetry,
a combination of poetic and social laws in the form of an erotic legal system.
At the court in Aquitaine Eleanor heard cases and rendered decisions as if
she were a judge. But here we are again in the realm of literature, of the
imagination and of playacting, because it is difcult to believe that the con-
trived rituals of courtly love were actually or seriously practiced. Hence it was
literature ruling social behavior and social behavior behaving as literature: an
elaborate theatrics and poetics of love. Later, as literacy increased, loves tex-
tual record burgeoned, particularly from the eighteenth century on, and Peter
Gay has been able to cull valuable insights from letters, billet-doux, and the
like in the nineteenth century. But not yet in the sixteenth and seventeenth
38 Engendering Dulcinea

centuries. Loves record then was either literary or legible only in the traces of
its suppression, which is to be expected, as love stories depend on the suppres-
sion of love for their plots. In literature this record is vast and pervasive during
the Spanish Golden Age, as in the rest of Europe. Out of this mix Dulcinea
emerges. But her origin in Don Quijotes imagination had a more mundane
beginning.

I will begin by reconstructing the real relationship between Dulcinea and
Don Quijote to see it in its sociohistorical, legal, and literary dimensions. I say
real, of course, with all the available caveats, to resist Don Quijotes own
mystications and those accrued through literary and critical history. Hence I
will refer to Alonso Quijano and Aldonza Lorenzo in speaking of this affair,
not of Don Quijote and Dulcinea. Dulcinea is rst mentioned as Don Quijotes
ladylove as he is in the process of assuming his new identity. Here is the kernel
of his invention of her as reported by the narrator at the end of chapter 1 of
Part I:
This [lady worthy of his affection], they say, was a good looking country-
wench, called Aldonza Lorenzo, who lived in the neighborhood, and with
whom he had formerly been in love; though by all accounts, she never knew,
nor gave herself the least concern about the matter. He looked upon her as one
qualied, in all respects, to be the queen of his inclinations; and putting his
invention again to the rack, for a name that should bear some afnity with her
own, and at the same time become a princess or lady of quality, he determined
to call her Dulcinea del Toboso, she being a native of that place, a name in his
opinion, musical, romantic and expressive, like the rest which he had appro-
priated to himself and his concerns. (I, 1, p. 8)

[Y fue, a lo que se cree, que en un lugar cerca del suyo haba una moza
labradora, de muy buen parecer, de quien l un tiempo anduvo enamorado,
aunque, segn se entiende, ella jams lo supo, ni le dio cata dello. Llambase
Aldonza Lorenzo, y a sta le pareci ser bien darle el ttulo de seora de sus
pensamientos, y, buscndole nombre que no desdijese mucho del suyo, y que
tirase y se encaminase al de princesa y gran seora, vino a llamarla Dulcinea
del Toboso, porque era natural de El Toboso; nombre, a su parecer, msico y
peregrino y signicativo, como todos los dems que a l y a sus cosas haba
puesto. (p. 44)]

It should be noted that the narrator here says that she is good looking (de
muy buen parecer), lest we allow ourselves to imagine Dulcinea as grotesque,
as she has often been portrayed by criticism and some writers and artists.
Later, as he prepares Sancho for his mission to take a letter to Dulcinea, Don
 Engendering Dulcinea 39

Quijote provides more details about his relationship with Aldonza and about
her background:

And though it [the letter] be written by another hand, it is of small impor-

tance, because, now, I remember, Dulcinea can neither read not write, nor
ever set eyes on any writing or letter of mine; for, our mutual love has been
altogether platonic, without extending farther than a modest glance; and even
that so seldom, that I can safely swear, in twelve years, during which I have
loved her more than the light of these eyes, which will one day be closed in
dust, I have not seen her more than four times, and even in these four times,
perhaps, she has not perceived me looking at her more than once. Such is the
restraint and reserve, in which her father Lorenzo Corchuelo, and her mother
Aldonza Nogales, have brought her up! (I, 25, pp. 19091)

[Y har poco al caso que vaya de mano ajena, porque a lo que me s acordar,
Dulcinea no sabe escribir ni leer, y en toda su vida ha visto letra ma ni carta
ma, porque mis amores y los suyos han sido siempre platnicos, sin esten-
derse a ms que a un honesto mirar. Y aun esto de cuando en cuando, que
osar jurar con verdad que en doce aos que ha que la quiero ms que a la
lumbre destos ojos que han de comer la tierra, no la he visto cuatro veces; y
aun podr ser que destas cuatro veces no hubiese ella echado de ver la una que
la miraba; tal es el recato y encerramiento con que su padre, Lorenzo Cor-
chuelo, y su madre, Aldonza Nogales, la han criado. (pp. 282 83)]

This record of Alonso Quijanos encounters with Aldonza could be a par-

ody of those of Dantes with Beatrice, which were also sporadic (the rst two
separated by nine years, according to the Vita nuova). The glances are typical
of the courtly love tradition, which acquire a Neoplatonic aura as we move
into the Renaissance. The telling detail of Aldonzas probable illiteracy begins
to sketch a class prole that will soon lled out by Sancho. Don Quijotes
mention of Dulcineas parents allows the squire to identify Aldonza and to
give the most complete description of her in the Quijoteand the only eyewit-
ness one:

I know her perfectly well, said Sancho; and this will venture to say, in her
behalf, that she will pitch the bar, as well as ever a lusty young fellow in the
village. Bless the sender! she is a strapper, tall and hale wind and limb, and can
lift out of the mire any squire or knight-errant, who shall choose her for his
sweetheart. Ah! the whoreschick! what a pair of lungs and voice she has
got! I heard her one day howl from the belfry to some young fellows of her
acquaintance, who where at work in a corneld of her fathers; and though it
was at the distance of half a league, they heard her as plain as if they had been
right under the steeple; and what is better still, she is not at all coy, but be-
haves herself civilly; and jokes, and romps, and plays the rogue with any
40 Engendering Dulcinea

body. . . . But when one considers the affair, what benets can my lady
Aldonza LorenzoI mean, my lady Dulcinea del Toboso, reap from your
worships sending, or having sent those, whom you overcome in battle, to fall
upon their knees before her? especially, as they might chance to come, at a
time, when she is busy, carding ax or threshing corn; in which case, they
would be ashamed to see her, and she laugh or be out of humor at their
arrival. (I, 25, pp. 19192)

[Bien la conozcodijo Sancho, y s decir que tira tan bien una barra
como el ms forzudo zagal de todo el pueblo. Vive el Dador, que es moza de
chapa, hecha y derecha y de pelo en pecho, y que puede sacar la barba del lodo
a cualquier caballero andante, o por andar, que la tuviere por seora! Oh
hideputa, qu rejo que tiene, y qu voz! S decir que se puso un da encima del
campanario del aldea a llamar unos zagales suyos que andaban en un bar-
becho de su padre, y aunque estaban de all ms de media legua, as la oyeron
como si estuvieran al pie de la torre. Y lo mejor que tiene es que no es nada
melindrosa, porque tiene mucho de cortesana: con todos burla y de todo hace
mueca y donaire. . . . pero bien considerado, qu se le ha de dar a la seora
Aldonza Lorenzo, digo, a la seora Dulcinea del Toboso, de que se le vayan a
hincar de rodillas delante della los vencidos que vuestra merced le enva y le ha
de enviar? Porque podra ser que al tiempo que ellos llegasen estuviese ella
rastrillando lino, o trillando en las eras, y ellos se corriesen de verla, y ella se
riese y enfadase del presente. (pp. 28384)]

There are a number of physical traits here to which I shall have to return. We
conrm toward the end of Part I that, indeed, Don Quijote has never touched
Aldonza. He says, when he is about to give his hand to Maritornes and the
innkeepers daughter, who are about to play a cruel joke on him: Receive,
madam, said he, that hand, or rather that chastiser of all evil doers; receive, I
say, that hand, which was never touched by any other woman, not even by her
who is in possession of my whole body (I, 43, p. 377) [Tomad, seora, esa
mano, o, por mejor decir, ese verdugo de los malhechores del mundo; tomad
esa mano, digo, a quien no ha tocado otra de mujer alguna, ni aun la de aquella
que tiene entera posesin de todo mi cuerpo (p. 508)]. The furtive and well-
spaced encounters, the glances, the chastity, all belie the courtly love mold
that shapes Don Quijotes passion. He follows those rules as sedulously as he
does those of chivalry. Those rules proscribe touching and make marriage an
unavailable option. Alonso, known as El Bueno (the Good Man), admired
Aldonza at a decorous distance for a full twelve years.
Alonso Quijano did not have to fall in love with Aldonza Lorenzo. In-
steadand more in keeping with his social positionhe could have gone for
a woman of comparable status belonging to the petty nobility of the region.
She could have been a wealthier farmers daughter like Dorotea or Marcela,
 Engendering Dulcinea 41

given to more ladylike occupations than carding ax or threshing corn. Doro-

tea ran the farm and was a musician; Marcela obviously read pastoral ro-
mances and poetry. Aldonza does hard labor, yells from a church steeple, and
banters with the boys. She is essentially like one of them. But Alonso did see
Aldonza and became infatuated with her before his fateful decision to become
a knight-errant, a signicant sequence. Once within his madness, Don Quijote
could also have chosen a woman closer to Amadss Oriana and to the world
of chivalry from among those of his social class. To be sure, Cervantes could
well have had Alonso Quijano choose Aldonza so that she would be as far as
possible from that world to underline the severity of Don Quijotes illness and
to show how little reality inuenced his thinking. The grotesqueness of his
choice increases as the gap between an Oriana and an Aldonza widens. This is
clearly the overt reason. But I think that there is a deeper one, dependent on
the interplay of love and the law, that helps explain some of Dulcineas more
bafing features.

It may appear that Dulcinea was created by a mechanical process making her
every feature the opposite of those of the ladies in the courtly love and chival-
ric tradition: that she is the reverse of Neoplatonic beauty, and hence ugly and
unattractive, except to someone like Sancho. But this is not the case at all,
although it is, for instance, with Maritornes and other women in Part II.
Sanchos description of Aldonza Lorenzo follows different ideals of beauty
that already had a literary tradition of their own and a standard comical
situation to be displayed: the love of an aristocrat for an earthy, stout peasant
lass. This is Alonsos and Aldonzas script to follow. Even in the strictest
nonliterary terms, what we have in their romance is the love of a middle-aged
petty nobleman, an hidalgo, for a country girl from his district. He could have
married her, although there would have been some complications. As we learn
from the interpolated stories in Part I, unequal marriages of this sort were not
unusual, particularly because nobility was transmitted via the father in Cas-
tile, so any children would retain their social status. As Dorotea says in her
appeal to Don Fernando to honor their betrothal, If you think your blood
will be debased, in mixing with mine, consider, that almost all the great fami-
lies on earth have undergone the same intercourse, and that the womans
quality in no manner affects illustrious descents (I, 36, p. 311) [Y si te parece
que has de aniquilar tu sangre por mezclarla con la ma, considera que pocas o
ninguna nobleza hay en el mundo que no haya corrido por este camino, y que
la que se toma de las mujeres no es la que hace al caso en las ilustres descenden-
cias (p. 428)]. From what Don Quijote and Sancho say about Aldonzas par-
ents, there is no reason to believe that they were destitute, but her marriage to
42 Engendering Dulcinea

someone of Alonso Quijanos class would still be highly desirable. He is a

modest hidalgo but a landowner who can afford to sell parts of his estate to
buy books of chivalry, and his lineage is of some distinction and of old
Christian stock. Aldonzas illiteracy was typical of the kind of upbringing
such old Christians would give their children, particularly girls, so there
would have been no religious or racial obstacles to their union. The age
difference was irrelevant in the period, as it continued and continues to be in
Europe and other parts of the world. Cervantes other old gentlemen married
to young women, like the ones in the short theatrical piece The Old Jealous
Man and the story The Jealous Man from Extremadura, are in the Boccac-
cio mold and draw their humor from the predictable consequences of the
uneven levels of sexual ardor. In any case, if Alonso Quijanos love for Al-
donza has lasted twelve years and he is around fty when the novel opens, it
began when he was merely in his middle to late thirties. The old men in the
other works mentioned are decrepit.
Yet marriage was not contemplated either, and this may explain Don Qui-
jotes bachelorhood as owing to the dire socioeconomic situation of the pe-
riod, which affected everyone, including hidalgos like Alonso Quijano, and
often led them to other options. Francisco Toms y Valiente writes: In a
society in which there was a widespread dread of marriage as a result of the
growing nancial insecurity, typical of an age of stiing economic pressure
with chronic famines and uncontrolled ination; in a society in which many
adult men devoted their youth to military or student life (then given to dissipa-
tion and often to idleness), or entered (with or without a true vocation) con-
ventual life, there had to be many extramarital sexual relations, damaging to
the honor of the deceived father, husband, or brother.
So in the situation involving Alonso Quijano and Aldonza Lorenzo there
was alsowe learn this too from the interpolated storiesthe potential for
abuse. Here is a mature nobleman aroused by a young peasant woman from
his district who could have been tempted to exercise a seigneurial right, a
derecho de pernada, that in the past would have allowed him sexual privileges
without the responsibility of marriage. Seducing peasant women was a pos-
sibility even contemplated by Capellanus, who writes in his wicked treatise:
And if you should, by some chance, fall in love with some of their [peasant]
women, be careful to puff them up with lots of praise and then, do not hesitate
to take what you seek and embrace them by force. For you can hardly soften
their outward inexibility so far that they will grant you their embraces quietly
or permit you to have the solaces you desire unless rst you use a little compul-
sion as convenient cure for their shyness. Ravaging Aldonza is something
Alonso might have considered, but it is unlikely that he would have been able
 Engendering Dulcinea 43

to overpower the brawny farmer, part of whose attractiveness is being muscu-

lar and somewhat manly. Anyway, by this time the aristocrats right to do such
a thing was explicitly prohibited by the prevalent legislation and a court case
would have probably followed. As Toms y Valiente also writes, such a case
would have ended in a settlement in which Alonso would have been forced
either to marry Aldonza or to improve her dowry to make her marriageable
despite her lack of virginity.
The conicts making up the plots of poems, plays, and stories hinge on the
possibility of gures like Aldonza being abused, but not until the early modern
period. In medieval works they seem to be quite capable of taking care of
themselves, as Aldonza probably could. But in all eras, the conict is sparked
by the attraction country women exert on upper-class men by their crudeness,
which ostensibly promises a savage kind of sexual pleasure not available with
women of their social class. More disturbing and deep-seated is the sexual role
reversal or cancellation of difference suggested by the womens strength and
manliness. This adds a touch of perversity to the aristocrats fascination with
them, reaching back into the deeper, primal forces of desire, where the object
is still undifferentiated. The emergence of difference will depend on an act of
creation akin to that of the literary text itself. Most crucial here is the ambiva-
lent (having literally both sexual valences) allure of the transvestite, as we shall
see when discussing the Pageant in the Forest, a heavily made-up gure in all
senses of the word. Dulcinea in her various guises is the protagonist of this
hidden drama in which, paradoxically, the idealized version of her functions as
the law.
The earliest country women who are sexually alluring in Spanish literature
are the serranas, or young women from the hills (hillbilly babes) who appear in
Juan Ruizs fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor (Book of Good Love).
The Archpriest of Hita, as this lustful cleric was known, includes several
poems in his masterpiece telling hilarious stories about robust, aggressive
young women he encounters in his travelshe is the narrator-protagonist of
his book. They are strong enough to carry him on their backs to their huts,
where they shelter him from the cold, feed him coarse fare, and vigorously
demand sexual favors in return for their help. The Archpriest speaks in a
courtly tone, Con miedo (with fear), they in rough language: Comamos
deste pan duro; Despus faremos la lucha (Lets eat from this hard bread /
and afterward well tangle). The tradition of the muscular, irresistible ser-
rana continued in the delightful serranillas by the fteenth-century Iigo
Lpez de Mendoza, Marqus de Santillana. These are arte menor poems,
written in popular short-verse forms about serranillas, again, young women
from the sierras. As in the Libro de buen amor, the speaker in these poems, a
44 Engendering Dulcinea

cultivated man of superior social class, is enchanted by husky, hard-working

cowgirls. The most famous of these serranillas is about La vaquera de la
Finojosa (today Hinojosa, a cattle-farming region near Crdoba), a cowgirl
who arouses the weary traveler as he journeys vencido del sueo / por tierra
fragosa (vanquished by sleep / over rough terrain). She is minding the herd,
however, and spurns his advances. In another poem he tells a cowgirl that he
cannot believe that she is a peasant, given her beauty (and youth, for he says
que me zo gana/la fructa tempranaI was aroused / by the unripe fruit).
These are forerunners of Aldonza who excite upper-class men precisely by
their rustic appearance and demeanorby their masculinity.
By Cervantes time the fetishistic attachment of an aristocrat to peasant
women led to tragedies, particularly in the theater. In two of Lope de Vegas
best-known playsPeribez and Fuenteovejuna, both written between 1610
and 1614the action centers on the xation of a comendador on a village
maiden. In Peribez the comendador attempts to seduce Casilda before she
marries Peribez, but is killed by the irate groom exercising his right to
defend his honor. In Fuenteovejuna, Comendador Fernn Gmez attempts to
abuse Laurencia and other peasant women, but the whole village rises up and
kills him. In Tirso de Molinas El burlador de Sevilla, although Don Juan likes
women of all classes, he takes particular pleasure in seducing the peasant
Aminta and the sherwoman Tisbea, both of whom appeal to him precisely
because of their rural charms. And in Caldern de la Barcas El alcalde de
Zalamea, Isabel, the mayors daughter, is raped by the captain who was bil-
leted to his house. The captain is garroted onstage by the outraged father, who
is also discharging the duties of his position as mayor of the town.
There is no doubt from Sanchos description that Aldonza was this kind of
rough, bucolic beauty and that she aroused Alonso Quijano precisely because
of her rusticitywhich is, by the way, inscribed in her name, for it seems that
at the time Aldonza was the name for the quintessential country wench. She is
transformed into Dulcinea not by means of a crass contrast with the ethereal
beauties of courtly and chivalric literature but by a kind of transmutation that
takes on different forms through her various inventors but whose kernel is that
rough farm girl. The initial change is what could be called the literalization of
courtly love, or perhaps only its misapplication. What prevents Don Quijote
from approaching Aldonza may or may not be shyness, fear, or the economic
conditions, but it is also, as his madness progresses, the undesirability of
marriage or consummation as the goal of love in courtly conventions. Courtly
love was the religion of love for its own sake, not for the object of the love
both person and purpose. It thrived on arousal and denial or on denial as a
form of arousal. Once Alonso Quijano is Don Quijote he cannot aspire to
 Engendering Dulcinea 45

marry Aldonza, if he ever didhence he turns her into Dulcinea, who is

beyond such worldly goals. He parries off all attempts to marry him to other
women, as when Sancho insists that he wed Princess Micomicona. As Ciriaco
Morn Arroyo has put it: The idealized Dulcinea allows the knight not to
have to become entangled in complications with any one concrete woman.
Throughout Part I Dulcinea remains the abstract, necessary object of Don
Quijotes desire and of the constitution of his new persona as knight-errant.
The portrait we get from Sanchos description, the marginal note in the Arabic
manuscript about her ability to salt pork, and the Dulcinea the squire has to
invent to cover up that he has not journeyed to El Toboso, provide the back-
ground of Don Quijotes sexual attraction to Aldonza as due to her origin. The
glimpse we are allowed into Don Quijotes subconscious in Montesinoss Cave
does reveal that Dulcineas peasant originher strength, her smell, her viril-
ityfrom which Sancho has drawn to concoct the enchanted Dulcinea, lies
buried in his mind as the spark of his attraction to her. Otherwise she is the
lady whose beauty the merchants from Toledo are reluctant to acknowledge,
the one whose castle the freed galley slaves refuse to visit, and the one for
whom Don Quijote does penance in the Sierra Morena and invokes whenever
he is beaten up or humiliated. This is a love story without the trappings of love:
no stolen kisses, secret encounters, clandestine letters, or even dialogue be-
tween the lovers. Dulcinea stands for the laws of courtly love, of which she is
the guiding principle, and these laws appropriately prescribe restraint: Dul-
cinea fends off Aldonza. In that role she is incorporeal, almost an allegory of
Platonic love, a drive to the good through the beautiful. She is also, ironically,
the law.

But the description of Dulcinea that Don Quijote gives Vivaldo, the traveler
who quizzes him on their way to witness Grisstomos burial, shows other-
wise. The portrait is a crescendo of poetic clichs, with a masterful and re-
vealing comic twist at the end. Don Quijote is carried away as he rushes from
one convention of the rhetorical portrait to the nextalways going from top
to bottom until he barely catches himself just short of straying beyond
decorum:
her name is Dulcinea; her native country El Toboso, a village in La Mancha;
her station must at least be that of a princess, since she is queen and lady of
my soul; her beauty, supernatural, in that it justies all those impossible,
and chimerical attributes of excellence, which the poets bestow upon their
nymphs; her hair is of gold, her forehead the Elysian elds, her eyebrows
heavenly arches, her eyes themselves suns, her cheeks roses, her lips of coral,
46 Engendering Dulcinea

her teeth of pearl, her neck alabaster, her breast marble, her hands ivory, her
skin whiter than snow, and those parts which decency conceals from human
view, are such, according to my belief and apprehension, as discretion ought
to enhance above all comparison. (I, 13, p. 80)

[su patria, el Toboso, un lugar de la Mancha; su calidad, por lo menos, ha de

ser de princesa, pues es reina y seora ma; su hermosura, sobrehumana,
pues en ella se vienen a hacer verdaderos todos los imposibles y quimricos
atributos de belleza que los poetas dan a sus damas: que sus cabellos son oro,
su frente campos elseos, sus cejas arcos del cielo, sus ojos soles, sus mejillas
rosas, sus labios corales, perlas sus dientes, alabastro su cuello, mrmol su
pecho, marl sus manos, su blancura nieve, y las partes que a la vista humana
encubri la honestidad son tales, segn yo pienso y entiendo, que slo la
discreta consideracin puede encarecerlas, y no compararlas. (pp. 14142)]

In 1624 the Portuguese Inquisition ended the sentence after her skin whiter
than snow, because of the shocking suggestiveness of Don Quijotes musings
about those parts which decency conceals. It is a near slip that betrays that
Alonso Quijanos looks at Aldonza Lorenzo may have been leers inspired by a
strong sexual desire. Those hidden parts of Dulcinea do play a role in Alonso
Quijanos and Don Quijotes longings in disturbing ways.
The contrast between that Dulcinea and her mundane origin as Aldonza
Lorenzo is Cervantes reply to the courtly love tradition at the most elemen-
tary level and a extension of insights by more recent poets. Love cannot soar
that far from the worldly without becoming a meaningless abstraction or a
worthless game. There has to be an incarnation of it in the bruising and
withering reality of the here and now, ruled by the presence of death and felt
by a concrete, suffering self. This is the rigorous lesson Western literature
learned in Petrarchs stirring poetry about a dead Laura and in Spain in the
work of his disciple Garcilaso de la Vega. The more profound aspect of Cer-
vantes answer to this quandary is that each embodiment of Dulcinea is dif-
ferent, and that all of them are perversions of the ideal, not completely inde-
pendent of it.
This bewildering trend increases in Part II, where everything appears to lose
itself in a game of multiplying reectionsthe apocryphal Quijote, the Knight
of the White Moon, and so on. Dulcineas reections, however, are not the
ghosts of Don Quijotes family romance. One of the reasons for Dulcineas
abstractness in Part I is that we never learn anything about Don Quijotes
parents. His only family is that niece whose own parents we do not know
anything about, but whom someone has written is the object of the hidalgos
incestuous passion. He is, because of his age, safely beyond Oedipus. Don
Quijotes love is self-generated, willed and illusory at once, focused on a mas-
 Engendering Dulcinea 47

culine Aldonza who could be the erasure of difference, the fulllment of desire,
and the ultimate convolution of the self onto itself in search of ever-eeing
stasis. Dulcineas nal transformation into a transvestite in Part II may signal
this: that she is a projection of Don Quijotes own quest of self, an image of his
own buried longings. She would be the self disguised as monstrous other, with
gender a contrived differencea form of alluring otherness. When Sancho
gets near Aldonza he notices a sort of mannish smell (I, 31, p. 281) [sent un
olorcillo algo hombruno (p. 359)]. The peasant woman on a donkeywho
smells of raw garliccould be a perversion of the knight himself, his distorted
self-reection. She is a grotesque equestrian gure because of her mount, some
of her features, and the fact that she is a woman. This cauldron of perversions
at the source of Alonsos and Don Quijotes desire is exposed through a series
of mildly obscene allusions and references.

Part II, a profound interpretation of Part I, provides a reading of Alonso
Quijanos infatuation with Aldonza Lorenzo and her transformation into Dul-
cinea through her various incarnations. The stages are the enchantment of
Dulcinea by Sancho, her appearance in the Cave of Montesinos episode, the
enchantment of the twelve dueas who grow beards that only Don Quijote
can remove by slaying a giant, and her appearance as a transvestite in the
Pageant in the Forest.
Other than her strength and smell, Aldonzas most signicant feature is her
bodily hair, which she shares with other country lasses and coarse women in
the Quijote and other works. For instance, the goatherd Torralba, in Sanchos
truncated story in Part I, is very strong: a thick, brawny wench, a little coy,
and somewhat manly, for she sported some sort of mustachios (I, 20, p. 134)
[era una moza rolliza, zaharea y tiraba algo a hombruna, porque tena unos
pocos bigotes (p. 213)]. In Sanchos description of Aldonza he says that she is
de pelo en pecho, which Smollett chose to translate with English idioms of
comparable meaning: she is a strapper, tall and hale wind and limb. But the
Spanish expression, which suggests strength and courage, literally means that
she has hair on her chest like a man. Celestina was a vieja barbuda (bearded
old wench) and the serranas and serranillas also tend to have either facial hair
or excess hair elsewhere on their bodies. Hair and masculinity, hair and an
abundant sexual drive are synonymous going all the way back to the Bible and
classical mythology. I am thinking of Samson and Absalom, of course, and
also Medusa, who had in Spain a curious metamorphosis into a bearded
gure.
But there were many bearded women in literature, art, and real life in the
48 Engendering Dulcinea

Spain of Cervantes time, to judge by Jocobo Sanz Hermidas work on the

topic. According to the physiology of the time, beards, a sign of mascu-
linity, grew because of the dry, hot constitution of a mans body; by contrast,
the female body, humid and cold, produced menstruation, a sign of femininity.
A hot body on a woman generated more hair, including facial hair, and in
some monstrous cases the emergence of male genitalia from within her own.
Hence the bearded women in the Quijote, particularly Dulcinea, project both
a heightened sexuality and one that threatens to become masculine in nature.
Don Quijote, whose body is dry and hot, is endowed with a heated sexuality
that draws him to these hairy ladies. Their sexuality, in turn, seems to want to
become one with his through a process that dangerously tends to erase physi-
cal gender differences, as is revealed in Part II in the Pageant in the Forest.
Beards and sexual organs converge as the temperature of bodies riseshair
leads to the pubic area, as we saw in the rhetorical portrait of Dulcinea painted
by Don Quijote.
The transformation of beards into pubic hair and mouths into female geni-
talia is too common to require reference to authority. The Quijote is its own
authority in this. In Part I, the innkeepers wife makes the connection between
beard and her own sexual organs through a complicated pun that Javier
Herrero has unraveled with great delight. This is the episode in which the
priest and the barber borrow an oxs tail that the innkeepers wife has hanging
on the wall to hold her comb. They use it as a fake beard to deceive Don
Quijote. The connection is shockingly clear in Chaucers The Millers Tale,
when the woman, who has promised to stick her head out the window in the
dark of night to receive a furtive kiss from her lover, offers instead her naked
rear. He kisses it:

And back he started. Something was amiss;

He knew quite well a woman has no beard,
Yet something rough and hairy had appeared.

This cluster of resonances afxes Alonso Quijanos desire to those parts of

Dulcinea to which Don Quijote alludes with a chaste and urgent circumlocu-
tion in the description cited beforethe rhetorical portrait that almost went
too far. In Part II the bearded and mustachioed ladies are there to remind Don
Quijote, who wants to suppress it, of his prurient desire for Aldonza, which
could have driven him to commit estupro, a rape or unlawful seduction.
The most signicant of these ladies is, to be sure, the enchanted Dulcinea,
that is to say, the country wench that Sancho wants to pass off as his masters
beloved. When Don Quijote protests about her bad looks, Sancho says that
 Engendering Dulcinea 49

to tell the truth, I saw not her homeliness, but beauty, which was exceedingly
increased by a mole upon her upper lip, something like a moustache, consist-
ing of seven or eight red hairs, like threads of gold, as long as my hand.
According to the correspondence which the moles of the face have with
those of the body, said Don Quixote, Dulcinea must have just such another on
the inner part of her thigh, of the same side; but, hairs of such a length, are, I
think, rather too long for moles. (II, 10, p. 516)

[para decir verdad, nunca yo vi su fealdad, sino su hermosura, a la cual suba

de punto y quilates un lunar que tena sobre el labio derecho, a manera de
bigote, con siete o ocho cabellos rubios como hebras de oro y largos ms de un
palmo.A ese lunardijo Don Quijote, segn la correspondencia que
tienen entre s los del rostro con los del cuerpo, ha de tener otro Dulcinea en la
tabla del muslo que corresponde a donde tiene el del rostro pero muy luengos
para lunares son los pelos de la grandeza que has signicado. (pp. 70910)]

Aldonzas pelo en pecho has migrated from the chest to her upper lip and
from there to her groin to perturb the knight with the memory of his lust,
unveiling, as it were, those hidden parts that he claimed decency wanted to
keep covered, but toward which he rushed headlong down the rhetorical
portrait. Casildea, the Knight of the Forests lady, a clone of Dulcinea invented
by Sansn Carrasco, also has barbas. Sansn says, after being defeated by
Don Quijote: I confess, said the vanquished knight, that the clouted dirty
shoe of the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, excels the dishevelled, tho clean beard
of Casildea (II, 14, p. 544) [Coneso dijo el cado caballeroque vale
ms el zapato descosido y sucio de la seora Dulcinea del Toboso, que las
barbas mal peinadas, aunque limpias, de Casildea (p. 745)]. (There are some
obscene, nearly pornographic allusions encoded in what the wily Carrasco
says here, as the editors of the Instituto Cervantes edition that I am using here
point out.)
The culmination of all this is the appearance of the twelve enchanted du-
eas, who have grown beards as a punishment and whom Don Quijote is
expected to disenchant. This is all a farce, of course; they are wearing fake
beards like the characters in the Princess Micomicona episode of Part I. The
dueas come onstage, as it were, sporting veils on their faces, which they
remove suddenly and in unison to the shock of all: So saying, the aficted
duenna and her companions, lifting up their veils, disclosed so many faces
overgrown with huge beards, red, black, white and parti-colored; at sight of
which, the duke and duchess were amazed, Don Quijote and Sancho con-
founded, and all present overwhelmed with astonishment (II, 39, p. 708) [Y
luego la Dolorida y las dems dueas alzaron los antifaces con que cubiertas
50 Engendering Dulcinea

venan, y descubrieron los rostros todos poblados de barbas, cules rubias,

cules negras, cules blancas y cules albarrazadas, de cuya vista mostraron
quedar admirados el duque y la duquesa, pasmados don Quijote y Sancho, y
atnitos todos los presentes (p. 948)].
All of these bearded women hit a raw nerve in Don Quijotes subconscious,
where lust and guilt are barely concealed. These in Part II not only conrm it
but are even a parody of the whole thing because the radically weird form of
their hairiness is manifest. Bearded, manly women represent a brutal kind of
sexuality at the origin of Don Quijotes attraction to Aldonza Lorenzo. That
sexual attraction, animal in its source and represented by the strength, the
smell, and the hair, was what caught Alonso Quijanos attention, what created
his xation on Aldonza. That xation, that fetish, is what could have driven
him to ravage her, to exercise his seigneurial rights and hence to commit a
crime that would lead to the kind of story that we get in Fernando and Lus-
cinda, for instance. In Part II Don Quijote struggles to disenchant Dulcinea
because the one Sancho has chosen as her stand-in reminds him of his prurient
and perhaps even violent desire for Aldonza. He wants to overcome, to erase
that memory by again turning Dulcinea into the idealized lady of his (literary)
dreams. In short, the enchanted Dulcinea is, appropriately from Sanchos
point of view, a strong, hairy, sexual, vulgar womanprecisely like Aldonza,
the origin of Don Quijotes desire. To disenchant her means to remove those
qualities from her by turning her back to the idealized Dulcinea who is so
vague, ethereal, and unreal as to not have any sexuality at all. Don Quijote
cannot accept the enchanted Dulcinea as she appears; he has to be blind to
her reality because it rakes the still-burning ashes of his desire for Aldonza.
Although there are no hairy women in it, the Pageant in the Forest is the
culmination of the series of images of Dulcinea that remind Don Quijote of the
origin of his love for her as Aldonza Lorenzo. This is the episode in Part II in
which the duke and duchess have their butler stage an elaborate spectacle to
frighten Don Quijote and Sancho and bring up the matter of Dulcineas en-
chantment as recounted to them by the squire. It is night, the whole party is
outdoors after a day of hunting, when a series of carts lled with penitents
carrying torches comes toward them. One cart, larger than the othersa
triumphal chariotcarries two gures. One, a nymph representing Dul-
cinea, is seated on a throne

dressed in robes of silver tissue, bespangled with innumerable leaves of gold

brocade; so that her dress, if not rich, was extremely gaudy: her face was
covered with a delicate and transparent veil of ne tiffany, the rumples of
which could not conceal the beauteous features of a young lady; and the
 Engendering Dulcinea 51

number of lights enabled the spectators to distinguish her charms and her age,
which seemed to be turned of seventeen but under twenty. Close by her ap-
peared a gure clad in what is called a robe of state, that reached to his feet;
and his head was mufed in a black veil. The cart had no sooner come op-
posite to the duke and duchess, and Don Quixote, than the music of the waits,
the harps, and lutes, ceased all at once; then this gure rising, threw aside his
robe, and, taking off the veil, disclosed to view the horrible and eshless form
of death. (II, 35, p. 687)

[vestida de mil velos de tela de plata, brillando por todos ellos innitas hojas
de argentera de oro, que la hacan, si no rica, a lo menos vistosamente ves-
tida. Traa el rostro cubierto con un transparente y delicado cendal, de modo
que, sin impedirlo sus lizos, por entre ellos se descubra un hermossimo
rostro de doncella, y las muchas luces daban lugar para distinguir la belleza y
los aos, que al parecer no llegaban a veinte ni bajaban de diez y siete. Junto a
ella vena una gura vestida de una ropa de las que llaman rozagantes, hasta
los pies, cubierta la cabeza con un velo negro; pero al punto que lleg el carro
a estar frente a frente de los duques y de don Quijote, ces la msica de las
chirimas, y luego de las harpas y lades que en el carro sonaban, y levantn-
dose en pie la gura de la ropa, la apart a entrambos lados, y quitndose el
velo del rostro, descubri patentemente ser la mesma gura de la muerte,
descarnada y fea. (p. 921)]

This gure identies himself as the wizard Merlin and proceeds to tell an
elaborate story about his research on how to disenchant Dulcinea and how he
has come up with the formula to do so: Sancho must give himself 3,300 lashes
on his naked buttocks. Sancho protests that he will not do such a thing, and
then the embroidered nymph who sat by Merlins spirit, rising up, took off
her transparent veil, and disclosing a face which to all the spectators seemed
more than exceedingly beautiful, addressed herself in these words, directly to
Sancho Panza, with a manly assurance and a voice that was not very feminine
in tone(II, 35, p. 730) [levantndose en pie la argentada ninfa que junto al
espritu de Merln vena, quitndose el sutil velo del rostro, le descubri tal,
que a todos pareci ms que demasiadamente hermoso; y con un desenfado
varonil y con voz no muy adamada, hablando derechamente a Sancho (p.
924)]. She proceeds to berate him for his selshness and cowardice. This is a
scene redolent with internal and external allusions, typical of the baroque
quality of Part II.
Sanchos offense is his having told the lie about his trip to El Toboso, which
he then tried to substantiate by telling his master that the peasant girl on the
donkey is Dulcinea enchanted. But it is not really that much of a lie, for the
peasant woman is closer to the real Aldonza than to the imagined Dulcinea,
52 Engendering Dulcinea

which is precisely why Don Quijote needs to have her disenchanted, as we

have been observing. There are clear allusions in this scene to Purgatorio 30,
when Beatrice appears to Dante and is abandoned by Virgil as he is about to
enter Paradise. The combination of personal revelation with Revelation gives
the whole episode its sublime depth. Dulcineas diatribe against Sancho also
recalls the Beatrice of Purgatorio 30 because it is here that she berates Dante
for not having remained faithful to her after her death. The grotesque con-
trivance of all this in the Quijote is what is left of revelation and stakes the
difference between Dante and Cervantes. Because Don Quijotes true revela-
tion is nding Dulcinea in this guise, the only time that he lays eyes on her as he
purportedly imagines her. Javier Herrero writes: It is a remarkable twist of
Cervantes irony that the incarnated Dulcinea is a lie of the dukes, built on a
previous lie of Sancho. To top it all, Dulcinea is really a man: a page of the
dukes that the butler has selected to play this role because of his beauty. Such is
the ontological status of the earthly Dulcinea: a labyrinth of lies built upon
lies, of contradictory appearances. The contradictory element is most sig-
nicant, however, not merely another Cervantine game about the elusiveness
of the real.
What is truly Cervantine, however, is that this complicated contrivance, the
whole pageant, the gures, the verses, are the work of an internal author,
another of those mouthpieces in the Quijote that project creation onto an
abyss of innite regression. The butler is no mere jester. His version of Don
Quijotes love, with its allusion to the Divine Comedy, is a profound and
wildly deformed reection of the knights psyche that takes the whole issue of
love and the law in the book to another level. The butler seems to be reaching
the very limits of representation and the farthest origins of literary creation
itself. The elaborateness, the parodic distortions, the play with the very serious
issue of revelation, both offered and denied, manifest the text as a perplexing
response to dark drives beyond not only our control but more signicantly
also our comprehension. A concoction arises surrounded by images of death
and desire, intertwined in grotesque gures whose meaning eludes us and
whose material existence is all a series of fabrications.
Because the revelation concerning Don Quijote, of which he is not aware, is
the true nature of his desire. This is another unnarratable story, like that of the
prisoner of sex, buried beneath the layers of ironies and ambiguities men-
tioned by Herrero. Because the most signicant detail here is the manly
assurance, and not very feminine tones in which Dulcinea expresses
herselfthat desenfado varonil and voz no muy adamada. We learn later
that the butler had a page play her role. He is made to look gorgeous but
cannot change his voice to disguise his gender. That voice is an echo (pun
 Engendering Dulcinea 53

intended) of Aldonzas strong one in Sanchos description of her and an indica-

tion that the gure is a transvestitea man disguised as a woman. The fair
Dulcinea of Don Quijotes imagination, even as played by this beautiful page,
has beneath the veils and dresses a masculine kernel, a perverse virility (an
excess of testosterone) that dened the peasant womens savage sexuality. His
coarse voice is evidence that he is not effeminate but manly even while dis-
guised as a woman (like hair, a deep voice was a sign of masculinity in the
physiology of the period). This is what is left of all those beautiful ladies of the
poetic traditions: a contrived woman who is not even a woman. Nobody is
perfect.
Don Quijote obeyed the laws of courtly love so that Alonso Quijano, El
Bueno, would not break those of society. Deep in his subconscious, even in his
madness, Dulcinea represents for Don Quijote a desire repressed and trans-
ferred, transformed, deected so as not to become sinful and criminal. Dul-
cinea is the law: she is beyond the reach of desire because consummation,
much less marriage, were not options, and because she really only exists in the
knights imagination. She is effective, because she is incorporeal, in projecting
Don Quijotes sexual drive elsewhere, away from Aldonza Lorenzos rustic
allure. This is what, ironically, turns her into an elaborate form of interdiction;
love has become the law. In spite of his observance of it, the knight will still
become a criminal and wind up as a fugitive from justice.
 4

The Knight as Fugitive from Justice:

The Quijote, Part I

No sooner does Don Quijote set out from his village in search of chival-
ric adventures than he runs into a picaresque world at the rst inn. The second
inn, Juan Palomeques, is the one most readers remember, and rightly so,
because of the crucial episodes that take place within it. It is the building that
denes Part I, in contrast to the dukes palatial home in Part II. But this rst inn
is also important because it is rst and because it sets the tone or better, the
dissonance, of the novelthe din of competing discourses of which it is com-
posed (chivalric and picaresque in this case). Here, at the very threshold of his
quest, Don Quijote will encounter, in the prostitutes and the innkeeper, the
earliest representatives of the two themes that I am developing herelove and
the lawin a picaresque setting replete with other transient characters of a
similar ilk. The prostitutes represent love at its lowest level and the innkeeper
the law, of which he has been a favorite object and whose representative he
becomes mockingly when he knights Don Quijote. The novels plot will circle
back to an inn, Juan Palomeques this time, in which Don Quijote will be
subdued, caged, and returned homea complete reversal of his accession to
knighthood in the rst inn.
This rst innkeeper is a retired pcaro, or rogue, who tells his own story to
boast about a misspent but adventuresome youth. As with the prisoner of sex,
here we have Cervantes drawing a round character with a few pen strokes.

54
 Knight as Fugitive from Justice 55

Readers of his time would recognize the innkeepers life as an itinerary of noto-
rious picaresque emporiagathering places where these rogues convened in
large numbers to rejoice in each others company and in their collective rejec-
tion of societys norms and the states laws. The population of rogues formed,
in fact, a countersocietya society in reversewith colonies in all the
Spanish prisons, which were virtually run by the inmates, as we learn from
Cristbal de Chavess Relacin de la crcel de Sevilla. The rst innkeepers
story is a map of picaresque life of sixteenth-century Spain, as Diego de Clem-
encn called it in his massive nineteenth-century edition. His mock confession
(relayed by the narrator) is a conceited chronicle in which he translates with
great ironic air his life as a criminal into a chivalric romance. It is the lan-
guage of literature in the process of being contaminated by that of the jail-
house, as it is contained in the legal documents pertaining to the innkeeper, the
only discourse capable of inscribingthat is, of restrainingthis seasoned
crook. But by his rhetorical skill, comparable to that of the prisoner of sex, he
can subvert it. Instead of being told in the rst person, as in a conventional
picaresque novel, the innkeepers story is reported in an indirect style that
underscores the ironic process by which picaresque adventures are narrated as
if they were chivalric ones. The performance is very much a part of his self-
denition as a devious, skillful tricksterhence the narrator is needed to act it
out, as it were. The innkeeper avails himself of a common rhetorical ruse
among thugsa form of jocular transposition and inversion of meanings and
values. In their jargon, called germana, it was customary to say one thing to
mean the opposite, a poetic display as elaborate and baroque as that of con-
temporary Gngora-style verse. Germana, according to the Spanish Acad-
emy, derives from hermano, brother; it is the secret language of criminal
brotherhoods. It was also known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as
the language of the brothels. The inversion of meanings is akin to the practice
of signifying among American blacks and of choteo among Cubans.

Before I look at the passage containing the innkeepers biography and move on
to examine Don Quijotes criminal career, I should perhaps give a thumbnail
sketch of the picaresque, about which I have already written some in the
chapter on the galley slaves, and about which there will be more in subsequent
chapters. It is important that I do so too because there seem to be gross
misconceptions about the picaresque in the English-speaking world. These
stem from the term romance as applied to narrative in the American academy,
thanks mostly to Northrop Fryes inuential Anatomy of Criticism. This is
a concept that does not exist in Spanish and has no currency in Spanish-
56 Knight as Fugitive from Justice

language criticism. (To add to the confusion romance means ballad in

Spanish.) I nd romance useful in English to refer to chivalric narratives,
which have stereotypical characters with little development and standard plot
lines. But this is hardly the case with picaresque stories, which we call nov-
elas in Spanish and do not adhere to anything resembling Fryes denition of
romance.
The picaresque, as a literary genre, was inaugurated in 1554 with the pub-
lication of the anonymous La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y
adversidades (The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, and of His Fortunes and Mis-
fortunes). The Lazarillo established the conventions of the genre: it is the
rst-person narrative of a petty criminal who tells his life from birth to the
moment he writes, emphasizing his poverty and troubled childhood, his serv-
ing a series of depraved and abusive masters, and his being immersed in a
world of thievery, violence, prostitution, and pervasive corruption. This is a
world that had already appeared, but in a different mode, in the 1499 La
Celestina. Some of these elements had also been featured in European nar-
rative ction, particularly Italian, from Il Novellino to Boccaccio and later
Bandello, but not all together at once, and without the aura of criminality and
persecution by judicial and penal authorities. This change is manifest in the
very rhetoric the text of picaresque ction assumes, which is part of its deant
irony. The picaresque narrative took the form of a legal document: the deposi-
tion, or relacin, that the criminal gives to account and justify his current pre-
dicament, his caso, or case, typically an entanglement with the law. Lazarillos
plight is that he has married the mistress of an archpriest to serve as a cover for
their cohabitation, which makes him a willing cuckold and an accessory to a
clergymans corruption. His is no simple fornication, it is complexa fornica-
cin calicada. Lazarillos tone is one of ironic self-exculpation: how, having
the life that I have had, could I have turned out otherwise? His is the rst ironic
novelistic voice, a truly revolutionary innovation in narrative ction: a crimi-
nal telling his own life not to God, like Augustine, but to a judge, a lay
temporal authority.
This template was followed forty-ve years later by the book that came to
be known as the quintessential picaresque novel, Mateo Alemns (1547
1614) Guzmn de Alfarache (1599), whose second part (1605) was called
Atalaya de la vida humana (Watchtower of Human Life). Here the scope of the
narrative has been greatly amplied and the pcaro, who has spent time as a
galley slave, tells his life after having undergone a conversion to the good. So
his confession is presumably one of repentance, offered as example of what
not to do, but like all such pious literary texts, the relish with which evil is
narrated belies the professed devout intentions. The novel is, nevertheless,
 Knight as Fugitive from Justice 57

studded with vexing sermonizing after each of the adventures. The zealotry of
Counter-Reformation Spain has intervened in the years since Lazarillo. Still,
the depiction of criminal life throughout a vast landscape that exceeds Spain to
encompass Italy is so shocking and pitiless, that the Guzmn is, indeed, a
powerful example of early realism. The picaresque mode continued in Spain
with substantial variations in the works of Cervantes himself, but also in those
of Francisco de Quevedo, Francisco Lpez de Ubeda, and others. Elsewhere in
Europe it had a vast and inuential following in Lesages Gil Blas, von Grim-
melshausens Simplicius Simplicissimus, Fieldings Tom Jones and Joseph An-
drews, Tobias Smolletts Roderick Random, and so on until the present. There
are quite a few modern picaresques, from The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn to Felix Krull and quite a few Spanish and Latin American ones. Spanish
criticism credits the picaresque with being the origin of the modern novel. (The
English, of course, claim the honor for Fielding, and the French, parbleu, for
Madame de Lafayette.)
Rafael Salillas, a brilliant if today nearly forgotten nineteenth-century Span-
ish criminologist, maintains that the picaresque, particularly Alemns Guz-
mn de Alfarache, is the genesis of criminology as a science because of its
detailed and uncensored depiction of criminal life. He makes a very persua-
sive case. From the perspective of literature and Cervantes, what is most rele-
vant is that in presenting the life of the hampa, or underworld, the authors of
picaresque novels were laying bare the most frightful manifestations of the
human, all too human in general, bereft of the embellishments of morality and
customs. If the Renaissance was interested in the study of man, the picaresque
constituted a deeper probe than the analyses of princes, courtiers, ironic self-
analysts, and Platonic lovers (Machiavelli, Castiglione, Ficino, Montaigne).
For Salillas, as for Cervantes, criminal life inside and outside of prisons was
like the negative (in all senses) yet accurate portrait of society. For Cervantes
and for literature the most compelling aspect of picaresque life was the indi-
viduating detail, the originality of the deviant, his bizarre behavior, rst cap-
tured in the ne net of legal writing, where his story would have rst been told.
In the picaresque the program of representation due to the casuistry of Spanish
law (studied here in chapter 2) crosses over into literature to leave an indelible
mark on the history of realism and of the novel. Cervantes found in the pica-
resque a poetics of the vile that he worked into the Quijote and some of the
Exemplary Stories, as well as a poetics of everyday life, which elevated to
literature the common things detailed in legal documents as they itemized and
inventoried the real world in which the pcaro roamed.
The origin of the word pcaro, from which the terms picaresque in
general and picaresque novel in particular derived, has been the object of
58 Knight as Fugitive from Justice

debate, as could be expected. I note that the Oxford English Dictionary has
both pcaro and picaroon as being used in English already in the seven-
teenth century. The most likely origin is the verb picar, or to cut, accord-
ing to the great etymologist Joan Corominas. The jobs that some of these
unsavory individuals held involved cutting: the pinche de cocina, or kitchen
helper or porter, cuts up meats and vegetables, so he is nimble with knives.
From there to picar faltriqueras, to snip pockets, was an easy transition, as
was to stab people in order to kill them, maim them, or leave marks on their
bodies. (Faltriqueras were pockets hanging outside the pants, shirts, or vests
that these characters would cut off and ran away with.) There is a great deal of
aggression and physical violence in the picaresque, and the verb picar seems
like an appropriate emblem of it. To this origin some had added Picard,
the natives of Picardythe old French provincewho are said to have been
particularly rowdy and dangerous as soldiers of fortune. Others have even
claimed an Arabic origin for pcaro (to be poorfakir-fgaro-fgaro-
pcaro). It seems to me that the most likely is picar, although I still have
trouble with the dactyl pcaro, which is difcult to account for following the
normal evolution of Spanish words from Latin to romance. Yet Corominas
assures us that changes of that nature do occur, and, of course, pcaro could
be a deliberate disguring of picar following the unconventional rules of the
language of germana, where such things occurred not only to the meaning of
words but also to their pronunciation, because the pcaros secret jargon, or
germana, was given to wild troping and puns that transgressed ordinary laws
of linguistic transformation, as those who spoke it eschewed those of society.

This point brings me back to the passage in which the rst innkeepers story
is told:

The innkeeper, who, as we have already observed, was a sort of a wag, and
had from the beginning suspected that his lodgers brain was none of the
soundest, having heard him to an end, no longer entertained any doubts
about the matter, and in order to regale himself and the rest of his guests with
a dish of mirth, resolved to humor him in his extravagance. With this in view,
he told him, that nothing could be more just and reasonable than his request,
his conceptions being extremely well suited, and natural to such a peerless
knight as his commanding presence and gallant demeanor demonstrated him
to be: that he himself had, in his youth, exercised the honorable profession of
errantry, strolling from place to place, in quest of adventures, in the course of
which he did not fail to visit the suburbs of Malaga, the isles of Riaran, the
booths of Seville, the marketplace of Segovia, the olive gardens of Valencia,
 Knight as Fugitive from Justice 59

the little tower of Granada, the bay of St Lucar, the spout of Cordova, the
public houses of Toledo, and many other places, in which he had exercised the
dexterity of his hands as well as the lightness of his heels, doing innite
mischief, courting widows without number, debauching maidens, ruining
heirs, and in short, making himself known at the bar of every tribunal in
Spain; that, at length, he had retired to this castle, where he lived on his own
means, together with those of other people; accommodating knights-errant of
every quality and degree, solely on account of the affection he bore to them,
and to the coin which they parted with in return for his hospitality. (I, 3,
pp. 15 16)

[El ventero, que, como est dicho, era un poco socarrn y ya tena algunos
barruntos de la falta de juicio de su husped, acab de creerlo cuando acab
de orle semejantes razones, y, por tener que rer aquella noche, determin de
seguirle el humor; y as, le dijo que andaba muy acertado en lo que deseaba y
peda, y que tal presupuesto era propio y natural de los caballeros tan prin-
cipales como l pareca y como su gallarda presencia mostraba; y que l,
ansimesmo, en los aos de su mocedad, se haba dado a aquel honroso ejer-
cicio, andando por diversas partes del mundo, buscando sus aventuras, sin
que hubiese dejado los Percheles de Mlaga, Islas de Riarn, Comps de
Sevilla, Azoguejo de Segovia, la Olivera de Valencia, Rondilla de Granada,
playa de Sanlcar, Potro de Crdoba y las Ventillas de Toledo y otras diversas
partes, donde haba ejercitado la ligereza de sus pies, sutileza de sus manos,
haciendo muchos tuertos, recuestando muchas viudas, deshaciendo algunas
doncellas y engaando a algunos pupilos, y, nalmente, dndose a conocer
por cuantas audiencias y tribunales hay casi en toda Espaa; y que, a lo
ltimo, se haba venido a recoger a aquel su castillo, donde viva con su
hacienda y con las ajenas, recogiendo en l a todos los caballeros andantes de
cualquiera calidad y condicin que fuesen, slo por la mucha acin que les
tena y porque partiesen con l de sus haberes, en pago de su buen deseo.
(pp. 55 56)]

This is the life of an unrepentant thief and trickster who has been hauled
before many criminal courts and lives off his ill-begotten fortune by continu-
ing to eece others. He has graduated from young pcaro and Don Juan type to
middle-aged crook and is proud of it. There has been no conversion to the
good here as in Guzmn de Alfarache; on the contrary, he shows a wistful
regret for a criminal past now gone but hardly forgotten. However, the most
interesting feature in the passage is the transformation of picaresque into
chivalric adventures and the conquests of a common pimp into grand-style
Don Juantype erotic feats involving the seduction of widows and deower-
ing of maidens. The narrator echoes and magnies in mock-heroic tones the
innkeepers own sense of self-worth in a bombastic, if ambivalent, eulogy. This
60 Knight as Fugitive from Justice

is the ip side of Don Quijotes translation of tawdry, everyday reality into

chivalric terms, as when he calls the whores at the inn doncellas (virgins),
which astonishes and delights them because the very concept could not be
further from their profession. The mockery highlights the innkeepers chica-
nery, holding him up as the very exemplar of criminality, cynicism, and radical
lack of values.
The narrator, echoing the innkeeper, accomplishes the transformation by a
typically Cervantean twist, not just by following a germana trope. By 1605,
when Part I of the Quijote was published, the picaresque style of life had
acquired a literary dimension, in great measure because of the success of
Alemns Guzmn de Alfarache. In other words, pcaro was a role one could
play like that of knight; high and low literature had the same effect and fol-
lowed common tropes, as did the language of germana and Gongoristic po-
etry. The character that had been plucked out of the archive of criminal cases
had become a novelistic type. It is conceivable, and Cervantes suggests it here
and in Rinconete and Cortadillo, one of the Exemplary Stories, that some of
the real pcaros had chosen that path not because of need but to play the role
and to revel as a group in their collective rejection of society. They are, in a
sense, doing the same as Don Quijote by adopting the style of a literary charac-
ter and setting out on a life of adventure according to books read, not to
societys rules. This is the reason the innkeeper can transform pcaro into
knight. Of course, given the mock-heroic tone and irony of the passage, it is
most likely that the innkeeper is also shrouding in a literary mantle the reasons
for his turning to picaresque life, which were more than likely poverty and his
natural inclination to evil. The third-person indirect style allows the reader to
perceive the distance between truth and its embellishment. The truth of the
innkeepers story is no doubt written and stored in the criminal records of all
those courts and tribunals mentioned, the veritable source and archive of
picaresque lives.
The traveling prostitutes, who are ennobled by Don Quijotes chivalric rhet-
oric, are on their way to Seville with some muleteers. Picaresque life is migra-
tory, and the inns in the Quijote serve as gathering places for the cornucopia of
rogues of both sexes. Seville was the capital of picarda, the gateway to the
New World, and in general a center of criminal life. (Seville was the only port
through which Spain had commerce with its American empire.) These pros-
titutes bring to mind similar ones in La Celestina, Lazarillo de Tormes, and
Guzmn de Alfarache. But here they also stand in sharp contrast to Dulcinea
and the knights imaginings about this farm girl elevated to the exalted status
of courtly love lady. In their kindness to Don Quijote the prostitutes also
 Knight as Fugitive from Justice 61

reveal a common Cervantean topic: the goodness of delinquents within the

rules of their own world and independent of their being outside the law. And
the prostitutes are outside the law merely by being on the road, away from
their homes and the protective legal custody of fathers and brothers. Their
wandering ways are a component of their depravity. Lust and criminality
love and the lawsurround Don Quijote at the inn, a background against
which he thrusts the rhetorical ights drawn from the courtly love tradition
and the chivalric romances.
It is a contrast that also underscores the clash between the feats that Don
Quijote thinks he is accomplishing and the criminal acts he is really commit-
ting. He sets out determined to deal with grievances to be redressed, wrongs
to be rectied, errors amended, abuses to be reformed, and debts to be settled
(I, 2, p. 9). Which in the Spanish has a more legalistic tone: segn eran los
agravios que pensaba deshacer, tuertos que enderezar, sinrazones que enmen-
dar, y abusos que mejorar, y deudas que satisfacer (p. 45). (Tuertos has the
same origin as the English tort, in Latin twisted.) The disparity between
the justice he plans to dispense and the series of injuries, torts, and damages
that he causes is crucial to understanding Part I of the Quijote because the
knights criminal record contributes to the novels shapea record that could
be written by setting specic instances of misbehavior under each of the cate-
gories of offense that he plans to correct. It is a record that is the reverse of his
intentions. The pursuit and capture of the hidalgo, and the restitution made
for some of the injuries and damages that he causes, organize the book. The
picaresque backdrop at the inn also denes Don Quijote, which is part of the
reason he ofcially assumes his new identity there. It is the exact opposite,
the mirror image, of the innkeepers turning his life as a pcaro into that of a
knight. From now on Don Quijotes criminal record, his wandering along
roads and through wilderness and his catastrophic sojourns at Juan Palome-
ques inn make him into a pcaro instead of a knight.
Don Quijote is the rst hero in the Western tradition to be a fugitive from
justice, one whose life is dened by ight from the authorities of an organized
state. The wily Ulysses returns from war shrouded in glory, and his trek home
is staked out by a series of obstacles that put his courage and mettle to the test.
Aeneass journey takes him to the solemn task of founding Rome. The pilgrim
in Dantes Divine Comedy seeks transcendence in the sublime quest for Bea-
trice. The pcaros, Lzaro, Guzmn, and Pablos, lack the heroic grandeur to
which Don Quijote aspires, but they do provide a close model and similar
ambience, a world of criminals and representatives of justice within which the
mad hidalgo will attempt to revive chivalric adventures. Don Quijotes ight
62 Knight as Fugitive from Justice

and capture are cast within the discourse of the law because he is now the
citizen of a body politic whose morals and mores are at odds with his heroic
aspirations and his outdated concept of justice.
The pervasive presence of the law as context to Don Quijotes actions is a
sharp reminder of the knights real statusof the gap between what he thinks
he is entitled to and that to which the changing social and political conditions
have reduced him. As an hidalgo, or petty nobleman, he considered himself, if
not completely beyond the reach of the law, at least due certain exemptions
and privileges, which he elevates through the language of chivalry to the level
of a caballero entitled to use the donhe was not as a mere hidalgo. Knights
are above the law. But the lawthat is, justicedoes catch up with him,
signaling the change in Spanish society, and the stark fact that he is not only
heir to his deeds, as he says, but responsible for his actionshe is a subject,
subject to criminal justice like any other. Hidalgos were gradually losing their
privileges. The devastating humiliation of punishment is partly staved off by
his madness, which protects him through Part I from the reality of his social
condition and allows him to rationalize not only his defeats but his arrest and
caging at the end. The mere fact that Don Quijote can be served with an arrest
warrant reveals the erosion of the nobilitys exemptionshe is released to the
priest and barber not because of his social status but because of his insan-
ity. The convolution of the plot through punishment and reparation at the
end make the whole story meaningful: it frames, as it were, the hero (pun
intended).
There are many unanswered questions about the structure of the Quijotes
plot, which seems to be merely episodic with no anticipated end in sight
there is one adventure after another, with characters who reappear and situa-
tions that are repeated, creating some patterns but with hardly a guiding line
of development. No foreseeable end to his quest looms in the future, as in the
case of Dantes pilgrim. There is no sequence of actions linked by necessity to
build an Aristotelian chain of events, either, though we know from chapters 47
and 48 of Part I that Cervantes was highly conversant with the Poetics and its
Spanish and Italian commentators. Nor is there the overall shape that would
be provided by the pcaros life, a plot structure already known and even
parodied by Cervantes in the gure of Gins de Pasamonte. This is the kind of
plot that carries the rogue from birth to the moment he tells the story, proceed-
ing through a series of events and masters that lead to his corruption and, in
some instances, his conversion. There is no such pattern in the novel, in spite
of Cervantes reference to the story of Don Quijote as a caso, clearly suggest-
ing that what he found in the archives of La Mancha was a criminal case, the
record of Don Quijotes weird behavior and misdeeds. There is not even the
 Knight as Fugitive from Justice 63

story of a fabulous birth, like that of Amads de Gaula, Don Quijotes model,
whose youth and training as a knight are narrated in loving detail in the best-
known chivalric romance.
We learn, in fact, hardly anything about Don Quijotes family and youth, as
if a determining beginning had been purposely avoided. (The use of lugar in
the rst sentence of the novel is also a way of withdrawing any kind of deter-
minism from Don Quijotes origin in the most concrete fashion, as is the
narrators refusal to reveal the name of the village.) In the rst sentence of the
book there is a clash between a beginning dictated by tradition, In such and
such a place there dwelt, and a Renaissance authors will to create an original
work of literature: whose name I do not care to remember. There is also an
echo of a legal document in which place and time are specied, as in a relacin.
Don Quijotes only relevant life is the one he invents for himself as a literary
character within the ction. That life, however, is only good as a setup for the
mounting yet disconnected number of episodes that occur in roads and inns. It
is, in fact, the legal cast of the story, the knights criminal acts, persecution, and
capture, that gives recognizable form to the plot, along with the partial repara-
tions for the damages and injuries that he inicts along the way. Don Quijotes
capture and submission at the end loops the plot, giving it a kind of closure. He
is returned home caged, on a cart like the ones that were used to display
criminals in order to hold them up to shame or carry them to the gallows. I will
concentrate on this larger story here and leave the various shorter ones, begin-
ning with Marcela and Grisstomo, for following chapters.

As we saw in chapter 1, after the galley slaves episode both Don Quijote and
Sancho become fugitives of the law, although that was not their rst misdeed
by far. We discover in the nal episodes in Juan Palomeques inn that the Holy
Brotherhood had issued a warrant of arrest for the knight. Freeing the pris-
oners and injuring their wardens are Don Quijotes most serious crimes, for
they are committed directly against the crown, and in addition were offenses
perpetrated in despoblado, on the open road, in an unpopulated area. As I
explained, crimes in such places were singled out by Spanish law as par-
ticularly damnable because the victims had no chance of being helped by
othersdespoblado means a barren place, a place without pueblo, with-
out people, outside the town, a kind of wilderness, the uncivilizedliterally,
that which is not within the political because it is not in the polis or city.
Despoblado is a place outside the scope of the law and of justice, the un-
sheltered. In other works by Cervantes the most hideous crimes are com-
mitted in such areas, as in The Call of the Blood, a story we will have
64 Knight as Fugitive from Justice

occasion to examine later. In fact, most of Don Quijotes crimes take place in
despoblado; hence toward the end of the novel he and Sancho are called by
one of the troopers of the Holy Brotherhood salteadores de caminos and the
knight a salteador de sendas y carreras (p. 528): that is to say, highway
robbers or a highwayman, individuals known for assaulting people on the
open roads. This kind of criminal was accorded special attention and punish-
ment in Spanish law because it was the crowns charge to keep roads safe;
therefore, offenses committed on them were considered against the crown, not
against local or regional authorities. The laws were enacted and toughened in
response to bandolerismo, or brigandage, a common scourge at the time that
threatened the stability of the kingdom, represented in Part II by the gure of
Roque Ginart. As we have already seen, there was a special police force orga-
nized to deal with such criminal activities in elds and roads: the Santa Her-
mandad, or the Holy Brotherhood.
The Holy Brotherhood, which I have mentioned as an example of an institu-
tion created by the Catholic kings in their effort to achieve centralization, was
sanctioned at the Cortes de Madrigal in 1476. The seat of the Holy Brother-
hood was Toledo. It was essentially a revamping and consolidation of brother-
hoods, independent vigilante forces scattered through Spain and dating back
to the Middle Ages. The Holy Brotherhoods duty was to patrol the des-
poblado, to pursue criminals who escaped from one jurisdiction to another,
and to punish crimes deemed as rebellious against public order, including
rape. It was more than just a rural police. It also acted as a court of justice
whose sentences were notorious for their summary expediency and the sever-
ity and swiftness of the punishments meted out. Its cuadrilleros, or troopers,
were feared and hated, and the institution declined as the towns that sup-
ported it through special taxes protested and eventually withdrew their nanc-
ing. The troopers were like members of an ofcial posse. By Cervantes time
the strength of the Holy Brotherhood had been reduced and it was charged
mostly with the control of brigandage, but consciousness of its presence and
fear of its penchant to pass judgment and execute its harsh sentences without
delay were still very vivid, as we can gather from Sanchos apprehensions. He
says that he can hear the troopers arrows buzzing around his ears because the
Holy Brotherhood liked to execute criminals by tying them to a post and
shooting them with their bows: I give you notice, that all your errantry will
stand you in little stead against the Holy Brotherhood, who dont value all the
knights-errant in the universe three farthings; and, in faith, this minute I think
I hear their arrows buzzing about my ears (I, 23, p. 163) [porque le hago
saber que con la Santa Hermandad no hay usar de caballeras; que no se le da a
 Knight as Fugitive from Justice 65

ella por cuantos caballeros andantes hay dos maraveds; y sepa que ya me
parece que sus saetas me zumban por los odos (p. 248)]. The Holy Brother-
hood is a constant and menacing presence in Part I. Juan Palomeque, the
innkeeper, belongs to it, which leads one to believe that troopers and criminals
were cut from the same cloth.
But releasing the galley slaves and injuring the guards, while being the
gravest offenses, are not the only punishable crimes the knight and (some-
times) his squire commit. Had Don Quijote been brought to trial at the end of
Part I, the following list of offenses could have been produced against him. All
of them are covered by contemporary Spanish law, and in some of the episodes
there is direct allusion to the potential application of specic statutes.
At that rst inn, Don Quijote brains with his lance two carriers or muleteers
who touched his arms while he is on their vigil. These are serious violent acts.
When the rst carrier touched Don Quijotes arms, [He] raising his lance with
both hands, bestowed it with such good will upon the carriers head, that he
fell prostrate on the ground, so effectually mauled, that, had the blow been
repeated, there would have been no occasion to call a surgeon (I, 3, p. 18)
[alz la lanza a dos manos y dio con ella tan gran golpe al arriero en la cabeza,
que le derrib en el suelo tan maltrecho, que si segundara con otro, no tuviera
necesidad de maestro que le curara (p. 58)]. And to the second: [He] lifting up
his lance, failed to break it into pieces on the carriers head, but not the head
itself, which split into four(I, 3, pp. 1819) [alz otra vez la lanza, y, sin
hacerla pedazos, hizo ms de tres la cabeza del segundo arriero, porque se la
abri por cuatro (pp. 5859)]. These are, of course, two cases of assault and
battery resulting in serious injury.
The episode in which Don Quijote forces Juan Haldudo to stop ogging
Andrs is shrouded in legalisms and is one of several in which the issue of
justice is at the forefront. Haldudo is not breaking the law by punishing An-
drs, though he may be using excessive force. As in the galley slaves episode,
Don Quijote acts as judge, but in doing so he has usurped Haldudos right to
deal with his servant and threatened him with physical injury. We will learn
later that Don Quijotes actions have had the opposite effect of what he in-
tended, and that in fact Andrs is a kind of pcaro on his way to visit places like
those on the rst innkeepers itinerary. In other words, he may very well have
been guilty and Haldudo justied in punishing him. Don Quijotes ad hoc
seigneurial justice is out of step with current conditions and, in fact, leads to
crime. We may remember here the lines from Richard L. Kagans superb Law-
suits and Litigants in Castile: 1500 1700 that I quoted in chapter 1, which
seem inspired by this very episode: By the time Cervantes wrote about a
66 Knight as Fugitive from Justice

pathetic knight setting out to preserve justice by means of chivalric valor and
courageous derring-do, most of his readers would have equaled justice with
the world of lawyers, judges, and other men of the law. In this legalistic
world, the gure of Don Quixote was not so much a joke as an anachronism.
He represented a mythical age in which justice was possible without the help
of lawyers and a bevy of legal briefs, but there was no room for an ageing
knight errant in the labyrinth of Castiles courts. The irony is not just how
ineffectual Don Quijote is, but how his actions to bring about justice are
themselves criminal and punishable by law.
The episode with the merchants from Toledo could have led to injury had
Rocinante not stumbled, but Don Quijote did attack one of them in a fashion
that, in spite of the chivalric models for the adventure, betted a highway rob-
ber. Don Quijote has perpetrated here his rst assault in despoblado against
innocent and peaceful subjects availing themselves of the kings highway. One
of their servants beats him to a pulp in legitimate self-defense, settling the issue
without recourse to ofcial justice.
After a brief stay at home and the acquisition of Sancho as squire, Don
Quijote attacks the Benedictine friar in the episode that winds up with the
battle against the Basque. This is another unprovoked assault: and without
waiting for any other reply, he put spurs to Rocinante, and couching his lance,
attacked the rst friar with such fury and resolution that, if he had not thrown
himself from his mule, he would have come to the ground severely mauled, not
without some desperate wound, nay, perhaps stone dead(I, 8, p. 48) [Y sin
esperar ms respuesta, pic a Rocinante y, la lanza baja, arremeti contra el
primero fraile, con tanta furia y denuedo, que si el fraile no se dejara caer de la
mula, l le hiciera venir al suelo mal de su grado, y aun mal ferido, si no cayera
muerto (p. 100)].
The ght with the Basque is also punishable by law, as ghting in the open
elds and roadsagain, despobladowas a serious offence, and the man
sustains severe wounds: he began to spout blood from his nostrils, mouth and
ears (I, 9, p. 55) [comenz a echar sangre por las narices y por la boca, y por
los odos (p. 111)]. Sancho knows the gravity of the crime and is quick to
suggest seeking sanctuary in a church, the only place safe from the reach of the
law: Sir, said he, I think it would be the wisest course for us to retreat to some
church; for, as he with whom you fought remains in a sorry condition, tis odds
but they inform the Holy Brotherhood of the affair, and have us apprehended:
and verily, if they do, before we get out of prison, we may have a chance to
sweat for it (I, 10, pp. 57 58) [Parceme, seor, que sera acertado irnos a
retraer a alguna iglesia; que, segn qued maltrecho aquel con quien os com-
 Knight as Fugitive from Justice 67

batistes, no ser mucho que den noticia del caso a la Santa Hermandad y nos
prendan; y a fe que si lo hacen, que primero que salgamos de la crcel que nos
han de sudar el hopo (p. 113)]. Sancho is referring to being tortured, to which
he, but not his noble master, was liable. Sanchos alarm is such that he insists:
I do know that the Holy Brotherhood commonly looks after those who
quarrel and ght up and down the country (I, 10, p. 58) [slo s que la Santa
Hermandad tiene que ver con los que pelean en el campo (p. 113)].
In the episode with the men from Yanguas and their mares (who are so
seductive to Rocinante), which is in parodic contrast with the Marcela and
Grisstomo story and a heavy satire of the courtly love tradition, Don Quijote
injures another man: the knight lent the rst he met with such a hearty stroke
with his sword, as laid open a leather jacket he wore, together with a large por-
tion of his shoulder(I, 15, p. 93) [dio don Quijote una cuchillada a uno, que le
abri un sayo de cuero de que vena vestido, con gran parte de la espalda (p.
160)]. The men then proceed to thoroughly beat him, Sancho, and Rocinante
and to ee for fear that they too can be hunted down by the Holy Brother-
hood. More mayhem follows. Don Quijote kills more than seven sheep in the
episode in which he takes the herds for armies of knights. This opens the list of
property damage that he causes throughout Part I. The shepherds, in return,
rain stones on Don Quijote and leave him for dead, eeing in a hurry because
they, like the men from Yanguas, also fear the Holy Brotherhood.
There follows the adventure of the corpse, in which Don Quijote attacks the
men in mourning who are transporting it, knocking one down and breaking
his leg. The man claims that by injuring him Don Quijote has committed a
great sacrilege and crime because he had already taken orders, alluding to
specic statutes of the period. The man accuses Don Quijote of having laid
violent hands on consecrated things (I, 19, p. 128) [ha puesto mano violenta
en cosa sagrada (p. 206)], to which Don Quijote replies with a bit of pettifogg-
ery that reveals his familiarity with the law, I touched him not with my hands,
but with my lance (p. 152) [no puse las manos sino este lanzn (p. 206)]. To
add insult to injury, Sancho plunders the supply ass that the men had with
them. Breaking this mans leg is the worst bodily injury that the knight causes
in Part I, and whether the victim had actually taken rst orders or not, Don
Quijote would still be liable for a violent act committed in the open road and
at night. Sancho would be prosecuted as a thief.
Next comes the famous episode of the barbers basin, in which the poor
fellow is not injured because he jumps off his mount in the nick of time. But
Don Quijote steals the basin, which Sancho assesses to be worth a handsome
amount. Together with the provisions that they stole from the men with the
68 Knight as Fugitive from Justice

corpse, Don Quijote and Sancho carry with them booty obtained by violent
means on the open road. As with the merchants from Toledo, the Benedictine
friars, and the men with the corpse, he has assaulted an innocent subject on the
kings highway.
We have already looked closely at the episode in which Don Quijote frees
the galley slaves and attacks their keepers, and here we are looking at how it
structures the plot of the novel because Don Quijote is pursued and captured
as a result. The whole chapter is packed with legalisms and with a very de-
tailed depiction of the functioning of Spains criminal justice system, which
clearly Cervantes knew well rsthand. The episode is not just about the law
but about its enforcement, including, of course, deviations from it and institu-
tionalized corruption.
Sancho is the one most keenly aware of the danger they are in because of the
seriousness of their offense, which has been against the crown, and not only
because it was committed in the open road but because the condemned men
were directly under the purview of royal authorities, as were all those assigned
to the galleys. (Here domestic and foreign policy coalesced, as the prisoners
provided the motive force for ships that enforced the latter.) Sancho provides
the legal theory behind the potential sanctions against them. He says that the
prisoners are gente forzada del rey (p. 236), translated by Smollett as a
chain of slaves compelled by the King to work in the galleys (I, 22, p. 153),
which reects the legalistic precision of Sanchos words. The squire further ex-
plains, like an expert jurist, that la justicia, que es el mismo rey, no hace
fuerza ni agravio a semejante gente, sino que los castiga en pena de sus de-
litos (p. 236), rendered thus by Smollett: justice, which is the king himself,
never uses violence nor severity to such people, except as punishment for their
crimes (I, 22, p. 153). Sancho means that the king, in whom natural law is
invested, or who incarnates it, is discharging his duties, not acting violently.
When the priest catches up with them later and, to vex Don Quijote, tells a
tall tale about having been assaulted by the freed prisoners, he corroborates
Sanchos legal interpretation. The perpetrator of the crime, he says, was
rebelling against his King and rightful sovereign, by acting contrary to his just
commands, in depriving the galleys of their hands, and arousing the Holy
Brotherhood, which hath continued so many years in undisturbed repose (I,
29, p. 241) [quiso defraudar la justicia, ir contra su rey y seor natural, pues
fue contra sus justos mandamientos. Quiso, digo, quitar a las galeras sus pies,
poner en alboroto a la Santa Hermandad, que haba muchos aos que re-
posaba (p. 344)]. Rey y seor natural means exactly that: his power to
command issues from natural law. Don Quijote and Sancho, in fact, will from
 Knight as Fugitive from Justice 69

now until the end of Part I become fugitives from justice. They are being
pursued both by the priest and barber and by the Holy Brotherhood, with the
posses converging at the end to nab the knight.
Don Quijote as fugitive from justice is a major ironic incongruity because of
his perceived exemption from the law as an hidalgo and his deranged belief
that he is a knight. But at this particular pointthe episodes in the Sierra
Morenahis being a fugitive is ironic in three particular ways that engage the
overarching presence of penal law in the novel as applied to him. First, Don
Quijote ees into the Sierra Morena to do penance for Dulcinea in the manner
of chivalric heroes; but it is a penance, as Sancho reminds him, without a
motive or reason because Dulcinea was not guilty of the sort of indelity that
Angelica committed in Ariostos Orlando furioso, one of his masters models.
Don Quijote also has to make up his own delinquency to justify the penance:
his only imaginable fault would be insufcient service to his lady, an innite
debt that is by denition impossible to repay. His is a punishment without a
crimehis or his ladys. Second, Don Quijote has, indeed, a genuine and
pressing reason to become a fugitive because the Holy Brotherhood is surely
after him for actual offenses. The lack of a real motive for penance is ironically
counterbalanced by the genuine motive for ight, of which he is oblivious, but
that more than justies it. Don Quijote is a fugitive without a cause, but with a
pending cause. Third, he is going to nd in the Sierra Morena a mirror image
of himself, Cardenio, who has a real reason to do penance because he has been
betrayed by Luscinda and also because he has committed various assaults and
thefts. He is remorseful too because his cowardice also led to his predicament.
When Don Quijote and Cardenio meet they embrace like brothers. The ironic
interplay between existent and nonexistent motives or causes is augmented by
the Sierra Morena itself as a setting, as a place to expiate real and imaginary
guilta site for literal rustication.
The Sierra Morena is a true despoblado, in the juridical sense discussed be-
fore, and also a wilderness like the selva selvaggia of the Divine Comedy and of
literary tradition. It is a labyrinth, too, as Javier Herrero has suggested.
Solitude and the starkest absence of civilization are its main characteristics, not
to mention an inhospitable nature. Cardenio, the quintessential inhabitant of
this landscape, is a wild man, with sporadically violent contacts with other
human beings. Dorotea, his counterpart in the Sierra Morena, who completes
this primal and alienated couple, is dressed as a man, as if to highlight the
disorder prevalent in these woods; it is chaos prior to civilization and the
separation of the sexes. She has been sexually assaulted by her employer and by
the servant who helped her to escape, whom she hurls down a cliff when
70 Knight as Fugitive from Justice

defending herself. We do not know if he survives. These are dangerous woods.

Because of all this lawlessness, the Sierra Morena threatens to become alle-
goricalabstract in the purity of its lacks and absences and chartable by
recourse to systems of thought and belief. But this tendency is counterbalanced
by the juridical nature of the despoblado, which gives it a contemporaneous
air, a factuality, that withdraws it from the literary and the ideologicalit is a
space named and classied by the legal codes in all their casuistry and con-
tingency. Outlaws running away from the Holy Brotherhood hide here, not
lost pilgrims in search of sublime salvation. Cardenios and Doroteas counter-
parts are the galley slaves, who must be hiding in the very bowels of the earth
(as Gins de Pasamonte put it), in parts not too dissimilar to the Sierra Morena.
They must be in despoblados of their own, committing the kind of crime that
the priest mentions in his made-up story about them. Like Don Quijote, they
are true fugitives from justice, dwellingconned, rusticatedin some hos-
tile region. Will they be redeemed by this punishment? When Gins reappears
it is to steal Sanchos donkey, but in Part II he has transformed himself into
Maese Pedro, master puppeteer, a kind of redemption by art. Don Quijote
emerges from the hills ready to take on the hideous giant Pandalando de la
Fosca Vista (Panphilanderer of the Menacing Gaze).
After serving time in the Sierra Morena the conicts in Part I are resolved,
once the characters repair to Juan Palomeques inn. It is as if their season in the
woods had puried them, as if the rustication had led to their conversion to the
lawful. At the inn Don Quijote will add to the list of damages that he causes by
slashing the wineskins and spilling their contents. But in so doing he slays the
ghastly giant Pandalando de la Fosca Vista and prepares the way for the
scene in which justice will be served and order restored by the various mar-
riage vows made or observed. Again, this may contain an allegorical sugges-
tion, except for the grotesqueness of it all and the fact that the giant and the
whole story of Princess Micomicona is a hoax. More importantly, the court-
like scene at which settlements are reached is, after all, Palomeques inn, the
kind of picaresque abode that opened Part I. The criminal site becomes an
improvised courtroom. There is an ironic appropriateness to this, for the inn
and picaresque life are the true realms in which Don Quijote has moved and
in which he himself will be recognized by the Holy Brotherhood troopers, one
of whom

recollected that among other warrants for apprehending delinquents, he had

one against Don Quixote, issued by the Holy Brotherhood, on account of his
having set the galley-slaves at liberty, as Sancho had very justly feared. This
coming into his head, he was resolved to assure himself, whether or not the
 Knight as Fugitive from Justice 71

knights person agreed with the description, and pulling out of his bosom a
bundle of parchment, he soon found what he sought, and beginning to spell
with great deliberation (for he was by no means an expert reader) between
every word he xed his eyes upon the knight, whose visage he compared with
the marks specied in the warrant, and discovered beyond all doubt, that he
was the very person described. (I, 45, p. 393)

[le vino a la memoria que entre algunos mandamientos que traa para prender
a algunos delincuentes, traa uno contra don Quijote, a quien la Santa Her-
mandad haba mandado prender por la libertad que dio a los galeotes, y como
Sancho con mucha razn haba temido. Imaginando, pues, esto, quiso cer-
ticarse si las seas que de don Quijote traa venan bien, y sacando del seno
un pergamino, top con el que buscaba, y ponindosele a leer de espacio,
porque no era buen lector, a cada palabra que lea pona los ojos en don
Quijote, y iba cotejando las seas del mandamiento con el rostro de don
Quijote, y hall que sin duda alguna era el que el mandamiento rezaba. (pp.
52728)]

The plots loop is closedSanchos prophecy fullledwhen the document

with Don Quijotes arrest warrant is read. (The warrant, by the way, like the
sentences of the galley slaves, is another text mentioned but not reproduced in
the novelwe do not get to read it.) The knights case is closed, as it were, as
his body and the description yield a match. Here we have an instance where
casuistrys program of representation has been successful. It is now up to the
priest to plead, as had the rst innkeeper, that because of Don Quijotes mental
condition he will never be convicted, and to ask that the prisoner be released to
him and the barber to return him to his village. Justice is prevailing, not just in
the lofty realm in which abstract ideas, theories, and religious doctrines can be
shufed like cards, but in the real world of warrants, arrests, and the conne-
ment of bodies. Because it is bodies, not souls, that are at issue in this fallen
world ruled by the law, the priest acts as a lawyer, not in his capacity as
minister of God.
The priests argument about Don Quijotes immunity by reason of his in-
sanity is grounded in Spanish law going back to (at least) the Siete partidas in
the thirteenth century. For instance: The same thing that we stated about
minors applies to madmen or those who are devoid of memory, who cannot be
charged for actions committed while they were suffering their derangement;
We also state that if a man who is mad or devoid of memory, or a minor of
less than ten and a half years of age, killed another man, that he does not
commit any crime because he does not know, nor understand, the fault that he
commits; Furthermore, the man who is insane and does not act properly
cannot be charged because he does not know or understand right from wrong
72 Knight as Fugitive from Justice

(Esso mismo [of what is stated about minors], dezimos, que seria del loco, o
del furioso, o del desmemoriado, que lo non pueden acusar de cosa que ziesse
mientras que le durare la locura; Otrosi dezimos, que si algund ome que fuesse
loco, o desmemoriado, o moo que non fuesse de edad de diez aos e medio,
matasse a otro, que no cae porende en pena ninguna: porque non sabe, nin
entiende, el yerro que faze); Otrosi, el ome que es fuera de su seso, non faze
ningun fecho endereadamente: porende non se puede obligar, porque non
sabe, nin entiende, pro ni dao). Closure, in the case of Don Quijote, is
brought about within the limits prescribed by the law. These texts, these Par-
tidas, are the foundation of those in force at the time and are effective in
invalidating the one read by the ofcer of the Holy Brotherhood. Both func-
tion within the system.
It is at the inn too where the barber whose basin was stolen is paid and the
innkeeper recites a list of the expenses incurred by Don Quijote, Sancho, and
their mounts, in addition to the substantial damages that they have caused in
their two calamitous visits. The beginning of chapter 46 has the tone of a court
settlement, with the representatives of the Holy Brotherhood exercising their
judicial duties and the various parties damages paid and, in the case of the
barber, with a document issued to prove it:
the curate talked so effectually, and the knight himself acted such extrava-
gances, that the troopers must have been more mad than he if they had not
plainly perceived his defect; therefore they thought proper to be satised, and
even performed the ofce of mediators betwixt the barber and Sancho Panza,
who still maintained the fray with great animosity; for, the troopers, as limbs of
justice, brought the case to an arbitration, and decided it in such a manner, as
left both parties, if not fully satised, at least in some sort content with the
determination, which was, that the pack-saddles should be exchanged, but the
girths and halters remain as they were. With regard to Mambrinos helmet, the
curate, unperceived by Don Quixote, took the barber aside, and paid him eight
reals for the basin, taking a receipt in full, that cleared the knight from any
suspicion of fraud, from thence forward, for ever, amen. . . . The innkeeper,
who took particular notice of the full satisfaction which the barber had re-
ceived from the curate, demanded payment of Don Quixote for the damage he
had done to the bags, and the loss of his wine, swearing that neither Rocinante
nor Sanchoss ass should stir from the stable until he should be satised to the
last farthing. The curate pacied the landlord, and Don Fernando paid the bill,
although the judge very sincerely offered to take that upon himself. In this
manner, universal concord was restored, so that the inn no longer represented
the disorder in King Agramantes camp, but rather the peace and quiet that
reigned in the time of Octavius Caesar: and this blessing was generally ascribed
to the laudable intention and great eloquence of the priest, together with the
incomparable generosity of Don Fernando. (I, 46, pp. 39596)
 Knight as Fugitive from Justice 73

[En efecto, tanto les supo el cura decir, y tantas locuras supo don Quijote
hacer, que ms locos fueran que no l los cuadrilleros si no conocieran la falta
de don Quijote; y as, tuvieron por bien apaciguarse, y aun de ser medianeros
de hacer las paces entre el barbero y Sancho Panza, que todava asistan con
gran rancor a su pendencia. Finalmente, ellos, como miembros de justicia,
mediaron la causa y fueron rbitros della, de tal modo, que ambas partes
quedaron, si no del todo contentas, a lo menos en algo satisfechas, porque se
trocaron las albardas, y no las cinchas y jquimas; y en lo que tocaba a lo del
yelmo de Mambrino, el cura, a socapa y sin que don Quijote lo entendiese, le
dio por la baca ocho reales, y el barbero le hizo una cdula de recibo y de no
llamarse a engao por entonces, no por siempre jams amn. . . . El ventero, a
quien no se le pas por alto la ddiva y recompensa que el cura haba hecho al
barbero, pidi el escote de don Quijote, con el menoscabo de sus cueros y falta
de vino jurando que no saldra de la venta Rocinante, ni el jumento de Sancho,
sin que se le pagase primero hasta el ltimo ardite. Todo lo apacigu el cura, y
lo pag don Fernando, puesto que el oidor, de muy buena voluntad, haba
tambin ofrecido la paga; y de tal manera quedaron todos en paz y sosiego,
que ya no pareca la venta la discordia del campo de Agramante, como don
Quijote haba dicho, sino la misma paz y quietud del tiempo de Octaviano; de
todo lo cual fue comn opinin que se deban dar las gracias a la buena
intencin y mucha elocuencia del seor cura y la incomparable liberalidad de
don Fernando. (pp. 53031)]

The priest has argued his case well and has taken care of the proper compen-
sations. Restitution is a form of resolution, an ending of sorts, a kind of
closure provided by the legal cast of the plot rather than by a literary de-
vice drawn from narrative tradition. The innkeeper and his wife are made
whole, as it were, as was the second barber. But there are others, like the
shepherds and the man whose leg was broken, who are not compensated for
their losses or injuries.
Part II of the novel, which is among various other things a profound com-
mentary of Part I, with episodes sometimes matching ones from the rst part
as direct rewritings, has what I take to be a hilarious and complicated gloss on
this scene of reparations at the inn. I am referring to the aftermath of Don
Quijotes destruction of Maese Pedros puppet show (II, 26), when the knight
is made to pay for every gurine smashed, with the award being established
according to the rank of the character each represents in the story and the
amount of damage inicted to the object itself. This is a brilliant passage in
which literary characters acquire concrete existence, but only as gures in a
puppet show, and while their injuries are reduced to the material damage done
to their images, their status in the ction also determines their worth. There
are faint traces here of contemporary debates about religious images, but more
to the point the ction in Part I, shrouded in a legal mantle and resolved in a
74 Knight as Fugitive from Justice

trial-like scene, is brought down to a miniaturized but real drama involving

restitution in a manner that involves both ction and the most trivial reality. It
is as if Cervantes were saying that, indeed, the conicts in Part I were of a
judicial nature but transformed into literature to such a degree that they can be
represented by this blatantly ctitious puppet theater. In short, this episode is a
parody of Part I that underlines the literary role that reparations play. Cer-
vantes, as is often the case, preempts critical commentary, such as mine here.
After the reparations the charade to cage Don Quijote for the return home is
organized. This is another masterstroke, by which the knight will be punished
but on his own terms, at the level of ction. Don Quijote will still engage in
two more violent acts: his ght with the goatherd and the attack on those
carrying an image of the Virgin. But the overall pattern of injury, damage,
judgment, and restitution is closed at the inn.
Two patterns have emerged from the foregoing. One is the overall story of
crime, pursuit, capture, and connement of Don Quijote, with the attendant
plot of damages and restitution. The other is the one of rustication and re-
demption, or correction and reform, involving Don Quijote and the characters
in the Sierra Morena. Both intersect at the inn, which is transformed from
picaresque emporium into court of justice, with priests, policemen, judges,
assessments of damages, negotiated settlements, and conscription. What gives
shape to the Quijote, Part I are these underlying legal stories and the gradual
merging of pcaro and knight to create a protagonist that will endure in the
history of the novel: one caught in the net of the law, which connes him as it
denes him and gives him social and ontological substance.
 5

The Amorous Pestilence:

Interpolated Stories in the Quijote, Part I

As soon as the Quijote was published in 1605 Cervantes came under

attack for the way in which he had inserted so many extraneous stories in the
book. There is no denying that at least the one called The Impertinent Curi-
osity is totally independent from the plot and characters in the novel, who are
(with the exception of Don Quijote, who is asleep while it is read, and the
priest, who reads it out loud) mere listeners. It is also true that there seems to
be no end to the stories, from that of Marcela and Grisstomo to the un-
nished one of Vicente de la Rosa and Leandra as the novel winds down. They
follow one another with persistent regularity. By the time we reach the adven-
ture of Clara and Don Luis it is apparent that there is something comical about
their very accumulation, as if Cervantes were saying to the reader, If you
think that I am nished with these, here is another! But Cervantes was stung
by the criticism, which he acknowledged at the start of Part II, when he has
Sansn Carrasco say, as he gives to the knight and his squire a report about
Part I, which he has read: One of the faults that are found with the history,
added the bachelor, is that the author has inserted in it a novel entitled The
Impertinent Curiosity. Not that the thing itself is bad, or poorly executed; but
because it is unreasonable, and has nothing to do with the story of his worship
signor Don Quixote (II, 3, p. 475) [Una de las tachas que ponen a la tal
historiadijo el bachilleres que su autor puso en ella una novela intitulada

75
76 Amorous Pestilence

El curioso impertinente; no por mala ni por mal razonada, sino por no ser de
aquel lugar, ni tiene que ver con la historia de su merced el seor don Quijote
(p. 652)]. Cervantes also saw to it that the stories that he did include in Part II
were woven into the plot, even if the devices used to do so are often blatantly
contrived.
Efforts to account for the presence of the interpolated stories in Part I have
ranged from intricate formalist justications to thematic ones, and combina-
tions of the two. I do not think that their existence and placement can be
justied in terms of any overarching determining form, because it seems to me
that Cervantes greatest innovation is to have let improvisation enter into his
creative process and be apparent in the nal product (which is, of course, not
nal at all). This is so, I believe, because he wants to assign a role to chance in his
invention, which adds to the irony of the book by leaving in it an unassimilated
residue beyond the control of the creative mind. There is an unnished quality
to the Quijote, both in the sense of there being no conclusive ending, par-
ticularly in Part I, and also no polish, no glow of perfection. It lacks nish, as it
were. The self-reexive games involving authors and manuscripts is the most
blatant manifestation of this; a book that has presumably gone through so
many hands and stages in getting to the reader can hardly aspire to be perfect.
Thematic justications for the stories, precisely because they tend to be less
determining, are probably more plausible. The interpolated stories do reect
dominant themes of the principal plot, or make up series of variations on the
topic of love, valuable for their richness and multiplicity more than for the
cohesiveness of the whole ensemble. I believe that the underlying unity is
found in the relation of the love stories to legal issues. Javier Herrero has
shown how the stories in the Sierra Morena involving Fernando, Luscinda,
Cardenio, and Dorotea are, in fact, resolved by Don Quijote as he slashes at
the wineskins, thinking that he is slaying the giant Pandalando de la Fosca
Vista. It is a kind of metactional conclusion, in that the giant is the char-
acters own concoction, or a ctional translation of Doroteas plight. That
tight nucleus of narrative strands coheres at various levels, including the alle-
gorical one that Herrero proposes: Don Quijote has killed the monster of
lasciviousness, and the couples are now free to return to society, marry, multi-
ply, and be happy forever after. But Herreros allegorical interpretation un-
ravels once we remember that the whole thing begins as a hoax to return Don
Quijote home. He can hardly be seen as the Christian knight who has brought
about a moral ending to the conicts because his agency is so ridiculous and he
is a madman. Only the theme of love as the indistinct force behind everyones
actions, including Don Quijotes, is broad enough to account for movement in
the plot.
 Amorous Pestilence 77

Herreros is only a partial solution, as grand as it is, because it does not

account for the other stories, such as Grisstomos and Marcelas, Claras and
Don Luiss, Vicentes and Leandras, and the captives and Zoraidas. Cer-
vantes was experimenting with a loose narrative structure without precedent,
except in the chivalric romances that he is parodying, where tales engender
other tales almost ad innitum. But even in those the digressions tend to
include the protagonist in some way. I am inclined to accept a variation of the
thematic-formalist approach, seeing the connection among the stories and
their own link to the main plot as guided by a sharing of what I would like to
call commanding subjectscontents that rule form, as it were. Thus I think it
best to read these stories against the backdrop of Don Quijotes and Du-
lcineas, and as conicts involving love and the law in the terms that I have
been outlining.
This kind of reading erodes the allegorical dimension that Herrero sug-
gests by pitting the concreteness of conicts and individuals in a social setting
against the abstractions of the courtly love tradition and theological notions of
justicejustice here is that which the real laws of the realm allow or forbid.
Love and the law are transformed into literature in Cervantes by assuming the
concreteness of their historically bound discourses. The quarrels in the inter-
polated stories involve crimes of passion, torts, grievances, and debts, and
marriage is central to their resolution both as a potential or actual legal form
of closure and as a literary one. (Literary in the sense that marriage is a con-
vention of narrative and of the theater as an ending.) Differences of social
status are often at the root of the lovers conicts: not necessarily questions of
wealth, because sometimes the commoners are richer than the aristocrats.
This being so, the tale called The Impertinent Curiosity is probably included
for contrast, being so purely and unequivocally literary in origin and structure,
which is the reason why we, as readers, join the characters in the somewhat
passive role of listeners. The story seems to exist in a pure literary realm before
the picaresque and Cervantes. It is also the only story in Part I the main action
of which takes place after marriage, thus having a tragic ending, whereas most
of the others, which wind up with marriage, end as comedies. Tragedy seems
literary in its self-enclosed perfection, whereas comedy has more ragged edges
and thrives on improvisation, real or feigned.
But there are exceptions, such as the story I am going to discuss here,
because there are always exceptions in Cervantes that anticipate and preempt
critical interpretations by revealing their foolhardiness in excluding the prod-
ucts of improvisationtheir presumption of accounting for it all without
leaving residues. The exceptions project onto interpretation the irony of the
Cervantean text by showing its rends and tears, its blatantly futile efforts to
78 Amorous Pestilence

hide its own improvisations, which are, like Don Quijotes visor, incapable of
sustaining the rst good blow. The only solution is complicity, to join in the
ironic self-doubt and disavowal of authorial control and authority. Contrary
to my theory, the Marcela-Grisstomo episode has a tragic ending although it
occurs before marriage and because marriage is rejected as a solution.

The Marcela and Grisstomo story is of special signicance because it is the
rst and sets the tone for all the others and is linked to one of the main themes
of the book, the one concerning the nature, function, and effect of literature on
individuals and society. It is an episode in which love and the law are tightly
intertwined and which culminates in a variation of the trial scene. Litera-
ture, as it were, is also on trial here. The framing episodes of the Marcela-
Grisstomo story are very relevant, too: the speech of the Golden Age and
the fracas with the men from Yanguas provoked by Rocinantes surprising
lustfulness stand in sharp contrast to it while at the same time being clearly
correlated.
The interlude with the goatherds, during which Don Quijote delivers his
speech on the Golden Age, a kind of overture, precedes the Marcela and
Grisstomo story. The battle with the Basque has just ended and the hero and
his squire have ed into the forest. Sancho already feels that they are fugitives
from justice because of the serious injuries suffered by his masters opponent,
as we saw. The Holy Brotherhood must be after them, he fears. But they nd
instead peace and solace with the goatherds, who offer them food, drink,
entertainment, and hospitality. The Marcela and Grisstomo conict that
follows focuses on the clash between literature and reality or, better, between
an idealized past and a present perceived as a fallen time. This contrast is the
main theme of Don Quijotes speech on the Golden Age. The here and now is
represented by the crass but kind goatherds, the idealized past by the image of
the Golden Age that Don Quijote evokes through a series of literary topics. It
is the kindness of the goatherds, however, that inspires Don Quijote to think
of the Golden Age because, in spite of historical changes that are obvious to
the point of being grotesque, human goodness remains a constant. The thread
between the past and the present is not in the literary evocation but in the
goatherds goodness and generosity, which are in consonance with fundamen-
tal concepts of the human in Cervantes. Literature, Renaissance literature, in
its effort to revive the classical age, misses the mark by a wide margin. It is out
of place and time. Don Quijotes speech is replete with commonplaces and cast
in a hackneyed, overblown rhetoric that leaves his audience dumbfounded.
The goatherds are kind and receptive, even if they do not understand. An
 Amorous Pestilence 79

ahistorical, essential goodness and sense of justice prevails in spite of differ-

ences among the characters that could have led to violence, as often happens in
the Quijote. The knight, overburdened with literature, does not realize that
the Golden Age is now, not in the past.
The gulf between idealized past and debased present is a very Renaissance
quandary. The humanists felt a nostalgia for a classical antiquity from which
they felt separated. They longed and labored to make that shining past pres-
ent, as does Don Quijote. He incarnates the desire to defeat the ow of history
by reactivating a glorious yesterday. What Don Quijote practices is a kind of
hermeneutic anachronism. For him every word is freighted with a kind of
etiological myth, a myth of origins. That myth is deliberately, intertextually
present in many Renaissance texts that are present in his speech. As a myth of
origins Don Quijotes personal past is thin, while his textual past is thick,
dense, bulging with literary topoi. But literature appears very remote from the
actual world because of the inappropriateness of Don Quijotes rhetoric; these
goatherds sitting in front of him could not be less like the shepherds of the
pastoral tradition. They are stunned by his words. Not so Vivaldo, the traveler
who joins Don Quijote to attend Grisstomos funeral. As the knight ex-
pounds on the virtues of chivalry and the absolute need of a ladylove to
accomplish the high deeds required of him, Vivaldo, a well-read man, remarks
that it all seems like heresy to him. Don Quijotes interpretation of chivalry as
centered on love is dangerously close to a religion (Cervantes did not need
Denis de Rougement to gure this out). The speech and the exchange on
chivalry foreshadow the dramatic episode climaxing in Grisstomos burial
because the same conicting elements are present, only now in a very precise
juridical context because someone has died in ambiguous circumstances. Lit-
erature, in fact, is also very much a part of the present and in a disturbing way,
as the story of Marcela and Grisstomo and Don Quijotes very being demon-
strate, particularly to those like Vivaldo who are in the know. The stakes are
much higher now than during Don Quijotes postprandial oration since a
death is involveda death in great measure provoked by literature.
The conict, involving injury, restitution, possible revenge, accusations, de-
fense, judgment, and release from culpability, unfolds and is resolved in a
decidedly judicial manner. There is a detailed socioeconomic background to
this episode that will reappear in the other interpolated stories, except for that
of The Impertinent Curiosity. Issues of money, property, inheritance, and
business in general have an almost Balzacian texture, with the law present
concretely or implicitly in documents such as wills and trusts and as overarch-
ing set of principles to adjudicate conicts. Testamentary law prevails, but
penal and even canonical law also hover over the episode.
80 Amorous Pestilence

Marcela is the daughter of Guillermo el RicoWilliam the Rich, Smollett

calls hima wealthy farmer. Her mother died in giving birth to her and when
Guillermo passes too, she is reared by her uncle, a village priest who is the
executor of her fathers considerable estate and her legal guardian. The text
reads: dejando a su hija Marcela, muchacha y rica, en poder de un to suyo
sacerdote y beneciado en nuestro lugar (p. 131) [young and rich and en-
trusted to one of her uncles, a priest and curate to our village (I, 12, p. 72)].
Poder means here power as in power of attorney, having sole legal
authority over Marcela and her inheritance. Muchacha means a girl of a
tender age, a minor; the word meant someone younger than what it means in
todays Spanish, according to Covarrubias and Corominas. Marcela is to be
her uncles ward until she marries. She grows up to be an incomparable beauty
with countless suitors, many of whom would make a good match. But her
uncle and guardian refuses to marry her off without her consent, which he
could not do by law anyway. This is clear in the Recopilacin de 1567, which
states that not even with a letter from the king authorizing it can anyone be
forced to marry another against hisor more likely herwill. Marcela pro-
tests that she is too young to assume the burden of marriage. Her uncle post-
pones taking action for this reason, not to continue enjoying her fortune, as
Pedro, the goatherd telling the story, makes clear somewhat defensively but
also revealing the constraints of the bequest, which reects age-old Castilian
beliefs and laws going back to the Siete partidas about the inherent inferiority
of women. (Marcela, as do so many women characters in Cervantes, shows
the obsolescence of this conception.) The background here is legally accurate
and precise in that, once she married, Marcelas husband would come into
possession of her estate as dowry. Before that the uncle is in charge because,
given the provisions of her fathers will, Marcela cannot hold the property or
inherit it directly from him. But she is proud of her afuence and boasts that
when she went off to be a shepherdess, it was to tend to her own animals, not
somebody elses. Wealth, even if held in trust by her uncle, gives her a consider-
able freedom of which she takes advantage.
Grisstomo, for his part, is a rich hidalgoan hijodalgo rico (p. 129)
who also inherited property after his fathers death. As Pedro, the goatherd,
put it: About that time, the father of this Grisstomo dying, he inherited great
riches, that were in moveables and lands, with no small number of cows, sheep
and goats, and a great deal of money; of all which this young man remained
desolate lord and master (I, 12, p. 71) [Ya en este tiempo era muerto el padre
de nuestro Grisstomo, y l qued heredero en mucha cantidad de hacienda,
ans en muebles como en races, y en no pequea cantidad de ganado, mayor y
menor, y en gran cantidad de dineros: de todo lo cual qued el mozo seor
 Amorous Pestilence 81

desoluto (p. 130)]. The English cannot do justice to the precise legal and
nancial terminology that Cervantes, the former tax collector, uses here to
inventory Grisstomos properties. Muebles and races refer respectively
to moveable properties such as farm equipment and the animals that pull
them and buildings and land, that is, real estate. Ganado, mayor y menor,
while surely meaning cows, sheep, and goats, is legalese to refer to different
kinds of farm animals who are not involved in work, something akin to saying
cattle on the hoof in English. Being a male, an adult, and an only child,
Grisstomo, unlike Marcela, inherits directly, taking over the farm, animals,
and other properties. He is seor desoluto of all this, a legal term derived
from the Roman soluta possessio, meaning that he is in complete and abso-
lute legal possession of the property, without lien or mortgage, and not under
the jurisdiction of a mayorazgo, a large estate owned and controlled by a
nobleman. When Don Quijote peers at Grisstomos dead body he sees a
man of about thirty. Grisstomo is a young, unmarried, wealthy landowner of
noble blood, but no longer a juvenile.
Grisstomo had been a student at the University of Salamanca for many
years where he had become very learned. He excelled in astrology and was
able to help his familys business with this expertise, which allowed him to
predict the weather and determine which crops should be cultivated in a given
year. This is Grisstomo speaking to his family and friends in Pedros recon-
struction of the scene: this year you must sow barley, and no wheat; here you
must sow carabances, but not barley: next year there will be a good harvest of
oil, but for three years to come there will not be a drop (I, 12, p. 71) [Sembrad
este ao cebada, no trigo; en este podis sembrar garbanzos y no cebada; el
que viene ser de guilla de aceite; los tres siguientes no se coger gota (pp. 129
30)]. These are coarse, basic, elementary crops, whose yield would wind up in
the familys rustic pots and ovens, as well as in those of their counterparts in
town and country. In this inventory I hear again the voice of Cervantes the
former tax collectoreven in the archaisms, such as guilla. It was from this
sort of production that he had to exact a portion for the crown. Grisstomos
intelligence and learning enrich his family and eventually himself. With his
knowledge he increases the value of his estate. Like Marcela, Grisstomo is
prosperous and very eligible.
Together with these practical business skills, Grisstomo has others that
give him a more transcendental dimension. He is an astrologer and a poet in
the Petrarchan and Garcilasian mold, as the Cancin read at his burial by
Vivaldo demonstrates. But he is also, in a more traditional vein, the village
poet who writes villancicos (carols) for Christmas and the allegorical autos
sacramentales for the Corpus Christi celebration. These, going back to the
82 Amorous Pestilence

medieval miracle plays, were staged on carts in village squares. Grisstomo is

a religious poet, too. The autos centered on the mystery of the Eucharist,
which they celebrated, and required a considerable knowledge of scripture
and theology. (Grisstomos name is a rural version of Crisstomo, or Saint
John Chrysostom, a father of the Eastern church, patriarch of Constantinople,
known for his eloquence, hence Khrysos, gold, and stoma, mouth. He
was a sort of John of the Golden Mouth.) If the prisoner of sex was a
minor Don Juan gure, there is a Faustian side to Grisstomo: love and abso-
lute knowledge merge as the ultimate goal of his anxious quest. His suicide is
very much a result of this volatile combination, as is, presumably, his decision
to become a shepherd.
There has been debate in criticism about whether Grisstomo committed
suicide or just died of love. To me it seems beyond dispute that he killed him-
self. The words used to refer to his actions are clear. The very verb desespe-
rarsenormally to become desperateis often used in the Golden Age as
a euphemism for suicide, and there are unequivocal allusions in Grisstomos
poem to killing himself. There may be reticence on the part of Cervantes to
state straightforwardly that Grisstomo was a suicide because it was not easy
then to speak freely of what was and continues to be a mortal sinthe devils
sinparticularly in the frivolous pastoral context of this story. But a suicide it
is, I believe, which heightens the drama and raises the stakes of Grisstomos
venture. Besides, a suicide is also very much in keeping with Grisstomos
Faustian side, a suicide being the ultimate effort to acquire knowledge of the
absolute, though at a very high cost.
But the situation, before the demonic elements of Grisstomos character
take over, seems ripe for a marriage to Marcela that would join the two
fortunes and perpetuate Grisstomos noble line. It would be something of an
unequal marriage because of her lack of noble blood, but as we have learned
before, aristocracy was patrilineal in Castile, so their union would not ruin
succession. In fact, the added wealth from Marcelas side would surely im-
prove it. But this potentially normal succession in rural Castile is thwarted,
rst by Marcelas decision to dress like a shepherd and take to the hills and
then by Grisstomos to go after her in similar costume. In both cases the
transformation was sudden and unexpected. Pedro, the shepherd telling the
story, uses the same gure to narrate both: each suddenly awoke one morning
and, out of the blue, dressed up as a shepherd and left for the elds. Once
Marcela appeared so clothed, says Pedro, many others followed suit: you
cannot conceive what a number of rich youths, gentlemen and farmers imme-
diately took the garb of Grisstomo and went wooing her through the elds
(I, 12, p. 73) [no os sabr buenamente decir cuntos ricos mancebos, hidalgos
 Amorous Pestilence 83

y labradores han tomado el traje de Grisstomo y la andan requebrando por

esos campos (p. 133)]. They are all infected with the amorous pestilence (I,
11, p. 65)as Don Quijote calls it in his speech on the Golden Agea certain
kind of love mediated by literature. By pestilencia amorosa Don Quijote is
making reference to the well-known poetic and medical tradition of the amor
hereos, aegritudo amoris, or mal damour, which is a malady that he suffers or
feigns to suffer himself. It is the kind of love sickness that could lead to death
and that Sancho mocks in Part II when he says that dying for love is a most
ridiculous affair (II, 70, p. 918) [esto del morirse los enamorados es cosa de
risa (p. 1196)].
The thoroughly detailed social, economic, and legal background makes
marriage a backdrop against which to see everything that happensit looms
as the expected conclusion that was thwarted by the unexpected events just
mentioned. Marriage would have been the ordinary way of proceeding, the
one that would have resolved the conict through the sanctioned judicial and
religious institutions. Nothing stands in the way: no Romeo and Juliet drama
involving opposing factions, no insurmountable social and economic obsta-
cles, no secret or public rivals, no concealed shameful past that suddenly
becomes known. All the conventional narrative devices normally present to
create a tragic story are missing. The availability of marriage and the lack of
obstacles are present in their absencebrillan por su ausencia, as we say in
Spanish: they shine in their absence. Marcela and Grisstomo should have
wed and their family should have become the foundation of village life by
providing wealth and prestige to the region. But their bizarre decision to
become shepherds disrupts everything.
Marcela and Grisstomo are Don Quijotes pastoral counterparts, as are all
the others who roam the woods in pursuit of the young and elusive beauty. He
wants to be a knight-errant like those he has read about in the romances of
chivalry; they want to be like the shepherds in the pastoral poems and ro-
mances that they have read, turning their lives into literature. As in the courtly
love tradition, obstacles to marriage and consummation are fabricated as part
of the literary game, and Marcelas chosen role as unattainable maiden fur-
nishes the impediment. The pastoral, in its origin (if it can be determined),
represents an ideal ight into absolute freedom and communion with a benev-
olent nature. Like a Diana in ight through the forest, Marcela is playing a
mythological and literary role in disdaining not just Grisstomo but mar-
riage in general. Like a cold Galatea, Marcela is hard and indifferent to her
suitorsOh, ms dura que el mrmol a mis quejas (Harder than the hardest
marble to my moans), would write the great Garcilaso de la Vega, whose
verses had already become ingrained in the language. Marcelas models are
84 Amorous Pestilence

plentiful. Grisstomos suicide also belongs to the pastoral and Petrarchan tra-
ditions, certainly close to Cervantes with regard not only to the Italian sources
but also to Garcilasos inuential poetry from which I have just quoted. The
whole episode is dense in literary allusion, including not only the pastoral up
through Cervantes own romance La Galatea and the canonical Los siete
libros de la Diana (1559) by Jorge de Montemayor, but also the Renaissance
epicAriosto, Tasso, and their imitators. Marcela, Grisstomo, and their
followers are enacting literary scenes and playing literary roles to the detri-
ment of their social and economic status and the future of their respective
legacies.
The story is masterfully told by several narrators in anticipation of the nal
scene, when Ambrosio and Marcela give their versions and Grisstomo his by
way of two documents that he leaves behind: a poem and his will. This per-
spectival narrative is one of Cervantes favorite devices, one that would have
an enduring inuence on narrative ction to the modern period (think, for
example, of Faulkner) and that invites reecting upon the truth of the matter
at hand from several points of view. The presence of Grisstomos two texts
seem to promote the idea of nality, being that they were the last texts that he
wrote and that one is a legal document and the other a poem. The rst would
literally manifest his will beyond death, the latter his real inner sense of the
truth, his most intimate confession. They are twin texts. The will, rather than
dwelling on how to dispose of his considerable property, sets out instead the
place and manner of his burial and the fate of the literary texts that he has
written. There are clear allusions to Virgil in Grisstomos decision to have
them destroyed and pagan overtones in his desire to be buried where he rst
met Marcela rather than in consecrated groundthe lad who rst reports of
his death remarks that he ordered himself to be buried in the eld, like a
Moor (I, 12, p. 70) [mand en su testamento que le enterrasen en el campo
como si fuera moro (p. 128)]. It is also an unequivocal indication that Griss-
tomo planned to kill himselfhence would not be entitled to burial in conse-
crated soilso his will, like the poem, is also a kind of suicide note. The
religious authorities in the village are concerned about the choices Grisstomo
made, noting their potentially heretical bentthese are matters worthy of the
Holy Ofce of the Inquisition and its interpretation of canon law.
The desire to have his literary production burned indicates, beyond merely
the Virgilian allusion, an unrelieved anxiety to achieve literary perfection, the
model of which is probably Petrarch, but it is also a reection of Griss-
tomos Faustian facet. Perhaps fortuitously, or more prosaically owing to Cer-
vantes own deciencies as a poet, the poem that is saved, thanks to Vivaldos
bold action of reaching for it against Ambrosios wishes, is a cliche-ridden
 Amorous Pestilence 85

Petrarchan-style canzone, which would have been justiably condemned to

the ames. The reader is left to decide if the poem is weak on purpose or by
accident. In either case, it is not as awful as to warrant the poet killing himself,
but it is inferior enough. There is more pathos than poetry in it, which may
be a truer measure of the poets despair and the unattainability of his desires.
Grisstomo wants to extend his determination to achieve purity of love and
aesthetic perfection beyond his own death, which is the implicit intention
behind both texts. This is the reason why he turns his will, a legal document,
into a set of stage directions for the ceremony of his burial and wants his
papers destroyedlet us not forget that he was also a playwright who wrote
allegorical plays for the feast of the Corpus Christi. The will is also the script
for a play, a pagan play, however, in which his body, not that of Christ, as in
the autos sacramentales that he wrote, is the protagonist. Although not etymo-
logically true, as we saw, there is a vague echo of Christ in Grisstomos name.
Grisstomo wants to shape the futurewhat will take place after he dies
as he shapes the words and conventions of poetry and theater to create litera-
ture, a literature as lofty as religious belief itself, if we remember Vivaldos
words about the religion of love. He wants to endow his texts with the same
proleptic power that allowed him to foretell the weather through astrology
it is a cosmic knowledge he seeks, a fusion with the absolute whose counter-
part would be the work of Spains great mystic poets like Saint John of the
Cross, who translated his desire for God into the most beautiful erotic poetry
in the Spanish language. With his death Grisstomo succeeds in this quest and,
more importantly, in playing the role of disdained lover to the hilt. Through
self-inicted death he fuses life and literature, which he planned and carried
out as the centerpiece of the ritual he orchestrates for his obsequies. His body
is the main stage prop in this play of love. In real life, of course, the price of all
this is incommensurate, but as a statement it allows no possible rejoinder.
Marcela tells her side of the story in the form of a defense of her actions, a
speech that has been correctly read in contrast to Don Quijotes on the Golden
Age. Both adhere to rules of classical rhetoric in various ways: his is epideictic,
hers forensic. Don Quijotes is celebratory, full of adornment; Marcelas is
based on logic and proof. She argues, with ironclad logic and availing herself
of the precise rhetorical devices needed to make her case, that she is free not to
love and is therefore guiltless in the matter of Grisstomos death. The burial
ritual, the play planned and performed by Grisstomo and his friends, is
transformed by Marcela into a court scene. Not all are convinced by her
arguments, and when she ees some try to go after her, but Don Quijote
declares that she has proven her innocence and prevents them. His words are
like a ruling:
86 Amorous Pestilence

Let no person, of whatsoever rank or degree, presume to follow the beautiful

Marcela, on pain of incurring my most furious indignation. She has demon-
strated, by clear and undeniable arguments, how little, if at all, she is to be
blamed for the death of Grisstomo, and how averse she is to comply with the
desires of any of her admirers: for which reason, instead of being pursued and
persecuted, she ought to be honored and esteemed by all virtuous men, as the
only woman in the universe who lives in such a chaste and laudable intention.
(I, 14, p. 90)

[Ninguna persona, de cualquier estado y condicin que sea, se atreva a

seguir a la hermosa Marcela, so pena de caer en la furiosa indignacin ma.
Ella ha mostrado con claras y sucientes razones la poca o ninguna culpa que
ha tenido en la muerte de Grisstomo, y cun ajena vive de condescender con
los deseos de ninguno de sus amantes, a cuya causa es justo que, en lugar de
ser seguida y perseguida, sea honrada y estimada de todos los buenos del
mundo, pues muestra que en l ella es sola la que con tan honesta intencin
vive. (p. 156)]

The Spanish original of Don Quijotes words is fraught with legalisms and
with the formulas typical of notarial rhetoric: cualquier estado o condicin,
so pena, claras y sucientes razones, and a cuya causa es justo que. The
case seems to be settled there, but far from it.
It has been argued that Marcela is arrogant, callous, and self-centered in the
way that she makes her dramatic appearance and delivers her cold and logical
defense at Grisstomos very funeral. Marcela, Renato Poggioli claims, is nar-
cissistic, self-absorbed, and hence cannot share herself with others. An exces-
sive concern with selfhood ends all too often in self-love: and no other detail
proves this as eloquently as the fact that Marcela attends Grisstomos funeral
merely because it is also her trial. If she comes, it is not to pay the tribute of pity
at the grave of a dead friend, but to use that grave as a tribune from which to
plead the cause of the self. Marcelas elocution is like a rebuttal of Am-
brosios eulogy, which was the appropriate kind of speech for a funeral, as well
as Grisstomos poem, a heartfelt retelling of his passion. By refusing marriage
altogether she is seriously deviating from accepted social practice and religious
doctrinethere was no place for unmarried women who do not become nuns
in Habsburg Spain. As Hart and Rendall have written: Marcela rejects not
merely Grisstomos suit but the very institution of marriage. . . . She believes
that freedom is incompatible with marriage because marriage implies the sub-
ordination of wife to husband. But to reject marriage also means rejecting
society itself: seventeenth-century Spain made no real provision for a single
woman, one who refuses either to marry or to become a nun (the latter is, of
course, the bride of Christ). It is precisely because she understands that society
 Amorous Pestilence 87

has no place for her that Marcela chooses to become a shepherdess, that is, to
reject the real world for a literary world which can be made into an image of
her own desires.
Marcela may be exactly what Ambrosio calls her in what at rst sounds like
a commonplace from courtly love poetry and is actually derived from lines
9798 of Garcilaso de la Vegas Elega I, a mortal enemy of the human
race (I, 13, p. 82) [enemiga mortal del linaje humano (p. 144)]. (One of the
conceits of courtly love poetry was to berate the beloved for her indifference
with words that are really of praise.) Marcela is the enemy not just of human-
ity (or of the human race, as Smollett translates linaje humano) but of
human generationlinaje acquires here a more etymologically grounded
meaning as lineage, succession. Marcela is the nemesis of the human blood-
lineof human reproduction and renewal.
She and Grisstomo are squandering their respective fortunes by having no
heir, not to mention their youthful bodies, which will not now reproduce and
multiply. In his case the omission is aggravated by the suicide, which would
compromise the legacy because of his unholy death in addition to foreclosing
the salvation of his soul in the hereafter. But in hers, being an only child and a
woman, her estate would also be wasted, particularly because her guardian
and next of kin, her uncle, is a priest and hence can have no legitimate children
to whom the estate can pass. Here the detail of his vow of chastity, which
parallels hers, becomes poignantly signicant. This detail also allows us to
gauge how carefully Guillermo prepared Marcelas inheritance: by leaving her
in the hands of a priest he chooses a male relative, who would have more legal
weight than a female but would not threaten her chastity and would not be
able to alienate or compromise the bequest by marrying himself. All of this
weighs heavily in the outcome of the story and allows a different view of Don
Quijotes ruling in the culminating court scene.
In that scene there is a coalescence of love and the law that may not be
readily apparent. There is little doubt about the court-like kind of setting and
procedure: Ambrosio and Grisstomo are the accusers, Don Quijote is the
judge, and the assembled real (meaning the goatherds) and faux shepherds are
the jury. As we have just seen, the accusations are laid out in the poem and Am-
brosios speech, Marcela delivers her explicitly forensic oration, Don Quijote
rules in her favor and prevents those not in agreement from taking justice into
their own hands. But this is a court in two senses: it is like a court of law, but it
is also like a court of the courtly love kind. Mock trials involving difcult
cases of love were held in Eleanor dAquitaines castle mostly, one assumes,
for entertainment and to sharpen the witsto acquire, as Dante would put
it, inteletto damore. Speeches like Marcelas, framed in the Scholastic
88 Amorous Pestilence

discourse that she employs, were delivered and analyzed. Rulings were made
according to the laws and conventions expressed in the poetry. In this kind of
court Marcelas arguments are unassailable and both her behavior and Griss-
tomos follow well-known scripts involving the dialectics of desire and dis-
dain. Don Quijotes ruling, he being himself a communicant in the religion of
love, could not be other than it was. Seen in this context everyones actions are
coherent and comprehensible. The laws of love have been scrupulously ob-
served, too literally in Grisstomos case.
But as the court of law, of real law, which the scene also resembles, the
whole proceedings could have had a different interpretation, though not nec-
essarily a different resolutionno court could force a young woman to actu-
ally marry against her will, though the pressures from her parents or guardian
could be immense. There is, because of the socioeconomic and legal cast of the
episode, an expectation of marriage that has not been fullled, a failed expec-
tation that has caused irreparable damage to Grisstomo and to others like
him who pine for Marcela and offer to marry her. A debt has been incurred,
augmented exponentially by Grisstomos suicidethere is no possible resto-
ration, no way to make him whole again. Marcelas defense is against the
existence of such a debt, but it looms over the entire incident. By killing
himself Grisstomo has made that debt innite, impossible to repay, except
perhaps and unwittingly by Marcelas steadfast renunciation of love and her
ight into the wilderness, which are a kind of expiation and perhaps even a
show of faithfulness to his memory. The transaction is completed with her self-
denial, which now acquires a positive dimension that it lacked before, by
balancing the equation and leading to a certain form of justice. The resolution
is functional at both the literary and legal levels. Grisstomo has lost all and is
not even buried in consecrated ground. Marcela has also lost all and her body
is relegated to the despoblado, to the wilderness into which she eesan
unholy state too; this is what Don Quijote calls the spot in the next chapter
(p. 166), an unfrequented place (I, 15, p. 97) in English. It is signicant that
she goes into the thicket on a neighboring mountain (I, 14, p. 90) [lo ms
cerrado de un monte (p. 155)]. The English misses the absolute superlative, lo
ms, and monte is more than a mountain; it is the wild. English also erases
the oxymoron implicit in her going into that which is most impenetrably
closed: se entr por lo ms cerrado de un monte (p. 155). Ms cerrado
does mean thicket, but the original metaphor is a hyperbole. It is closed,
shut, made inaccessible by so much vegetation. The act of entering what is
most rmly closed vaguely suggests the impossibility of coming back out. The
monte is a kind of prison. There is no assurance that Marcela will be able to
tend to her herd there and will most likely become a wild renegade like Car-
 Amorous Pestilence 89

denio. In fact, the place where Cardenio makes his dwelling claries, retro-
spectively, to what extent Marcelas ight into the monte is a self-inicted
punishment. Wandering in the bush, Cardenio relates, I inquired of some
goatherds, whereabouts the most craggy part of the mountain was, and, ac-
cording to their directions, thither I rode, resolving to put an end to my life
(I, 27, p. 217) [y all pregunt a unos ganaderos que hacia dnde era lo ms
spero de estas sierras. Dijronme que hacia esta parte. Luego me encamin a
ella, con intencin de acabar aqu la vida (p. 314)]. The original says, lo ms
spero de estas sierras, like lo ms cerrado de un monte. This is the place
where the galley slaves presumably went. Marcela follows the same course as
Cardenios, perhaps with the same intention of ending her life, thus repaying
in kind her debt to Grisstomo.
As a court in the literary tradition the proceedings follow a predictable path
to a logical, reasonable resolution in which justice is done. As a court of law,
there appears to be no restitution or resolution in that Grisstomo is dead,
Marcelas suitors are unsatised, and the legacy of both lovers is lost and
foreclosed. But there is a settlement of sorts, a squaring of accounts, because,
while Grisstomo is dead, Marcela is condemned to a kind of rustication by
having to ee into the thickest part of the wild, to be a pariah in a lawless
milieu from which she might not be able to leave. One could perhaps say that
while Grisstomo suffers a real death, Marcela is condemned to a civil death.
The linchpin between the two judicial codesthe civil and the courtlyis
marriage, but in both cases as a meaningful absence. In the courtly love tradi-
tion marriage was not an option, and one could argue that Grisstomo is
violating that law by proposing to wed Marcela, while she remains steadfast in
her refusal, thereby complying with it. In the judicial situation in which the
episode is couched the avoidance of marriage is an implicit offense that brings
about the correlative loss of their estates by both parties. If not justice, at least
a kind of parity has been reached. Don Quijotes ruling stands in both kinds of
court: a successful marriage of love and the law.
But Grisstomos cadaver, cradled in his literary texts, upsets the apparent
harmony that has been achieved. Their being burned after all seems to give the
episodes conclusion a disquieting effect that lingers beyond it, as if justice has
not really been completely done. The arbiter and judge of the whole conict,
let us not forget, is Don Quijote, a madman who lost his reason by reading too
much and by attempting to reenact in the real world of the present the fantas-
tic actions and values of ction and of the past. There seems to be an unes-
capable indictment of literature in the episode, but it is a nuanced one. Litera-
ture, by suggesting to Marcela the existence and attainability of a pastoral
world of pure freedom, leads her to act as if it were possible to live oblivious to
90 Amorous Pestilence

the laws of society. Grisstomo takes to the hills to meet her in that world, but
nds that its laws are just as rigorous, if not more so, than those from which he
sought to escape. By following those rules to the letter he has to kill himself.
The lesson seems to be that literature offers a simulacrum of freedom unre-
strained that is as alluring as it is deceiving and perilous. Its wages are ex-
tremely dangerous, as Grisstomo nds out the hard way. There is no free-
dom, except perhaps in the limitless interval that the prisoner of sex envisions
between punishment and deaththe long life ahead of him after the galleys
or in the wilderness where Marcela winds up we never know for how long. It is
a term without term. But as we shall see with the other characters that we meet
in the wild, the reach of the law is just as long and pervasive there.
The Marcela and Grisstomo interlude prepares the way for the stories that
follow, from those that begin in the Sierra Morena to the very last one involv-
ing Vicente de la Rosa and Leandra. But rst there is the hilarious episode of
Rocinantes tryst with the mares, which is a translation of the Grisstomo-
Marcela story into the language of animal love and real, not pastoral, nature.
Don Quijote and Sancho say their good-byes to those present at the burial and
take off after the eeing Marcela, entraron por el mesmo bosque donde
vieron que se haba entrado la pastora Marcela (p. 159), which Smollett
renders as entered the same wood to which Marcela had retreated (I, 15,
p. 92). The sequence from one adventure to the other is clear: knight and
squire go into the very same wilderness in which the young woman took
refuge to look for her and offer their assistance. It is the very same lawless
despoblado to which she is condemned or that she chooses because of its
promise of unrestricted freedom. There is, of course, also a thematic link: love
and rejection spark the conict between Rocinante and the mares too, only
now its outcome is outright violence.
Actually, what Don Quijote and Sancho nd in the forest is a locus amoenus
in the best Renaissance tradition. They seek shade and coolness at the height
of the days heat (remember that the novel takes place in the summer) and nd
a perfect clearing that offers also plenty of grass and water from a brook. The
setting brings to mind the Petrarchan chiare, fresche et dolce acque. The
muleteers from Yanguasthey are also called Galicians, to emphasize their
rusticityhave chosen the same spot for the same reasons. Their mares will be
able to rest, graze, and drink in that glade and glen. The locus amoenus is, of
course, redolent with pastoral allusions. It is the traditional place for lovers
to meet, inamed with Neoplatonic passion and resplendent in their perfect
physical and spiritual beauty. The noon hour, perfect in its symmetrical cen-
teredness, adds to the aura of the place and time: full light to reveal every detail
of awless bodies, as if time itself were stopped to arrest change and potential
 Amorous Pestilence 91

decay. Don Quijote and Sancho should have found Marcela here, as they will
Dorotea a little later in a similar spot.
The connection between this episode and the previous one is also at the
highest, most abstract level. Like Marcela, Rocinante and the mares are con-
taminated by loves plague because of excessive freedom. Sancho had been at
no pains to tether Rocinante, secure as he thought, in knowing him to be so
meek and peaceable, that all the mares in the meadows of Cordova, could not
provoke his concupiscence (I, 15, p. 92) [No se haba curado Sancho de echar
sueltas a Rocinante, seguro de que le conoca por tan manso y tan poco rijoso
que todas las yeguas de la dehesa de Crdoba no le hicieran tomar mal sini-
estro (p. 159)]. The mares have also been allowed to roam free to graze. After
the fray, when Don Quijote and Sancho nd comfort in the squires ass, which
was the only one not injured, it is said that the latter had also gone a little
astray, presuming upon the excessive licence of the time (I, 15, p. 98) [que
tambin haba andado algo distrado con la demasiada libertad de aquel da
(p. 167)]. It is in this lawless site that Rocinante makes his surprising move on
the mares, who receive him with their hoofs and teeth, being more interested
in grazing than in love.
I cannot help but see in this a grotesque version of Marcela and Grisstomo,
with the mares playing the role of the elusive shepherdess and Rocinante that
of the ardent poet and astrologer. Or, more likely, with Rocinante playing his
master, who after all has gone in pursuit of Marcela too, and whom he resem-
bles more than Grisstomo because of his frail physique. Natures realm ap-
pears to be fraught with violence too, as both the mares and their keepers beat
to a pulp the poor nag and the two adventurers. Or perhaps Rocinantes
transgression consists in not having observed the laws of nature, which regu-
late love according to precise periods of fertility and infertility. It seems more
likely that the scene highlights the disorder that prevails in the wilderness to
which Marcela escaped, and the deceptiveness of topoihere etymologically
commonplaceslike the locus amoenus. The jocular nature of the episode
withdraws from it all the meaningful solemnity that its Renaissance setting
suggests and casts a backward glance toward the preceding episode to remove
some of the tragic aura that surrounded it. The whole sequence that begins
with the goatherds who feed the protagonists leads to another adventure with
keepers of animalsthe men from Yanguas who are herding their mares. The
rst were kind and hospitable, the second aggressive and violent. The knight
and his squire are about to enter the thick of the novel, which will be a
counterpoint between the Sierra Morena, a wilderness like the one in which
Marcela was lost, and Juan Palomeques inn, the temple and courthouse where
the complicated love stories of Part I will be resolved.
 6

Broken Tales: Love Stories in the Quijote, Part I

The interpolated stories that come after the Marcela-Grisstomo epi-

sode and Rocinantes disastrous irtation make up the core of Part I of the
Quijote. They peak and are resolved, for the most part, together with the main
plot, which involves the persecution, capture, and return home of the knight.
This is a set of narrative strands tightly woven around the two principal drives
in the book: Don Quijotes love quest for Dulcinea and the series of crimes and
misdemeanors perpetrated by the hidalgo that lead to his pursuit and ap-
prehension. The interpolated stories have in common with the central plot,
with the Marcela-Grisstomo interlude, and with each other the perpetration
of offenses due to passion that result in injuries to honor, body, and property,
with the consequent need for restitution, recompense, requital, pardon, or
revenge. In all of them marriage looms as the inevitable and most appropriate
form of reparation as well as the most effective kind of narrative closure. The
culmination of this suite of intertwined stories is the captives, in which re-
ligious conversion intimates a kind of synthesis of contraries that not only
surpasses worldly barriers but even transcends the Neoplatonic convergence
typical of Renaissance plots. The tale could be seen as the counterpart of
sixteenth-century Spanish mystical poetry, in which courtly love and Petrar-
chan conventions are adapted to express religious fervor and union not merely
with the beloved but with God.

92
 Broken Tales 93

Another common feature of these stories is that their telling or reading is

interrupted in one way or another, something that also happened in the
Marcela-Grisstomo episode. As we saw, that narrative was broken off several
times and picked up by different tellers. The stories that follow are cut off in
various ways. Sanchos funny tale about the goats is suddenly stopped pre-
cisely because of his ban on interruptions; Cardenios by Don Quijotes un-
timely intervention and the novella The Impertinent Curiosity by Don Qui-
jotes nightmare and slashing of the wineskins. The captives tale is also cut
off at one point. The concluding and unnished story of Vicente de la Rosa
and Leandra is interrupted by the convergence of narrated events with the
presentby its very nature a current event can have no end as it is being
reported. The sense of this nonending is that the new ction, mediated by the
law, is a text in the making for which closure, by creating a good story, could
constitute the most blatant kind of untruth: that the shape of ction, of closure
itself, is a device to mask rather than reveal the truth. Interruption, by upset-
ting the narrative order, is the break needed for the emergence of the truth, the
arrival at an unexpected ending, or both.
In the episode of Don Quijotes ght with the Basque, the whole novel is
suspended, and one could say, with Vicente Gaos, that the entire book is built
on interruptions, that there is hardly any coherent or organic plot. This,
perhaps the most famous interruption in Western literature, allows for the
intervention of the narrator, who tells the well-known tale about how he ran
out of text, stumbled upon the rest of the manuscript, but in Arabic, and had it
translated. The gap lays bare the conventionalisms of ction and the true
nature of the text we read: that it is an abyss of tellings and retellings from
which no ultimate truth can be expected. The only reliable truth, to which the
interruptions give access, is about the deceitful nature of narratives, even when
they are sanctioned by the law, because of the disruptive powers of desire. This
truth emerges out of the violence of the breaks, which ironically only love it-
self can repair when submitted to the social contract backed up by religious
doctrinethat is, marriageyet another set of stories that can solely promise
a temporal truce. This troubling self-denial, which also avails itself of a con-
vention drawn from chivalric romances (the found manuscript), sets the
tone for the whole bookbut, signicantly, through an interruption, not at
the beginning, when one would expect principles to be set. It is a break in the
narrative that prepares the one at the end of the book. An interruption does
not have the privileged place of a beginning, being an accident presumably
independent from the narrative in question.
Breaking off the narrative, however, is one with the violence in the inter-
polated stories, a violence in which, once again, love and the law are closely
94 Broken Tales

implicated. Closure, when it occurs, involves a restitution, ordinarily, as I have

said often, by way of marriage. More mundane restitutions are made at the inn
as the love stories are being resolved; for instance, the second barber is com-
pensated for his lost basin, as we saw in my second chapter.
The sociolegal background and ensuing conicts present in the Marcela-
Grisstomo episode are greatly expanded in subsequent stories. These involve
unequal marriages and most of them contain violence of some sort. But al-
though penal law again looms over the episodes, the most developed legal
aspect in them derives from testamentary law, something already at issue in
the Marcela-Grisstomo conict. Inheritance and marriage codes, both regu-
lating succession, drive and constrain the characters; restitution and compen-
sation cooperate to make whole what they damage in the process of channel-
ing their desires. The same symbolic topology reappears as a counterpoint
between city or inn and wilderness or despoblado. This going back and forth
from one to the other is punctuated by interruptions in the narratives.

As Don Quijote and Sancho wait out the night in the episode of the fulling
hammers (I, 20), Don Quijote asks the squire to tell a story to help pass the
time. After complying with some preliminary traditional storyteller formali-
ties, Sancho proceeds to tell the tale of Lope Ruiz and Torralba, a couple of
young goatherds from Extremadura. This is an explicitly rural folktale, as
Sanchos elaborate beginning shows, but it has a contemporary air to it. It is
something that might have happened recently and has already become part of
the traditional narrative stock. Lope loved Torralba, but Torralba did some-
thing to make him jealous; Lopes love turns into hatred, at which point
Torralbas love is rekindled. Lope ees with his ock but has to cross the
Guadiana River, and there is only a small boat in which just one goat at a time
can cross. Sancho begins a one by one enumeration of the crossings, asking
Don Quijote to keep track of the number or he will not continue, and when the
knight falters the squire halts the telling irrevocably. After Don Quijote ex-
presses astonishment at the requirement and unexpected nish, the action
returns to the fulling hammers.
It is easy to dismiss Sanchos folktale as merely amusing, but it is too one of
the love stories of Part I, connected thematically and structurally to them and
offering a clue about their deeper link to each other and to the questions of
love and the law. The relation is made explicit at the moment when Cardenio,
about to tell his tale of woe, asks Don Quijote, Sancho, and the goatherd not
interrupt him or the story will end: If you desire, gentlemen, that I should, in
a few words, inform you of the immensity of my misfortunes, you must give
 Broken Tales 95

me your promise that you will not by any question or otherwise, interrupt the
thread of my doleful story; for, if you should, that instant I will break off the
narration. This warning recalled to the knights memory, the story recounted
by his squire, which still remained unnished, because he had not kept an
exact account of the goats, as they passed the river (I, 24, p. 175) [Si
gustis, seores, que os diga en breves razones la inmensidad de mis desven-
turas, habesme de prometer de que con ninguna pregunta, ni otra cosa, no
interromperis el hilo de mi triste historia; porque en el punto que lo hagis, en
se se quedar lo que fuere contando. Estas razones del Roto trujeron a la
memoria a don Quijote el cuento que le haba contado su escudero, cuando no
acert el nmero de las cabras que haban pasado el ro, y se qued la historia
pendiente (p. 262)].
The resemblance of Sanchos story to that of Marcela and Grisstomo is
manifest, as is the courtly love cast of the relationship between these rustics.
Don Quijote himself remarks, when Torralbas love increases in the measure in
which she is rejected by Lope, That is the natural disposition of women, said
Don Quixote, to disdain those who adore them, and love those by whom they
are abhorred (I, 20, p. 134), a common topic in cancionero-style poetry.
Es natural condicin de mujeresdijo don Quijote: desdear a quien las
quiere y amar a quien las aborrece (pp. 21314). Here it is the young man,
Lope, who ees with his herd, pursued by the ardent lass, who carries with her
a crude makeup kit, presumably the better to seduce him. She, by the way, is
another virile rube in the mold of Aldonza and other women in the Quijote
and in the literary tradition, as we saw: Torralba, who was a thick, brawny
wench, a little coy, and somewhat masculine, for she wore a sort of mos-
tachios (I, 20, p. 134) [era una moza rolliza, zaharea y tiraba algo a hom-
bruna, porque tena unos pocos de bigotes (p. 213)]. (The word Sancho uses,
rolliza, is more full-gured than thick, by the way, and it is used ad-
miringly, as difcult as it may be for a contemporary audience to understand.)
Because of the interruption we never nd out if Lope and Torralba meet, make
up, and marry, which would again be the expectation for these two young
people of comparable social class. Torralba, like Marcela, was the daughter of
a rich stock farmer, and therein may lie a slight hint of conict, though Lopes
three hundred goats are proof that he is far from poor.
Sanchos insistence on adhering to traditional conventions in storytelling
and Don Quijotes comments about them and about the tale itself highlight the
episodes concern with the nature of narrative and the kind of stories included
in the novel. This is something that, as we all know, worried Cervantes a great
deal and has been the focus of much modern criticism as well as imitation, for
instance by Borges. Sancho insists that his account adhere to what he considers
96 Broken Tales

the real by having the crossing of each goat mentioned, just as he insisted that
he could actually visualize Torralba as he described her, though when ques-
tioned by Don Quijote he confesses that he has never seen her. Sancho has
absolute faith in the story as told him. His narrative theory is a reductio ad
absurdum of mimesiseach and every goat most be reported. Furthermore,
he is adamant about keeping count of the goats, and if the number and total
are botched up the story must stop without reaching the end. Earlier Sancho
had embarked on what would have become an innitely receding sequence
when he began to trace back Torralbas genealogy, but Don Quijote cut him
off. On the one hand Sancho demands absolute literality (each goat accounted
for), on the other strict adherence to narrative progression in the most conven-
tional sense (one, two, three . . . ; father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so
on): narrative form (the sequence as shape) versus referentiality (each goat).
These are the polar opposites of representation, manifest in this folktale to
show the limits of narrative, a common Cervantes ploy. When they clash, as
Don Quijotes fumbling and his irritation show, the story breaks up all to-
gether. In the context of love and the law this issue of narrative representation
reveals other dimensions pertaining to truth, culpability, revenge, and restitu-
tion. Here interruptions are very signicant and, seen in relation to the inter-
rupted episode of the Basque, give the measure of the novels ultimate take
on ction.
I will allow myself an interruption of my own here. (A contemporary inci-
dent inspired my interest in the interruption of narratives and its relation to the
truth: the case of Susan Smith. On October 25, 1994, Smith, who is white,
claimed that a black man had stolen her car with her two boys in it: Michael,
aged three, and Alex, fourteen months. For nine days the entire United States
was riveted to news of the search for the boys and the culprit, as Smiths town
of Union, South Carolina, rallied around her. The frantic search turned up
nothing, and Smith appeared repeatedly on television, pleading tearfully for
the return of her sons. Everyone believed her story, probably even herself by
the time she had repeated it so many times. But Sheriff Howard Wells even-
tually began to ask questions and poke holes in her tale until she confessed to
murder. She had driven her car into a nearby lake with Michael and Alex
inside. It came out that Smith, who was divorced, had been dumped by her
lover, Tom Findlayheir to a local fortune, single, and a playboybecause
he did not want to become an instant father by marrying her.
Until the sheriff interrupted her story, Smiths account of the events sounded
plausible, even compelling, particularly to a public willing to believe that
blacks are capable or perhaps even inclined to commit such crimes. It was a
coherent story both within itself and within the context of general assump-
 Broken Tales 97

tions and convictionsit t with other stories, imagined and believed by

many. A black man jumps into your car at an intersection, mauls you, pushes
you out, and drives away with the children in the back. But in the light of day?
And how could he dispose of the children or hope to obtain a ransom for
them? None of these questions bothered the believing public until the narra-
tive ow was broken.
Smiths initial story is what Anthony G. Armsterdam and Jerome Bruner
call a script, as opposed to a narrative, in their ne book Minding the
Law. A script tells the norm and is part of what people generally believe in a
society.
Smiths story is a script that becomes a narrative because of the sheriffs
interruption.)
Back to Cervantes.
We read at the beginning of chapter 28 of Part I, after we have heard
Cardenios tale in two installments, the following self-referential mock admo-
nition: in this our age, so much in need of enjoying agreeable entertainments,
not only of his [Don Quijotes] true and delightful adventures, but also of the
intervening episodes, which are no less real, artful and delicious than the main
story itself, the twisted, reeled and ravelled thread of which is continued thus.
Just as the curate was ready to offer some consolation to Cardenio, he was
prevented by a voice that saluted his ears in these mournful accents (I, 28,
p. 219) [en esta nuestra edad, necesitada de alegres entretenimientos, no slo
de la dulzura de su verdadera historia, sino de los cuentos y episodios della,
que, en parte, no son menos agradables, articiosos y verdaderos que la misma
historia; la cual, prosiguiendo su rastrillado, torcido y aspado hilo, cuenta que,
as como el cura comenz a prevenirse para consolar a Cardenio, lo impidi
una voz que lleg a sus odos, que, con tristes acentos, deca de esta manera
(p. 317)]. I am interested not just in what the text says but in the interruption
itself, a speech act of sorts that performs the function of interrupting in these
narratives. Just as the priest is about to reply to Cardenio he is prevented by
Doroteas voice, which will provide part of the missing information in Car-
denios account. There can be no comforting of Cardenio yetinterruptions
rarely promote comforting. The words Cervantes used to refer to the buildup
or spooling up of narrative strands bring this out. They are drawn from spin-
ningrastrillado, torcido, and aspadoand are reasonably well translated
by Smollett as twisted, reeled and ravelled. But in the original they have (at
least for me) a more violent or literal inection. In other words, twisted,
reeled and ravelled are common terms in English whose metaphoric origin is
now faded. In Spanish, the words used by Cervantes, applied allegorically to
narrative, are shockingly fresh and evoke more directly the physical actions
98 Broken Tales

they describe. Rastrillar is to rake out the excess bers from the thread; torcer
is to twist together many threads in order to make a string or a rope; and aspar
is to twist two sticks to weave strands together, as is done on a smaller scale
with the needles in knitting. The cross marriagesLuscinda with Cardenio,
although she had been married to Don Fernando, and Doroteas to Don Fer-
nando, although she had been in Cardenios carereplicate the positioning
and action of the two sticks used for aspar. In short, the relation among the
stories, including the main plot, is predicated on blunt cuts and crisscrossings,
not on smooth transitions. These are made possible by interruptions.
Interruptions have two related purposes in Part I of the Quijote. First, by
stopping the narrative ow they reveal the narratives aws, pointing out its
potential falsehood. Unstopped, the story follows its own laws of develop-
ment from within, fostering a truth that depends on its inner coherence, like
Sanchos one goat, two goats, three goats . . .. These are the stories the
characters want to have others believe and that perhaps they also believe
about themselvesthey are scripts, to return to the terminology of Arm-
sterdam and Bruner. They are self-referential in the strongest sense and self-
contained, even when adhering to the rules of notarial or forensic rhetoric, or
particularly when they do. Second, the interruption facilitates the emergence
of a different, challenging, or adversarial truth, unknown to the teller himself
and certainly to his or her interlocutors. By breaking the continuity and violat-
ing its own laws of inner development the interruption releases a different
version, even if only by postponing the end, by deferring closure. This is the
reason narrators do not want to be interrupted or react angrily when they are,
as in Cardenios case. Police questioning, cross-examination, the psychoana-
lytic session, and more benignly the dialogue, are versions of this. Bakhtins
theories about the origins of the novel are of some relevance here, though in
his approach dialogue lacks the violent, contentious nature of the sort of
exchange I am talking about here.
Cardenios story is the paradigmatic one and, as we saw, is linked explicitly
to interruption as a device. His warning is in earnest. He is not to be inter-
rupted, and he gives the following reason why: I give you this precaution,
added he, because, I would briey pass over the detail of my misfortunes, the
remembrance of which brings fresh addition to my woe; and the fewer ques-
tions you ask, the sooner shall I have nished the relation, although in order to
satisfy your curiosity to the full, I will not fail to mention every material
circumstance (I, 24, p. 175) [Esta prevencin que hago es porque querra
pasar brevemente por el cuento de mis desgracias; que el traerlas a la memoria
no me sirve de otra cosa que aadir otras de nuevo, y, mientras menos me
preguntredes, ms presto acabar yo de decillas, puesto que no dejar por
 Broken Tales 99

contar cosa alguna que sea de importancia para no satisfacer del todo a vues-
tro deseo (p. 262)]. He is interrupted when he breaks Don Quijotes own ow
of thoughts by mentioning Amads of Gaul, which sends the knight into a long
tirade about the value of chivalric literature. Cardenio reacts by digging from
his subconscious a slanderous story about Queen Madsima, which provokes
Don Quijotes violent rejoinder and Cardenios attack. The interruption has
revealed Cardenios xation on having been betrayed by a woman, which he
has translated into the twisted version of a chivalric romance. Betrayal is the
story beneath the story he is telling and also beneath the one that now arises.
Cardenio has elevated Luscinda into a queen from the chivalric world but
prostituted her by saying that she was having an affair with a mere surgeon
(surgeons were not as prestigious then as they are now, ranking somewhere
next to barbers).
That Don Fernando is transformed into a surgeon in Cardenios psychotic
episode adds to the implicit violence of his fantasy, but it is a reection of
certain elements of the surface story he tellsthe one about his misfortunes.
Don Fernando had a knife with which he planned to kill Luscinda, and Lus-
cinda herself had another with the intention of committing suicide. Cardenio
fears that Don Fernando has already possessed Luscinda with the same ruse
that he used to seduce Dorotea. Like a surgeon, Don Fernando has cut into
Luscinda with his weaponhis sexual organ/scalpelspilling her blood as he
deowered her. This paranoid fantasy turns out not to be true, but if Cardenio
believed it within himself, it goes a long way in explaining his pusillanimous
behavior at crucial moments. Deep within himself he feared that it was too late,
that Luscinda was already ruined and not deserving of his love or t for mar-
riage. When everything is cleared up in the scene of the betrothals, closure is
brought about, the wound is, as it were, curedLuscindas imaginary one and
Cardenios psychological one. The postponed end nally arrives after all the
interruptions and all the violence. It is, needless to say, a brilliant move on the
part of Cervantes to have this drama transferred to the realm of literature, as it
was a literary text that provoked the interruptionAmads de Gaula. (One
could even read here an echo of the Paolo and Francesca episode in Dantes
Divine Comedy, if only because in both a book of chivalry is involved.)
The interruptions, which are forced and premature endings, and the re-
starts, which are accidental new beginnings, mirror the strained social and
legal predicaments of the characters involved in the interpolated stories and
the damage that they do to each other. The economic, social, and ultimately
judicial context that was the background of the Marcela-Grisstomo episode
is greatly expanded here to encompass deep social and economic issues in
Castile during the sixteenth century. The judicial situation is accurate, precise,
100 Broken Tales

and the source of the conict in which Don Fernando, Cardenio, Luscinda,
and Dorotea are entangled. The impending marriage of Luscinda and Car-
denio is one that is again dictated by circumstances as well as by mutual
attraction. Cardenio says that Luscinda is a maiden as well born and rich as
I (I, 24, p. 175) [doncella tan noble y tan rica como yo (p. 263)]. The descrip-
tion he gives of their youth and early love is like the implicit blueprint for the
marriage of Marcela and Grisstomo, only that it was nearer to taking place.
Their marriage was an union which the equality of our age and fortune
almost seemed to arrange on their own (I, 24, p. 176) [cosa que casi la
concertaba la igualdad de nuestro linaje y riquezas (p. 263)]. But the ambition
of social advancement rst postpones the marriage and later leads Luscindas
parents to marry her off to Don Fernando, whose status as the son of a grandee
would make her leap up in social class. Cardenios father tells him to postpone
asking for Luscindas hand in marriage until he nds out what the duke, Don
Fernandos father, wants to do with him. (Literal commentators of the Quijote
are convinced that the duke is the Duque de Osuna, a Spanish grandee, and
Rodrguez Marn thought that he had gured out the exact legal case on which
Cervantes based the story. I am not a literal reader of the book, nor do I believe
that a single incident can be the source, but Rodrguez Marns information
does furnish proof about the existence of cases of this kind in the archives of
the period.)
Luscinda, for her part, writes in the letter she sends to Cardenio that her
father betroths her to Don Fernando, swayed by the advantage which he
thinks Don Fernando has over you (I, 27, p. 213), which conveys quite accu-
rately what the original saysllevado de la ventaja que l piensa que don
Fernando os hace (p. 309). Ambition moves Luscindas and Cardenios fa-
thers, or at least that is what he thinks. She refers to her father as my covetous
father (I, 27, p. 213) [mi padre el codicioso (p. 310)]. But in his recollection of
the wedding scene, Cardenio calls her avaricious, since the wealth of my rival
had shut the eyes of her love (I, 27, p. 216) [sobre todo codiciosa, pues la
riqueza de mi enemigo la haba cerrado los ojos de la voluntad (p. 314)]. And
in ne, I concluded that supercial love, slender understanding, vast ambi-
tion and thirst after grandeur, had obliterated in her memory those professions
by which I had been deceived (I, 27, p. 217) [me resolv en que poco amor,
poco juicio, mucha ambicin y deseos de grandezas hicieron que se olvidase de
las palabras con que me haba engaado (p. 314)]. Cardenios reckless praise
of Luscinda when speaking to Don Fernando and other details are part of the
Renaissance tradition of love stories of this kind, in which triangles of desire,
such as the one in The Impertinent Curiosity, are set up (as Girard has
written of so compellingly). Dudley has plausibly suggested too that there is a
 Broken Tales 101

homoerotic relationship between Don Fernando and Cardenio in which the

women, I would add, act as mediators. What is different here, however, are
the economic, social, and ultimately legal determinations: the key to these is
very precisely inheritance laws and practices in Castile.
Cardenio and Luscinda are of the low nobilityhidalgoswith sufcient
wealth to make their marriage desirable. Both would gain: she social status,
because Cardenios is higher; he wealth, because she is rich. Her estate would
become Cardenios dowry, guaranteeing succession, a reassuring prospect to
her parents because she is a woman. The added capital would even improve
the lineage. Dorotea, the rich farmers daughter, is far below Don Fernandos
status, and his marrying her would anger his fathershe is his vassal. (Her
name rhymes with Dulcinea, of course, so there is something of a mirroring or
echoing effect here, a version of what Don Quijote and Dulcineas romance
could have been.) The duke is so wealthy that while the increase of the estate
would be welcome, it would not be much of an incentive. The character most
vexed by judicial and economic pressures is Don Fernando, who is the source
of most of the troubles, having seduced Dorotea and married Luscinda under
false pretenses. He is guilty of estupro and the priest plans to denounce him,
whereupon he would become a fugitive from justice, like Don Quijote. His
actions have sent Cardenio and Dorotea to the wilderness and left Luscinda in
a dangerous situation from which she also wants to escape. (But she is ab-
ducted by Don Fernando from the convent in which she has taken refuge, a
story that is merely sketched and that threatens an innite proliferation of ad-
ventures and recalls Sanchos cautionary tale about the goats.) Don Fernando
is a Don Juan type who has caused injury to Cardenios and Doroteas families,
not just to them individually, by compromising their honor and estate, mean-
ing their social status and economic position. There is an implicit cause for his
criminal actions: Don Fernando is an anxious segundn, a second-born son.
In the Middle Ages Castilian law had elaborated the institution of the mayo-
razgo: an entailed estate, a mass of wealth and property whose integrity and
continuity was guaranteed by exceptional testamentary laws. As the name
implies (hijo mayor, eldest son), the mayorazgo consisted in the privileging of
rstborn males in matters of inheritancehe inherited the title and the bulk of
the endowment. The mayorazgo was an entailment devised to ensure the
accumulation and retention of wealth within one family by preventing its
dispersal through marriages. By the middle of the twelfth century the king
allowed the establishment of mayorazgos that comprised entire villages. A
mayorazgo could also be a royal grant from the king as reward for some
special deed. In the Siete partidas the legal foundation of the institution was
ultimately grounded on the conspicuous endorsement of primogeniture in the
102 Broken Tales

Bible, making specic mention of Gods command to Abraham to sacrice

Isaac, his rst and most beloved son. The Partidas also explicitly allowed the
testator to forbid his heir from alienating the inheritance by sale or other
means, obliging him to pass it on to his own rstborn son. Important legisla-
tion about the establishment of mayorazgos was issued in the Leyes de Toro of
1505, giving commoners the possibility of founding them. It was yet another
measure by the crown to reduce the power of the aristocracy. But the new
legislation also allowed for the coalition of two or more large mayorazgos,
whose power could rival the crowns. Charles V took care of this danger by
authorizing in such cases a second son or even a daughter to inherit a part of
the mayorazgo, thus breaking it up.
The proliferation of mayorazgos generated a class of segundones, or second-
born sons, who were left out of the patrimony. They had the social status their
usually illustrious names conferred upon them but no nancial substance or
position in society and an uncertain future. As Elliott writes in Imperial Spain:
Just under these two groups of magnates [grandees and ttulos], who formed
the lite of the Spanish aristocracy, came a group which differed from them in
having no corporate entity of its own, but which none the less enjoyed an
acknowledged position in the social hierarchy. This group consisted of the
segundonesthe younger sons of the great houses. These possessed no title of
their own, and were generally victims of the mayorazgo system which reserved
the bulk of the family wealth for their elder brothers. Since their resources
tended to be limited, they were likely to devote themselves in particular to
careers in the Army or the Church, or to serve the Crown as diplomats and
administrators.
The term segundn, by virtue of its sufx, an augmentative, is derogatory
granduln (lummox), regaln (spoiled), coquetn (irt), empolln (nerd),
gebn (lazybones), and so forth. It clearly points to the embarrassing posi-
tion of someone who can, because of his heritage, act with the self-sufciency
of his class but has little substance with which to back it up. The way out of
this situation was contained in a refrain of the timesiglesia, mar, o casa
realthat we encounter in the captives tale later in the novel applied to the
sons of a man who is not a grandee and must all seek their own fortunes
because of their fathers proigacy. The segundn, as Elliott explained, could
join the church, usually in a good position acquired for him by his family, go to
sea in search of fortune or as a soldier, or join the retinue of a nobleman as
a servantthe higher up the master the better. Cut off from their parents
legacy, the segundones became social and economic climbers anxiously trying
to make up for their deciency in status. In the Spain of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries they became a class unto themselvesa laborious one,
one should say, desperately seeking social and economic advancement.
 Broken Tales 103

Don Fernandos situation and actions betray all the features of this class
Don Fernando is a segundn, a second son of Duke Ricardo. In fact, the text
reads un hijo segundo del duque (p. 265), which Smollett translates as the
Dukes second son (I, 24, p. 177), instead of a second son. Rodrguez
Marn wants to correct the original to el hijo segundo del Duque, literally
the second son. But, as the Diccionario de la lengua espaola of the Span-
ish Academy explains, segundn meant, by extension, any son who was not
the rstborn. Segundn expresses the very condition of secondariness, of
not being the primognito who inherited all. The segundn is essentially he
who is not rst, the only position with entitlement. When Cardenio appears in
his home, explicitly to be the companion of his older brother, who is in line to
be their fathers successor and already a marquis, Don Fernando ingratiates
himself with the visitor and wins him over to his side. Cardenio is like a rival,
or someone who reminds Don Fernando of the role that he would be called
upon to play if he chose casa real as his destiny. He could be a competitor in
that, by becoming the ally of his older brother, he may come closer to wealth
and power than Don Fernando himself, prevented as he is by law from acquir-
ing them from his father. Don Fernando is the odd man outliterally number
three in this case, worse than second. So he lures Cardenio away and soon
nds himself as his rival for Luscindas favors. His seduction of Dorotea could
have an economic motive too, even if he leaves her at rst. In fact, when he
does agree to marry her, Don Fernando is, potentially, founding a estate that
could conceivably become a new mayorazgo that he could pass on to their
rstborn son. Restitution takes on a whole new meaning when viewed from
this perspective. Readers of Cervantes time would have easily and imme-
diately recognized all the testamentary conicts involved in Don Fernandos
actions, how the law impinges in his frantic love life.
Dorotea is the victim of Fernandos treachery but she is not a passive charac-
ter by any means, and her actions are also dictated by the economic and legal
determinations that drive the others. She is the daughter of commoners who
are, however, Old Christians and wealthy, and hence capable of social ad-
vancement. Her father is Clenardo the rich (I, 29, p. 231) [rico Clenardo
(p. 332)], and he and Doroteas mother have great ambitions for their daugh-
ter: I was the mirror in which they beheld themselves, the staff of their age,
and shared with heaven their whole attention and desires (I, 28, p. 222) [Era
el espejo en que se miraban, el bculo de su vejez y el sujeto a quien encamina-
ban, midindolos con el cielo, todos sus deseos (p. 321)]. The story that she
concocts, while in the role of Princess Micomicona, about Pandalando tak-
ing away her kingdom, reveals that one of her fears is that Don Fernando
(whose name rhymes with that of the giant) will steal her property. She is ever
mindful of her estate. In describing herself Dorotea stresses that she is the
104 Broken Tales

one who runs the prosperous family farm: By my advice, they received and
dismissed their servants; the tale and account of what was both sowed and
reaped, passed through my hands. I managed the oil-mills, the vineyards, the
herds and ocks, the beehives, and everything that such a rich farmer as my
father, may be supposed to possess: in short, I was the steward and mistress
(I, 28, p. 222) [por m se receban y despedan los criados; la razn y cuenta de
lo que se sembraba y coga pasaba por mi mano; los molinos de aceite, los
lagares del vino, el nmero del ganado mayor y menor, el de las colmenas.
Finalmente, de todo aquello que un tan rico labrador como mi padre puede
tener y tiene, tena yo la cuenta, y era la mayordoma y seora (pp. 32122)].
(As in the description of Grisstomos wealth, one hears in a passage like this
the voice of Cervantes the tax collector.) So, while Dorotea is a woman and a
vassal, she is well aware of her rights and legitimate aspirations, not to men-
tion what an asset her own physical beauty can be. When Don Fernando
sneaks into her chamber determined to possess her by any means, she makes
the decision to surrender motivated by love, pragmatism, and greed. In telling
her story to the priest, the barber, and Cardenio, Dorotea repeats what she
told herself at that crucial point:
Neither shall I be the rst, who by marriage, has risen from a low station, to
rank and grandeur; nor will Don Fernando be the rst nobleman whom
beauty, or rather blind desire, has induced to share his greatness with a part-
ner of unequal birth. Since therefore, I neither make a new world nor a new
custom, it is but reasonable in me to embrace this honor that fortune throws
in my way; and although the love he professes should not survive the accom-
plishment of his wish, I shall nevertheless, in the sight of God, remain his true
and lawful wife. Besides, if I treat him with disdain, I see he is determined to
transgress the bounds of duty and avail himself of force; in which case, I shall
be dishonored and inexcusable in the opinion of those who do not know how
innocently I have incurred their censure, for, where shall I nd arguments to
persuade my parents that this cavalier entered my apartment without my
knowledge and consent? (I, 28, p. 226)
[S, que no ser yo la primera que por va de matrimonio haya subido de
humilde a grande estado, ni ser don Fernando el primero a quien hermosura,
o ciega acin, que es lo ms cierto, haya hecho tomar compaa desigual a su
grandeza. Pues si no hago ni mundo ni uso nuevo, bien es acudir a esta honra
que la suerte me ofrece, puesto que en ste no dure ms la voluntad que me
muestra de cuanto dure el cumplimiento de su deseo; que, en n, para con
Dios ser su esposa. Y si quiero con desdenes despedille, en trmino le veo
que, no usando el que debe, usar el de la fuerza, y vendr a quedar de-
shonrada y sin disculpa de la culpa que me poda dar el que no supere cun sin
 Broken Tales 105

ella a venido a este punto. Porque qu razones sern bastantes para persuadir
a mis padres, y a otros, que este caballero entr en mi aposento sin consenti-
miento mo? (pp. 32627)]

Dorotea is faithfully following both religious doctrine and Castilian law, which
condoned premarital sexual relationships after a betrothal such as the one she
has forced Don Fernando to make. He has sworn to marry her not only
before God, but before herself and her servant. When she pleads her case at the
inn, Dorotea invokes these oaths, appeals to Don Fernandos conscience, and
assures him that by law he is not compromising his or his familys status
because nobility is transmitted by the father, not the mothers blood, in Castile.
She convinces Don Fernando with a speech (I, 36) that has as much verve as
Marcelas and is also couched in forensic rhetoric and terminology.
Doroteas story is as compelling as Cardenios, but she is more composed
and determined to obtain some sort of restitution. Her situation is compli-
cated by the fact that her father is Don Fernandos vassal and could hardly be
the one to seek revenge or compensation according to custom. But by law she
has recourse to both. Cardenio, on the other hand, being a man and an aristo-
crat like Don Fernando and the duke, offers to stand up for her, clearly because
it is also in his interest. He makes the promise in strict accordance to law and
custom: I swear upon the faith of a gentleman and a Christian, that I will
never abandon you, until I see you in the arms of Don Fernando, whom, if I
cannot by reasonable arguments, bring to a true sense of his duty towards you,
I will then use that privilege to which every gentleman is entitled, and, in single
combat, demand satisfaction for the injury he has done you, without minding
my own wrongs, which I will leave to the vengeance of heaven, that I may the
sooner revenge yours upon earth (I, 29, p. 232) [yo os juro por la fe de
caballero y de cristiano de no desampararos haste veros en poder de don
Fernando, y que cuando con razones no le pudiere atraer a que conozca lo que
os debe, de usar entonces la libertad que me concede el ser caballero, y poder
con justo ttulo desaalle, en razn de la sinrazn que os hace, sin acordarme
de mis agravios, cuya venganza dejar al cielo, por acudir en la tierra a los
vuestros (pp. 33334)]. Lost in the translation are the precise legal formulas
used by Cardenio, specically his allusion to challenging Don Fernando to a
duel; a riepto is the proper legal term, the most ancient form of settling scores.
The riepto was the object of much debate in the sixteenth century, with aristo-
crats claiming, as Cardenio does, that it was their privilege to take the law into
their own hands from Visigothic times, but that the crown had made this
illegal in the sixteenth century. Now that he is reassured of Luscindas vir-
ginal condition and the questionable legality of her marriage to Don Fer-
106 Broken Tales

nando, Cardenio is encouraged to take action, and he invokes what he believes

to be his right. Don Quijote avails himself of the same right when challenged
by the Knight of the White Moon.
Dorotea tells her story while in the garb of a farmhand, but in a locus
amoenus that is more in keeping with her awless Renaissance beauty. In Cer-
vantes perfect physical beauty is possible, even common among both young
men and women, but these specimens are most often found dressed the wrong
way, or they appear in the wrong setting. Dorotea is dressed as a man, which, as
we learned from other cases, is part of her allure. In the wilderness she repre-
sents undifferentiated, pure desire, before the emergence of the law. Transvesti-
tism is rampant in the Sierra Morena. First the priest dresses as a princess, then
the barber puts on the dress when the priest proves squeamish. There are
characters in drag ogling characters in drag: the barber, dressed as a woman,
leers at the beautiful Dorotea, who is dressed like a man. When the priest
addresses Dorotea he simply tells her that she can claim to be whatever she
wantsman or womanmeaning that she can use feminine or masculine
endings and pronouns, as Spanish allows for gender distinctions in the speaker.
The despoblado here is a place so far outside the law that genders have yet to be
denedit is even pre-grammatical. Doroteas story is briey interrupted by
Cardenio, who cannot refrain from saying something when he hears about his
own misfortunes from her point of view. This is the rest of his own story, which
he himself did not know, and when he reveals to Dorotea his identity, parts of
her story that she did not know fall into place.
The interruptions are like the seams between the pieces of a large puzzle. For
Cardenio the crucial piece is the scene at the wedding of Luscinda and Don
Fernando, which had appeared proleptically in the chivalric story that he
blurted out when Don Quijote interrupted him: the business about Queen
Madsima and the surgeon. An example of Cervantes psychological sophis-
tication is that Cardenio can only remember the ght with Don Quijote as if it
had been dream, but cannot recall what provoked the fracas: Cardenio im-
mediately, as if it had been the faint impression of a dream, recollected and
related the quarrel which had happened between the knight and him, though
he could not remember the cause of the dispute (I, 29, p. 233) [Vnosele a la
memoria a Cardenio, como por sueos, la pendencia que con don Quijote
haba tenido, y contola a los dems; mas no supo decir por qu causa fue su
quistin (p. 334)]. Cardenios story has a gaping hole, a crack at the climax
that is contained within another break: Don Quijotes interruption. It is like
the scar left by a deep wound. But now he and Dorotea begin to discern a
potential happy ending to their misfortunes at the intersection of their stories:
the deleted motive, the gap in the story concerns the legality of Fernandos and
 Broken Tales 107

Luscindas marriage and her retaining her virginity. It is that chasm, fraught
with violence and erased from Cardenios memory, that needs to be lled in the
melodramatic and conclusive scene at Juan Palomeques inn.
Cardenio expresses his desire for restitution using legal terms to describe the
damage inicted on him and Luscinda: I think we have room to hope, that
heaven will one day restore what mutually belongs us, as it is neither alienated,
ruined nor irretrievable (I, 29, p. 232). The original reads: bien podemos
esperar que el cielo nos restituya lo que es nuestro, pues est todava en su ser y
no se ha enajenado ni deshecho (p. 333). The last part is a notarial formula
used in contracts involving the assessment of properties and their resale value
when returned to the original owner. I think, too, that est todava en su ser
(it remains whole in its integrity) is a euphemism to say that Luscinda is still
virginal, as is deshecho (undone). His invocation of heaven means that, once
rescued from the wilderness, the lawboth human and divinewill again
take effect and their story will have a happy ending.
It is a stroke of genius that this process of restitution will be motivated by
Don Quijotes own nightmare, which comes to interrupt the reading of the
novella The Impertinent Curiosity (at the point, incidentally, when the truth
is about to be revealed). In the dream Don Quijote completes the story of
Princess Micomicona, that is, Doroteas predicament translated into the lan-
guage of chivalry, like Cardenios psychotic delusion. (This version of Doro-
teas imbroglio, true to the name she assumes, is a grotesque parody of her
story: mico means monkey, Micomicona is the twice monkey, with an aug-
mentative like that of segundn to boot, hence suggesting to mimic as in
monkey see, monkey do.) The ending of Doroteas story in that register is
what breaks off the reading of The Impertinent Curiosity. That story will
resume and come to its very tragic ending, while those of Cardenio, Luscinda,
Dorotea, and Don Fernando will have a purely comic one. This is yet an-
other intersection, with the accent on section, a crossing of break lines that is
signicant by way of contrast, like the aspar, or the manipulation of the sticks
in weaving. The ending of The Impertinent Curiosity reveals its articial,
literary quality when the reading is concluded, as the priest remarks; the oth-
ers, in the court-like scene of the reconciliations, manifest their contemporary,
realistic nature, in spite of the comedy-like ending. It is not just that before
marriage everything is comic and after marriage everything is tragic, but that
The Impertinent Curiosity is not drawn from the archives but from the stock
of literature, and takes place in a faraway Florence drawn from Italian collec-
tions of stories. The intertwined, broken tales make a whole, exuding a foren-
sic kind of trutha pragmatic justice that is the basis of the social. Javier
Herrero sees in this both a triumph of religion and an indication of changing
108 Broken Tales

social values as the result of the emergence of the bourgeoisie: It is true that
Neoplatonism, associated with the tradition of courtly love, was still the ac-
cepted poetic and artistic vehicle for aristocratic sentiment: but through the
inuence of Christian humanism, and as an expression of the strength of the
new bourgeoisie, the preoccupations with secular life and, above all, marriage,
replaced the stylized conventions of chivalry and the austere ideals of monasti-
cism. This may be true, particularly if we take into account the economic
and legal background that I have been examining.
But no sooner do the tales of Don Fernando, Luscinda, Dorotea, and Car-
denio get sorted out than two others appear, linked by an overarching story
about the effects of inheritance law: the captives tale and that of Clara and
Don Luis derive from the initial partition of his estate that a father from
Extremadura made. The captives tale is so important that Luis A. Murillo has
argued that it is the kernel of the whole book, and more recently Mara An-
tonia Garcs argued that it encodes the traumatic experience that turned Cer-
vantes into a writer and is the cipher of his creative imagination. It is easy to
see that the stakes are much higher here. If the others involved the potential
marriage of socially unequal partners, the differences between Ruy Prez de
Viedma and Zoraida-Mara are much more radical: race, religion, and lan-
guage. Their love overcomes obstacles beyond anything the other young cou-
ples in the book had faced.
The captives tale is one in which the power of love is shown to be so great
that it conquers the greatest impediments; this is the reason it is interspersed
with the story of Don Luis and Clara, the most clearly Neoplatonic and Gar-
cilasian of the interpolated novellas. Their story repeats the now familiar
conicts of class disparity and social status. Don Luis becomes a derelict like
Cardenio, and in some ways too the captive, who is also an outcast. The
difference is that Don Luis is a poet and a singer of exceptional talent. His
poetry, modulated by his beautiful voice, is a purveyor of harmony. His appeal
is Orphic: those who hear him are enchanted. (Si de mi baja lira/tanto pu-
diese el son que en un momento/aplacase la ira [If the sound of my lowly lyre,
/ were powerful enough to calm the ire]), to recall Garcilaso. This conict is
going to be resolved by a father who is also a judge, an oidor, sanctioning its
legal validity. From the beginning, an aura of impending resolution announces
a happy ending.
The captives tale is also caught in that aura. The awakening of Zoraidas
love is through the gaze. From her window she espies Ruy in the courtyard and
decides that he is the most caballero of all the menshe means, of course,
the most handsome. He is captivated by her exquisite white hand, and later by
the radiance of her incomparable beauty. Their attraction is so powerful that it
 Broken Tales 109

is not hindered by their inability to communicate except by sign language. No

words are necessary to express their love. But Zoraidas is more powerful still,
because it includes loving Ruys religion and her desire to formally convert.
Her spiritual conversion to Christianity is what has driven her to him, and their
union will not take place until she is properly baptized. Postponement, in this
instance, occurs because of the need for this sacrament to be administered so
that matrimony, also a sacrament, can follow the proper sequence. Cervantes is
following in this part of the captives tale the conventions of the novela mo-
risca, or novel with a Moorish theme, a fashion of the times. These novels
usually involved love between two young lovers, one of whom is a Moor, or
thinks that he or she is a Moor. But Cervantes tale has a more serious mood.
Like Marcela and Dorotea, Zoraida is a very independent and strong-willed
young womanshe too wants her freedom. Her conversion to Christianity
and ight with the captive has led her to betray her own father, Agi Morato,
the most tragic gure in Part I of the Quijote. She has also abandoned her
elevated position and her wealth, some of which winds up in the bottom of the
sea. Zoraida transforms herself to become a Christian and the captives wife;
she converts in the most radical way. As was the case with Dorotea, Luscinda,
and Clara, her wedding will have to wait a while, but all the barriers have
fallen or are about to fall. Notice that no mention is made of her being a Moor
and Ruy a Christian: there were no religious or civil laws against such a mar-
riage. Her becoming a Christian sufces to make them equal before God and
the crown, although we shall see that this becomes problematic by the time
Cervantes writes Part II because of the expulsion of the moriscos. Zoraida-
Maras prospects are good now that the captive has found his brother and can
be restored to a good social and economic position. The three brothers have
done well and their respective estates will grow, particularly that of the piru-
lero, the one who went to Peru and became rich. Zoraida-Maras and Ruys
formal betrothal winds up the love stories in Part I, except for the little tale
about the wayward she-goat and the unnished one about Vicente de la Rosa
and Leandra, about which I already spoke.
Could one say which prevails in the resolution of these conicts, love or the
law? I think that the most signicant feature in the ending of these intertwined
stories is the enclosure in which it takes place: Juan Palomeques dilapidated
inn. This is the court of law and love in which the lovers nd each other and
resolve the conicts that have brought them grief and separation. It is not an
imposing building. But the inn is by denition the most transitory of struc-
tures, almost literally a crossroads bespeaking transience rather than perma-
nence. It is the site of chance encounters and the commingling of the most
diverse peoples, not that of appointed meetings among homogeneous groups
110 Broken Tales

engaged in common pursuits. Appropriately, the inn is imsy, slapped together

around what must have originally been a stable, and does not even offer a solid
roof to protect its occupants: El duro, estrecho, apocado y fementido lecho de
Don Quijote estaba primero en la mitad de aquel estrellado establo (p. 171).
This is rendered by Smollett as The bed of Don Quixote . . . so hard, so
narrow, crazy and uncomfortable, stood foremost, and exactly in the middle
of this ruinous hayloft (I, 16, p. 101). But estrellado means that the stars
can be seen through the holes in the roof, and could even be a sarcastic con-
trast with Renaissance castles, on whose roofs the zodiac was often depicted.
The inns inhabitants are not sheltered by a solid, artful construction like the
state archive in Simancas or Eleanors palace in Aquitaine. Yet it contains
representatives of the most important strata of society, some of whom hold
inuential positions in it: the judge; the priest; Don Fernando, who is a noble-
man of exalted status; and, of course, troopers belonging to the Holy Brother-
hood. It is a building that bespeaks the fragility of the unions sanctioned
within it and, because of all the violence that has taken place between its feeble
walls, the likely possibility that further interruptions will break this interlude
of provisional peace. It is one with the kind of truth stories and interruptions
allow us to glimpse, which can only dwell in such an outrageous court. In Part
II the inn will be replaced by the dukes mansiona more solid structure but a
veritable house of ctions.
The stability of the unions sanctioned at Palomeques inn is not very promis-
ing. Dudley has written perceptively that it is difcult to imagine Fernando
undergoing the fundamental character change necessary for a convincing rec-
onciliation. In fact most modern criticism has failed to produce a believable
reading of his repentance. From the point of view of a modern psychological
reading, his acceptance of Dorotea at the inn seems contrived or at best tempo-
rary. It is just a matter of time until he will again be back to his old tricks.
But one need not appeal to a modern psychological perspective: Cervantes has
encoded transitoriness in the theater-like reconciliations. Don Fernando may
be about to marry into some nancial substance, but he is still a segundn, so
he may indeed go back to his old ways to assert his very masculinity. Cardenio,
on the other hand, has been mentally ill and when sane has proven to be rather
cowardly. He has shown some verve now that he is supported by a whole cast,
including a judge, troopers of the Holy Brotherhood, and Don Quijote. But it
could also be a matter of time before he again shows his weakness or his
madness. Luscinda may, again, give him reason for it, as she has shown her-
self to be unreliable in keeping promises when pressured by circumstances.
The next interruptions in these stories will likely lead to tragic endings, once
 Broken Tales 111

the marriages have been realized and new erotic and legal demands appear on
the horizon.
The ending of Part I is the last of the interruptions in the book. The
narrator relates that he knows that Don Quijote died because an old doctor
gave him a leaden box containing some parchments with several epitaphs. But
little is known of a third sally in which the knight went to Saragossa for some
jousts. There is a gap between the moment in which the narrative stops with
Don Quijote safely at home and his presumed death. This halt is nearly as
arbitrary as that when the action is arrested with the Basque and Don Quijote
about to tear each other with their swords, though not as dramatic. The mad
hidalgo has been captured and returned to his village by the priest and the
barber, closing a loop in the action, but that is not the end of his adventures. It
is an open ending, a door left ajar through which Avellaneda, author of the
apocryphal Quijote, would enter. One could say that this inconclusive nish is
one with the series of interruptions throughout the book; it is the forever open
way to the truth. Closing it would be the most blatant ction of all.
For those fond of kabbalistic connections and numerology I have to add
that there is another ending announced in these last pages of the Quijote
that has extratextual signicance. The omitted adventures in Saragossa would
have taken place on an April 23, the date at which the famous jousts were held
in that city. It is toward that date and city that Don Quijote sallies forth in Part
II and in Avellanedas Quijote. When this bogus second Quijote appeared,
Cervantes, to make his different, had his hero head instead for Barcelona.
Cervantes did not knowhe could not have known, of coursethat April 23
would be the date of his own death (it is also Shakespeares, but not the same
day because England and Spain were not on the same calendar). Going toward
it and avoiding it, playing tag with death, Cervantes created his masterpiece.
This is perhaps the underlying reason for the autobiographical turn of the
Quijote in the waning chapters of Part I. Subconsciously Cervantes must have
known, particularly given the age at which he was writing the novel, that he
was literally in mortal combat with death itself, the biggest and most denitive
of all interruptions.
 7

The Politics of Love and Law:

The Quijote, Part II

Everything in Part II of the Quijote is more complex than in Part I

because Part I is like the wax tablet upon which Part II is writtenor, better,
like a palimpsest on which there are many writings and rewritings. Part I is to
Part II what the Amads de Gaula and other chivalric romances were to Part I:
it provides the basic narrative structure and situations on which new ones are
based. The adventures of Part I are present in Don Quijotes and Sanchos
memories and in those of the characters who have read the novel and in some
cases try to reenact them. The protagonists now know that they are in a book,
in fact, they eventually discover that they are in two books. The play of mir-
rors was intensied by the publication of Avellanedas spurious Quijote in
1614, which forced Cervantes (and his characters) to compete for legitimacy
and authenticity. That the real author of the bogus sequel, whose name is an
obvious pseudonym, is unknown, adds yet another imponderable to the game:
he is an anonymous impostor. Cervantes masquerading schemes as author
have turned into a self-fullling prophecy, as an elusive and abusiveyet
realCide Hamete Benengeli has emerged to claim ownership of his now
famous protagonist. Appearing when Cervantes was well on his way to pro-
ducing a second part, Avellanedas work spurred him to nish and to nish off
Don Quijote to prevent further copies. This gives Part II a work-in-progress
quality and piles on yet another layer of irony, making the accident of Avella-

112
 Politics of Love and Law 113

nedas sequel an integral part of Cervantes Part II. One inspired scholar even
proposed that it was Cervantes himself who hid behind Avellanedas nom de
plumethat it was an elaborate and laborious ploy of his own to extend his
literary games from the ctional to the real world. One can see where Borges/
Pierre Mnard may have got his idea. In this house of mirrors the stakes of the
game are higher than in Part I.
At the Cave of Montesinos, which many consider the culmination of Part II,
Don Quijote meets his own madness, as Edward Dudley aptly put it. He
confronts it at least two more times as he faces mirror images of himselfnot
just metaphorically copies of him, but copies that have the power to actually
reect, either materially or because of their name. First, when Don Quijote
defeats the aptly named Knight of the Mirrors (Sansn Carrasco), whose
reective quality could not be more obvious but is also encoded in a subtle
play of words that announces his second appearance. (Cervantes prose ows
so effortlessly that it is easy to miss these subtleties.) The term used to refer
to the small mirrors attached to the knights armor is luna: muchas lunas
pequeas de resplandecientes espejos(p. 741), which Smollett aptly renders
as a number of small moons formed of the brightest looking-glass (II, 14, p.
541). Luna primarily means moon and suggests lunacy. But luna also
means the bright surface of a mirror that reects, as opposed to its frame,
borders, or dull backside. When Don Quijote is later defeated by the Knight of
the White Moon (still Sansn Carrasco), he again faces his own insanity. The
redundant whitenessthe moon is already whitesuggests self-reection,
innite repetition, and blankness: the void. It is as if Don Quijote were van-
quished by a force issuing from within himself. The duel is an eerie scene that
takes place on a beach, the threshold between the sea, an endless expanse, and
the land. It is the books most sublime moment, and there are many sublime
moments in Part II.
As Don Quijote and Sancho return home, they will one more time fall prey
to the duke and duchess in their house of gags and pranks, as if doublings and
redoublings were now the rulewhich they are. In fact, not only are episodes
from Part I reenacted in Part II, but episodes from Part II itself are repeated and
parodied, as when Sancho falls in the pit and relives his masters experiences in
the Cave of Montesinos. Raymond R. MacCurdy and Alfred Rodrguez claim
that in this parody of a previous episode within Part II Cervantes is showing
the innermost secret of his aesthetics. There are at least two internal authors
in Part II: the butler who scripts the Pageant in the Forest and Barataria, and
Altisidora, who concocts several pranks of her own. And when the duke and
duchess recount to Sansn Carrasco Don Quijotes adventures at their house,
it is as if there were already an internal reader of Part II within Part II itself
114 Politics of Love and Law

Carrasco is being told the adventures that we have just read. When the knight
and his squire march into their village toward the end of the book, Sancho
proclaims that Don Quijote returns the victor of himself (II, 72, p. 930)
[vencedor de s mismo (p. 1209)], the most difcult victory of all. The mirrors
have all collapsed onto one another, leaving us with the memory of the virtual
reality that their mutual reections created.
Far behind are now the ofcers of the Holy Brotherhood, the adventures of
rustics disguised as shepherds, or the antics of anxious segundones. In Part II
the law is elevated to politics and love to a complicated dance of shadows with
models higher than mere knights and damsels in distress. Part II probes into
the origin of the law, into the politics of power and the power of politics, to
dismantle, or at least see from the inside, the moorings of the statenot so
much the applications of codes as their foundations in the political.
Part II practically begins with a wide-ranging discussion about politics in-
cited by the priest, the barber, and eventually Sansn Carrasco, to test Don
Quijotes sanity. It is a very topical exchange with precise references to Spains
current political predicament: governed by a weak monarch who is controlled
by favorites, validos, and advised by all manner of schemers. Often lam-
pooned in the literature of the times, these spontaneous advisors were de-
risively called arbitristasfrom arbitrio, opinion or idea. Today we call them
political scientists. J. H. Elliott writes in Imperial Spain: Brought face to face
with the terrible paradoxes of the Castile of Philip III, a host of public-spirited
guressuch men as Gonzlez de Cellorigo and Sancho de Moncadaset
themselves to analyze the ills of an ailing society. It is these men, known as
arbitristas (projectors), who give the Castilian crisis of the turn of the century
its special character. For this was not only a time of crisis, but a time also of the
awareness of crisisof a bitter realization that things had gone wrong. It was
under the inuence of the arbitristas that early seventeenth-century Castile
surrendered itself to an orgy of national introspection, desperately attempting
to discover at what point reality had been exchanged for illusion. Now that
the state is a matter of reasona product of the intellectthat can be affected
by planning, and that can indeed be thought of as a work of art, many are
tempted to offer solutions to its problems, some of them truly wild. This role
as arbitrista is what the characters of the novel, particularly Don Quijote, are
playing in this early scene.
Part II of the Quijote is a political novel, no doubt the rst, that deals with
contemporary and even current crises in government and offers a bitter cri-
tique of the society of the period, particularly the ruling classes. In that open-
ing discussion at Don Quijotes house, there is reference to the innite num-
 Politics of Love and Law 115

ber of impertinent memorials (II, 6, p. 489) [tanta innidad de memoriales

impertinentes (p. 672)] that the king receives, followed by a critique of frivo-
lous courtiers and the decay of the empire as a result. In chapter 12, before the
Cave of Montesinos episode, there is a hilarious satire of humanists, with their
penchant for irrelevant intellectual pursuits, which undermines the hope that
from them could emerge a state that would be a work of art. Don Quijotes
continued praise of the military, in wistful tones and always favorably com-
pared to the career of letters, is but a thinly veiled critique of the state of the
Spanish armies and the power of bureaucrats. At the end of Sanchos govern-
ment of Barataria there is a pointed condemnation of the Spanish bureaucracy
as corrupt. There are many allusions to cohecho (corruption) throughout Part
II, as when Teresa Panza says that as long as her husband comes back rich
from his stint as governor, she does not care if he got the money through
cohecho. And, of course, Part II takes up in great detail the burning contempo-
rary issue of the expulsion of the moriscos, about which much more in a
forthcoming chapter. Finally, if in Part I we found minor representatives of law
enforcement and a judge on his way to the New World, in Part II there appears
a viceroy, the highest state ofcial in the whole work and one of the highest in
Spains chain of command. The far-ung Spanish dominions in Sicily, Mexico,
and Peru were organized as viceroyalties, or vice-kingdoms, following an Ara-
gonese model.

The rst adventure in which Don Quijote and Sancho engage in the knights
third sally is the search for Dulcinea in El Toboso itself and in the middle of the
night, a ghoulish journey into darkness. Dulcinea and her palace are no-
where to be found as knight and squire feel their way around to the sound of
barking dogs and other creepy animal noises. Love is a quest into the dark
night of the soul, only that instead of Saint John of the Crosss pilgrimage to
God, the characters merely nd a farmhand on his way to work. But he is not
even from El Toboso and is unable to give them directions. No human or
divine guidance is availablethey merely bump into the church, an incident
that elicits a line from Don Quijote that has merited much commentary sup-
posing that it is a barb against religious authority because of the turn of
phrase. They are in a no-place, a no-mans land contrived by Don Quijotes
desire and Sanchos lies. Lost, they opt to take cover in the wild, lest they be
found by the villagers who will be none too happy to nd such prowlers in
their streets and at such an hour.
This nonadventure (which announces that cities will now gure in the
116 Politics of Love and Law

novel) leads to the appearance of the Enchanted Dulcinea and the beginning
of the process that will wind up with Alonso Quijanos return to sanity. Part II
is a convoluted journey through loves madness to sanity and death. The
background is now not so much the courtly love and chivalric traditions as the
sober, deep, and profoundly revolutionary poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega, to
whom there are many references and whose verses are often quoted, in one
occasion a full stanza. A distinguished heir to Petrarch, Garcilaso places
madness and death at the core of the courtly love tradition, giving a somber
hue to beauty and desire. Spanish-language poetry came of age in his work.
More importantly, perhaps, Garcilaso, a courtier, poet, and soldier, embodied
the ideal knight of a bygone era, when the Spanish Empire was powerful and
proud. His presence in Part II is in consonance with the political intention of
the novel.
A clue to the change from Part I to Part II are the buildings and landscapes
where the action now occurs. If Part I took place in despoblados or in a
dilapidated inn somewhere in the middle of Castile, Part II will move indoors
to a summer mansion, a rich house in Barcelona, or the elaborate Monte-
sinoss Cave. Indoors and in poblado rather than despoblado, the characters
move within the domain of the law. Part II begins with a polite debate in Don
Quijotes home and returns to that same home to conclude in the knights
death chamber. Roofs, structures, solid walls now shelter the characters. Don
Quijote spends leisurely days at the house of Diego de Miranda, is locked in a
bedroom where he is wooed by a duea, Sancho presides in a hall at Barataria,
they dine at the dukes country home, and the knight dances at Don Antonio
Morenos house in Barcelona. Adventures will still begin and occasionally
unfold on the road, like that of Roque Ginart, but the most important ones
will be staged indoors or in a lavishly ornamented outdoors: the Pageant in the
Forest and Camachos wedding are cases in point, but there are others, like
Altisidoras mock funeral in the courtyard of the dukes house. Enclosure,
building, architecture, arch-texture, convey a sense of lawfulness and order
and suggest that love is contained by art and artice. This is a false impression,
however. The law does not necessarily mean reasonin the arch of architec-
ture there is lodged also the arcanum, the irrational mystery of interdiction.
Roofs and walls contain the threatening innite of open spaces and untamed
naturethe unlawfulbut within them art erects its own forms of mischief
and chaos. The law, too, is a human creation and as such awed by desire,
perhaps even more than nature itself. An increasing sense of the twisted con-
trivances of art and politics pervades the novel as the protagonists approach
the coast. It culminates when they reach Barcelona, that most beautiful and
 Politics of Love and Law 117

cosmopolitan of Spanish cities (it is not even Spanish), and the Quijote be-
comes an urban novel, again perhaps the rst. Like the dukes palace, Bar-
celona is full of games and pranks, some of them cruel, and its port is the scene
of a miniature naval battle; law in the city is also the purveyor of violence on a
grand scale.

Self-reexiveness is the hall and hallmark of Part II, the overarching structure
and theme under which all others fall. (I am playing on the origin of hall-
mark, which is Goldsmiths Hall in London, the seat of the Goldsmith Com-
pany.) It contains within its translucent walls the novels elusive sense, whose
very elusiveness is inherent to it and part of the overall meaning. Much has
been made about the elaborate games of self-reection in the Quijote: multiple
manuscripts and authors, allusions to Cervantes himself, characters who read
or hear about the book in which they appear, and so forth. This is the element
that modernist ction, famously in Latin America with Borges as the chief
practitioner, has focused and elaborated upon. But in the Quijote, rather
than pointing to the death of the author and other current critical topics,
self-reexiveness or self-referentiality has a more historically and politically
grounded sensea more richly signicant one. Texts issue from texts and
characters appear as creations of characters because a self-referential world is
one that is man-made; it is self-enclosed and functioning according to human
agency, not to divine rule, although the structure of a cosmos ordered by God
remains and beckons like an empty shell whose host has left. That is to say, a
structure of thought or conceptual system centered on a rst principlenow
hollowis still the vehicle for a conception of the world and the selfit is
only that the agency of that rst principle is implicitly voided. All this owed
much to the currents of thoughts that ran from Copernicus to Galileo and had
a decisive impact on Western thought, particularly on Descartes. A world that
is not geocentric conicts with all the received notions handed down by antiq-
uity and Catholic teachings. Because such daring assumptions ran counter to
religious doctrine, Amrico Castro, who best charted Cervantes indebtedness
to the most daring ideas of his time, called him a skillful hypocrite.
The main theme of Part II of the Quijote is that the world is man-made and
hence fragile, provisional, doomed to failure and always threatening to vanish.
What the game of mirrors emphasizes is the ethereal, imsy, and temporal
quality of all human products, particularly the self. These products are elusive,
illusory, and deceiving because of their lack of substance and their transitori-
ness, in contrast to the presumed permanence of the world beyondthe world
118 Politics of Love and Law

of immutable essences in the Christianized Platonic vision of eternal life. The

emblem of Part II is the baroque desengao, the falling off of the scales from
ones eyes to gaze into the void of the real and the unfathomable self. As Otis
Green has written: desengao is related to the sort of awakening to the nature
of reality that the Prodigal Son must have experienced: I will arise and go to
my father. This waking to true awareness is called caer en la cuenta: to have
the scales fall from ones eyes, to see things as they are. Such a state of mind is
desirable. Disillusionment comes to be viewed, even to be venerated, as a sort
of wisdomthe wisdom of the Stoic sapiens, or wise man of antiquity, who
was fully aware of what constituted the summum bonum, the supreme good,
and was utterly unenticed by everything else. Desengao, undeception,
recognition of the fake nature of the trompe loeil: Part II is, in one word,
baroque. It is redolent with a feeling of innity, games within games in reced-
ing sequences; a world without bounds emerging from the new discoveries of
science. It is also lled with a sense of decay, of deterioration, derived from the
melancholy perception that the Spanish Empire is in irrevocable decline.
There were baroque elements in Part I, particularly the grotesque features of
characters like Maritornes, the play of illusion and reality, the multiplicity of
ctional levels, and the chiaroscuro ambience of the episodes at the inns. The
holes in the roof of Juan Palomeques inn also give a hint of innity. But Part I
still contains many elements of what could be called Renaissance aesthetics in
characters such as Marcela and Dorotea, whose perfect beauty reect Neo-
platonic ideals. The same is true of some of the settings, like the locus amoenus
where Dorotea is rst seen. Nature, present because so much of Part I takes
place outdoors, is bountiful and orderly, even in the Sierra Morena. There
always seems to be fresh grass and water for the animals, as in the adventure of
the fulling hammers. There is also an underlying sense of optimism and mirth,
even when Don Quijote is returned home in a cage, a scene that occurs on a
Sunday and has a carnivalesque air. After all, most of the amorous conicts are
resolved in Part I. This changes in Part II because changes have occurred to
bring about a retrenchment in post-Trentian Spain, an effort to return to pre-
Renaissance ideas and doctrines, a return to the Middle Ages. Jos J. Arrom
has written: It is generally agreed today that the baroque was in Europe an
artistic climate created by the spiritual environment of the Counter Reforma-
tion. This climate acted like an obscure force that pushed toward a return to
what prevailed before the irruption of the Renaissance, to jump back onto
grounds that, because they had not been turned, appeared to be more solid. In
this leap back, Europeans . . . would up regressing into intellectual and artistic
currents that were aesthetically akin to the Gothic and intellectually to the
Middle Ages.
 Politics of Love and Law 119

In Spain this meant the imposition of Neoscholasticism as the ideology of

the state, an intricate, self-sustaining, convoluted form of reasoning to match
the labyrinthine cast of the patrimonial bureaucracy. But there is no going
back in time, no unwinding of history back to the Middle Ages. Every origin
sought in search of foundations turned into a contrived, made-up simulacrum
of an origin, not a past revived but a pulsating present. The resulting tortured,
pessimistic, and baroque worldview was uncannily modern, as I have argued
in Celestinas Brood. The pervasive self-reexiveness of the 1615 Quijote
issues from it, reecting the interconnected nature of neo-scholastic thought,
functioning on its own self-contained and tightly regulated syllogistic dis-
course and ultimately based on authoritiestexts emerging from texts. But
it is, of course, a very distorted reection that reveals its aws and grotesque
disconnection from the real: both the outside world of nature and the inner
world of the self. The most poignant dramatization of this is found in Sor
Juana Ins de la Cruzs poem Primero sueo.
The baroque structure that looms as emblem of that overarching self-
reexiveness of Part II is the very building housing the archive, literally the
beautiful Renaissance castle at Simancas that was turned into the state reposi-
tory for ofcial documents after rst having served as a prison. Here the
correlated and mutually referenced mountain of documents produced by the
bureaucracy was stored, classied, and encodedalong with all those recopi-
laciones de leyes, whose cumulative system it mimicked. Like the baroque
Part II, made of texts that issue from texts and refer to other texts, these docu-
ments lead one to the other, the very procedure for establishing the truth
active, operative, current, legalistic truths leading to exculpation or culpability,
debt, liability, merit, and so forth almost ad innitum. There is something
funereal about this enclosure, this crypt or mausoleum, sarcophagus-like in its
stony monumentality. In it, in this memento mori, power presumably lies (in
both senses of the word). But the power is not there, it is ultimately invested,
though its actions are endemically postponed, in the body of the king, the nal
authority who putatively adjudicates in all cases, but particularly those in
which the documents do not yield an easy answer in their articulation. Power,
then, is invested in the kings frail body, bound for an equally monumental
structurethe royal castle, shrine, and sepulcher at El Escorial. The kings
body is the void outside Las meninas that must be lled by our own bodyby
every body and everybody who stands before that painting.
This is also an important political statement that issues from the games of
self-reection in Part II: that the common person, the new inhabitant of this
decentered world, can aspire to occupy the center and become himself the
power; even if it is only for a few days, as in the case of Sancho, or for the
120 Politics of Love and Law

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Velzquezs Las meninas, 1656. Courtesy of Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY, Museo del
Prado, Madrid, Spain.

few minutes that the spectator occupies the place of the king in Velzquezs
painting.

Much has been made of the parallel between Cervantes and Velzquez in
recent years because of the readings of Las meninas and the Quijote proposed
by Michel Foucault at the beginning of Les mots et les choses. I would like to
suggest, however, that the strongest afnity between the Quijote and Las
 Politics of Love and Law 121

meninas is not just philosophical but political, and is intimately related to the
elevation of the law to its political origins in Part II, and hence also to the self-
reexiveness of both works. Let me consider the painting briey.
Las meninas (The Maids of Honor or, literally, The Little Ones), from the
Portuguese Meu nino, which means my child, refers to young people of
either sex, of noble lineage, who, as a servants, attended the king or queen
or the prince and princesses. Velzquez painted Las meninas about 1656.
It shows Princess Margarita Teresa, preparing to pose for a portrait, being
handed a glass of water by lady-in-waiting Mara Agustina Sarmiento. On her
left is Isabel de Velasco, daughter of the Count of Colmenares, who is bowing.
In the foreground, to the right from the perspective of the spectator, stand
female dwarf Mara Barbola and the minuscule midget Nicolasito Pertusato,
who is putting a foot on the dozing dog.
The relevance of this painting to the Quijote lies chiey in the issues of self-
reexiveness and the man-made, as I have been suggesting: in both novel and
painting the creator has been given a prominent place and in both they appear
in their function as authors of the very work in question. Hence it is not just
that they are the creators, but that what the painting and the novel represent is
the act of authoring, the act of creating, of producing work.
Las meninas seems to capture a moment, not a very signicant moment, but
one signaled to be a specic one by trivial gestures such as the gaze of the
painter, which seems to have just been averted toward us; or the midget who
has just put his foot on the dog; or the two gures on the right, on the second
plane, who appear to be caught in a moment of conversation; or the man who
is leaving through the back door, who has turned around for one last look at
the room or at the painting. This framing of an insignicant moment can be
equated in the Quijote to the issue of the contingent, the instantaneous, the
serendipitous, the many chance encounters that make up the narrative, as well
as to the trivialobjects, people, actions that are part of daily life and have
no particular relevance. In Las lanzas (The Surrender of Breda) the moment
caught is historical (though the horse on the right has just lifted its right rear
hoof), but not in Las meninas. Nothing seems to have been elevated to be in
this painting or in the Quijote; everything seems to have been caught up while
in the ow of ordinary existence. In Las meninas, in fact, the painting being
created and the subjects of the painting, the most important elements, are not
available to the eye.
Of the painting being made we only see the reverse, its inner workings,
its artice and the material elements that make it up rather than the n-
ished product. Of the subjectsthose being painted, presumably the king and
queenwe see only the reaction they have produced on others. The supports
122 Politics of Love and Law

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Velzquezs Las lanzas, 16341635. Courtesy of Scala/Art Resource, NY, Museo del Prado,
Madrid, Spain.

of the paintingstretcher, easel, the canvas itselfappear to be a deliberate

depiction of the backstage of representationits shop, as it were, since we are
in Velzquezs studio. This is akin to the narrative of the lost manuscript in the
Quijote and the awareness of the characters in Part II that they are in a book.
In Las meninas, as in the Quijote, the line between reality and representa-
tion is blurred. Either art encompasses all of life, or life all of art, without there
being a clear demarcation between the two. We make art and life, and some-
times try to make life be like art, as in the case of Don Quijote. It is a kind of
hyperrealism achieved by subjecting to scrutiny the process of representation.
In Las meninas this is achieved in several ways, but mostly by the trick of
having the spectator suddenly assume a place in the act of creation, perhaps as
its object. At the best angle to look at the painting the spectator becomes the
model for the painting, being sucked in by the whole scene. It is a trompe loeil,
a trampantojos. This is like the role of the reader in the Quijote, which is
highlighted by the fact that the protagonistthe knightis rst and foremost
 Politics of Love and Law 123

a reader. Hence we go on to occupy the role of Don Quijote as we read, just as

we do in Las meninas as spectator-subject of the painting. But the most ob-
vious way in which both painting and book erase the line between ction and
reality is by the inclusion of the creator in both.
That Velzquez is inside the painting has many consequences, the rst of
which is to humanize him, to make him one with his creation, therefore as
fallible and contingent as his creation. He is not above what he creates, a gure
of God to the world he creates, but rather he is one with that world. This
explains the double thrust of the device. I mean by this that, sure, the creator
has been placed in a prominent, visible role, but his authority is, at the same
time, severely underminedwe see his tricks from within his art. In the Qui-
jote this is evident in the fact that the narrator claims not to be the author of
the work but the transcriber of a translation from the Arabic. He is in the work
he is creatingI emphasize the present participlebut he is not the original
source of it. This is tied to the question of improvisation that I have mentioned
before and to the famous Cervantine errors or oversights. A awed creator, no
better than his creatures, is bound to make mistakes; a work of art, being a
human, not a divine product, cannot be perfect. In Las meninas this effect is
achieved by the lateral position of Velzquez in the painting and his slanted
and partial view of the room because he is gazing out toward the observer. We
see him and ourselves in the back mirror while he can see only us and not the
rest of the room that we can see with our broader, unfocused gaze. We can see,
however, only the back of the painting. The entire room can only be seen by
adding Velzquezs gaze to ours: there is no all-encompassing view of the
space. We can see what he sees only on that mirror placed about where the
vanishing point of perspective would be. Irony emerges from these incomplete
views, which hamper our comprehension of what exactly is happening totally
and absolutely. There is more, because it is not a sure thing that the gures in
the mirror on the back wall represent ourselves, given that the mirror is not
quite in the very center, at the vanishing point or point de fuite. In fact, one
could almost detect a pun on Velzquezs part in his having that man, just to
the right of the mirror, leaving through the back doorhe is eeing near the
vanishing point, or punto de fuga. If it is true that man was also named
Velzquez (actually Jos Nieto Velzquez), as some claim, the game of associa-
tions becomes even more complicated.
So, like the Quijote, especially Part II, Las meninas is radically self-reexive:
Velzquez paints himself in the act of painting, within a chamber whose per-
spective, as well as that of the spectator, suggests that as one views the canvas,
one becomes the object of the artists gaze and the focus of his work. We
become the subject of the painting. I would like to emphasize that Velzquez is
124 Politics of Love and Law

portraying himself in the act of creation and that creation is himself as he

produces it. The painting highlights human creativity, agency, and work in
the origination of the art object. No divine inspiration, no copying of classi-
cal modelsthe work, as we plainly see, is Velzquezs own. Velzquez has
usurped the central, privileged position that the monarchs should occupy as
tting subjects of a royal painting by a court artist. He is more important than
the king and queen. That space of the king and queen, moreover, is empty until
the spectator steps in front of the canvas and is swallowed up by the play of
reections. The crowns place is empty and can be taken by whoever happens
to be viewing the work to share an exalted centrality with the painterwe too
can be king or queen for a day in the virtual Barataria created by art. Velz-
quezs gesture is a Cartesian self-discovery through the act of creation: je peins,
donc je suis, I paint, therefore I am. His act of self-afrmation does not
depend on an outside authority, be it royal or divine, but on himselfit does
not depend either on reality, but on his construction of himself as the ultimate
reality. Within that enclosed chamber, like those in the Quijote Part II and the
Simancas Archive, all the perspectival lines converge on the self of the creator
and on his activity as producer of the work. The power of the monarchy has
been weakened, not only politically and in actuality, but also as a process of
conceiving the state that will eventually lead to the Enlightenment. Cervantes,
too, produces in Part II a work that exists in a palace of reections and self-
reections independent of God and king, though not rejecting either. The
game of literature and of life is played while both are distracted, perhaps
playing another game. The law can be made by a squire, elevated to ruler of a
fake kingdom, just as we can become the subjects of a painting in the making
by a court painter, no matter how common we may be.

Although testamentary law is still present in the rewriting of the stories from
Part I (rewritings are part of the self-referentiality), the law is now seen in rela-
tion to the constitution of the state and to its national and international pro-
jections. Among the already mentioned issues of national policy are the very
contemporary ones about the expulsion of the moriscos, the problem of Cata-
lan brigandage, the excessive inuence of the church in state affairs, the irre-
sponsibility of the aristocracy, and corruption in government. Among those of
international policy there are the Turkish threat, piracy in the Mediterranean,
Catalan separatism, and the pressing problem of the states nances, depen-
dent as they are on loans from foreign bankers. In Part II the protagonists
range beyond Castile into Catalonia, which is to say that the novel practically
ventures beyond Spain, but, true to the self-reexiveness, a beyond that is still
 Politics of Love and Law 125

Spain. In fact, the whole question of the state is taken up in the Barataria
Island episodes, and also in part in that counter-utopia that is Roque Ginarts
band of outlaws.
These criticisms of current social and political conditions are scattered
throughout Part II. Don Antonio Moreno is a friend of the brigand Roque
Ginart and of the viceroy, suggesting that there is something seditious about
these personages. Catalan brigandage was sometimes allied to Huguenots in
France. Worse, perhaps, both Moreno and the viceroy are frivolous and la-
ment losing Don Quijote as a toy with which to play once he agrees to go home
after his defeat. The viceroy acts with prudence in the case of Ricotes daughter
and her anc, but perhaps also a bit indecisively; he must await a ruling from
the capital, the bane of all centralized bureaucracies, particularly patrimonial
ones. The bitter exchange between the ecclesiastic and Don Quijote at the
dukes dinner table alludes to the excessive power of the church in temporal
affairs, and Don Quijotes advice to Sancho when he is about to become
governor is full of pointed references to the political ills of the period. His rst
admonition is against cohecho, or corruption. But the subtlest and most
cutting critique is embedded in the love story involving Duea Rodrguezs
daughter. The young woman has surrendered her honor to the son of a rich
farmer who does not want to make good on his promise of marriage. She asks
Don Quijote to intervene because the duke, who could and should act, would
not because he borrows money regularly from the lads father and cannot
afford to offend him: because, in fact, the young rogues father is extremely
rich and lends him [the duke] money; nay, becomes surety for him when he
happens to be in trouble, so that he would, by no manner or means, give him
the least concern of uneasiness (II, 48, p. 767) [y es la causa que como el
padre del burlador es tan rico y le presta dineros, y le sale por ador de
sus trampas por momentos, no le quiere descontentar, ni dar pesadumbre en
ningn modo (p. 1021)]. The translation does not quite convey how the duke
is beholden to his creditor because of the urgency of his nancial woes. In the
original the latter is ador de sus trampas por momentos, meaning that he
often bails the duke out of pressing debts at the last moment. This reveals how
the duke and duchess underwrite their expensive entertainments at their coun-
try mansion and seems to me to be as clear a reference as can be to the situation
of the Spanish crown, always on the verge of defaulting on its loans to Ger-
man bankers, like the famous Fuggers, and hoping to be saved by last-ditch
schemes or by the anxiously awaited arrival of the next shipment of silver
from Mexico or Peru.
The most politically allusive of all episodes in Part II is, of course, the one
about Sanchos government in the Isle of Barataria, which is also a synthesis of
126 Politics of Love and Law

baroque themes and structures discussed before. In Barataria the origins of the
law and the political are sought in a past that is both medieval and timelessly at
the founding of the social. The gist of this episode is given by the butler when
he says: My lord governor, said the butler, your lordship speaks so much to
the purpose, that I am struck with admiration, to hear a man so illiterate as
your lordship (for, I believe you do not know your letters) make so many
observations full of sagacity, and give counsel so much above everything that
was expected from your lordships capacity, by those who sent us, as well as by
ourselves who are come hither. Every day produces something new: jokes are
turned to earnest, and the biters are bit (II, 49, p. 771) [Dice tanto vuesa
merced, seor gobernador, que estoy admirado de ver que un hombre tan sin
letras como vuesa merced, que a lo que creo no tiene ninguna, diga tales y
tantas cosas llenas de sentencias y de avisos, tan fuera de todo aquello que del
ingenio de vuesa merced esperaban los que nos enviaron y los que aqu vini-
mos. Cada da se veen cosas nuevas en el mundo: las burlas se vuelven en veras
y los burladores se hallan burlados (p. 1025)]. Sancho, the common man, can
rule without learning because he is endowed with the capacity to interpret and
apply natural law. This is a medieval retention or recuperation, in line with the
return to pre-Renaissance ideas Arrom mentioned, that contrary to expecta-
tions (like Sanchos acumen), serves as vehicle for a modern concept: that the
common person is intelligent enough to rule him- or herself and others. Now
we see that the squires refranes, his many proverbs, are a form of natural
wisdom passed down orally through the agesit is a wisdom good enough to
form the basis of the law. The series of episodes in Barataria have to do with
the unraveling of aristocratic authority and the emergence of the common
person as potential ruler. Sancho is wise beyond all assumptions and in spite of
all pranks his dignity remains untouched; the mockers are mocked.
The point is that in the baroque theater of Barataria, what is planned as a
prank turns out to be true: Sancho is a good governor. (He is the opposite of
another king for a day, Prince Segismundo in Calderns Life Is a Dream,
who has been tutored by Clotaldo but fails his rst trial in the throne.) This
surprising outcome thwarts the designs of the duke and duchess and runs
counter to the authorial intentions of the butler who has scripted the whole
episode. In Barataria, the much-discussed Quixotization of Sancho reaches
its peak: he is educated by his dealings with the knight. One should not lose
sight that his failure is not due to any fault of Sanchos but to the contrived
nature of Barataria, built of pranks upon pranks to upset the squire. As Man-
uel Durn has written: it is also in the second part when the interaction of the
two main characters, the knight and his squire, reaches a climax. Sancho
Panza becomes increasingly quixotized and even at certain moments occu-
 Politics of Love and Law 127

pies the center of the stage, having become temporarily the novels central
character. It is like the spectatorlike any of usoccupying the place of
the monarchs while viewing Las meninas.
Barataria is a mock utopia, a Renaissance dream that nds its highest expo-
nent in Thomas More: the notion that a perfect society can be established
following a rational, even artistic design. (In chapter 2 I spoke about Mara-
valls contention that the Renaissance stateFerdinands and Isabellaswas
conceived of as a work of art.) The idea, evidently, goes back to Platos Re-
public, and in the Quijote it also reects all the treatises about the art of
government, including, of course, Machiavellis, as well as those on the educa-
tion of princes. There was no shortage of those in Spain, the most inuential
being Fray Antonio de Guevaras Reloj de prncipes (Valladolid, 1529). Bara-
taria turns this tradition upside down. The theoretical and political traditions
are both contained and satirized in the very conception of the nsula, the island
(Don Quijote uses an archaic term drawn from chivalric tradition that Sancho
fails to understand means island). Barataria, as island, projects three things.
One, the idea of self-containment and self-sufciency, of roundness, comple-
tion, and beauty. It is the creation of the dukes butler following the conception
of the modern state as a work of art that began with the Catholic kings. Two,
the relatively recent discovery of the Caribbean islands, where Spain had set
up new societies almost from the ground up, as it were. Three, the wished-for
but never reached islands of classical tradition: the Antilla or Ante-island. This
tradition of the fugitive islandof the isla a su vuelo fugitiva, to remember
Gngorahas been beautifully studied by Simone Pinet, who charts its ap-
pearance in classical, medieval, and Renaissance atlases. All this is behind
Sanchos unfullled desire. Barataria has the elusiveness that one associates
with Atlantis. The assumptions in all this bookish background are mocked in
Cervantes through his natural, illiterate ruler, who could not be an heir to it,
yet became a capable governor. This is also part of the desengao: the disillu-
sionment, the awareness of the failure of human knowledge and the limita-
tions of human agency.
Anthony Grafton opens the introduction to his magnicent New Worlds,
Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery with these
words: Between 1550 and 1650 Western thinkers ceased to believe that they
could nd all important truths in ancient books. He goes on to quote Spanish
Jesuit Jos de Acosta, who writes the following in his Historia natural y moral
de las Indias: Having read what poets and philosophers write of the Torrid
Zone, I persuaded myself that when I came to the Equator, I would not be able
to endure the violent heat, but it turned out otherwise. For when I passed
[the Equator] I felt so cold that I was forced to go into the sun to warm
128 Politics of Love and Law

myself. What could I do then but laugh at Aristotles Meteorology? (This is

mocked, by the way, in Part II, chapter 29 in the enchanted boat episode.)
Ironically, the proliferation of books brought about by printing begins a pro-
cess by which the book was severely tested and ultimately devalued. The
ability to read many books did not bring one closer to the truth but to an
inordinate, perhaps innite enlargement of the library, perhaps to Don Qui-
jotes madness. The function of books changes not only because the printing
press makes them available in larger quantities, but also because they are no
longer seen as reliable purveyors of knowledge. The scrutiny of Don Quijotes
library and Altisidoras dream clearly show some of the quandaries that this
new situation opens up. In the former a cleansing by re of the library is a futile
and belated attempt to reduce the number of books Don Quijote reads. In the
latter some devils appear to be playing a game of tennis, the balls being vol-
umes that fall apart when they are smacked with aming rackets. (It is no
accident that the book to be most thoroughly pulverized by one of the players
is Avellanedas apocryphal Quijote.) These brittle books, full of air, are many
but valueless; they must all be apocryphal or stolen. Sancho does not need
them to be able to rule well.
Barataria is also a consideration of the origin of the law by having a primi-
tive government in which both ruler and judge are the same personpower
and the responsibility for justice are invested in the same individual, recalling
ancient modes of legislation going back to the Bible. Freuds allusion to Bara-
taria in Totem and Taboo is instructive in this regard. For him the episode is a
playing out of the suffering a savage king must undergo to pay, as it were, for
his exalted position. This is reenacted chiey in the hilarious scene in which
Sancho is denied food by the fake doctor Pedro Recio. Freud is drawing an
analogy between certain neuroses and the behavior of primitives, focusing on
the ambivalent attitude toward kings and its analogue in the relationship of
children to their fathers. Here the importance of a particular person is extra-
ordinarily heightened and his omnipotence is raised to the improbable in order
to make it easier to attribute to him the responsibility for everything painful
that happens to the patient. Savages really do not act differently towards
their rulers when they ascribe to them power over rain and shine, wind and
weather, and then dethrone or kill them because nature has disappointed their
expectation of a good hunt or a ripe harvest. And later: Thus also the
taboo ceremonial of kings is nominally an expression of the highest veneration
and a means of guarding them; actually it is the punishment for their elevation,
the revenge which their subjects take upon them. The experiences which Cer-
vantes makes Sancho Panza undergo as governor on his island have evidently
made him recognize this interpretation of courtly ceremonial as the only cor-
 Politics of Love and Law 129

rect one. It is very possible that this point would be corroborated if we could
induce kings and rulers of to-day to express themselves on this point. He
goes on to make the unavoidable comparison with the Christian myth: Why
the emotional attitude towards rulers should contain such a strong uncon-
scious share of hostility is a very interesting problem. . . . We have already
referred to the infantile father-complex; we may add that an investigation of
the early history of kingship would bring the decisive explanations. Frazer has
an impressive discussion of the theory that the rst kings were strangers who,
after a short reign, were destined to be sacriced at solemn festivals as repre-
sentatives of the deity; but Frazer himself does not consider his facts altogether
convincing. Christian myths are said to have been still inuenced by the after-
effects of this evolution of kings.
Sancho is a stranger arbitrarily picked as ruler, he suffers, and his reign is
short-lived. Becoming a gure of authority has risks and can bring pain as
much as pleasure, all part of the heavy responsibility of power. It is the respon-
sibility to uphold the law that evidently Spains Habsburg rulers are shirking,
as well as the suffering that goes with it. From Sanchos point of view it is also
a lesson about the disappointment of all achievements: once obtained, things
are never quite what we imagined or desired, and they do not last very long
anyway. This is the powerful desengao element of these episodes in the island
and their consideration of the law in relation to politics, both in abstract terms
and specically referring to Spains current situation.

Love stories similar to those in Part I appear in Part II, but, as we can see in the
case of Duea Rodrguezs daughter, they are considerably more complicated,
have far-reaching consequences, and nd no satisfactory resolution like those
brought about by Don Quijote at Juan Palomeques inn. Some of the stories
are contrived by the duke and his minions, particularly that very inventive
butler who conceives of the Pageant in the Forest and Barataria. But even
those are not resolved: Tosilos does not marry Duea Rodrguezs daughter,
and Sancho sees through the prank about Clara and Andrs Perlerino. Of the
stories in the main plot, Ricotes daughter does not marry Gaspar, Altisidora
plays the role of the rejected Dido, and Claudia Gernima kills her anc
Vicente Torrellas in a t of jealousy. (This story is another exception to the
trend by which everything that happens before marriage is the stuff of comedy
and after that of tragedy.) The only story that comes to a happy conclusion is
Camachos wedding, not through Don Quijotes intervention, however, al-
though he does support Basilio as he did Marcela in Part I, but by the young
mans elaborate scheme to subvert the social order by using religion. A staged,
130 Politics of Love and Law

provisional wedding winds up as legitimate by the way Basilio manipulates

doctrinal technicalities about marriage, though in truth according to both civil
and religious law Quiteria and Camacho could have appealed. (This is a com-
plicated story to which I devote the next chapter.)
The most important unresolved love story is Don Quijotes and Dulcineas.
Don Quijote never disenchants her, although Sancho does complete the
lashes that make up a parody of restitution. He is paying back for his lies and
their consequences. The knight manages to disenchant her only when he re-
gains his sanity. Love is the vehicle to sanity, but only through a madness in
which distorted images of famous lovers are contrived: Altisidora as Dido and
Dulcinea as Beatrice in the Pageant in the Forest. The grandest love story in
Part II is not that of Don Quijote and Dulcinea, however, nor their models
from Part I, drawn from the chivalric and courtly love tradition. As with the
law, the stakes are higher now and the models are more exalted: Dulcinea is a
transvestite Beatrice and Don Quijote is pursued by Altisidora, a mock Dido
and the most interesting female gure in Part II. In the background story of
Aeneas and Dido love and the law coalesce with the theme of politics and with
desengao.
Allusions to The Aeneid abound in Part II. Both Don Quijotes descent to
the Cave of Montesinos and Sanchos fall into the pit recall Aeneass visit to
Hades. The journey toward Barcelona vaguely evokes Virgils heros trek to-
ward what would become Rome. Altisidora often appears surrounded by or
near ames, evoking Didos suicide in the pyre. She openly plays the role of
the spurned Carthaginian queen to Don Quijotes prudent and pious Aeneas.
In the political context that I have been examining, this evocation of Rome
through Virgil has a tinge of nostalgia, of melancholy for the grandeur of the
Spanish Empire, whose model was of course Romesthis may go a long way
to explaining the turn to the political in Part II of the Quijote. The current state
of the empire does not quite rate an Aeneid in perfectly crafted dactylic hex-
ameters, but a prose epic about a mad hero pursued by a fake Dido. The
Aeneid is also a poem about the founding of a polity, a city, a state; hence
allusions to it refer to the birth of the law and of government. In this sense the
cluster of allusions is, like Barataria, a probe into the principles of law and the
law of principles. Virgil was conscious of creating a national poem, and one
wonders if Cervantes did not feel that his novel would also become a national
epic, though a degraded one. One can also see that by playing Aeneas Don
Quijote is coming closer to sanity, for the Virgilian hero was certainly a pru-
dent lover, not a mad one like those in the courtly love tradition or in chivalric
romances. Love is shunned in favor of the law, but Don Quijote is not going to
be the founder of any city. He is going to nd and found himself, a great
 Politics of Love and Law 131

accomplishment, no doubt, as Sancho proclaims, but a sign of his disillusion-

ment with bringing justice to the world, of nding and upholding the law, of
founding, perhaps, a polity in consonance with his ideals. It is again the legal-
ese in Cervantes prose that gives the clue here.
As in Part I, there are references to many legal documents and acts in Part II.
The lion keeper wants to make sure that the other characters bear witness to
the fact that he is being forced to perpetrate a crime against the crown: it is
committed on the highway, in despoblado, and the animals are being sent to
the kings. What he shouts to them is a legal formula, a form of attestation: I
call all present to witness that I am forced, against my will, to open the cages,
and let loose the lions, and I here declare that this gentleman is chargeable
with, and answerable for, all the harm they shall do, as also for my salary and
perquisites over and above (II, 17, p. 560) [Sanme testigos cuantos aqu
estn como contra mi voluntad y forzado abro las jaulas y suelto los leones, y
de que protesto a este seor que todo el mal dao que estas bestias hicieren
corra y vaya por su cuenta, con mis salarios y derechos (p. 764)]. Smollett
quite successfully captures the legal terminology, the cuantos aqu estn,
contra mi voluntad y forzado, protesto a este seor, corra y vaya por su
cuenta. The lion keepers speech is like the dictation of a document that
would begin something like, Let the record show . . . When, at the end of his
rule in Barataria, Sancho appears before the duke to give him a report, he is
undergoing what was known as a juicio de residencia. It was a proceeding to
which high government ofcialsviceroys, governors, and the likehad to
submit themselves as they left ofce to provide proof of their honesty and
effectiveness during their tenure.
But all these documents, virtual or real, are part of the prose of the bu-
reaucracy that we are by now accustomed to nding in the Quijote. Part IIs
conclusion is marked by two legal documents with much higher signicance:
Don Quijotes will and his death certicate. In the rst the good hidalgo makes
restitution to his housekeeper, niece, and Sancho for all the grief that he has
caused them and the work that they have done without recompense. The
document is drawn up and dictated to a notary public in accordance with all
the rituals prescribed by the law and adhering to the expected notarial for-
mulas. It is an interesting document because, being childless, Don Quijote has
no immediate legal heir. His hidalgua is not going to be passed on to a son. It
ends with his death. What is left of his fortune is bequeathed in its entirety,
except for the sums left to Sancho and the housekeeper, to the niece, who is
the daughter of a sister. He does make provision to annul the bequest if the
niece marries a fellow who reads romances of chivalry, a prudent measure that
he has learned not only from his own misadventures but from those of all
132 Politics of Love and Law

those young men he met throughout, like Cardenio, who were steeped in
them. No courtly love and no chivalry: Don Quijotes niece and future hus-
band will run the estate with as much wisdom as Diego de Miranda, the Man
in Green (II, 18).
The death certicate is to be seen in conjunction with the afdavit that Don
Quijote has Alvaro de Tarfe sign declaring that he had never seen him before,
hence invalidating Avellanedas Quijote. Tarfe is a character in the apocryphal
sequel. With his signature Tarfe also attests to his own nonbeinga character
in a false book, he could not be more of an absence. He signs a certicate of
unbirth, as it were, the most outrageous document in the whole novel. Instead
of being a legal text that conveys the truth, it is a ctional legal text that attests
to the ctionality of another, creating an innite regression of texts with no
possible end. Both this document and Don Quijotes will are elegant jokes
about the relationship of the law to ctionabout their complicity and coeval
birth, which is a form of death at the same time, or the elimination of the
dividing line between them. The will presumably forecloses the possibility of
new sequels to the novel, being active and enforceable then within the realm of
ction like a death certicate in the real world. The afdavit guarantees the
legitimacy of one ction and disqualies another but at the same time blurs the
separation of legitimate and illegitimate ctions. There is no way out of this
gallery of mirrors, except through death, real death, from which Cervantes is
not far as he completes the Quijote.
Don Quijotes death makes all of his life like a dream, with death the only
access to a true, permanent life. It is not just his madness that is like a dream
but everything else: his madness is a dream within a dream. This is not a book
that has a plot in the Aristotelian sense, so that the life of Don Quijote is what
gives it formthis is drawn from the picaresque and from chivalric romances.
Hence the Quijote has to end with the heros death. Death is a form of closure
that everyone understands, even those who never heard of the Poetics. It gives
life shape by making everything converge in it, as Quevedo said memorably in
a poem. Cervantes is showing that the novel cannot be bound by the articial
shapes of art, but by the shape of life as everyone understands it and as it is
recorded in depositions and veried by death certicates. All this acquires
depth when we take into account that his own death is near as he writes about
Don Quijotes. Because the death that cannot be written out or postponed is
Cervantes own, the siempre, segura muerte (death, forever sure). Cervantes
has played so much with his own link to the creation of Don Quijote that one
is left with a sense of ambiguity about whether he felt that he owned the
character. He is the most reticent and at the same time visible and assertive
author. Is his death the death of the author of the Quijote? The prologue to the
 Politics of Love and Law 133

Persiles, written only a little later, shows a man resigned to his impending
death, as if death were merely a part of life. There is an identication of
Cervantes with Don Quijote in their deaths that is more profound than simply
the issue of not allowing anyone else to continue the Quijote. Life as lies, as
literature, has to come to an end for him too: a form of truth must be reached
on the brink of death. Cervantes seems to be saying that he, like Don Quijote,
is renouncing a life of make-believe.
 8

A Marriage Made in Heaven:

Camachos Wedding (Quijote, II, 1921)

Of all the love stories in the Quijote, Part II, none is more entertaining
and comedy-like than the episode of Camachos wedding. In fact, some critics
believe that the episode was to be the basis for a play Cervantes never got
around to writing. The episode is in some respects a rewriting of the love
stories in Part I, especially those of Cardenio, Luscinda, Dorotea, and Don
Fernando, but with reminiscences also of the Marcela-Grisstomo tragic con-
ict. It is one of the few stories in Part II that is not contrived by characters
within the ction, though the way in which Basilio stages its resolution and the
wedding festivities give it a theatrical quality akin to that of others, such as the
one involving Tosilos and Duea Rodrguezs daughter, and Altisidoras mock
wooing of Don Quijote. Camachos wedding is also the one love story in Part
II that has a happy ending, sealed not just by the union of the young lovers but
by Camachos forgiveness of the offendersthey did thwart a legally and
religiously sanctioned marriage. But while these are all signicant aspects of
the Basilio-Quiteria-Camacho love triangle, what stands out in this episode is
how the issues of love and the law are elevated to a higher sphere, that of
religious doctrine as codied in canon law. This Cervantes accomplishes by the
way in which he weaves in classical mythology and, above all, by how sedu-
lously he presents current and pressing questions about marriage in the Spain
of the times. There is also, I will argue here, a symbolic subtext that suggests a

134
 Marriage Made in Heaven 135

resolution of the uneasy mixture of classical mythology and Christianity and

of the questions of canon law concerning marriage.
Don Quijote and Sancho hear about the impending wedding of Camacho
the Rich to Quiteria on the road, from the students who engage in the fencing
match. They are natives of Quiterias village who are returning home to enjoy
the feast and to nd out how the unresolved problem of Basilios love for the
young woman will be played out. The potential conict has by now a familiar
ring: it is to be an unequal marriage. Basilio, clever and charming, is skilled at
sports and music but has no capital or protable skills. Quiteria has noble
blood but is not wealthy, while Camacho is fabulously rich but a commoner.
Their marriage will be benecial to both in social and nancial terms, the
ostensible reason why Quiterias parents want her to forget Basilio. When the
protagonists hear this, they launch into a discussion about marriage in which
Don Quijote defends the traditional position giving parents the right to marry
their children off to whomever they deem convenient, and Sancho the more
modern one holding that people should marry whomever they love. Curiously,
as the episode develops, their positions are reversed. Sancho is swayed by
the amounts of food he enjoys at Camachos wedding feast, Don Quijote by
Basilios pluck. (It is a Cervantean practice to foreground a story and the
characters in it before the action unfolds, something he may have learned from
writing for the theaterthose familiar with Molire will recall similar pro-
cedures in his plays. The same device is used in the Marcela-Grisstomo epi-
sode and in Cardenios.)
The story, like the one about Ricotes daughter, abounds in details of village
conviviality, depicting a peaceful life. It is the kind of custom-bound existence
that leads to the formulation of laws, the basis for the kind of communal con-
sensus that winds up as written codesderecho consuetudinario, or common
law. Basilio and Quiteria, who live in contiguous houses, grow up together
loving each other, and it is everyones expectation that they will marry, provid-
ing continuity to the changeless history of the village. Their love is explicitly
compared to that of Pyramus and Thisbe, who, as everyone knows, communi-
cated through a hole in the wall separating their houses. This allusion is an
ominously tragic note. The student who is telling the story says: This Basilio
is a neighboring lad and townsman of Quiteria, and there is nothing but a
partition-wall between his house and that of her parents, whence Cupid took
occasion to renew the long forgotten loves of Pyramus and Thisbe; for Basilio
became enamored of Quiteria, even from his tender years, and she smiled
upon his passion with all manner of honorable indulgence (II, 19, p. 575) [Es
este Basilio un zagal vecino del mismo lugar de Quiteria, el cual tena su casa
pared y medio de la de los padres de Quiteria, de donde tom ocasin el amor
136 Marriage Made in Heaven

de renovar al mundo los ya olvidados amores de Pramo y Tisbe; porque

Basilio se enamor de Quiteria desde sus tiernos y primeros aos, y ella fue
correspondiendo a su deseo con mil honestos favores (p. 783)]. The love
of Pyramus and Thisbe is not as forgotten as the student claims, however.
Lorenzo Miranda, the son of Diego de Miranda, whose house the protagonists
have just left, wrote a sonnet on the theme that is quoted in full, clearly also as
a form of foreshadowing. What the student means by long forgotten (los ya
olvidados amores) is that the love of Pyramus and Thisbe belongs to the past,
not to the present, as does that of Quiteria and Basilio.
Following the classical tale, when Basilio reaches manhood and Quiteria the
requisite age to marry (sexual maturity in both cases, one presumes), her
father forbids the young man to visit her any longer and arranges for her to
marry Camacho the Rich to free himself from all sorts of jealousy and suspi-
cion (II, 19, p. 575) [por quitarse de andar receloso y lleno de sospechas
(p. 783)]. The way in which Quiterias father expresses his concern makes it
clear that he believes she is capable of carrying on a sexual liaison, and there is
even a hint that it may have already begun or is near happening. Once he
learns of the impending wedding Basilio goes mad in a way not too dissimilar
to Cardenio, with similar outward symptoms, but he is very different in that he
is determined not to let Quiteria be taken away from him, using his unprot-
able but efcient skills for the purpose.
I retell this part of the plot to underline from the start one detail that
could go unnoticed but that later becomes signicant retrospectively: that the
prohibition arises when Quiteria and Basilio attain sexual maturity. She has
clearly begun to menstruateit is said that she is eighteen and he twenty, so
they are quite capable of reproducing. Up to then Quiterias parents did not see
Basilio as a threat, nor could they hope to create a legacy through Quiterias
children by a wealthy man. Separating the young couple is a way of ensuring
that Quiteria will not have a child by the impecunious Basilio, who has added
to his various abilities that of impregnating her. Given their proximity and
upbringing together there is a faint hint of the incest prohibition lurking in the
background, suggesting that more than a social and economic conict is at
stakethat their separation stems from a kind of primal law, an atavistic
forbidding of the fusion of bloodlines. This is another instance of what I have
been saying about the irrationality of interdictions and the origins of the
law. The ban leads to the clash that makes up the core of the story but also
hints at its resolution. The episode is built on such antitheses, on oppositions
that lead to transformations, to metamorphosesdynamic transmutations of
shapes and of matter. The Pyramus and Thisbe story is drawn, of course, from
 Marriage Made in Heaven 137

Ovids Metamorphoses, a poem that begins: My intention is to tell of bodies

changed / To different forms.

John Sinnigen has correctly observed that Basilios victory is due to his artful-
ness and his will, to his contriving an ending to the episode different from what
it appeared to be about to have:

The nal result of the action of Camachos wedding is the conrmation of

the propriety of romantic love and the rejection of the illegitimate claim on
love by inters [greed]. The same conclusion was provided by Cardenios
tale. There are, however, important differences between the two stories. Car-
denios tale ends in a venta [inn] to which the hand of fate had led the two
couples. The Bodas de Camacho, however, ends in a teatro [theater] and
the conclusion is brought about by Basilios industria [craft]. The difference
between these two endings reects a signicant difference between Part I and
Part II. In Part I only Don Quijote and the priest (and very briey the ventero
[innkeeper] in Chapter II) acted as authors in the sense that they tried to
impose ction on reality. The role of art was of secondary concern to the other
characters. In Part II, however, art and artice are extremely important and a
larger number of characters (from Sancho Panza to the Duke and Duchess)
act as authors by using ction to impose their wills on other characters. In
the Bodas de Camacho Basilio acts as author because he is not content to
let fate decide the end of the story. Therefore he imposes his will on the other
characters by using ction to alter the course of the story away from its
natural ending.

I would add that the art and artice involved in thwarting the ending of the
story, being all of Basilios making, are man-made, as are all such construc-
tions in Part II. The most clearly man-made of these is the law, both civil and
canon, which is the reason Basilio can so cleverly manipulate it.
This is because one of the attributes Basilio appears to have is a legalistic
mind, though there is no hint that he is a law student, as was the case with the
prisoner of sex studied in chapter 1. For all the zany ingenuity of the ruse he
uses to recover Quiteria, there is a very carefully laid legal foundation to make
their wedding valid. In this preparation and in the trick Basilio uses Cervantes
has embedded a detailed, nuanced discussion of the debates about marriage
that arose in post-Trentian Spain, when the councils resolutions on the matter
were incorporated into statutory law. Of course, Part I was also written after
the Council of Trent, but in 1605 Cervantes was more interested then in the
resolution of love stories within the framework of inheritance issues and the
138 Marriage Made in Heaven

foundation of estates, whereas now he is more interested in the foundations of

marriage as sacramentin the law before the law that involves the transfor-
mation of bodies. Events cannot develop and come to closure in Camachos
wedding, as they did in Part I, simply through the providential intervention of
Don Quijote and be cast in terms of testamentary regulations. The quandaries
now are at once more elemental and deeper.
These involve the issues raised by clandestine marriages, with the attending
dangers of polygamy, the disturbing issue of possible annulments of invalid
ones, which ran counter to the Catholic prohibition of divorce, and the ab-
sence of social or religious legitimation, as neither priest nor magistrate need
be present at the moment the vows are made. This direct communication with
God without the mediation of the church smacked of Protestantism, as did the
potential dissolution of marriages, made more dangerous in Spain because
Erasmus had written in favor of the practice. In the most concrete of terms
there was the question of the heavy burden imposed by acts of compliance, the
levity and eetingness of which seemed all out of proportion to the unbreak-
able bond that they sealedthe accidente irreparable (irreparable accident) as
Don Quijote calls marriage, using Scholastic terminology. You say I do in
the middle of the night, in a t of passion, alone somewhere with your lover,
and you are yoked for life with no reprieve. Can free will be so freely expressed
and at the same time be so easily relinquished? Should mere words with no
witness and no authority to validate them constitute an unbreakable bond?
We have seen some of this in the stories in Part I when Cardenio claims that
Luscinda cannot marry Don Fernando because she is already married to him,
and when Dorotea maintains that Don Fernando is married to her. With the
whole group present at Juan Palomeques inn, including the priest, the prom-
ises made there as the conicts are resolved are binding on legal and religious
grounds. In Camachos wedding the situation is considerably more compli-
cated by the way the marriage is executed. It is, appropriately, a conict de-
serving a baroque, Scholastic mind to ponder it because of all its legal and
doctrinal subtleties.
Basilios multiple skills include acting, of course: he convinces everyone that
he is mortally wounded and on the very brink of giving up the ghost. But he is
even more procient in canon law than in acting. He rst explains that he
will commit suicide to remove the obstacle to Quiterias good fortune, as the
heavens appear to want her to have it. He means, of course, that they are
already betrothed and the wedding cannot continue while he is alive. When he
beseeches Quiteria to marry him in articulo mortis he blackmails her, and the
others, by saying that he will refuse being confessed by the priest before expir-
ing unless she complies with his wishes. All those present know that, as a
 Marriage Made in Heaven 139

suicide, Basilio is going straight to hell if he does not confess and repent be-
fore dying, putting enormous pressure not just on Quiteria but also on the
priest and even on Camacho to give in to his wishes. Denying his request is
tantamount to condemning his soul to eternal damnation, for suicide is a
mortal sin. To do so would be worse than murdering him. Quiteria and those
involved would not just be selsh in worldly terms, but worse, cruel on re-
ligious grounds. From injured party (the wedding has been ruined) they are
turned into offending party before the most transcendental of courts and
the highest possible judge. Basilio is caught between two sentences without
termmarriage or helland has put everyone (particularly Quiteria) in the
predicament of having to decide which will be his fate. Camacho is encour-
aged by Basilios followers, who know what is about to happen. They are so
clamorous in soliciting him to consent to Quiterias giving her hand in mar-
riage to the hapless youth, whose soul would otherwise perish in despair, that
he was persuaded, and as it were compelled to say, that if his bride would grant
that favor, he should be satised, as it would only for a moment delay the
accomplishment of his desires (II, 21, p. 591) [pidindole que consintiese que
Quiteria le diese la mano de esposa, porque su alma no se perdiese, partiendo
desesperado desta vida, que le movieron, y aun forzaron, a decir que si Qui-
teria quera drsela, que l se contentaba, pues todo era dilatar por un mo-
mento el cumplimiento de sus deseos (p. 804)]. When she and everyone else
give in, Basilio extracts from Quiteria vows that carefully include words that
explicitly express that she is giving her consent freely and under no external
pressure: what I request, O fatal star of my destiny! is, that thy consent to this
exchange of vows may not be a mere compliment to deceive me anew, but that
thou wilt confess and declare there is no restraint upon thy inclination, while
thy hand is given and delivered to me as thy lawful husband; for it would be
cruel to use deceit and dissimulation with one in such extremity, who has
always behaved with thee with such sincerity and truth (II, 21, p. 592) [Lo
que te suplico es, oh fatal estrella ma!, que la mano que me pides y quieras
darme no sea por cumplimiento, ni para engaarme de nuevo, sino que con-
eses y digas que, sin hacer fuerza a tu voluntad, me la entregas y me la das
como a tu legtimo esposo; pues no es razn que en trance como ste me
engaes, ni uses de ngimientos con quien tantas verdades ha tratado contigo
(p. 805)]. The clever mention of to deceive me anew is a clear indication that
there had been a clandestine marriage between Quiteria and Basilio and that
he considered her wedding to Camacho an indelity or even bigamy. Ni para
engaarme de nuevo, as the original reads, can mean to deceive me anew,
but also to cheat on me again. He is, one more time, accusing her and the
others of doing harm to him, not the other way around. When she replies,
140 Marriage Made in Heaven

Quiteria follows Basilios promptings and utters the right words and then
some: No force upon earth would be sufcient to bias my will; and therefore,
with all the freedom of inclination, I give thee my hand as thy lawful wife, and
receive thine in the same terms, if thou bestowest it with the same good will,
undisturbed and unconfounded by the calamity into which thou hast been
hurried by thy own precipitate conduct (II, 21, p. 592) [Ninguna fuerza
fuera bastante a torcer mi voluntad; y as, con la ms libre que tengo te doy la
mano de legtima esposa, y recibo la tuya, si es que me la das de tu libre
albedro, sin que la turbe ni contraste la calamidad en que tu discurso acele-
rado te ha puesto (p. 805)]. She wants to make sure that the validity of the
marriage cannot be disputed by alleging that Basilio was not in possession of
all his faculties when making the vow or in a hurry because of his imminent
death, which is what discurso acelerado means. He replies with the required
words: I do, answered Basilio, without either disorder or confusion; but,
on the contrary, with all the clearness of understanding with which heaven
hath thought proper to endow me, I deliver myself for thy true and faithful
husband (II, 21, p. 592) [S doyrespondi Basilio, no turbado ni
confuso, sino con el claro entendimiento que el cielo quiso darme, y as me doy
y me entrego por tu esposo (p. 805)]. In legal terms, canonical and civil, the
marriage is validated by Quiteria after Basilio springs on everyone his sur-
prising resurrection: The bride, however, expressed no mortication at the
deceit; on the contrary, hearing somebody observe that such a marriage, ob-
tained by fraud, could not be valid, she said she conrmed it anew (II, 21,
p. 593) [La esposa no dio muestras de pesarle la burla; antes oyendo decir que
aquel casamiento, por haber sido engaoso, no haba de ser valedero, dijo ella
que le conrmaba de nuevo (p. 806)]. Camacho also acquiesces, driven by his
resentment of Quiterias disdain and the frightful thought that if she loved
Basilio before marrying him, she might well continue to do so after the wed-
ding, with worse consequences for him than he had just suffered. He attributes
the whole thing to Quiterias ckleness, which is not completely off the mark,
given that we learn later that she was not in with Basilio in his plan to upset the
wedding, which shows that she did change her mind on the spot, as she proba-
bly had before when her parents induced her to marry Camacho. (La donna
mobile, qual piuma al vento.) The point of all this is how carefully crafted the
entire episode is in legal terms, civil and canonical.
Let us observe closer the background of all the legal preparation to under-
stand better what moral, religious, and legal forces are in play. In a long
commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Erasmus wrote about the
churchs unusual inexibility with regard to the indissoluble nature of mar-
riage. He speaks about the ease with which two irresponsible adolescents
 Marriage Made in Heaven 141

could marry in secret, using the mediation of seedy go-betweens, under the
inuence of madness or drunkenness, without any of these circumstances
altering the sacramental nature of the union, made by God and which no man
can tear asunder. Why, he asks, can civil or religious authority not put an end
to such a marriage and allow a guiltless spouse (in cases of adultery) to re-
marry? The Spanish church, zealously searching for traces of heresy in Eras-
muss works, rejected and denounced this proposition. But during the Council
of Trent clandestine marriages and their indissolubility had been a carefully
debated issue, with someone like Juan de Avila, who considered marriage to be
a sacrament, arguing in favor of annulling clandestine marriages because they
could in certain cases lead to bigamy, as in the Camacho-Basilio-Quiteria
situation. The council could not agree to this without appearing to be giving in
to Protestant ideas and instead proclaimed that the church detested clan-
destine marriages and ordered the clergy not to celebrate weddings without
published banns and the presence of witnesses. This doctrine was incorpo-
rated by Philip II into Spanish statutory law in 1564, remaining as the founda-
tion of marriage in Spain until the nineteenth century.
Marcel Bataillon, whom I am following closely here, concludes that, what-
ever his opinion on clandestine marriages and their possible annulment, Eras-
mus (who wrote an Encomium Matrimonii in 1497, published in 1517) and
many other Renaissance thinkers praised matrimony often and eloquently.
For the great Erasmus and Cervantes scholar, the consensus of the sixteenth
century held matrimony in very high regard, with frequent praise for the
monogamous union that only God can severin short, Christian marriage.
Cervantes alludes in various ways to the ceremonies imposed by the Council of
Trent to regulate marriage and limit clandestine ones, without it being clear if
he condemned or accepted these. In a long footnote to his El pensamiento de
Cervantes, Amrico Castro cites many instances of both spontaneous clan-
destine marriages and others in which providentially a priest appears and the
union is properly sanctioned according to the dictates of the Council of Trent.
He opines that Cervantes favored the rst kind, but occasionally deferred to
church authority by having priests pop up at the critical moment. I do not
think that it is a question of which kind of marriage Cervantes liked, which we
will never know, but how one or the other kind t the needs of the narrative in
question. The issues raised by Trent allowed him to probe into marriage at a
deeper level than mere doctrine and made for stories with a richer gamut of
possibilities as a conclusion, as is evident in the Camacho wedding episode.
At bottom the question is if marriage is a social contract or a sacrament. If it
is the latter, as is clear with the Eucharist and other sacraments, the union
involves a literal kind of transubstantiation, a transcendental metamorphoses
142 Marriage Made in Heaven

of matter. In the case of marriage a blending of bloods makes the union

irreversibleif, in the biblical injunction, man and woman do become one
esh. In terms of the ritual itself, it is a matter of conferring upon words a
magical or talismanic power to effectuate this mystical union. This is evidently
what Don Quijote believes. He urges Quiteria to comply with Basilios desper-
ate request: here nothing was required but the I do of assent, which could
have no other effect than the trouble of pronouncing it, as the bridal bed must
also be the tomb of such a marriage (II, 21, p. 591) [Aqu no ha de haber
ms de un s, que no tenga otro efecto que el pronunciarle, pues el tlamo de
estas bodas ha de ser la sepultura (p. 804)]. What Don Quijote says (que no
tenga otro efecto que el pronunciarle) means that under normal circum-
stances the mere voicing of the words has the effect of legitimizing the mar-
riage, which would be its only effect here, as no consummation will take place.
But the mere utterance has the requisite power of legitimation no matter what
happens afterward. Looking at the episode with all this background in mind it
would appear that Cervantes is favoring the earlier, clandestine I do that
Quiteria presumably uttered to Basilio, while at the same time having them
observe the ceremonies prescribed by the Council of Trent at the suspended
wedding ceremony. It is, it seems, the middle course, adhering to the basic
requirement of mutual consent expressed before God, but sanctied by formal
religious and civil ceremonies. More importantly, it presents multiple possibil-
ities for ending the story and allows Cervantes to nish it with a double
ending, consonant with the two rituals: one for a wedding that does not take
place and another, at Quiterias house, for the one that did. This is part of the
theatrical nature of the episode, which, as in the Tosilos story, contains a
surprise ending not only for the characters but also for the reader.

The sacramental nature of marriage lurks in the subtext of the story through
the allusion to the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, pointing to the origin of
matrimonial law at its most elemental level. By going to the foundations of
love and marriage, Cervantes is doing here what he did with the origins of the
law in the Barataria interlude. His deployment of the myth has something in
common with similar practices by Gngora, Caldern, and other baroque
writers, as well as with Velzquez in some of his paintings. Its source for
Cervantes and the whole Renaissance and baroque was, as I said, Ovids
Metamorphoses. As in the rest of continental Europe and England, Ovid had a
long, profound, and sustained history in Spain and not just in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries.
Nearly a hundred years ago, Rudolph Schevill published the results of his
 Marriage Made in Heaven 143

long and exhaustive investigation of Ovids inuence in Spain from the Middle
Ages to the seventeenth century. He found most pervasive that of Ovids
works on love, the Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris, in which he found the
origin of what he called Ovidian love stories, mostly tales of seduction. He
discusses several in Cervantes work, including the Quijote. I nd Ovids pres-
ence in these stories to be so diluted into more direct sources like Boccaccio as
to be somewhat irrelevant. But the Metamorphoses also had a very long and
sustained life as an authoritative source for mythological fables. For instance,
Alfonso X (the Wise), whom we encountered when discussing the Siete parti-
das, made much of Ovid in his epoch-making Grande e general storia, an
ambitious work encompassing the entire history of the world as was then
known. Alfonso gives special importance to mythology, which he considers a
disgured history that he attempts to interpret, with sometimes bizarre ex-
plications. Mythology also plays a prominent role in his Libros del saber
de astronoma, in which constellations, such as that of Perseus, retain their
names. Alfonsos source is Ovids Metamorphoses, seen by church authori-
ties then as a kind of pagan bible because it provided an all-encompassing
cosmic history. In the fteenth century Juan de Mena, a learned poet who
wrote major historical and allegorical works such as El laberinto de fortuna, is
steeped in the Metamorphoses, his authority on mythological fables.
The rst Spanish translation of the Metamorphoses appeared in 1490, dur-
ing the reign of the Catholic kings. With the incorporation of Italianate
poetics in the rst half of the sixteenth century, classical myths attained more
prominence, particularly in the works of Garcilaso de la Vega, and Ovid was,
again, the obligatory reference. Among the learned humanists of the period,
the Salamanca-based Cristbal de Villaln, author of dialogues in the classical
style, wrote a play called Tragedia de Mirrha (1536) based on the Meta-
morphosis. Juan de la Cueva, among the founders of the Spanish national
theater in the second half of the sixteenth century, wrote Tragedia de Ayax
Telamn, inspired by the same work of Ovid. In the baroque, the predilec-
tion for mythology goes hand in hand with the advent of culteranismo and
gongorismo, the practice of writing obscure, intricately argued prose in the
rst instance, and complicated and allusive poetry in the second. Gngora, of
course, availed himself of Ovid in his mythological poems, and held him up as
an example of a poet who reveled in difculty and obscurity. His Fbula de
Polifemo y Galatea was one of many Renaissance and baroque efforts to
imitate Ovid. He also wrote a satirical ballad on the theme of Pyramus and
Thisbe. Caldern de la Barca wrote many mythological pieces for the theater,
including autos sacramentales, allegorical plays on the mystery of the Eucha-
rist, in which he goes back to the medieval practice of interpreting Ovid in
144 Marriage Made in Heaven

Christian terms. I provide this quick overview to show that Cervantes is fol-
lowing conventions common in his time and immediately before and also to
discern how his incorporation of classical myth differs from that of other
artists of his time. Before I look more closely at the role that the Pyramus and
Thisbe story plays in Camachos wedding, Id better join the tradition of
retelling the myth.
There lived in Babylon, the city founded by Queen Semiramis, a boy and girl
of incomparable beauty who resided in contiguous houses (contiguas tenuere
domos). Their proximity led them to love each other, but their parents disap-
proved and they had to communicate through a hole in the wall that separated
their houses. Desperate to see each other, they made plans to ee their families
and meet one night at the tomb of Ninus, Semiramiss late husband, which was
next to a mulberry tree, loaded with snow-white fruit. Covered with a veil,
Thisbe was the rst to arrive at the spot. While she waited for Pyramus, a
lioness appeared. She had come to drink from a nearby fountain and cleanse
her mouth from the blood of some cows she had recently slain. Frightened,
Thisbe ed to hide in a cave, but in her haste she dropped her veil. The lioness
mangled and stained it with blood before she left. Pyramus arrived and was
shocked by the sight of the lionesss footprints and the bloody veil. He as-
sumed that Thisbe had been killed, and became desperate at her loss and the
guilt he felt for having led her to such a dangerous place. He plunged his sword
into his body and when he pulled it out the wound spurted blood like a
fountain, turning red the fruit of the mulberry tree. Thisbe returned and was
disturbed rst by the change in the color of the fruit and then by discovering
Pyramus dying on the ground. She kissed him and tried to revive him; he lifted
his eyes to her, but death closed them. In despair, Thisbe blamed their parents,
requested that her ashes be buried with her lovers, and implored the gods that
the color of the fruit remain red in remembrance of their cruel fate. She then
fell on the sword with which Pyramus had killed himself. The parents and
gods complied with her request: their ashes were placed in the same urn and
the trees fruit became red as it ripened.
This is a tragic story in which a cruel fate befalls the characters because of a
misinterpretation, although it could be easily read as an admonitory tale about
the recklessness of youth. I think that the myth goes back to a conjunction of
love and death at the very moment when love ripens and is about to become
regenerative. It is a myth of spring, as it were, perhaps of that cruelest of
months. The young lovers, driven by desire, are to meet at the tomb of Ninus,
where they nd their bloody death not at the paws of the lioness but by their
own hands. The bloody veil can be seen as an image of the hymen, rent in the
act of love, a bloody event that recalls the onset of menstruation and the
 Marriage Made in Heaven 145

capacity for reproduction but also the recurrent death of a womans ova. The
red of the fruit is a symbol of both resurrection and death, as it recalls men-
struation in its periodic coloring. That the lioness is a female encourages this
interpretation, as does the fact that Thisbe sees her through the moonlight
(Quom procul ad lunae radios Babylonia Thisbe/vedit et obscurum timido
pede fugit in antrum). I would venture to say that the myth reenacts a tragic
human predicament, symbolized by the spilling of blood at conception, birth,
and death, leaving open the possibility that the law, here in the form of the
parents disapproval and interdiction, can overcome or forestall fatality; yet it
is also clear that the prohibition is allied with death, too, because it leads to
the catastrophe, as Thisbe proclaims, and because it may have arisen due to
the advent of menstruation. In Ovid the conict appears to resolve itself in
beauty, as the blood of the lovers becomes the red fruit of the tree. This is the
transformation that occurs; the transubstantiation of bloods yields a beautiful
objectan impasse valuable for its own sake without issue or moral conclu-
sion. The whole Metamorphoses is about the conversion of bodieshuman
and otherwiseinto other forms of matter, a kind of poetic physics, or physics
of poetry. This is precisely what happens in the story of Camachos wedding.
In Cervantes the myth is not retold with a didactic, satirical, or aesthetic
purposein fact, as we shall see, it is not quite so much retold as recycled. It is
not an Ovid moralis, a Renaissance retelling to emulate Ovid, or a baroque
version in a satirical or parodic vein, as in Gngoras Fbula de Polifemo y
Galatea, or his own ballad of Pyramus and Thisbe. Although it is reminiscent
of Velzquezs adaptation of classical myth, in which the legends are con-
trasted or mingled with scenes of a withered present far from classical perfec-
tion and timelessness, it is also quite different in that the shape of the story is
barely manifest. (In 1911, Jos Ortega y Gasset claimed that what Velzquez
means by mixing classical gods with unsavory characters from everyday real-
ity is that there are no gods, and no meaning, if we take the gods to be
the embodiment of the higher sense things acquire when seen in connection
to each other. Velzquez, he says, is an atheistic giant, a colossal impious
man. With his brush he banishes the gods as if smacking them with a broom.
In his Bacchanal there is not only no Bacchus, but a rascal is impersonating
Bacchus.)
Let us look at three paintings by Velzquez with mythological subjects
to contrast them with Cervantes use of myth in the Camachos wedding
episode. Los borrachos (Bacchanal) has nine gures, two of which seem to be
dressedor rather, undressedfor a bacchanal. The others are lusty peas-
ants, roughly clothed in contemporary dress and with the same unposed air
that characterized the naturalistic genre scenes called in Spanish bodegones.
146 Marriage Made in Heaven

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Velzquezs Los borrachos, 1628. Courtesy of Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY, Museo del
Prado, Madrid, Spain.

These sought and achieved an effect of a casually chosen slice of life. But Los
borrachos is carefully composed around the light esh of the bogus Bacchus in
the center. Jonathan Brown says that attempts to interpret the painting as a
parody of the Olympian gods or as a sermon on the evils of drink have failed,
and that instead Velzquez intended to represent Bacchus as the giver of the
gift of wine, which freed man (temporarily) from the harsh, unforgiving strug-
gle of daily life. . . . Deprived of the benecent liquid, the beggar nds no
respite from the hardships which, in sober moments, will be shared by all the
company. In La fragua de Vulcano (Apollo at the Forge of Vulcan) all the
characters participate in the action, casting converging gazes toward the clas-
sically idealized gure of Apollo, who enters from the left in a blaze of splen-
dor. He has come to warn Vulcan, who is unsuitably married to Venus, that his
wife is having an affair with Mars. The expression of shock and wary disbelief
on the smiths honest face contrasts with the sophisticated indifference of
Apollos Olympian prole. The other smiths stop work to hear the astonishing
news with deep concern. The setting, with the armor and blacksmiths ttings,
is contemporary. Brown writes: Painters in the seventeenth century over-
whelmingly preferred to illustrate the denouement, when Venus and Mars are
 Marriage Made in Heaven 147

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Velzquezs La fragua de Vulcano,1630. Courtesy of Scala/Art Resource, NY, Museo del

Prado, Madrid, Spain.

trapped in bed by Vulcans nely woven net of steel. Velzquez chose to avoid
this rowdy, burlesque nale in favor of the devastating but psychologically
delicate moment when the crippled blacksmith hears from Apollo the news of
his wifes indelity. . . . The gures, although correctly rendered, are com-
mon men, not statues come to life, as they would have been in the works of
many a contemporary Roman painter. Velzquez was in Rome when he did
this picture.
Finally, Las hilanderas (The Spinners) is a masterpiece painted around 1657
and thus a very late work contemporaneous with Las meninas, and nearly as
complex and ambitious. In it Velzquez has combined two subjects, one from
classical mythology and the other from the present. In fact, there are two
subjects from classical mythology. In the foreground we have the activities of
tapestry manufacturing as was done in factories under royal patronage in
Madrid, and in the alcove in the back the classical tale of the weaver Arachne.
The tapestry hanging on the back wall of the alcove is the key to the relation-
ship between the two scenes. It is a woven copy of Titians The Rape of
Europa, one of the most celebrated of Jupiters erotic adventures with mortal
women. Arachne had challenged Minerva, patroness of weavers and goddess
148 Marriage Made in Heaven

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Velzquezs Las hilanderas, c. 1657. Courtesy of Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY, Museo del
Prado, Madrid, Spain.

of wisdom, to a weaving contest. It was called a draw, but because Arachnes

tapestry was judged to be the equal of Minervas, and further because it de-
picted such a scandalous act by her father, the goddess punished Arachne by
turning her into a spider. This is the reason Minerva is shown gesturing an-
grily. Brown believes: By inserting a quotation of this famous work [The
Rape of Europa] into the composition, Velzquez implies his belief in the
nobility and transcendental value of the art of painting. . . . In The Fable of
Arachne Velzquez seeks to reconcile the articial world of myth with the
palpable world of visual reality without sacricing the decorum required by
the one, or the verisimilitude, by the other. . . . The contrast between the
foreground, where sturdy women toil at burdensome tasks, and the rened
atmosphere of the artists atelier [seen in the back] is perhaps Velzquezs way
of implying his conviction about the distinction between craft and art.
In Cervantes, the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe is given in shards or analects
with a faint outline that is like a distant memorysomething like the alcove in
the back of Las hilanderas. Needless to say, in Cervantes the conclusion is
quite different from the original as it appears in Ovid. We nd here, and
elsewhere in Cervantes, a new way of dealing with myth, more forward look-
 Marriage Made in Heaven 149

ing to Joyce than backward to the Renaissance and Middle Ages. But the
vestiges of the mythical story are distinct enough: the beauty of the young
lovers, their shared childhood, the parental prohibition, the effort to overcome
their forced separation, the manner of suicide, and the presence of animal
blood. Some of the details are so specic that I am inclined to believe that
Cervantes had Ovids text in front of him as he wrote, or (a likely possibility)
that he had a prodigious memory for signicant or striking particulars. For
instance, when Basilio feigns being in his death throes, his eyes are very much a
part of the act: Basilio lay, with his eyes already xed and Basilio unxing
his eyes (II, 21, pp. 591, 592) [Basilio ya los ojos vueltos; Desencaj los ojos
Basilio (p. 805)]. This recalls the moment when Thisbe asks the dying Pyramus
to answer his carissima Thisbe, whereupon Ad nomen Thisbes oculos a
morte gravatos/Pyramus erexit visque recondidit illa (He heard the name of
Thisbe, and he lifted / His eyes, with the weight of death heavy upon them, /
And saw her face, and closed his eyes). Other such specicities are the scab-
bard mentioned in Ovid, transformed into the staff in which Basilio carries his
sword and the tube within which he conceals fresh animal blood, and the
discussion about whether or not to pull out the sword from Basilio brings to
mind the way Pyramuss wound spurted blood when he pulled his weapon
from it. These are like those very vivid memories from a dream that is other-
wise fuzzy and difcult to recall, and, as with dreams, may very well be hints of
a deeper meaning.
As in Velzquez, there can be no doubt that Cervantes is taking his leave
from classical models as paradigms to be imitated by pointing out the time gap
that separates the present from them: los olvidados amores. Pyramus and
Thisbe live in fabulous Babylon, Semiramiss legendary city, a paragon of
Oriental sensuality, while Basilio, Quiteria, and Camacho live in a humble
Spanish village. A scene further on in Part II gives us the clue as to the effects of
this temporal gap. Don Quijote and Sancho stop at the inn where they will
meet Alvaro de Tarfe, the character from Avellanedas apocryphal Part II, and
they are

shown into a low apartment with old painted leather hangings, such as are
used in country places, in one piece of which some wretched hand had drawn
the rape of Helen, who was carried off from Menelaus by her presumptuous
guest; and in another was represented the story of Dido and Aeneas, the
unhappy queen standing upon a lofty tower, making signals with a white
sheet to her fugitive lover, who, in a frigate or brigantine, was ying from
her coast. He observed, of these two history pieces, that Helen showed no
marks of compulsion; but, rather exhibited her satisfaction in a roguish smile,
whereas, from the eyes of the beautiful Dido, tears as big as walnuts seemed to
fall. (II, 71, p. 924)
150 Marriage Made in Heaven

[Alojronle en una sala baja, a quien servan de guardameciles una sargas

viejas pintadas, como se usan en las aldeas. En una de ellas estaba pintada de
malsima mano el robo de Elena, cuando el atrevido husped se la llev a
Menelao, y en otra estaba la historia de Dido y de Eneas, ella sobre una alta
torre, como que haca de seas con una media sbana al fugitivo husped, que
por el mar, sobre una fragata o bergantn, se iba huyendo. Not en las dos
historias que Elena no iba de muy mala gana, porque se rea de socapa y a lo
socarrn; pero la hermosa Dido mostraba verter lgrimas del tamao de
nueces por los ojos. (pp. 12023)]

This sight provokes a comment from Sancho that is astonishing proof of the
degree to which Cervantes knew that he had created a new literary myth: Ill
lay a wager, said Sancho, that, in a very little time, every cooks cellar, tavern,
inn, and barbers shop in the kingdom, will be ornamented with pictures
containing the history of our achievements; but, I should be glad to see them
painted by a better workman than him who made these daubings (II, 71, p.
925) [Yo apostardijo Sanchoque antes de mucho tiempo no ha de
haber bodegn, venta ni mesn, o tienda de barbero, donde no ande pintada la
historia de nuestras hazaas. Pero querra yo que la pintasen manos de otro
mejor pintor que el que ha pintado a stas (p. 1203)]. Anyone who has been to
Spain knows how prescient this remark is, as images of Don Quijote and
Sancho are all over, and their gurines, curiously evoking Picassos painting of
the heroes, are for sale everywhere, not to mention that there is a huge statue
of the knight and his squire in one of Madrids most important squares. (John
J. Allen and Patricia Finch have done an exhaustive study of the many places in
which Don Quijotes image appears, from computer mouse pads to comic
books and everything in between.)
Don Quijote takes the cue and launches into an observation leading to a
critique of Avellaneda, the rst to retell their myth, as it were: Thou art in the
right, replied Don Quixote; he that painted these pieces is just such another as
Orbaneja, a painter of Ubeda, who, being asked what he was painting, an-
swered, Whatever comes out: and if he chanced to represent a cock, he wrote
under it, This is a cock; that it might not be mistaken for a fox. Such a person,
I suppose, is that same painter or author, for it is the same thing, who ushered
into the world the latterly published history of the new Don Quixote, for he
has painted or described whatever came out (II, 71, p. 925) [Tienes razn,
Sanchodijo don Quijote, porque este pintor es como Orbaneja, un pintor
que estaba en Ubeda, que cuando le preguntaban qu pintaba, responda: Lo
que saliere . . . Desta manera me parece a m, Sancho, que debe ser el pintor o
escritor, que todo es uno, que sac a luz la historia de este nuevo don Quijote;
que pint o escribi lo que saliere (p. 1203)].
 Marriage Made in Heaven 151

The point is that the classical mythological gures (Helen and Dido) are
badly reproduced; the bad painter of today improvises not only as he repre-
sents them, but also as he depicts contemporary reality, so that even the new
gures (Don Quijote and Sancho) are unfaithfully copied. It would appear,
then, if we contrast the knight himself with his chivalric models, that what
comes outlo que saliereis always new, distorted, and a variation of pre-
vious models, like the Quijote: both the knight in relation to chivalric heroes
and the book in relation to chivalric romances and all previous literature. As is
his wont, Cervantes is giving the reader a clue about his own method of
composition and artistic ideas in what to all appearances is a throwaway
scene, a ller used to lampoon Avellaneda. The episode also sheds retrospec-
tive light on the relationship of the Pyramus and Thisbe episode to Camachos
wedding. The version in the Quijote is one that repeats with variations the
original, barely recognizable through a deliberate act of interpretation of its
scattered relics, ruins like those of ancient monuments and buildings strewn all
over the former territories of the Roman Empire.
But what the remnants of Pyramus and Thisbe suggest in the episode of
Camachos wedding is a probe into the deeper issues in the myth that are
related to marriage. Cervantes picks up the latent religious questions concern-
ing the fusion of bodies and souls and the continuities between apparently
distinct manifestations of the physical worldthe atavistic links between pro-
hibition, desire, death, and ritual, the point at which love and the law intersect
dangerously and precariously at the very moment in which the wedding is
being celebrated. What is at stake is the sacramental nature of marriage even
prior to theological interpretation, to the adoption of doctrine, and to the
elaboration of a symbolic, ritualized displacement of the threatening violence
in matrimonyforemost the deoweringwhich is transformed from ex-
plicit to implicit it the wedding feast. The elements for this interpretation are
scattered throughout the episode, like the memories of the myth to which they
allude. I ask the readers indulgence as I attempt to join them.
I shall have to trace an itinerary of blood, as it were, picking up the trail left
by the Pyramus and Thisbe myth. When the protagonists ride into the can-
opied eld that has been so prepared for the wedding celebration, The rst
object that presented itself to the eyes of Sancho, was an entire calf spitted
whole upon an elm branch, roasting by a re of wood the size of a middling
mountain (II, 20, p. 582) [Lo primero que se le ofreci a la vista de Sancho
fue, espetado en un asador de un olmo entero, un entero novillo; y en el fuego
donde haba de asar arda un mediano monte de lea (p. 792)]. The scene not
only recalls pagan sacrice but the youth of the slain animal about to be
consumed establishes a link with the young couple about to marry. The calf is
152 Marriage Made in Heaven

the sacricial victim at the ritual, offered to the gods in place of the young man
and woman who are going to be the protagonists of the ritualthe slaugh-
tered animal is their proxy (Basilio implies, as we saw, that he is going to
sacrice himself for Quiteria). The ritualistic killing of the calf has already
taken place, but the implicit butchery alludes to the blood that will be spilled
at the consummation of the wedding, a token or gift also to the deities to
forestall the blood that could also be shed at the potential conict between the
families being joined. The tale of Romeo and Juliet is but one of the stories
about such conicts coming from the tradition. To add to the signicance of
this novillo, it is already pregnant: in the belly of the roasting calf were
sewn a dozen suckling pigs, to make it tender and savory (II, 20, p. 583) [En
el dilatado vientre del novillo estaban doce tiernos y pequeos lechones, que,
cosidos por encima, servan de darle sabor y enternecerle (p. 793)]. The vio-
lence, the blood, announce gestation and the spilling of more blood as the new
human being, the most basic purpose of the marriage, is produced. Now, these
animals are going to be consumed at the feast together with the enormous
quantities of wine and white bread, whose symbolism, in Christian terms,
could not be clearer. But we are not, not here anyway, at that specic level yet.
To consume and to consummate go together in the wedding celebration. As
the celebrants and their guests eat and drink they establish a continuity with
the natural world around them: with the animals and plants through the meat
and vegetables that they eat, with the earth itself as they ingest the wine it has
yielded through the vines. It is a form of transubstantiation, of transforming
one substance into another, through actions that involve violence and plea-
sure. This is precisely what is also going to occur as the marriage is con-
summated. Basilios intervention postpones the blood Quiteria would shed in
Camachos bed, substituting it for the fake blood that he has concealed and
spills as he feigns suicide. This blood that stains his garmentappropriately
interspersed with crimson ames (II, 21, p. 690) [jironado de carmes a
llamas (p. 802)]recalls that of Pyramus and Thisbe, and the blood of the calf
who commands the kitchen area, which is sacred to Sancholooking
upon that place as a sacred sanctuary and respected retreat (II, 21, 593)
[parecindole aquel lugar como sagrado (p. 807)]. It is this proxy blood that
suspends the real blood that would seal the marriage by making Camachos
and Quiterias commingle, like the ashes of Pyramus and Thisbe in the urn,
and foreshadows Quiterias eventual blood in Basilios bed.
I believe that there is a hidden blood that also plays a role in this itinerary
and that is related to the postponement of Quiterias hymeneal bleeding
another blood, like Basilios fake one, that impedes that of consummation. I
know that my evidence is tenuous here, but I am not in a court of law but
 Marriage Made in Heaven 153

reading a literary text. To put it bluntly: I believe that on her wedding day
Quiteria is suffering her menstrual period. When she rst appears at the cere-
mony, the narrator describes her thus: Vena la hermosa Quiteria algo des-
colorida, y deba de ser de la mala noche que siempre pasan las novias en
componerse para el da venidero de sus bodas (p. 802), rendered by Smollett
as the fair Quiteria was paler than usual; and this change of complexion must
have been owing to the bad night which brides always pass, in striving to
compose themselves for the approaching day of their nuptials (II, 21, p. 589).
This is good enough, but descolorida does not just mean pale, but to have
lost the color on your face, indicating a more serious cause than just sleep-
lessness, and componerse does not simply mean to prepare. Cervantes
had plida available. Descolorida can mean loss of color because of loss
of blood, and componerse can mean to make herself up but also to recover
from an ailmentto get or look better after an ailment. But we cannot argue
medicine here and quibble over words in the hope of reaching the truth. My
suspicion was aroused by similar words used in the Cave of Montesinos epi-
sode to describe Belerma, when it is said that she looks as if she might be
menstruating but is not (she is actually menopausal):
If she now seemed a little homely, or not quite so beautiful as fame reported
her, the change proceeded from the bad nights and worse days she passed in
that state of enchantment, as I might perceive in her large wrinkles and wan
complexion; nor did that yellowness and those furrows proceed from any
irregularity in the monthly disorder incident to women; for, many months and
even years had passed since she had the least show of any such evacuation;
but, solely from the anguish of her heart, occasioned by that which she holds
incessantly in her hand, and which renews and recalls to her memory the
misfortune of her ill-fated lover. (II, 23, p. 606)

[y que si me haba parecido algo fea, o no tan hermosa como tena la fama, era
la causa las malas noches y peores das que en aquel encantamiento pasaba,
como lo poda ver en sus grandes ojeras y en su color quebradiza. Y no toma
ocasin su amarillez y sus ojeras de estar con el mal mensil, ordinario en las
mujeres, porque ha muchos meses, y aun aos, que no le tiene ni asoma por
sus puertas, sino del dolor que siente su corazn por el que de contino tiene en
las manos, que le renueva y trae a la memoria la desgracia de su mal logrado
amante. (p. 823)]

Quebradiza, the word Cervantes uses to describe Belermas color, is fairly

well translated by Smollett as yellow, and her complexion as wan is good
too. The word derives from quebrar, to break, and when applied to a
color it means faded or faint. My oblique observation here is that Cervantes
description of Quiterias face, with the hasty and passing explanation for the
154 Marriage Made in Heaven

source of her lack of color, could be a euphemistic way of saying that she had
her period, or avoiding having to say it. If not, why mention at all that she
looks pale? If I am right in my diagnosis, Quiterias menstrual blood would be
an impediment to the consummation of her marriage, or at least a deferral, as
the condition is laden with all manner of superstitious injunctions and fore-
bodings. (These are not just Spanish but exist in most cultures.) It would be a
providential blood that would make one marriage impossible and another
possible. Its effect would be like that of the animal blood Basilio uses to stop
the wedding.
Quiterias menstruation, her regla, or rule, as is said in Spanish, would be
a superior law, inherent in the blood itself and determining the outcome of the
conict. Even if you, dearest reader, do not buy my reading of her pallor, there
is enough bleeding in the episode to construe a symbolic kind of menstrual
blood that impedes the marriage. This is the law before the law, which Don
Quijote, as he intervenes in favor of Basilio, interprets as being Gods design:
those whom God hath joined, no man shall put asunder (II, 21, p. 593) [que
a los dos que Dios junta no podr separar el hombre (p. 807)]. With this
statement, echoing Matthew 19:6, normally quoted at weddings, the marriage
is denitively legitimized. Marriage is seen as ordained by God, part of a divine
plan that supersedes custom and law, overriding all considerations of unequal
social or economic status. The intimation is that it precedes all such con-
structs, being embedded in the blood itself, in the general transformation of
matter according to divine grace. In the Pyramus and Thisbe classical myth,
there is no salvation: the lovers fusion and commingling is achieved only as
ashes in the funerary urn. The only positive outcome is the recurrent reddening
of the mulberries, an image of splendid beauty, but lacking transcendence. Not
so in the Quijote episode, in which a form of justice has been made and there is
every reason to believe that the commingling of bloods will lead to regenera-
tion, the birth of a new human being.
Camachos wedding elevates the conicts of love and their resolution be-
yond the laws of men to a religious, sacramental realm, without abandoning
the commonality of everyday experience and the agency of manwe must not
forget Basilios industria, his craftiness. In this realm it gives the lie too to
classical myth without making an explicit statement in favor of Catholic theol-
ogy, in spite of the nod to marriage before a priest. The spoken dance at the
wedding, a kind of hackneyed epithalamium, is wrong in its interpretation of
what will happen. The show, obviously scripted by a follower of Camacho,
predicts his victory: wealth will defeat love. But the opposite occurs; it is a
weak representation of mythology, like the one in the wall hangings at the inn.
Classical stories cannot predict or determine the future or provide rules of
 Marriage Made in Heaven 155

behavior in the present. But, as we saw with Pyramus and Thisbe, they may
contain the ancient seeds of human predicaments and serve as a memory for
the race.
Cervantes, in short, has gone beneath or beyond the debates about marriage
to consider the sacrament in its most material sense. He has come up with a
law before the law, a force so compelling in blood itself as a substance that it
drives the lovers to a true metamorphosis of each into the other. It is as if an
obscure fate drew them together, charting a plot to unite them in spite of the
various obstacles along the way. It is a story that reappears in The Call of the
Blood, one of the Exemplary Stories, in which a child issues out of the fusion
of bloods and which I will discuss in another chapter. These subplots are
daring and disturbing because in them love and the law are complicit in un-
canny designs to generate a new story, a new myth, freed from the burden of
the past. It is this quality in general that destined Cervantes creatures to gure
in so many reproductions and guises.
 9

Love and National Unity:

Ricotes Daughters Byzantine Romance

This chapter being the last on the Quijote, and hence a transition to
those on the Exemplary Stories and The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda, I
will begin with a summary of the previous two, a kind of preliminary or
provisional conclusion to the book.
In chapter 7 I argued that in Part II questions pertaining to love and the law
are elevated to a higher level in which they merge or constitute the political.
The emphasis, with regard to the law, is not so much on its application to
individual cases as on the foundations of the law in the constitution of the
state. Part II takes place indoors, rather than on the road, and has a baroque
makeup: episodes are contrived by characters within the ction, like the butler
at the dukes house, and they appear to be rewritings of previous ones in Part I,
or even within Part II itself (Sanchos fall in the pit, a retake on Don Quijotes
episode in Montesinoss Cave). Everything in Part II is man-made, not pro-
vided by nature, as was generally the case in Part I. The law too, is the product
of mans agency, as is art itself and the literary text. I used an analysis of
Velzquezs painting Las meninas to illustrate this, as the painter has often
been compared to Cervantes. I stressed that Las meninas shows Velzquez in
the act of painting, and of painting himself in the act of painting: human
agency is on display as is the self of the artist. Moreover, he, a court painter, is
painting himself instead of the monarchs, who are absent but whose position

156
 Love and National Unity 157

we as observers occupy. This elevates both Velzquez and his subjects in that
he is both the creator and object of his work, and we as observers deserve the
attention of a court painter and stand in place of the king and queen. I com-
pared this to the self-reexiveness of the Quijote, augmented in Part II by the
publication of Avellanedas apocryphal sequel. The characters now know that
they are in two books: Part I and Avellanedas.
I moved on then to the Barataria Island episodes, in which Sancho becomes
kingas we do when looking at Las meninas. The point is that Sancho, an
illiterate peasant, can indeed be an effective ruler. The power of books as
sources of knowledge has been undermined by what amounts to a medieval
retention that is part of the baroque. Sancho is endowed with sufcient knowl-
edge to interpret and apply natural law. Barataria is a false kingdom but in it
Sancho, both ruler and judge, reenacts the foundations and foundation of the
state: the origin of the law. The elevation of the legal consists of a return to its
beginnings and principles. In this and in much else Part II constitutes a bitter
critique of the political situation of Spain at the time. A shift in models for Don
Quijotes deportment also signals this change. In his dealings with Altisidora
he is more Aeneas to her Dido than Amads to her Oriana. Virgils The Aeneid,
a poem about the founding of Rome, the quintessential city and prototypical
polity, is in the background of much of Part II of the Quijote.
I concluded with a brief analysis of three legal documents at the end of the
book: the afdavit that Don Alvaro de Tarfe, the character from Avellanedas
Quijote, is made to sign swearing that he had never seen the real Quijote and
Sancho, hence declaring his own ctionality; Don Quijotes death certicate,
which is Cervantes way of bringing closure to the book and foreclosing poten-
tial sequels, and which pretends therefore to be a document effective outside
the ction, though it is clear that it could not be, as history and the Pierre
Menards of this world have proven; and Don Quijotes will, in which he leaves
everything to his niece, except for a few things to Sancho and the housekeeper.
But Don Quijote, a childless bachelor, cannot bequeath his hidalgua, and the
death of Alonso Quijano is not that of Don Quijote, who disappeared as
Quijano regained his sanity. What the will does do is end the book by certify-
ing the protagonists death, a kind of nish understood by common readers
not acquainted with or interested in debates about Aristotles Poetics. Death is
lifes closure and the will is the document that gives access to a bureaucratic
afterlife in the archive. It is a legal epitaph.
In chapter 8 I focused on that well-known episode of Camachos wedding to
show how love too is elevated by bringing it down to principles and begin-
nings. I couch my discussion in the context of debates about clandestine mar-
riages in the Council of Trent, whose conclusions were incorporated into
158 Love and National Unity

Spanish statutory law. The issue was if words pronounced in secret, with no
ecclesiastical or civil authority present to ratify their validity, constituted a
marriage. Such marriages could lead to polygamy, but dissolving them would
go against the churchs ban on divorces. The council decided to discourage
secret marriages and insist that proper rituals be performed. This is behind the
story of Quiteria, Basilio, and the rich Camacho, which, like those in Part I,
involves an unequal marriage because the young woman is poor, as is her
neighbor and suitor. I read the resolution of the conict against the myth of
Pyramus and Thisbe as it appears in Ovids Metamorphosis. As in Ovid, in
Cervantes story there is an itinerary of blood, involving the animals killed for
the feast, the fake blood of Basilios mock suicide, and what I construe as
Quiterias menstrual blood. I maintain, through a close reading of various
words, that Quiteria is menstruating on her wedding day, a fortuitous impedi-
ment to her marriage to Camacho as well as blood announcing her deower-
ing by Basilio. Her menstruation, her regla, is a law before the law that deter-
mines the resolution of her conict and the consummation of the marriage. As
in Barataria with the law, love has been brought back to a foundational level,
one that is inherent in the classical myth, a record of its timelessness. Cervantes
has brought the myth from fabulous Babylon, Queen Semiramiss city, to an
insignicant village in Spain, a process that he has inscribed in the scene at the
inn where Don Quijote and Sancho meet Don Alvaro de Tarfe. Two wall
hangings there depict Helen of Troys abduction and Didos lament when
Aeneas abandons her. Don Quijote and Sancho comment on how poor the
representations are and hope that theirs, in the future, will be better, anticipat-
ing that they too will become myths. The disgurement of those myths points
at the gap between the fabulous past and the fallen present, but the protago-
nists hope of a better fate as objects of representation also speaks for the
presents relevance and future. Myths are a memory of the race that can be
reenacted in the present. New myths, however, can emerge.

In his classic Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Northrop Frye writes: The
romance is nearest of all literary form to the wish-fulllment dream, and for
that reason it has socially a curiously paradoxical role. In every age a ruling
social or intellectual class tends to project its ideals in some form of romance,
where the virtuous heroes and beautiful heroines represent the ideals and the
villains the threats to their ascendancy. Although, as I have said before, the
concept of romance does not exist in Spanish, the form obviously does in the
chivalric romances, even if they are called novelas de caballeras, and in other
narrative genres. The pervasiveness of the form, as Frye suggests, is that it can
 Love and National Unity 159

be easily adapted to ideologies subtending political entities, such as nations,

and that it has an obvious link with psychological constructs. In the Quijote,
Part II there is a signicant interplay between a virtual overall romance, a
Spanish myth of national unity, and the small-scale one in the story involving
Ricote, a morisco, and his daughter, who is betrothed to a young Castilian
nobleman. As in other cases, in Part II love and the law are elevated to greater
questions involving the origins of both and their involvement with broader
philosophical and political issues.
If there is an episode in the Quijote that we cannot read innocently in the
twenty-rst century it is the one about Ricote, Sanchos morisco neighbor who
has been expelled from Spain along with nearly all of his brethren. With the
twentieth-centurys ethnic cleansings, the Holocaust, mass murder by fascist
and communist regimes, and exiles provoked by religious and political per-
secutions still so fresh in our memories, Ricotes ordeal has a distressingly
familiar air. The expulsion of the moriscos, which began in 1609, like that of
the Jews in 1492, shows that the consolidation of a modern state was not
brought about without depredations and atrocities that would become com-
mon, and much worse, in centuries to come. Not that the search for social,
political, and religious cohesiveness by states or nations had been free of these
evils before, or that they are by any means inherent to what we call the West.
The novelty in sixteenth-century Spain was the implementation of such poli-
cies as part of a deliberate and elaborate plan to dene the nation through
the machinery of a patrimonial bureaucracy, aided by its judiciary and law-
enforcing branches, including, of course, the Holy Ofce of the Inquisition.
But 1609 was not 1492, and the moriscos were not exactly like the Jews.
The Jews were a domestic issue with little international projection. The expul-
sion of the moriscos, aside from the various incidents that led up to it, was
provoked by the fear that they were collaborating with nations that were
enemies of Spain, like the Turks and the Moors of Morocco. It does not matter
how much of this fear had a basis in fact. The fear of connivance between
external and internal enemies as justication gives the expulsion of the moris-
cos a decidedly modern aura. Spain was dening itself as a nation by drawing
its real and ideological frontiers, in contrast with and defense from enemies
that threatened it both materially and doctrinally. This is clearly reected in
the Quijote and constitutes another instance in which the origins of the state
and the law surface as a major issue and are linked to a love story. Ricotes saga
culminates in a naval battle, literally off the shores of the peninsula and very
near the end of the novel. Moreover, Ricotes daughters amorous conict, the
last love conict in the book, unfolds at the same time as the knights defeat
and the beginning of his return home. Part of it takes place abroad.
160 Love and National Unity

Both Spains shores and the end of the ction are frontiers, one of the nation
and the other of the textnovel and nation have reached their limits. This is
the reason why Ana Flixs story takes on the form of a Byzantine romance
and is thus related to Cervantes posthumous The Trials of Persiles and Sigis-
munda, which ranges through a vast geography from Iceland to the Mediter-
ranean and winds up in Rome. Errantry and pilgrimage are very much a part
of this Quijote episode and the Persiles, as if to emphasize their involvement in
matters of international politics announced in the discussions involving the
priest, the barber, and Sansn Carrasco at the beginning of the novel. Cer-
vantes was working on the Persiles as he wrote the Ricote episodes, which may
explain why it is like a Byzantine romance in miniature: or, better, that it is
made up of allusions to the romance form while taking place in a realistic
setting. As is well known, the Byzantine romance, called in Spanish novela
bizantina because, as I have mentioned, we do not have the concept of ro-
mance in our language, was a narrative form rst developed in the Hellenistic
period that ourished in the late Roman Empire. (Hence Byzantine, but also
because of their intricacy and complexity, as when we say in English a Byzan-
tine argument.) The most famous of these narratives is Heliodoruss Aethio-
pica, known in Spanish as Historia etipica de los amores de Tegenes y
Clariclea, published in 1554 as Historia ethiopica de Heliodoro in a transla-
tion from the French. This book is the model of Cervantes Persiles, about
which we will have a chapter later. Such tales, at rst in verse and later, during
the Middle Ages, in prose, contained thrilling adventures in strange lands,
usually of separated lovers who nally meet, with shipwrecks, close calls,
mistaken identities, and in which the marvelous abounds. The anonymous Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, for example, includes a green man who sur-
vives decapitation. The emphasis is on the adventures, the complicated plots
and subplots, the idealized characters and the marvelous. There is no charac-
ter development (generally they do not age) and no attention to realistic de-
tails. In fact, in criticism and literary history the romance is opposed to the
novel because of these features. The chivalric romances that Cervantes paro-
died in the Quijote were the descendants of these, also called Greek novels.
The romance form had a great deal of currency in the Renaissance, inuencing
the work of Ariosto and Tasso, which, of course, Cervantes knew very well.
The Byzantine romance elements in the Ricote episodes, in addition to giv-
ing the novel and the political issues that it raises an international dimension,
also suggest the possibility of reconciliation and harmony at the novels con-
clusion, an apotheosis of love and the law united. The romance components of
the story, however, are like teasers, and are cast against a larger romance, a
Spanish national myth, to which they allude: because, signicantly, the wed-
 Love and National Unity 161

ding of Ana Flix and Pedro Gregorio is postponed pending a ruling by the
highest judicial authority in Madrid. Marriage will also take place after the
end of Part I in the stories involving Zoraida and the captive as well as Lus-
cinda, Dorotea, Cardenio, and Don Fernando, but in these cases the betrothals
at the inn, with the priest present, are tantamount to matrimony. The situation
is different with Ana Flix and Pedro Gregorio. An exception would have to be
made to allow her to stay in Spain and a pardon granted for her having
returned to the Peninsula, a crime often punished by death. She is disen-
franchised and a criminal for having deed the edict of expulsion. Ana has to
regain her citizenship and a ruling in her favor has to be made pardoning her
and her father for the transgression. The last love story in the Quijote is left
open for arbitration. Love cannot overcome the law, except in literature, and
this will be the point.
A brief explanation is in order here about the moriscos and about Ricote.
The moriscos were the Arabs who remained in Spain after the fall of Granada
in 1492. They are the former residents of what had been Al-Andalus and had
been in the Peninsula for centuries. After 1492 their living conditions changed,
but in different ways and according to the period and region, owing to the
fragmented nature of Spain as a polity and to the diversity of laws and local
exemptions (the fueros). At rst, when policy toward them was dictated by
Hernando de Talavera, archbishop of conquered Granada, they were allowed
to go on living as they had before, retaining their customs, language, and
religion. But when Cardinal Francisco Jimnez de Cisneros took over, there
was a radical change. Being the queens confessor, he was as close to power as
possible. Jimnez de Cisneros was a commanding intellectual and political
gure of the period, responsible for the foundation of the University of Alcal,
the production of the polyglot Bible, and the creation of chairs for the study
of Greek and Hebrew. But he was a zealot when it came to religious uni-
formity and passed harsh measures forcing the moriscos to change their habits
and language and to convert or leave. These measures were unevenly enforced
and were ineffective in assimilating the moriscos into the dominant culture.
When they were applied vigorously revolts broke out, as they did periodically
throughout the sixteenth century. The moriscos had their defenders and the
crown was busy ghting the Protestants to the north and the Turks in the
south, simultaneously organizing its American empire to the west, so their
situation was allowed to remain largely the same, except for the decrees of
1569 that provoked open warfare for a time. Philip II, it seems, was really in
favor of leniency and against forced conversions. The situation grew worse at
the beginning of Philip IIIs reign, perhaps because of the growing sense of
insecurity due to economic collapse, protracted and inconclusive wars in the
162 Love and National Unity

Netherlands, and weakness in the throne. This, together with the threat of
morisco complicity in conspiracies instigated from abroad, led to the order of
expulsion in 1609.
Ricote, a storekeeper in Sanchos village, has done very well and he and his
family are in the process of being assimilated, to the point that his daughter is
being courted by a rich old Christian of noble lineage. Marriage to him
would mean total integration. Both Ricotes wife and his daughter are Chris-
tians and he claims to be well on the way to becoming one. From what Ricote
and Sancho say, and the friendship and neighborliness that they display to-
ward each other, it is clear that the morisco is part of the social and economic
fabric of the village. In Castile the moriscos were fewer and lived in relative
isolation from their culture, lacking the context provided by their large num-
bers in areas such as Valencia. Ricotes name means, of course, very rich or
lthy rich, having the same augmentative ending as Quijote. This cer-
tainly reects his economic status, to judge by all the wealth and jewels cons-
cated from his wife and the treasure that he has buried outside the town. He
also throws money around freely in trying to solve his daughters predicament.
But the name Ricote may also indicate that he hails originally from the Valley
of Ricote, in Murcia, having taken on a toponym for a name, a common
practice among both moriscos and former Jews (conversos). This potential
link to Valencia is enough proof for Francisco Mrquez Villanueva that Cer-
vantes is alluding to the sad fate suffered by the Murcia moriscos; he suggests
that Cervantes was against the order of expulsion, in spite of what he has
Ricote say in the novel. (He is one of those scholars still taking sides in a
political battle that took place four centuries ago but that denes and over-
determines their scholarship, to the point of accusing those who speak of
morisco rebellions and complicity in conspiracies as being against the moris-
cos.) There is an episode in the Persiles in which the moriscos are complicitous
with invading Turks (book III), so the matter is not as simple as it seems, as we
shall see.
Be that as it may, Cervantes has faithfully followed current history in creat-
ing the character of Ricote and laid out in detail the conicts and dilemmas
surrounding the expulsion of the moriscos. He has painted a full picture that
includes Ricotes going to France, Italy, and Germany in search of a suitable
country in which to settle, and the sad fact that the Spanish moriscos were not
well received by their correligionists across the Strait of Gibraltarthey be-
came double exiles there. The case is complicated by Ricotes actions, which
constitute crimes against the crown. As soon as the expulsion decree was
issued, many moriscos tried to stay by any means, and once expelled, many
tried to sneak back into Spain, as Ricote does. For a time death was the
 Love and National Unity 163

punishment for such an action. Ricote has also broken the law by hoarding
and concealing gold, as the crown was attempting to arrest the drain of wealth
that would accompany the departure of the moriscos, many of whom were
rich. Burying treasure is as old as the human race, but in the Spain of the period
it was encouraged by very specic economic conditions. With the ination of
the 1590s, Spanish currency had lost its value. By stockpiling and hiding gold,
Ricote is preserving the only true net worth available against devaluation.
(Burying treasure in the land he is forced to leave also has a symbolic dimen-
sion, of course.) His fellow fake pilgrims also come to Spain to collect gold and
take it out of the country, in spite of the checks at the frontiers, by stitching the
metal to their clothes. All this adds to Ricotes dangerous legal plight. These
current and pressing criminal and political dramas are shrouded in the Quijote
in a web of amorous and legal conicts, in consonance with what we have seen
all along Part II.

Don Quijote and Sancho leave landlocked Castile and arrive in the cosmopoli-
tan port city of Barcelona, the greatest urban center of the Aragonese crown,
and the jewel of Catalonian culture. This is no forgotten village in the midst of
arid Castile, nor a sleepy El Toboso silhouetted in the darkness of night by
eerie barks and brays. But before arriving in Barcelona the knight and his
squire meet Roque Guinart, the notorious Catalan brigand and his gang of
outlaws. He is a character drawn from real life. Guinarts well-organized band
is a counter-utopia, run ruthlessly but with scrupulous honesty and justice by
their compelling leader. Guinart is no illiterate desperado. Like other charac-
ters in Part II he knows about Don Quijote and treats the knight with respect
and courtesy. Don Quijote nds a kindred spirit in the outlaw, whose life of
adventure and self-sufciency he admires and nds similar to chivalric ways.
The bandit, a romantic gure, is perhaps the living origin of chivalry, roaming
through the countryside imposing his own kind of justice and ghting those
who oppose it. Guinart is the founder of his group, the drafter of its lawshe
is both ruler and judge. The band is a self-enclosed association that is like the
embryo of civil societyits kernel or microcosm. The band is very much like
Monipodios brotherhood in Rinconete and Cortadillo, one of the pieces in
the Exemplary Stories, and recalls Rafael Salillass study of picaresque life as
the blueprint of human societygoverned and organized by humanitys baser
instincts and desires, that is, by its true self. Guinarts group is also very much
like Sanchos Island of Barataria because of its isolation. As in Barataria,
in Roque Guinarts band the ruler is at the same time judge, embodying, as
in primitive societies, judicial and executive powers. Appropriately, as the
164 Love and National Unity

protagonists move into Barcelona, the only city to appear in the Quijote,
Cervantes delves again into the origins of civil society, the foundations of the
law and of the state. Guinart and his men are also a link between Sanchos
meeting with Ricote, who is disguised as a German pilgrim, and the Byzantine
romance unfolding of the love story in which the moriscos daughter is the
protagonist. Thematically, Guinart and Barcelona represent the international
projection of the novel as it approaches the end.
Banditry in Catalonia was a problem for the Spanish crown in the sixteenth
century. The phenomenon had its own regional causes but was also a reec-
tion of the tensions between Castile and Aragon, between center and periph-
ery, which had by no means disappeared with the union of the two crowns
achieved with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. Autonomist, secession-
ist Catalonia chafed under Castilian rule, rst because of the authoritarian
character of the Catholic queen, later under the emperor and his heirsthe
imperial Habsburgs. Castile looked inward or westward toward the Indies,
Catalonia outward and eastward to its Mediterranean and Italian colonies.
Castile, land of castles, piles of rock built on arid land as it moved south with
the Reconquista; Catalonia a maritime power, sending out to sea from its mag-
nicent port of Barcelona ships laden with goods, soldiers, and government
ofcials. Guinart gures in this outward projection. Brigands were viewed as
dangerous by the crown, because Catalan bandits often had contacts with
French Huguenots. Catalonia was not only a Mediterranean threshold but
also a frontier with Protestant France. Guinart has connections with powerful
individuals in Barcelona, like Antonio Moreno, who is, in turn, a friend of the
viceroy. The bandit is the one who provides Don Quijote with safe passage to
the city because of his network of inuence in Catalan society. Guinart repre-
sents a political danger beyond the disruptions he causes within the national
territory by his lawlessness; it is a political danger of an international nature
because he is a potential ally of Spains enemies abroad. He threatens the
integrity of the state, the very foundation of laws.
But this threat, though serious in the eyes of the crown, is nothing compared
to the one posed by the moriscos, with which it merges signicantly in the
novel. This was a threat that had peaked earlier, in 1569, when the moriscos
revolted. As Elliott writes in Imperial Spain:
The Protestant peril was growing hourly, and it was growing at a moment
when the danger from Islam seemed also to be mounting to a climax. For
Catalonia was not the only region of Spain where revolt and heresy threat-
ened. On Christmas night of that terrible year 1568the year of the danger
in Catalonia, of the cutting of the sea-route through the Bay of Biscay, and of
the arrest and death of Philips son and heir, Don Carlosa band of Morisco
outlaws led by a certain Frax Abenfrax broke into the city of Granada,
 Love and National Unity 165

bringing with them the news that the Alpujarras had risen in revolt. Although
the rebels failed to seize the city, their incursion signalized the outbreak of
rebellion throughout the kingdom of Granada. Spain, which had surrounded
itself with such strong defenses against the advance of Protestantism, now
found itself endangered from within; and the threat came not, as was ex-
pected, from the Protestants, but from its old enemies, the Moors.

This revolt followed a pragmatic sanction drawn up at the end of 1566 and
published in January of 1567 whose decrees were not new, but whose enforce-
ment now seemed inescapable. The pragmatic included the prohibition of
speaking or writing in Arabic, the obligatory use of Castilian dress, the aban-
donment of traditional habits such as bathing, and, of course, the cessation
of all religious practices. How to bring about the conversion of moriscos
to Christianity became a vehemently debated issue, concomitant with simi-
lar debates about the conversion of American native populations in Spains
American empire. The arguments ranged from forced conversion to peaceful
proselytizingcatechization. All efforts failed and the controversy became
more urgent as morisco conspiracies with afliates in Morocco, like the one
in Seville in 1580, were discovered. Others involved covert contacts with
France, particularly with Henry IV, which were highly disturbing to the Span-
ish crown.
By 1590 talk of expelling the moriscos began in earnest, but because of
Spains multiple wars at the end of the sixteenth and beginnings of the seven-
teenth century they enjoyed a respite, as attention was diverted elsewhere.
There was also a division between Castile and Aragon on the matter, and
the Aragonese exemptions and legislative immunities made expulsion of the
moriscos in Valencia a difcult legal matter. Those moriscos in Castile, who
had wound up there after an earlier pragmatic dispersing them to forestall
revolt, were free but relatively rootless, like Ricote. In Valencia, on the other
hand, they were prized vassals who paid considerable taxes to their lords,
constituted the backbone of agricultural labor, and had been there for cen-
turies. The aristocracy in Valencia did not look upon expulsion with favor, but
eventually the Council of State agreed on it as the only solution, and in 1609
the process began.
It lasted several years, which included the nal six of Cervantes life, when
he was trying to complete Part II of the Quijote and rushing to put the nishing
touches on The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda. He also published in those
years the Exemplary Stories, his plays, and the Voyage to Parnassus. It was a
time of feverish activity in which Cervantes, aware that his time was short, was
coming to a balance of his life and works. It was also at a moment in Spanish
life when awareness of the nations decline as an imperial power was very
keen. The morisco question added to the unrest in Spanish consciousness, to
166 Love and National Unity

the collective fear that the foundations of national unity were cracking, and
that the central myths of the nation were being dismantled. The challenge to
the ideology of the state came not only in the form of resistance to Christianity
and to Spanish customs, but in a rethinking of Spain itself in morisco litera-
ture, meager as it was because of the persecution. As Luce Lpez-Baralt has
written: the Morisco texts were not only linguistically hybrid. They also
rethink Spain from the Islamic point of view. The texts were written, as the
Spanish saying goes, al revs de los cristianos [inverting Christianity]. They
force us to get acquainted with a concept of Spain the fundamental cultural,
religious, and social values of which have been inverted: Islam is the true
religion, Muhammad is the Prophet of God, and we should pray to Allah.
Spanish central myths of national and religious integrity reached back
through the Reconquista, which had culminated with the fall of Granada to
the Catholic kings in 1492, to the perceived catastrophe of the Moorish inva-
sion in 711, when the legendary unity of Hispania was shattered. Fear of the
moriscos and their connivance with Turks and Moors unleashed a phantom in
the national subconscious. The Turks had once been the center of the powerful
Ottoman Empire, defeated at Lepanto, that shining moment of Cervantes
military life, and were still feared and despised. The acerbic Covarrubias refers
to them in his Tesoro as: turk. We know this nation more than we need,
because it lorded over such a large portion of the world. They are a vile people
with bad habits who lived from stealing and abusing others. . . . There are
specic histories of this people. Father Gernimo Romn, in his Repblica de
los turcos, mentions their origin and etymology of their name, saying that they
are called Turks because they devote themselves to theft, lived like barbar-
ians, were very poor, and did not consider it injurious to others to steal from
them. (The bad habits to which Covarrubias alludes include, most of all,
homosexuality, a view of the Turks that is reected in the story of Ana Flix
and Pedro Gregoriowhen in the hands of the Turks, the young man has to
be disguised as a woman so as to be less attractive to men.) All of these dreads
hovered around a core anxiety about the integrity of Spain as a nation. Elliott,
putting it succinctly, calls it the fear that the Reconquista would be undone.
Archbishop Juan de Ribera, eventually named viceroy of the kingdom of Va-
lencia in 1602, wrote to Philip III a year before that he feared Spain would be
lost as in the time of the Visigoths. It was this apprehension, exacerbated by
the resistance of many moriscos to integrate into Spanish society, that brought
about the expulsion, the historical context of Ricotes daughters story.

The source of the primal fear of national disintegration is a subtext involving
one of the core political myths of modern Spain, the one that emerges with the
 Love and National Unity 167

Catholic kings. Not surprisingly, Spanish national mythology about the ori-
gins of the nation includes a legend about illicit love and treason that presum-
ably precipitated the fall of Spain to the Moors in 711. Theogonies often begin
with lovers transgressions, a break of the primal law. It is this master love
story that is behind that of Ricote, his daughter, and her suitor. It is perhaps a
version of the biblical fable of the Fall, but other stories, some classical myths,
seem to have inuenced it too. The protagonists of the myth of national catas-
trophe are Don Rodrigo, the last Visigothic king; Count Don Julin, governor
of Ceuta, across the Strait of Gibraltar and a key stronghold against a Moorish
invasion; and his daughter Florinda, or La Cava. The basic plotthere are
many variantsis that King Rodrigo raped or seduced Florinda, and the
outraged Count Don Julin, in revenge, opened the way to the Moorish inva-
sion. Florinda, it is clear, was not an unwilling partner in all this, hence her
nickname La Cava, derived from the word for whore in Arabic. She is the
Helen of Troy of this saga. The Visigoths were eventually routed at Guadalete
and the full takeover followed, beginning eight centuries of Moorish domina-
tion that ended with the fall of Granada in 1492. We know, of course, that this
is the stuff of national mythmaking, that during those eight hundred years
Christian and Moorish kingdoms were often allied, and that the relationship
was frequently one of convivencia, or conviviality. It is clear that very little in
the story really happened as it was told, though there may be shreds of factual
truths here and there. The whole of it is so thick with variants that the roles of
some of the protagonists change, and others are added. But the truth of the
story is irrelevant. The fable of Don Rodrigo, La Cava, and Don Julin is a
powerful tale of political self-denition through warfare to undo an outrage
whose origin is sexual, and as such an important component of Spain. What
counts, in short, is the creation of the legend and the role that it plays in
Spanish national consciousness as a myth of origins. This is the romance of
which Ana Flixs and Pedro Gregorios is a variant.
The theme of Don Rodrigo, La Cava, Don Julin, and the fall of Spain
became one of the principal ballad topics in the late Middle Ages, continuing
through the sixteenth century to Cervantes time. These ballads, or romances,
dealt with other mythic gures, like the Cid, and were transmitted orally for
the most part, though printed collections began to appear soon in the sixteenth
century. These ballad cycles constituted whole stories told in fragmented form
in the individual poems, some separated one from the other by centuriesthe
implicit whole is the romance as dened by Frye. Narrative necessity more
than historical accuracy prevailed, of course, hence we have romances about
the Cids youth to round out the gure of the hero, about whose early life very
little is really known. The legend of Don Rodrigo is also lled out to make up
a whole story. It culminates in the most famous of the poems, about Don
168 Love and National Unity

Rodrigos penance, decreed by a hermit he nds in his wanderings after the

defeat at Guadalete. He is put in a tomb with a huge snake with seven heads
that chews his most sensitive parts:

Its eating me up, eating me up,

starting with my most sinful part,
and from there straight to the heart,
the source of all of my sorrows.

[Ya me come, ya me come,

por do ms pecado haba,
en derecho al corazn,
fuente de mi gran desdicha.]

The story was taken up by printed literature at a crucial period of Spanish

history. The rst to nd inspiration in the legend was Pedro del Corral, author
of the Crnica sarracena, or Crnica del Rey Rodrigo con la destruycin de
Espaa, written around 1443 but not published until 1499, during the reign of
the Catholic kings. It is very much like a chivalric romance and the rst histori-
cal novel with a nationalist theme, according to Marcelino Menndez Pelayo,
that most authoritative of Spanish literary historians. Del Corral turned Don
Rodrigo into a knight-errant and embroidered considerably on his love affair
with La Cava. Predictably, the most interesting part comes after his defeat at
Guadalete, when Don Rodrigo meets the hermit who imposes on him the
ghastly punishment we already saw. Rodrigo resists various temptations by
the devil, who appears to him, of course, in the guise of Don Julin and La
Cava. Don Rodrigo nally redeems all his sins through the horrendous ordeal
with the snake. He dies on the third day and bells peal on their own to an-
nounce his demise. I furnish these gruesome details to show that this is the
kind of story likely to be deeply embedded in the Spanish subconsciousit is a
nightmarish tale of sexual transgression and treason at the origin and estab-
lishment of the polity wherein the law will be forged.
In the sixteenth century a morisco from Granada, Miguel de Luna, fab-
ricated a story that he said he had found at the library in El Escorial and that he
called Verdadera historia del rey don Rodrigo y la prdida de Espaa (Gra-
nada, 1592). Although inferior to the Crnica sarracena, it is the text in which
La Cava rst acquired the Italian name of Florinda. De Luna used a device that
may have had an inuence on Cervantes creation of the Quijote: he attributes
authorship of the text to one Albucsim Taric Abentarique, a Moorish histo-
rian who could be the original Cide Hamete Benengeli. Sometime after 1604,
the great Lope de Vega wrote a play entitled El ltimo rey godo, a broad-
ranging historical piece in which the rst act represents the love of Don Ro-
 Love and National Unity 169

drigo and La Cava, the second Don Julins revenge and the rout at Guadalete,
and the third the beginning of the Reconquest with Don Pelayo and the victory
at Covadonga. (Don Pelayo was a Visigothic aristocrat who defeated the
Moors at the legendary battle of Covadonga in 718, thus starting the Recon-
quest. He was proclaimed the rst king of Asturias, in northern Spain, where
the Christians had taken refuge after the invasion of the south.) Lope again
included an episode from the legend in his long epic Jerusaln conquistada
(1609). Lopes El ltimo godo gives the full measure of the national myth of
Fall and Redemption by rounding off the story with the beginning of the
Reconquest by Don Pelayo at Covadonga.
But the myth was part of a more generalized discourse because of the bal-
lads, which constitute a whole cycle with Don Rodrigo as protagonist. Don
Julin had become an example of vengeful treachery, as we can observe in Part
I of the Quijote when Cardenio, upon learning of Fernandos betrayal, ex-
claims: O villain! more ambitious than Marius, more cruel than Cataline,
more savage than Sylla, more fraudulent than Galalon, more treacherous than
Vellido, more vengeful than Julian, and more covetous than Judas (I, 27,
p. 210) [Oh Mario ambicioso, oh Catilina cruel, oh Sila facinoroso, oh Gala-
ln embustero, oh Vellido traidor, oh Julin vengativo, oh Judas codicioso! (p.
306)]. Luscinda and Florinda rhyme, of course, perhaps a kind of phonetic
allusion to the story. La Cava, meanwhile, is mentioned in the Zoraida episode
when the ship in which she is eeing sails into a cove next to a promontory
called Cava Rumia, which signies, The wicked Christian woman, there
being a tradition among them that Cava, on whose account Spain was lost, is
interred in that place; for Cava, in their language, implies a Wicked Woman,
and Rumia signies Christian, so they look upon it as a bad omen, when they
are obliged, by necessity, to drop anchor here (I, 41, p. 357) [el de la Cava
Ruma, que en nuestra lengua quiere decir la mala mujer cristiana, y es
tradicin entre los moros que en aquel lugar est enterrada la Cava, por quien
se perdi Espaa, porque cava en su lengua quiere decir mujer mala, y ruma,
cristiana: y aun tienen por mal agero llegar all a dar fondo cuando la nec-
esidad los fuerza a ello (p. 484)]. Sancho and Duea Rodrguez allude to the
very verses quoted before in Part II, chapter 33. Says Sancho: and that from
his riches, pastime and embroidery, Rodrigo was taken to be devoured by
serpents, if the rhymes of old ballads do not lie. Here Donna Rodrguez, the
duenna, who was one of the hearers, interposing, Wherefore should they lie?
said she, for the ballad says as how they thrust king Rodrigo alive into a tomb
full of toads, lizards and snakes, and two days after, he was heard to cry with a
weak and doleful voice, Now they eat me! now they gnaw the part in which I
sinned so heinously! (II, 33, p. 675) [y de entre los brocados, pasatiempos y
170 Love and National Unity

riquezas sacaron a Rodrigo para ser comido de culebras, si es que las trovas de
los romances antiguos no mienten.Y cmo que no mienten!dijo a esta
sazn doa Rodrguez la duea, que era una de las escuchantes: que un
romance hay que dice que metieron al rey Rodrigo, vivo, en una tumba llena
de sapos, culebras y lagartos, y que de all a dos das dijo el rey desde dentro de
la tumba, con voz doliente y baja: Ya me comen, ya me comen / por do ms
pecado haba (p. 907)]. It is evident that the collective imagination and the
duea practice amplicatio, embroidering on the horror of the punishment.

In the Ricote episode Cervantes is dealing with very current and hot political
events, so contemporary to his novel that ctional and historical time coalesce,
giving the book an almost journalistic quality. Cervantes cautious position on
the matter of the expulsion may very well stem from this contemporaneity of
the events he narratesperhaps he was as fearful as Sancho of legal reprisals
by the authorities. He is writing about real time in real time. The events in ques-
tion raise issues about the very integrity of the nation, about its political foun-
dations, which means its myths of origins and its self-denition against its
enemies abroad. Barataria and other episodes dealing with these matters were
contrived by the characters and hence doubly ctional. But Ricote and his
daughter Ana Flix are caught in the mesh of very current history. Part II,
which began with the discussion involving Sansn Carrasco, Don Quijote, the
priest, and the barber about Spains international conicts, circles back to them
at the end in the most concrete fashion possible. The Quijote approaches docu-
mentary realism as Don Quijote returns to sanity, an interesting conuence.
But the trials of Ricote and his daughter have another familiar ring by now:
hers is another unequal marriage, like those of Fernando and Dorotea and
Cardenio and Luscinda in Part I, and Camacho and Quiteria in Part II. Sur-
prisingly, as the novel moves toward historical realism, this love story acquires
an almost small-town tone that contrasts with its international ramications.
The stories in Part I and Camachos wedding take place in villages and elds
relatively far from the place where Don Quijote and Sancho live, and toward
which they will return. Ricote and his family, on the other hand, are from their
village, the one whose name the narrator does not want to rememberhome
is now near and far. Ricote is Sanchos neighbor, aware of the squires poverty,
while Sancho knows Ricote and his family well. He followed their ordeal with
concern and compassion when the order of expulsion was made public. The
squire is able to tell his neighbor about his kins last days in the village, for
Ricote (as we know) had left earlier to search for a convenient nation in which
to settle. Thus we learn, with the morisco, about Ana Flixs involvement with
 Love and National Unity 171

Pedro Gregorio, a mayorazgo belonging to a prominent family. Ricotes tale is

lled out by Sancho but it is left incomplete and is taken up again only when
the knight and his squire are unwittingly caught in the naval battle outside
Barcelona. Now we learn, along with Ricote and the Catalan authorities,
including the viceroy, the fate of Ana Flix and her suitor. Dorotea-like, she
has taken arms against a sea of trouble, disguising herself as a man and her
lover as a woman to escape from the Turks who have captured them. The
story, which began like all the others with the problems of mismatched young
lovers, acquires an international dimension and the shape of a Byzantine ro-
mance: cross-dressing, lovers who resemble each other in their beauty so much
that they are like siblings, beastly suitors bent on ravaging the young lovers,
potentially incestuous relations, protracted sea journeys with shipwrecks and
bizarre adventures in strange lands, miraculous encounters and rescues, con-
stant action with little character development.
But the marriage conict begins with common problems about wealth and
social status, to which the difference in race and religion are added, as in the
Zoraida-captive story in Part I. However, Ana Flix is a Christian since birth
and her mother a convert, so the difference is mostly one of customs, which
Ricote is quick to point out has kept morisco women from having much to do
with Christian men. The expulsion, however, gives a new twist to what could
have been a highly conventional Romeo and Juliet kind of story, or even one
like those in the novela morisca, which is also in the background here. The
novela morisca, as we have seen in earlier chapters, was usually about a young
man in love with a morisca woman; the two eventually marry after suffering
captivity and other ordeals. Like the romance morisco, or Moorish ballad, it
was a translation into literature of the morisco problem. But with the expul-
sion of Ricotes family and Pedro Gregorio following Ana Flix into exile, the
story takes on a different, more serious character, blending in love with the
themes of politics and the origins of the law. This is obvious because the case of
the young couples love winds up before the viceroy, the highest government
authority to appear in the Quijote, in a court scene reminiscent of those in
which the love conicts in Part I were resolved.
While the differences between the myth of La Cava and the story of Ricote
are many, I believe that they are linked by the fear of national disintegration,
by the feeling that the stability of the state is threatened by sexual misconduct
and unchecked miscegenation. The legend is to the episode in the Quijote
what the Pyramus and Thisbe story from Ovid is to Camachos wedding. But
here the background is of a compelling and urgent contemporaneity. This is
what gives the story of Ana Flix and Pedro Gregorio a transcendental politi-
cal dimension beyond the immediate legal issues that their union raises. Pedro
172 Love and National Unity

Gregorio is a mayorazgo, heir to a fortune and a title; Ana Flix is morisca and
rich. Because she is Christian, the only impediment to their union is based on
custom, for as we have seen titles and estate are passed down to the rstborn
male heir in Castile. There was no law against the marriage of an old Christian
and a recent convert, except that now, with the expulsion of most moriscos, it
has become illegal for Ana to stay, even if she can somehow prove the sincerity
of her religious faith, and she could be severely punished for having returned.
She is not a convert, as she and Ricote are at pains to express: she was born
already a Christian because her mother was a sincere, though recent, one. Ana
absorbed Christianity with her mothers milk, as she says, so the expulsion is
unjust and unjustied in her case. The crux of the situation is this, as Ricote
explains. He is not against the expulsion, which he nds necessary given the
seditiousness of his correligionists, but laments that the minority of those
moriscos who are genuine Christians should have to suffer the consequences
of acts they did not commit and did not support. The solution to the conict,
to whether Ana Flix and Pedro Gregorio can marry, can redress the injury
done to loyal moriscos who have assimilated. Their marriage would be a
fusion of bloods and beliefs, aided by the Neoplatonic beauty of both spouses,
which announces an apotheosis of love triumphant. It would cancel or hold in
abeyance the fear of national collapse brought about by a reenactment of that
original catastrophe of foreign invasion provoked by La Cava and her father,
Count Don Julin. But it is a form of closure that the story postpones because
the real historical situation has had no closure yet: the effects of the moriscos
banishment, its success or failure, are yet to be known. All that is evident are
the reasons for the decree and the pain caused to those forcibly exiled. The
novel cannot anticipate historical solutions, even in terms of a conventional
literary love story. Cervantes pays homage to the ofcial in charge of enforc-
ing the expulsion in La Mancha through Ricotes words in answer to Don
Antonios offer to go to the court to negotiate a pardon for Ana:
Ricote, who was present at this conversation, said: Neither tears, entreaties,
promises, nor presents will avail with the great Don Bernardino de Velasco, to
whom His Majesty has entrusted the charge of our expulsion; for, although he
really tempers justice with mercy, as he perceives the whole body of our nation
contaminated and gangrened, he applies the actual cautery instead of the
mollifying ointment; so that, by his diligence, prudence, sagacity, and terrify-
ing threats, he has sustained upon his able shoulders the weight of that vast
project which he has successfully put into execution, without suffering his
Argus eyes, which are always alert, to be blinded by all our industry, strat-
agem, fraud, and solicitation. He is resolved that none of our people shall
remain concealed, lest, like a hidden root, they may hereafter bud and bring
 Love and National Unity 173

forth fruit which may be poisonous to Spain, already cleansed and delivered
from those fears that arose from the prodigious number of the Moors. An
heroic resolution of the great Philip III who has, at the same time, displayed
the most consummate wisdom in committing the execution of the scheme to
the courage and ability of Don Bernardino de Velasco. (II, 65, pp. 89293)

[Nodijo Ricote, que se hall presente a este plticahay que esperar en

favores ni en ddivas; porque con el gran don Bernardino de Velasco, conde
de Salazar, a quien dio Su Majestad cargo de nuestra expulsin, no valen
ruegos, no promesas, no ddivas, no lstimas; porque aunque es verdad que l
mezcla la misericordia con la justicia, como l vee que todo el cuerpo de
nuestra nacin est contaminado y podrido, usa con l antes el cauterio que
abrasa que del ungento que molica; y as, con prudencia, con sagacidad,
con diligencia y con miedos que pone, ha llevado sobre sus fuertes hombros a
debida ejecucin el peso desta gran mquina, sin que nuestras industrias,
estratagemas, solicitudes y fraudes hayan podido deslumbrar sus ojos de
Argos, que contino tiene alerta, porque no se le quede ni encubra ninguno de
los nuestros, que como raz escondida, que con el tiempo venga despus a
brotar y echar frutos venenosos en Espaa, ya limpia, ya desembarazada de
los temores en que nuestra muchedumbre la tena. Heroica resolucin del
gran Filipo Tercero, y inaudita prudencia en haberla encargado al tal don
Bernardino de Velasco! (pp. 116566)]

The case remains open beyond the end of the novel. Readers never learn if
Ana and Don Gregorio do marry, as we know or assume is the case in other
stories. The verdict is left for higher legal and political authorities than priests,
regional judges, and ofcialsor knight-errants. Now defeated, Don Quijote
is in no position to offer succor to the couple or to Ricote, and Sancho is
careful to limit his help to not denouncing his neighbor to the authorities, in
itself a punishable offence. Justice is delayed indenitely: love cannot be the
victor against the law when the stakes are so high as national unity and the
integrity of the state.
Ultimately, the signicance of Ricotes story is the radical way in which it
confronts the themes of love and the law within the more profound context in
which they appear in Part II. By his expulsion, Ricote has been left devoid of
legal substance in the most radical fashion: removed from the national terri-
tory, he is left not just bereft of citizenship but outside the very ground to
which he belongs. He is made to endure worse than a civil death. He stands
before the beginning of the legal and beyond its end, literally in a no-mans
land. Exile was a common punishment for various crimes in Spain, a practice
derived from Roman law, where it was also frequent. Ricote is condemned to a
life of errantry, to a no-place often dened in Spanish law, beginning with the
174 Love and National Unity

Partidas, as some island designated for the purpose of placing the culprit
beyond terra rma. The Byzantine romance in which Ana Flix is involved in
her love affair with Pedro Gregorio highlights this errantry and projects it to a
purely ctional realm. This realm is one in which genders have yet to be
dened and appear interchangeable and where marriage is forever interrupted
or postponed, sometimes by prohibitions as elemental as that of incest. There
is a hint of this in the parallel, almost prenatal adventures of the two lovers,
who are at pains to acquire a sexual identity before they can even consider
forming a heterosexual couple capable of marriage and founding a social unity
with legal substance and possible heirsan estate, a furtherance of the mayo-
razgo. The Byzantine romance represents the enactment of polar, dual dimen-
sions by going beyond and to the origins of the law at the same time. Its
domain is literature, where a real resolution can always be suspended, blend-
ing the real political need to leave pending Anas and Pedros wedding with the
absence of closure ction allows, even while demanding it. Desire, love in the
form of the Neoplatonic union of the two beautiful partners, is the only force
capable of sustaining the hope of a happy ending. The romance form is not
realized as closure is forestalled. National unity remains an open question
for which literature can furnish no effective solutions and perhaps not even
hopeit can only hint at the common origin of the desire to bring about
closure in both its own ctions and ideology by their persistent elaboration of
myths cast as conictive love stories.
In Part II Cervantes seems to have realized the novels engagement with the
present and its potential to probe into major contemporary concerns. He
brings love and the law back to their origins as issues of philosophical, liter-
ary, social, and political signicance, and forward to a future yet unknown
its is a brilliant blending of the picaresque, the romances of chivalry, and the
whole tradition of idealistic Renaissance art. If the picaresque, as Salillas had
claimed, constituted the beginning of criminology, the novel, as Cervantes
fashions it out of so many disparate elements, will lay bare the mechanisms of
the social and political forces that shape the present. Love and law, inter-
diction and desire, are at the core of the myths of the nation, creating new,
necessary myths that writers of Cervantes stature will cast in their ctions to
test their viability and examine their value, values, and instrumentality.
 10

The Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories:

The Call of the Blood

This fear that a terrible event may be brought on by its mere mention is out of
place or pointless in the overwhelming disorder of the real world, but not in a
novel, which should be a rigorous scheme of attentions, echoes, and afnities.
Every episode in a careful narrative is a premonition.
Jorge Luis Borges, Narrative Art and Magic

I suppose that the question everyone asks when reading Exemplary Sto-
ries is whether, had Cervantes not written the Quijote, this collection would
have won him a prominent place in Western literary history. But, since he did
write the Quijote, a more pertinent question is how this collection is related to
the masterpiece, not only in terms of quality, but also of themes and narrative
structures. Exemplary Stories, a work of which Cervantes was proud because
it made him the rst to have novelado en lengua castellana (to have written
novellas in the Spanish language), is a superb group of stories, among which
there are some true brief masterpieces. Given the inclusion of similar stories
in the Quijote, Part I, and in a different way in Part II, it is safe to say that
Cervantes favored this kind of long short story, and that he invested consider-
able creative effort in them. I would venture also that the decision to assemble
and publish the volume of twelve stories was inuenced by the criticism Cer-
vantes received for inserting several stories in Part I of the Quijote. It is known

175
176 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories

that he had a few of the exemplary stories already writtensome even pub-
lished in an anthologyand realized that he would not be able to incorporate
them into the larger books that he was working on, like Part II of the Quijote
and The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda. One of the innovations of Exem-
plary Stories is that there is no overarching ction connecting the stories, no
group of narrators who leave the city to escape the plague and who speak
according to given themes, as in Boccaccios Decameron. Here we have a
collection of twelve novellas, under Cervantes name, with no false attribu-
tions or fake authors like Cide Hamete Benengeli. It is an assertion of author-
ship that reects Cervantes newly acquired fame and authority after the suc-
cess of the Quijote.
I agree with Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce that Cervantes wrote various works
at the same time, so that it is difcult to establish a teleology, as Ruth El Saffar
tried to do. In the case of the Quijote one can discern the movement from Part
I to Part II because Part II has to take Part I as a point of departure. But this
does not apply to other works that he had in the loom at the same time as the
masterpiece, which may date from earlier periods and were revised or not but
without pressure to write with or against a previous one. Cervantes published
quite a few books toward the end of his life but they can hardly be seen as an
evolving project with a discernible single intention or focus. Exemplary Stories
is made up of multiple disconnected pieces that cannot be placed in a satis-
factory chronological pattern according to when they were written, and the
sequence in the book is no guarantee of a gradual thematic or formal pro-
gression from one to the next. The traditional division into idealistic and
realisticthe rst derived from the Italian literary tradition and the second
from the picaresquebreaks down too often to be useful. The story I am
going to discuss here can hardly be called idealistic, but it has been categorized
as such by some.
Let me take up briey the two words in the books title: novelas and
ejemplares. By novela Cervantes meant the Italian novella, a long short
story by our standardsthe short story as we know it did not develop until
the advent of newspapers in the eighteenth and principally the nineteenth
century. The adjective ejemplares in the title has caused much confusion,
complicated by Cervantes own enigmatic statement about the stories exem-
plariness. He writes: I have called them exemplary, and on close examina-
tion you will see that there is not one from which you cannot extract some
protable example; and were it not for the fact that I do not wish to labor the
point, I might show the delicious and wholesome fruit to be gathered from
each individual story as well as from the collection as a whole (p. 4) [Heles
dado nombre de ejemplares, y si bien lo miras, no hay ninguna de quien no se
 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories 177

pueda sacar algn ejemplo provechoso; y si no fuera por no alargar este sujeto,
quiz te mostrara el sabroso y honesto fruto que se podra sacar, as de todas
juntas, como de cada una de por s (p. 8)]. This sounds ironic to me: one could
nd moral prot; I would show you how. But if one could nd a moral if one
were told how it is because exemplariness in moral terms is not central to the
book. Amrico Castro has argued that, now that Cervantes has become im-
portant and apt to be heard by those in power as a result of the success of the
Quijote, he is pandering to them with this turn to the exemplar. He supports
his contention by alluding to the rewritings of two of the stories, which had
appeared earlier in an anthology along with The Pretended Aunt. The re-
writings, which Castro purports were intended to tone down their prurience
and his having left out The Pretended Aunt from Exemplary Stories are
evidence of his moralism. There may be something to this but only tangen-
tially, for some of the stories left in the book are still quite salaciousfor
instance, The Deceitful Marriage and The Dialogue of the Dogs. The
Pretended Aunt would have raised the total of stories in the book to thirteen,
a number Cervantes may have wanted to avoid, though it is true that the story
is nearly pornographic in some details and very much derived from the Celes-
tina in tone and spirit. But Part II of the Quijote is very critical of the aristoc-
racy and those in power, as we have seen.
Others have struggled with the possibility of the stories being a series of
moral parables. But Cervantes never wrote such kind of literature. There is no
question, of course, that there are profound ethical issues involved in some of
the stories, and that characters are caught in deep moral dilemmas, but the
stories are not moral allegories or commentaries on current ideological de-
bates such as Erasmianism, as critics like Alban Forcione claim. I believe that
the answer is simpler. Ejemplar may be an adaptation of the medieval term
exemplum, in Spanish esiemplo, which indeed meant a tale with a moral.
Recasting medieval forms was a common practice in the baroque. But it is a
playful adaptation: one could nd morals in the tales if one looked or were
told how to nd them. I think that ejemplares has the sense of muestrario, a
collection of stories with varying themes and techniques, a cross section of
possibilitiesthe stories are examples of the kinds of stories that can be writ-
ten. In this I am inclined to accept Bruce W. Wardroppers idea that the stories
are forms of eutrapelia, meaning a good twist or trope, a trick like those of a
magician or acrobat. The exemplariness of the exemplary stories is that Cer-
vantes plays with the limits of narrative in all of them, sometimes by a reductio
ad absurdum of a genre or subgenre like the Byzantine romance (The Gen-
erous Lover), the picaresque (Rinconete and Cortadillo and The Dialogue
of the Dogs), or the sentimental tale (The English Spanish Woman). All of
178 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories

these are obsolete genres and subgenres that he tries in miniature form, as in a
laboratory of ction. This same kind of muestrario is what Cervantes offers at
the end of Part II of the Quijote, when he has a mini novela morisca, a small-
scale Byzantine romance, a tale about brigands, and so forth.
Returning to chapter 1, these stories are examples of what cannot be nar-
rated, like the horror of the prisoner of sexs incest, his rustication to a world
of men, his narcissism; or the blood itinerary in the Camachos wedding epi-
sode in Part II of the Quijote. Deep in the exemplary stories are tales that
cannot be told, unnarratable stories because they reveal the common root in
the irrational of desire and its proscription.
Love and the law gure prominently in the stories in the way that I have
been analyzing those themes here, with love really being the unifying thread
throughout. In The Glass Graduate (It should be The Glass Lawyer),
Toms Rodaja is given a love potion by a scorned lady that turns him mad: he
believes that he is made of glass and must take special care of his body lest it be
broken. Rinconete and Cortadillo is Cervantes proposal for a different kind
of picaresque: the students-to-be wind up in Monipodios brotherhood, which
controls crime and sexual trafc in Seville. There is a gay grandeur to crime in
the Seville portrayed by Cervantes. I am particularly interested in three of the
stories because of the radical way in which the themes of love and the law are
deployed: The Call of the Blood, The Deceitful Marriage, and its sequel,
The Dialogue of the Dogs. This chapter is devoted to the rst of these.

No story of Cervantes has been more severely criticized than The Call of the
Blood. Avalle-Arce begins his commentary by simply stating that the story is
a bold novelistic experiment and a failure at the same time. My former
teacher Manuel Durn begins his by saying: Perhaps the only description that
ts this novelette is Italianate Absurd Melodrama. He winds up with this
blast: Cervantes had so many excellent tales to his credit that he thought he
could afford this bomb. Yet others, beginning with Jean Pierre Florian in
1796, have considered The Call of the Blood the best of Exemplary Stories,
and the list of other advocates includes Marcelino Menndez Pelayo, Luis
Astrana Marn, and Joaqun Casalduero. I count myself among the admirers.
I believe that The Call of the Blood is the most perfect and modern of the
Exemplary Stories, and given the competition the choice is not easy. It is a
story that could have been written by a modern master like Jorge Luis Borges,
but he and all the others learned their craft reading Cervantes anyway.
The Call of the Blood begins with a crime, in a manner that makes the
story seem like it is taken out of an archive of court cases. It is an abduction
 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories 179

perpetrated at night, in the open road (despoblado), against a helpless old

hidalgo and his family, followed by a rape, forced connement, and a ight
from the city by the criminal, who makes no reparations to the woman and her
family for their injured reputation or to the son who is born as a result of his
actions. Rodolfo is no good. The plot follows a sequence of events that forces
him back to the city, to the house, room, and bed where he committed the
crime, and thereby to his making restitutions to Leocadia, Luisico (the child),
and the rest of the old hidalgos family by marrying the young mother. It is a
tale of damage and compensation, of injury and restoration, but one in which
the process of making whole is complicated and tightly woven by a series of
repetitions and unexpected connections.
Rodolfos crime is ghastly in ways not seen elsewhere in Cervantes. In the
Quijote, Dorotea is seduced by Fernando, but the sexual act is by mutual
consent and with no other violence than the moral one and the actual de-
owering. But Leocadia is raped while she is unconscious, a lifeless body. This
underlines the preeminence of inanimate things in the storylike blood, the
moon, a crucixthat seem to have a life and an inclination of their own,
independent of the characters will and agency. Leocadias body, not Leocadia,
is injured, and Leocadias most tangible proof of the crime is Luisico, the child
that her body produces as a result. He is concrete proof of the crime and will
bring about with his blood the identication of the culprit and his being
sentenced to marry his mother.
Luisico issues from Leocadias body, inseminated while lifeless by one nearly
accidental act, as Leocadia herself calls it. Leocadia is not guilty of anything, as
her father, who would be the most affected by her loss of honor, recognizes. It is
as if the crime had been committed against somebody else and Leocadia were a
virgin mother, a daunting suggestion that religiously oriented readers of the
story seem not to have picked up. And Rodolfo lacks an identity, a face, and
even his voice is masked. He disappears for a long timeseven yearsa
temporal void in which he is nonexistent. No one is looking for him because of
the self-imposed silence of Leocadia and her family, who fear dishonor. Un-
canny elements come into playparticularly the repetitions of gestures, of
accidents, of faintsthat create a rhythm and suggest a meaning. This is what
is haunting about The Call of the Blood. It is a story about the uncanny,
about the familiar becoming unfamiliar, about the return of phenomena and
of things.
The Call of the Blood, then, begins with a wanton crime. The love stories
in the Quijote and the other exemplary stories contain in their plots violent
acts but always as part of a larger plot. In the interpolated stories in Part I
Fernando is the worst sexual offender, but he is a seducer with a stereotypical
180 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories

modus operandi that he seems to follow with regularity. He is drawn to

women of the lower classes whom he ravages, exercising what he believes is his
seigneurial right. His seduction of Dorotea is a premeditated act, the culmina-
tion of a plan that involves her servant, but at the crucial point she gives her
consent. She is later the object of an attempted rape, but she fends off her
assailant, whom she knew well. The Impertinent Curiosity relates the pro-
tracted development of an obsession that brings about a catastrophe. In Part II
there are seductions, such as the one of Duea Rodrguezs daughter, but
again, these follow recognizable patterns of behavior by men and women of
different social classes. In Exemplary Stories there are injurious acts com-
mitted because of passion, as when the rejected woman in The Glass Gradu-
ate feeds Toms Rodaja a substance that turns him mad, or when the envious
lady-in-waiting of The English Spanish Woman gives Estefana a poison
that ruins her beauty and nearly kills her. In Rinconete and Cortadillo
Juliana la Cariharta laments that her lover and pimp, Repolido, beats her, but
when questioned by the other prostitutes and thugs she confesses that she
enjoys it and tells a tale of mutual sadomasochistic delights.
But in The Call of the Blood the violent acts committed against Leocadia
and her family have no antecedents or previous development; she does not
know her assailant or vice versa, and the attack does not evolve from a plan or
compelling sequence of events. It is sudden, unmotivated, vicious, and owing
to Rodolfos impetuous whim. The victims have no recourse and no defense.
They are rst overpowered physically and then cowed morally, having fallen
prey to unchecked desire and social forces superior to their own. The incident,
which takes place on the outskirts of Toledo, reads very much like the sort of
case that is drawn from the citys court archives and that today we would nd
in newspapers and media reports. The Call of the Blood is clearly one of the
tales in Exemplary Stories without a literary antecedent. Its frightening appeal
lies precisely in the wantonness of the assault and the innocent and vulnerable
nature of the victims.
Leocadias father is an old, poor hidalgo, accompanied by his wife, daugh-
ter, small son, and a maid. He is no match for Rodolfo and his accomplices,
who are youthful, strong, armed, and bent on pleasing their friend, a wealthy
aristocrat who gives them money (he is liberal, meaning generous). Leo-
cadia is a mere sixteen, brought up with such caution by her parents that she
claims never to have heard mens voices, save for her fathers and her con-
fessors. She is not only virginal but clearly devoid of any experience with love,
though under duress she proves to be a quick study and also to be thoroughly
schooled in the harsh laws of the honor code. The two groups are lambs and
wolves, as the text reads.
 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories 181

The legalistic cast of the case extends beyond the gruesome crime that sets it
off, which shocks the reader and provokes in him or her a sense of injustice.
The revulsion at the physical, moral, and social injuries caused by Rodolfo and
his associates creates not only the expectation of but the need for punishment
and recompense. The law was made to deal with violence committed against
the weak, to redress physical and material injuries, and to ensure recompense
for losses incurred by such acts. That the story begins with an appalling act of
abuse makes it obligatory that its development will lead to some sort of settle-
ment, which, as we have seen all along, can take the form of marriage as both
compensation and punishment, increasing the womans dowry to make her
attractive to other men even though she has been ruined, or even pardon.
Rodolfos crime and statutory punishments were clearly dened by Spanish
law. Francisco Toms y Valiente writes: According to the law of the Partidas
the rape of a virgin who was not a nun was punished by the loss of half of ones
assets if the rapist were an honorable man [a nobleman], and by a ogging
and ve years of exile on some island if he were a commoner. But in practice
these sentences were not applied. Usually the punishment was the one dictated
by canon law for this crime, which was to marry the raped woman or give her
a dowry established by the judge. To this alternative sentence Castilian judges
also customarily added the loss of freedom to satisfy the need for public
vindication. In short: the rapist had the choice of getting married, providing a
dowry, or going to jail. In another publication Toms y Valiente writes the
following about a case that occurred precisely in Toledo: In a 1586 case of
rape by force and in the wilderness [despoblado], the Toledo justices con-
demned the accused to two hundred lashes and eight years in the galleys,
without stating at all that he could marry the injured woman. Both parties
appeal and a little later the young womans lawyer asks for permission for her
to grant a pardon to the offender, provided he marry her, because this would
be in her best interest. The judicial permission is issued, the pardon granted,
and the wedding celebrated.
The event that opens The Call of the Blood makes for a necessary unfold-
ing leading to one of these outcomes. I insist on the fact that the crime follows
no previous development: it is a pure beginning, a fresh start. The unfolding of
the story will have to follow from it without any other complications. A huge
sense of debt is created by Rodolfos act, calling for a proportionately severe
punishment and restitution.
The story is studded with legalisms to describe the crime, its scene, and its
resolution. In this it too has the air of having been drawn from the archive. The
narrator says that Rodolfo will be so named so as not to further tarnish his
reputation, and Leocadias name is also what they want to call her. This is a
182 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories

notorious case whose actors are still alive in the present of the telling; hence
the original document from which the case is drawn has to be slightly altered
to protect them. The description of the time and place also has an elliptical
quality typical of a legal document, as if blanks were being lled in a form or
the conventions of the artis notariae were being followed: The night was
bright, the hour eleven, the road lonely and their pace leisurely (p. 24) [La
noche era clara; la hora las once; el camino solo, y el paso tardo (p. 239)]. It is
as if Cervantes were saying, You, reader, know how this is reported in the
document I am glossing. The procedure by which Leocadia, her parents, and
above all Rodolfos mother get at the truth of the matter adheres closely to that
of a criminal investigation, involving the collection of material evidence, its
interpretation, the interrogation of witnesses and of the accused and victim.
The nal scenewhen the case is solved, the manner of restitution agreed
upon, and the marriage that closes the plot takes placehas the by now
familiar court-scene aura, with Rodolfos mother acting as judge and the priest
sanctifying the pardon and union.
There are other legalistic elements that are familiar to us. The rst and most
obvious is that the assault takes place in despoblado, literally outside the city
in this case, beyond the reach of the many police that Toledo has, whose
existence gives Leocadias father a false sense of security. Trusting the vigilant
police (p. 24), the text reads [Con la seguridad que promete la mucha justicia
(p. 239)]. It also occurs at night. Crimes committed in despoblado and at
night, as we know, were considered particularly heinous in Spanish penal
codes, precisely because the victims could not enjoy the protection of neigh-
bors or police forces. Leocadias familys calls for help are not heard. The scene
is also a road, leading from the river to the town. Crimes on roads, as we have
seen, came under the jurisdiction of the crown and its police forces, such as the
Holy Brotherhood. All of these factors aggravate Rodolfos offenses, adding to
the singularity and appeal of the case, and hence to its deserving to be rescued
from the archive and told as an exemplary story.
Beneath the crime and punishment plot there also lurks the issue of an
unequal marriage, highlighted by Rodolfos abuse of his power as an aristo-
crat. Leocadias father is a poor hidalgo, long on honor but short on wealth.
She laments that were her parents rich she would not have found herself in the
predicament that she is in, implying that they would have been protected by
servants and private guards, not found alone on the road. But the disparity in
social and economic class also underscores the possibility of restitution by
marriage. Because Rodolfo is so much richer and of a much higher social class,
marriage to him would be sufcient compensation for the injuries and dam-
ages that he has caused. This appears to be the case at the end, when he marries
 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories 183

Leocadia and recognizes Luisico as his son. Everybody seems to be happy:

Rodolfos parents have gained not only a beautiful and virtuous daughter-in-
law, but more importantly another male heir capable of giving continuity to
their legacy; Leocadias have their honor restored, their daughter married to a
wealthy aristocrat, and their grandson in line, as rstborn son, to inherit from
his father and grandfather a considerable estate. In terms of the legal plot there
seems to be a satisfactory ending to The Call of the Blood, a turn of events as
astonishing as the crime itself: the achievement of criminal and civil justice and
the atonement of sin by the marriage sanctied by that priest who pops up at
the appropriate moment to marry Rodolfo and Leocadia. The viciousness of
the crime is counterbalanced by the surprising and joyous resolution.
Two eminent Cervantes scholarsAlban Forcione and John J. Allenhave
adduced enough evidence to mount a considerable case in favor of reading
The Call of the Blood as the retelling of a miracle story drawn from popular
religious lore. The role that the silver crucix plays in the resolution of the
conict and allusions to the miraculous by characters support this interpreta-
tion. Allen claims that the story of the Cristo de la Vega, an image of Christ in a
Toledan church of the same name, has some inuence on The Call of the
Blood. A legend retold by the Spanish romantic Jos Zorrilla, known as A
buen juez, mejor testigo (If the Judge Was Good, the Witness Even Better),
tells the story of a young, impecunious woman who brings her anc before
the image of Christ to swear that he will marry her. He goes off to war and
upon his return reneges on the promise. The young woman drags him back to
the church and asks the Cristo de la Vega if it is true that the young man had
sworn to marry her. The Christ pulls a hand off from the cross and lowers his
arm. In some versions the statue actually speaks. Faced with such proof, the
man relents and marries the woman. The fact that the church in question is the
basilica of Saint Leocadia, the name of our heroine in The Call of the Blood,
and that in 1587 her remains had been returned from Flanders to Toledo,
suggests to Allen that the legend was probably in the back of Cervantes mind
as he wrote the story. It is quite possible, though it seems tangential to me and
remains external to The Call of the Blood. Forcione buttresses his reading
with his familiar appeal to the romance form, which he maintains is that of
miracle stories: plots involving the supernatural, characters lacking develop-
ment who seem to be moved by the unfolding of the story and happy endings.
Couched in the context of Spanish religiosity in the period, which Forcione
reconstructs through thick description and relentless scholarly accumulation
of details, there is an inevitability to his reading that is hard to resist.
I nd readings of The Call of the Blood in connection to miracles un-
satisfactory while at the same time not entirely wrong. There is no question
184 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories

about the intensity of religious feeling among Spaniards in the period nor of
Cervantes sincere Catholicism. But the problem is precisely that: that there is
no question, hence to address it as an issue is a distortion. It is a kind of
hermeneutic pleonasm, a redundancy. Spains and Cervantes Catholicism are
so inherent to the story as to make the kind of work Allen and Forcione
perform superuous and extraneous to the text. It is beside the point, as it
were. Of course there were those legends of miracles, surely Cervantes and his
readers were aware of them, there is no doubt that at some prima facie level of
reading the surprising resolution of the case in the story may appear to be like
a miracle. Yet in the story there is nothing supernatural or that can be con-
strued as miraculous because it violates common physical laws. In A buen
juez, mejor testigo the image of Christ on the cross, made of wood, moves an
arm. There is not the slightest hint of any such event in The Call of the
Blood. Everything follows along as the report of a court case in which there
was this happy settlement, brought about by some concurrent incidents and
accidents, some of which were the result of the characters intentions and
plans, as when Rodolfos mother makes Leocadia appear at the nal dinner
dressed in a shockingly beautiful fashion. Nothing escapes the commonplace
and the ordinary, and while the accident in which Luisico was wounded,
which starts the unraveling of the plot, could be construed as providential, it
cannot be called that denitively, of course.
I think that my admired colleagues and friends read the story motivated by a
conventional view of Spain held among American Hispanists and by a desire
to tame Cervantes text by reducing it to a narrative pattern with admittedly
deep cultural roots but independent of literary discourse. It is like being in a
jail cell and reaching out through the bars to grab a key that will open the door.
In literature we can imagine ourselves outside and free. In my view what is
profoundly original and disturbing in The Call of the Blood is how the
questions of crime, punishment, and restitution escape this kind of reading,
giving the story a modern cast in which miracles are not denied but are not
tendered as explanation for how things turn out. Besides, Cervantes story is
important as literature, while miracle stories are read only by the pious or by
scholars in search of miracles to solve their quandaries.

The Call of the Blood is so compelling as literature because of the relentless,
pitiless concert of repetitions that fosters a sense of inevitability, a conspiracy
of elements that one does not associate with human agency: lifeless bodies,
blood, moon, light, steps on a staircase, a bed, are in collusion with each other.
It is a whole network of signs that seems to be acting in consonance, but not
 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories 185

guided by the characters. In fact it sometimes appears that the concurrence of

these elements dictates the characters actions. This gives the text a certain
detachment from author, characters, and readers, as if the story were writing
itself in a language that belongs to none of them. It is a strange language made
up of apparently heterogeneous elements, whose only common feature is to
belong to the material world. They are brute and mute, yet animated and
articulate through a grammar of their own, with its own accidents. It is like a
higher law, as it were, that incorporates and assimilates the transgression and
its punishment, that makes them part of itself as text. There is in the story an
uneasy amalgamation of love and the law, a synthesis that leads not to a clear
resolution in which atonement and recompense effectively erase the crime. It is
another of the unnarratable stories.
Common language is silenced in The Call of the Blood. When Rodolfo
grabs Leocadia she loses her voice: deprived of voice to cry out (p. 25) [el
sobresalto le quit la voz para quejarse (p. 240)], and the assault occurs in the
silence of night (p. 25) [el callado silencio de la noche (p. 240)]. She hears his
voice only when he leaves her on the street, but he changes it and speaks with a
Portuguese accent: in a feigned voice and speaking a mixture of Portuguese
and Spanish (p. 30) [en voz trocada y en lengua medio portuguesa y cas-
tellana (p. 244)]. She claims, as we already saw, that the only male voices she
had heard were her fathers and her confessors. Leocadias father wants to
keep the affront quiet, lest he be dishonored, and she asks Rodolfo to admit to
his guilt and not come up with any excuses: tell yourself that you offended me
accidentally, without attempting to excuse it (p. 28) [Haz cuenta que me
ofendiste por accidente, sin dar lugar a ningn buen discurso (p. 242)]. In the
darkness of the room in which she is raped, Leocadia has to feel around to
identify things with her hands, even touching Rodolfo to ascertain that he is
not a ghost of some sort. Reality is invisible and mute. The rape occurs while
Leocadia is in a faint, her body unable to utter a protest or even comprehend
the act. She is aware of what happened only because she is hurt, I in pain?
(p. 26) [Yo lastimada? (p. 241)]; the only way her body speaks to her at that
moment is through the pain, but it will be more eloquent later. Leocadia faints
three times, Luisico once when he is hit by the horse, and Rodolfo once at the
climax of the scene when Leocadia is identied by her mother. At crucial
moments characters cannot speak, or do so poorly, as Rodolfo does to hide his
identity.
Leocadias shame is such that she wants to erase her own name and that of
her family and does not want to learn Rodolfos. She reads only the material
world around her: the hangings on the walls, the number of steps on the stairs,
the features of the bed, the pieces of furniture, and the crucix she steals as
186 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories

tangible proof of her presence in the room. Leocadia reads the language of
things rather than that of people. Like the physical memory of the assault, she
places more condence in the speech of matter than in human discourse. She is
right, for it is bodies and things that will tell the story. Leocadia and her family
have managed to suppress the crime, and Rodolfo has erased it from his
memory to the point that he hardly remembers it as he leaves for Italy. But then
Leocadia feels herself to be pregnant and her body begins to speak for her. The
child is the most material evidence of the crime. It is an ambivalent proof and
judgment because on the one hand Luisicos mere presence is an accusation,
while on the other it is a blessing, not just because he is a human life, but
individually because of the many ne qualities he possesses. Among these the
most signicant is his very early ability to read Latin and Spanish and to write
very neatly. He is a body endowed with speech, with language. Leocadias
body speaks by repeating the unseen face of her assailant in Luisicos, who
looks so much like his father that he startles his paternal grandparents with the
resemblance. Leocadias body speaks because it is the offended part, as she was
unconscious when raped. It is a speech that betrays her in the sense that she did
not want to know or see Rodolfos face, but Luisicos shows it to her unwit-
tingly and independent of his or her intention or desire. She does not want to
see his face because she does not want to remember it: holding in my memory
the image of the cause of my suffering (p. 27) [ni guardar en la memoria la
imagen del autor de mi dao (p. 242)].
But her body retains the imprint and reproduces it in Luisicos face. The
erased image is replaced by a tangible copy of the face, as if memory were
physically inscribed. Blood speaks, too, here and elsewhere, as we shall see;
this is its power, which is also the call of the blood in the sense of its voice, its
language. In the story the language of blood is not as gentle and benign as that
of miracles.
In the darkness of the room in which she is raped, Leocadia is only able to
discern objects because of a window through which the light of the moon
entered so brightly that Leocadia could see the colors of the hangings that
adorned the room(p. 29) [por do entr el resplandor de la luna, tan claro,
que pudo distinguir Leocadia los colores de unos damascos que el aposento
adornaban (p. 244)]. She is able to see not only shapes but also colors. The
moon was complicitous in the crime because it allowed Rodolfo to be struck
by Leocadias beautiful face, which led to his wanting to possess her. It
illuminated her face for his gaze. On another level, the moon also intervenes if,
through the conventional association of lunar and menstrual cycles, one con-
siders how fortuitous it was that Leocadia was ovulating the night that she was
raped. There is also the link between all those faces, the ones that Rodolfo and
 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories 187

his friends look at impudently, Leocadias and Luisicos beautiful ones, and
las caras de la luna, the faces of the moon. But more signicantly there is the
silver crucix, which is, together with Luisico, the most tangible proof of the
crime. Silver is the metal conventionally associated with the moon and with
mirrors and reproduction because it reects reality. It is as if the crucix had
preserved in its silvery essence the moonlight of the night of the crime, with its
incitement to lust, but also, with its projection of light, the possibility for the
truth to be revealed. The crucix will facilitate the nal resolution by con-
stituting such a proof, which will again bring the lovers together in the same
bed. It is also, by the way, material proof of Leocadias own crime of theft. So it
is an ambivalent sign, on the one hand religious and tending to truth and on
the other erotic, with a clear reminiscence of blood and sacrice. This disturb-
ing conjunction, this crossing of contradictory thrusts, as it were, explains
why Leocadia suddenly desires Rodolfo at the end, contrary to all conven-
tional psychological expectations. In addition, because of his uncanny resem-
blance to his father, Leocadia has been looking at Rodolfos face in Luisicos, a
twist by which the rejected face becomes the desired one, and a love perversely
kindled by the son, a stand-in for his father. Such is the power of blood, which
also explains why, in a very real sense, Rodolfo gets away with it.
Implicit in the faces of the moon and on reection is the notion of repetition,
which is at the core of The Call of the Blood, and in a sense constitutes
bloods power. Leocadia faints three times, as we saw, and we canas with
the Camacho wedding episodetrace an itinerary of blood in the most literal
sense: one blood leading to the other or becoming signicant in relation to the
next. It is an itinerary that is also an enunciation because repetition is the
foundation of language, of the production of meaning through signs. The rst
blood would be Leocadias at the rape scene and the second Luisicos at that of
the accident with the horse and later on the very bed on which his mother was
raped. There is an irresistible call back to that bed, a golden or gilded one, as
Leocadia discovers by the light of the moon.
The independence of this itinerary from human agency is proposed by Leo-
cadia herself. She attempts to displace or cancel Rodolfos culpability by say-
ing the violation was an accident, as we have already seen. Her use of the
term is a Neoscholastic echo typical of the times, but what Leocadia probably
means is that it does not issue from Rodolfos ontological essence, but from the
contingency of his sudden burst of desire after having seen her face by the light
of the moon. By removing the intentionality she is also diminishing her dis-
honor, blaming the whole thing on something unintended, hence incapable of
causing offence. This is the reason she does not want to see Rodolfos face or
learn who he is. Rodolfo is like an anonymous force that has overtaken her, in
188 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories

a scene reminiscent of Tirso de Molinas Don Juan in El burlador de Sevilla.

He is his body. Unwittingly, of course, she is removing the act from the realm
of language, in which honor codes and laws are expressed, and attributing it to
a force that propels matter, inanimate things, which are appropriately the ones
that will become articulate and in a sense tell the story. Leocadia also at-
tributes the assault to the power of blood, to the irresistible thrust of sexual
desire, of lust (today we would blame testosterone). Blood has the power of
representation, of re-presentation and of reproduction. Luisicos noble quali-
ties, passed on through the noble blood of his father, are a case in point. He
was fair of face, gentle of disposition, quick of wit, and in all his acts betting
that tender age gave evidence of having been begotten by a high-born father
(p. 33) [de rostro hermoso, de condicin mansa, de ingenio agudo, y en todas
las acciones que en aquella edad tierna podia hacer daba seales de ser de
algn noble padre engendrado (p. 247)]. This is ironic, of course, because
Rodolfo does not give evidence of possessing such qualities, except for the
physical beauty. Cervantes, in any case, like most Spaniards of the period, had
a deterministic, pre-modern concept of genetics. In the prologue to Part I of
the Quijote he says that I wish this book, as the child of my understanding,
were the most beautiful, sprightly and discreet production that ever was con-
ceived. But, it was not in my power to contravene the order of nature, in
consequence of which, every creature procreates its own resemblance (p.
xlvi) [quisiera que este libro, como hijo del entendimiento, fuera el ms her-
moso, el ms gallardo y ms discreto que pudiera imaginarse. Pero no he
podido yo contravenir al orden de naturaleza; que en ella cada cosa engendra
su semejante (p. 9)]. The fact that Leocadia is saying things whose ultimate
meaning she cannot be aware of underscores that the power of language, when
not lacking, is impaired. The sense of what she says is beyond Leocadia as
Rodolfo is unable to check his appetite. Their only meaningful and productive
dialogue is with their bodies.
If the rape is the rst accident, the second accident is Luisicos with the
horse, which provokes the second bleeding (actually the third, counting the
implicit one at his birth) and precipitates the series of events that lead to the
nale. His paternal grandfather notices the resemblance to his son because of
the blood, the language that he reads on the boys injured head and face. This
second bleeding reenacts or supplants the rst because it is as if Luisico were
born, or conceived anew in blood and violence. It is the repetition of a begin-
ning, an uncanny and logical impossibility that highlights the translogical
nature of the language of blood and things. The sexual symbolism of the
bolting horse is obvious; his fury is like Rodolfos and its consequences are
 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories 189

similar. The horses owner and rider was unable to check it (p. 33) [detenerle
en la furia de su carrera (p. 248)].
It is highly signicant that the mishap occurs as Luisico carries a message
from his maternal grandmother to another relative: he speaks, he is language,
the language of blood. The horse runs over him as if to silence him, as his
mother was silenced at the rst bleeding, but contradictorily he will speak
through his wound to his paternal grandparents and begin to uncover the
truth. The face rst speaks to them when Luisico is unconscious; it is an
eloquent but mute face that speaks when silent. The story is cast in the lan-
guage of paradox, one that cannot express the law, but instead the conspiracy
of things and meanings before or after language. This is expressed somewhat
laconically with the saying When God gives the wound, He also gives the
medicine (p. 36) [Dios da la llaga da la medicina (p. 250]).
There appears to be a restoration of order at the end with the restitu-
tions made. Leocadia has a husband and Luisico a father. Rodolfo has been
condemned to marry Leocadia, a beautiful woman such as he desired. The
grandparents are all happy, particularly Rodolfos parents, who now have a
new male heir to whom to pass on the legacy. But how could so much good
come from something as evil as Rodolfos crimes? And how can Leocadia
suddenly feel that she is deeply in love with him? She says that Rodolfo is the
one she already loved more than the light of her eyes (p. 41) [al que ya quera
ms que a la luz de sus ojos (p. 255)]. These are, signicantly, the eyes that
he had blinded and that her parents had lost in losing her. But they are also
the eyes that have been gazing at Luisico, preparing her to fall in love with
Rodolfo, whose copy he is.
Rodolfo is not repentant, as Don Fernando appeared to be at the end of the
Quijote, Part I. When he receives the news that his parents have arranged for
him to marry a beautiful woman he is happy to return, eager to make his the
fair bride his father held out to him (p. 37) [con la golosina de gozar tan
hermosa mujer como su padre le signicaba (p. 251)]. Once back, when his
mother shows him the picture of an ugly woman and tells him that she is the
one they have chosen for him, he refuses because that her plainness should
delight his eyes I fear is impossible (p. 39) [fealdad alegre los ojos del esposo
parceme imposible (p. 253)]. He argues that the married couple has a right
to deleite (delight) in order to fulll marriages second purpose(p. 39)
[segunda intencin (p. 253)], meaning having children. Desire, pleasure, must
drive the spouses to conceive, to reproduce. Rodolfo confesses without ambi-
guity that he seeks beauty in a woman: there are those who look for rank,
some for discretion, others for beauty, and I am one of these last (p. 39) [unos
190 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories

hay que buscan nobleza, otros discrecin, otros dineros y otros hermosura, y
yo soy de estos ltimos (p. 253)]. He has not changed at all: It is beauty that I
seek, beauty I desire (p. 39) [La hermosura busco, la belleza quiero (p. 253)].
Leocadia was wrong: the rape was no accident independent of Rodolfos es-
sence but part of his very being, which is driven by lust. David M. Gitlitz, in a
superb article on the story to which I am deeply indebted, calls Rodolfo a
libidinous sob.
The one who has been transformed is Leocadia, who upon seeing Rodolfo
for the rst time in his full splendor is left dumbfounded. He returns from
Italy: so handsome and so gallant he looked as he entered his fathers house
that he seemed the glass of fashion and the mold of form (p. 38) [entr en
casa de su padre tan galn y tan bizarro que todos los extremos de la gala y de
la bizarra estaban en l todos juntos (p. 252)]. She is smitten as she gazes at
him in the same way that he did at her the rst time, without his being aware.
Rodolfo does not know that she is looking at him because Leocadia is con-
cealed: [She] had hidden herself, gazed on him with wonder and emotion (p.
38) [Suspendiose Leocadia, que de parte escondida le miraba (p. 252)]. Sus-
penderse, the word used in the original to describe her reaction, is to be left
speechless. Her look is correlative to the one he gives her, from behind a veil,
when he rst sees her on the road. The result is that, as we saw, she begins to
love him more than the light of her eyes. The rape is now an alluring and
perverse memory, as she began to turn in her imagination what had happened
with Rodolfo (p. 41) [Comenz a revolver en la imaginacin lo que con
Rodolfo haba pasado (p. 255)]. She herself is decked out by her mother-in-
law to make her attractive to Rodolfo. We must remember that other than her
beautiful face he had not really seen her in the act of raping her, which the
narrator attributes to his youthful lust, which needs few enticements. Now
Leocadias body is outtted and ornamented and she comes to table with her
natural beauty set off and enhanced by all the devices of adornment (p. 40)
[ms hermosa muestra que pudo dar jams compuesta y natural hermosura
(p. 254)]. Her dress is studded with diamonds that dazzled the eyes of the
beholders (p. 40) [con ellos entretenan y turbaban la luz de los ojos que los
miraban (p. 254)]. She blinds those who look at her, meaning that she, contra-
dictorily, impairs Rodolfos vision of her. But blindness works again, as his
desire for her is rekindled. Leocadia appears, relevantly accompanied by two
maidservants: lighting the way with two wax tapers in silver candlesticks
(p. 40) [delante della venan dos doncellas alumbrndola con dos velas de cera
en dos candelabros de plata (p. 254)]. Silver, again, as source of light, reminis-
cent of the silvery light of the moon during the rst encounter and the silver
crucix. She is illuminated by the same light that was complicitous in her rape
 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories 191

and that also brightened the room in which she was raped so that she could
gather the evidence of the act. It is also a moonish light of memory, em-
bedded in the substance of the crucix and her recollections of the act, which
are now tinged with desire. These are memories that reawaken Rodolfos
desire and awaken hers retrospectively. The repetition of the act is what un-
cannily brings about the resolution by uniting the lovers again as tremulous
esh, even though through the proper social and legal channels.
Because desire still rules. Rodolfo, once the word husband has been ut-
tered, abandons all decorum and grabs Leocadia again: having removed the
barriers of dignity and decency that the surroundings might have put in his
way, he bent his face to that of Leocadias and, pressing his mouth to hers, he
seemed to be waiting for her soul to breathe itself forth that he might receive it
in his own (p. 42) [llevado de su amoroso y encendido deseo, y quitndole el
nombre de esposo todos los estorbos que la honestidad y decencia del lugar le
poda poner, se abalanz al rostro de Leocadia, y juntando su boca con la
della . . . como esperando que se le saliese el alma para darle acogida en la suya
(p. 256)]. He is silencing Leocadia again, possessing one more time her mute
body. She comes to as he kisses her mouth and gently tries to pry herself loose.
This is an exact reenactment of the rape scene. Once the marriage has taken
place, ofciated by that priest who conveniently shows up for the purpose,
Rodolfo can hardly wait to nd himself alone with his new wife, presumably
in the same old bed, furthering the repetition: so great was his desire to be
alone with his beloved wife (p. 43) [tan grande era el deseo de verse a solas
con su querida esposa (p. 257)]. The house is calm, like the rst time, and in
that vacuum of sound and light, of voice and gaze, in which they rst met, they
again have their bodies join to engender a long and lasting progeny. As with
Luisico, it is that brood that speaks the truth of the story, breaking the silence:
The house was buried in silence. But not the truth of this story, for the
numerous children and the noble offspring of this happy couple left who still
live in Toledo would not consent it (p. 43) [toda la casa estaba sepultada en
silencio, en el cual no quedar la verdad de este cuento, pues no lo consentiran
los muchos hijos y la ilustre descendencia que en Toledo dejaron (p. 257)]. It is
the bodies that issue from their carnal union who speak the truth. Cervantes is
playing here with the meaning of verdad, which is made to mean the ending,
conclusion, or ultimate signicance of the story.
The language of blood, like that of the story, is one of paradox, not of
ambiguity. Ambiguity suggests a possible resolution; paradox enunciates the
convergence of contraries. It performs their nonresolution in the text. There is
nothing ambiguous about paradox. Take the relationship between life and
death expressed through the faints in The Call of the Blood, when bodies
192 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories

become lifeless while still being alive and generate life while appearing to be
dead. All the faints are intimations of death. Leocadias at the beginning turns
her into a lifeless body, a stump or column, as she herself calls it. But every
faint, particularly her rst and Luisicos, which are accompanied by blood,
leads to a rebirth, as if death were giving birth to life. This is why Leocadia
calls the bed where she is raped and to which Luisico is taken a tomb: the bed
was that which had been the stone of her grave (p. 35) [aquella era la misma
cama que tena por tumba de su sepultura (p. 249)]. The bed is the tomb in
which Luisico was conceived, and where he is taken to die and be reborn after
the accident. It is the bed in which Leocadia and Rodolfo will engender that
long progeny.
Life and death at cross purposes, in paradoxical unionlike the very shape
of the crucix that plays so important a role. The crucix is the X of a non-
language, a crude symbol of nonsignication, the generic X of a signature that
does not identifyRodolfos namelessness as criminal. It is the X that marks
the spot of that no-place in which Leocadia was raped, a void of sound, no
voices, and of recognizable shapes, no light. It is a language that signies
through the brute and mute force of its own shaped materiality, like all those
objects through which the story is told. This is the deep meaning of the cruci-
x, not that of the drippy miracle story. Leocadia, it must be remembered, rst
picks it up as evidence of the crime and as instrument for a secret design of
hers, explicitly not moved by religious sentiment. She hid it in the sleeve of
her gown, not for reasons of devotion or to steal, but because of a wise design
(p. 29) [se le puso en la manga de la ropa, no por devocin o por hurto, sino
llevada de un discreto designio suyo (p. 244)]. When she proposes to her father
to use the crucix to identify the culprit, to put the X on him, her father replies
that it would not do, that it would lead to further confusion because her
assailant could send a third person to pick it up. Like the X that it is, the
crucix cannot name. It can signify the paradoxical nature both of the text and
of lifes forces.
The Call of the Blood does not neutralize the positive power of evil,
incarnated in sexual desire and the acts that it induces. Crime is the foundation
of the law, the transgression needed for its inaugurationon a smaller scale,
Leocadias theft leads to her having justice. Criminal acts have a facticity that
stands before the language of the law, constituting a proto-language of their
own inscribed in bodies, objects, and things that are both suggestive and
suggest meanings. Legal codes translate into social order through a form of
control that literature does not allow to dominate the text because it amounts
to attaching a meaning to things that is external to them and to the text itself,
like all the contextual material adduced by my distinguished colleagues. They
 Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories 193

signify only in relation to each other in the text. (There are ample records of
piety but not of depravity, except in literature.) Codes, like the honor code,
want to silence the language of things, of matter aroused by the force of desire.
This is the power in the power of the blood as glimpsed in Cervantes brief
novel, another virtual story of the unnarratable, of that which, literally,
cannot by told, cannot be relatedit is beyond language, which is why things
and bodies speak here. The story per se manifests itself only in the hidden
text that I read here. If this is the case, the title of this exemplary tale must be
read literally: it is about the power of blood, the substance itself, something
that we had already seen in the episode of Camachos wedding.
Characters in The Call of the Blood can have no psychological develop-
ment because the actors in the story are the things, the crude matter that makes
up bodies and objects. The repetitions are not part of an aesthetic design, in
the sense of being a composition with balanced members and discrete shapes
that provide pleasure. The exemplariness of the story lies in its ability to
display the workings of language in the process of being given form by desire
and its interdiction, the play of yes and no at the foundation of the law. This
operation cannot yield a sense of justice or a pious meaning. It is pitiless in its
working and its implications, which is what makes The Call of the Blood
one of Cervantes most successful and modern stories.
 11

The Bride Who Never Was and Her Brood:

The Deceitful Marriage

While Cervantes works are inconceivable without the picaresque, he

never wrote a proper picaresque novel and had a guarded attitude toward the
new genre. The episode of the galley slaves in Part I of the Quijote (chapter 22)
has embodied for criticism the gist of his reservations. The prisoners, common
criminals of the sort who often appear in the picaresque, are portrayed sympa-
thetically, and several are allowed to expound on their miseries and misdeeds.
These rst-person confessions are like miniature picaresque novels, including
the one by the character I called the prisoner of sex in chapter one. The star
of the group, however, is the insolent and loquacious Gins de Pasamonte,
who is considered so likely to escape that he is restrained in a spectacular way:

he was shackled in a very different manner from the rest; his foot being loaded
with a huge chain that went round his whole body, and his neck adorned with
two iron rings, to one of which the chain was fastened; and the other was called
a keep-friend, or friends foot, from which descended to his middle, a couple of
iron bolts tted with a pair of manacles for his arms, secured by a large
padlock, in such a fashion, as to hinder him from lifting up his hands to his
mouth, and to disable him from bending his head to his hands. (I, 22, p. 157)

[Vena diferentemente atado que los dems, porque traa una cadena al pie,
tan grande, que se la liaba por todo el cuerpo, y dos argollas a la garganta, la

194
 Bride Who Never Was 195

una en la cadena, y la otra de las que llaman de guardaamigo o pie de amigo,

de la cual descendan dos hierros que llegaban a la cintura, en los cuales se
asan dos esposas, donde llevaba las manos, cerradas con un grueso candado,
de manera que ni con las manos poda llegar a la boca, no poda bajar la
cabeza a las manos. (p. 241)]

Gins may not take anything to his mouth or put his mouth to anything, but
what the guards cannot do is to shut it. Gins banters with them, insinuates
that they are themselves guilty of some kind of scam involving expenses at an
inn, and launches on a tirade of self-promotion as the author of a book about
his life. This is Ginss well-known exchange with the commissary and Don
Quijote:
He tells nothing but the truth, said the commissary; for, he has actually
written his own history, as well as could be desired, and pawned the manu-
script in jail, for two hundred rials. Ay, and I shall redeem it, said Gins, if it
were for as many ducats. What! Is it so entertaining? said Don Quixote.
Yes, answered Gins, it is so entertaining, that woe be unto Lazarillo de
Tormes, and all who have written or shall write in that manner. What I can
afrm of mine, is, that it contains truths, and such ingenious and savory
truths, as no ction can equal. And what is the title of your book? said the
knight. The Life of Gins de Pasamonte, replied the other. Is it nished?
Said Don Quixote. How can it be nished, answered the author, when my
natural life is not yet concluded? I have already written my whole history
from my birth till the last time I was sent to the galleys.(I, 22, p. 158)

[Dice verdaddijo el comisario; que l mesmo ha escrito su historia,

que no hay ms, y deja empeado el libro en la crcel en doscientos reales.
Y le pienso quitardijo Ginssi quedara en doscientos ducados.
Tan bueno es?respondi don Quijote.
Es tan buenorespondi Gins, que mal ao para Lazarillo de Tor-
mes y para todos cuantos de aquel gnero se han escrito o escribieren. Lo que
s decir a voac es que trata verdades, y que son verdades tan lindas y tan
donosas, que no pueden haber mentiras que se le igualen.
Y cmo se intitula el libro?pregunt don Quijote.
La vida de Gins de Pasamonterespondi el mismo.
Y est acabado?pregunt don Quijote.
Cmo puede estar acabadorespondi l, si an no est acabada mi
vida? Lo que est escrito es desde mi nacimiento hasta el punto que esta
ltima vez me han echado en galeras. (p. 243)]

This remarkable passage encapsulates not only Cervantes take on the pica-
resque, but an incisive exposition of the genres poetics and an exacting cri-
tique of it. The critique is also an opinion about its newness in relation to the
196 Bride Who Never Was

unfolding of literary history. Renaissance authors wished to follow classical

models and genres, but the picaresque was a radically new kind of literature,
deviating from this practice. Cervantes is considering here this departure from
aesthetic norms and questioning if the picaresque can really follow a different
path of development, as it appears to claim. This seems like a lot, perhaps too
much critical theory for such a brief passage, so I will unpack it as pro-
legomenon to my discussion of The Deceitful Marriage and The Dialogue
of the Dogs, which together constitute Cervantes nal statement on the
picaresque.
The title of the book Gins has writtenThe Life of Gins de Pasamonte
is a direct allusion to the rst picaresque novel, which was entitled La vida de
Lazarillo de Tormes, y de sus fortunas y adversidades (The Life of Lazarillo de
Tormes, and of His Fortunes and Misfortunes). It was published in 1554. As
Guilln noted, the new genre installed the vida, the life or life story as its
narrative form; it is a life told from birth to the moment the rogue sets out to
write it. To call it autobiography would elevate the picaresque vida to an
inappropriate rhetorical level because it is the life of a low-life type, often a
criminal, and follows more the notarial arts than classical models. The im-
plication of life as a genre in which an individuals term of existence is
narrated by himself involves an impossibility that Cervantes gleefully points
out. How can I narrate my entire life when to be able do so means that life
cannot have ended and thus reached its full span? This is, to be sure, the
quandary of all autobiographical writing, going back to Saint Augustines
Confessions. One way out of the impasse is for the writer to claim that he has
undergone a radical conversion, whereby his life, up to the moment he starts
to tell it, is like that of a dead man, someone whom he no longer is. Another
way out is the one the great nineteenth-century Brazilian novelist Machado de
Assis followed in his The Posthumous Memoirs of Brs Cubas: the narrator-
protagonist of the novel is already dead. But authors of picaresque lives were
not quite ready to be so radical. Guillns point, however, is valuable. Picares-
que narratives tell a life, not a well-wrought story having an Aristotelian-style
tight plot with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They refuse to be literary in
that way.
In work going back to the 1970s that culminated in my Celestinas Brood, I
added to the critical corpus that the life told by picaresque narrators is that of a
criminal giving a deposition before a judge or someone in authority, more
specically a representative of the judicial or penal branch of the Spanish
bureaucracy. This uncouples the picaresque from literary tradition and links it
to social and political developments. I maintain that such a confession is
precisely the kind Lzaro makes as he tries to explain away his immoral and in
 Bride Who Never Was 197

fact unlawful marital situation: he is married to the mistress of an archpriest in

order to serve as a front for their illicit relationship. I added, furthermore, that
by adhering to a nonliterary form, indeed a bureaucratic formula drawn from
the notarial arts (the relacin or deposition), the picaresque is claiming to
reveal a truth more valid than that of conventional literature, which is articial
by its very nature, as well as greater originality precisely because it has devi-
ated from received literary tradition. Using legal rhetoric to mimic and mock
the law, the picaresque is aiming at the very core of social and political author-
ity: the modern, bureaucratic state founded by the Catholic kings and per-
fected by their successors Charles V and Philip II. Against all those classical
forms that Renaissance authors imitate, adhering to the doctrine of mimesis,
the picaresque offers a humble but truer form of writing drawn from the
testimony of those at the bottom of the social ladderindeed, often outside of
society because they are often inside its prisons. As Rafael Salillas wrote, and I
have mentioned before, the picaresque is in this respect the birth of the social
sciences. Hence we have in the picaresque a detailed picture of human life at
its most elementary. It deals with hunger, abuse, violence, and the way charac-
ters cope with these in order to survive, which is often by recourse to crime.
By the time Cervantes began to publish his important works, the picaresque
formula had been rened and expanded by Mateo Alemn in his massive
Primera parte de Guzmn de Alfarache, published in 1599, followed in 1604
by a Segunda parte de la vida de Guzmn de Alfarache, atalaya de la vida
humana. The ambiance of criminality, of lowlife in towns, inns, and roads, is
greatly expanded by Alemn, whose book became a best seller and was known
simply as El pcaro. Lazarillo was a masterpiece of succinctness, while the
Guzmn is expansive and digressive, with interpolated tales, and, owing to the
heightened religious zeal of Philip IIs Spain, endowed with visible moralistic
purposes. Many adventures are followed by a sermon interpreting the sins and
crimes committed by the protagonist and others. The Guzmn is a somber
book in which Alemn makes literal the device of the conversion: Guzmn,
who spends time as a galley slave, writes from an atalaya de la vida humana, as
the subtitle proclaims, a watchtower of human life. It is obvious that the
barbs in the Quijote episode are directed at Alemn, although it is the Laza-
rillo that is mentioned. Like Guzmn, Gins has been a galley slave and has
written a voluminous autobiography.
But Cervantes has critiqued the conventionalisms of the picaresque not only
by pointing at the absurdity of claiming to encompass an entire life in Ginss
book but also by unveiling the articiality of conversion as a form of closure:
its elastic, ctional, narrative-device nature, which makes it suspect as the
expression of a sincere turn to the good and a forsaking of the life of crime.
198 Bride Who Never Was

Gins has been to the galleys before; he is a recidivist. He has to await an-
other turning point in his life to be able to resume writing his autobiography,
with each sentence to the jail being the requisite conversion. But, of course,
there can be an innite number of these, none of them guaranteeing his being
reformedon the contrary. Ginss literal conception of autobiography serves
Cervantes to show the asymptotic nature of the convergence of life and writ-
ing, with conversion being the device to make them coalesce arbitrarily. The
notarial arts can also be subverted by the wily criminal author, whose pen-
chant to violate the law extends to his creative practice. Cervantes appears to
be making a statement about the picaresque as a new literary genre and about
its being privy to truth as a result. Once the genre becomes literature it cannot
make such a claim. Gins implies as much when he speaks about the inge-
nious and savory truths of his life, which are better than ction itself. Once
functioning as a literary genre with its own kind of conventions and devices,
the picaresque has no particular advantages over other forms of literature and
its evolution follows the same rules as others, with novelty coming not from its
relation to the truth by way of the nonliterary but by how its own conven-
tionalities are deployed or violated. In writing his picaresque autobiography
Gins is an author, not just a criminal, but he is certainly that too.
Cervantes most obvious revision of the picaresque formula is Gins own
light-hearted, impudent self-defense, and the fact that he is an author not by
being a repentant criminal but because of his lively imagination and verve.
This is really the reason why he has to be burdened with so many chains,
which, as I mentioned, can trap his body but cannot silence him. Not only will
he reappear as Maese Pedro in Part II of the Quijote to reassert his talents as
author, but in the passage quoted he boasts of his intelligence and success as a
writer by relating how he has been able to pawn the book, showing that he has
readers, one of whom is the guard who speaks so highly of his work. The very
fact that he has written the book in prison (like Cervantes, who claims to have
begun the Quijote in Sevilles jail) shows that Gins is undeterred by conne-
ment, that his spirit and imagination soar beyond the bars, and that within the
jail he has a life in which guards read his writings and others are willing to buy
them. Ginss vida is not somber like Guzmns. Debasing and sordid, life in
prison is not without gaiety, grandeur, and creativity; prisoners, often marked
by physical defects that individualize them (Gins is cross-eyed), are as inter-
esting or more so than characters drawn from conventional literary works.
Criminal life, Gins seems to intimate, may very well be more revealing of the
human condition than that of other social classes. Chvezs Relacin de la
crcel de Sevilla corroborates what Cervantes is suggesting here and else-
where: inside jail life still thrives in all its sordid, bizarre, and variegated ways.
 Bride Who Never Was 199

Gins represents all of this and more because, as an author, he links the
picaresque to authorship as a historically evolving role in the production of
literature. There is an unavoidable correlation in Cervantes between criminal
deceitfulness and authorial talent, between wit in the sense of ingenio, of
inventiveness, and the delinquent mind. It is because he possesses these quali-
ties that Gins has to be shrouded in chains, lest his deviant imagination
concoct yet another prank. This is, again, why he claims that all the truths of
his Vida are tan lindas y tan donosas: ingenious and savory, says Smollett,
but beautiful and witty is closer to the original. What Gins suggests is that
his art makes the factual beautiful as well as truthful, the ideal combination
sought by Renaissance poetics but expressed here by a convicted criminal of
limited book culture (he must have read the Guzmn). Gins is not aware of
any kind of poetics, although he is following that of the new picaresque genre.
He can dispense, like Cervantes in the 1605 prologue to the Quijote, with
bibliographies and canonical lists.
The connection between Gins and the gure of the author, which he will
continue to be in Part II with his puppet show, suggests that he stands for the
modern writer, like Cervantes himself, no longer beholden to the classical
tradition because he aims at a wider audience, not just the humanist elite.
Alemn, Lope de Vega, and Cervantes belong to the rst generation of Spanish
writers who had to earn a livingthrough their craft, if possible, or by some
other means. Before them writers were usually wealthy or belonged to the
clergy. But only Lope could support himself by writing because the theater was
protable enough and he enjoyed a monopoly. Cervantes, on the other hand,
tried to rely on aristocratic patrons who, for the most part, did not come
through. The pawning of Ginss book alludes to the fact that selling their
works was an important consideration for these writers, that their cunning
had to extend beyond the wit needed for literary creation to the world of
business and dirty monetary transactions. There they had to be as cunning as
pcaros.
The picaresque is a fundamental element in Cervantes work because
through it he learned the value of representing the messy world of his present,
particularly that of criminals or underworld types. He nds in criminals, not
just Gins but also Roque Guinart, the Catalan bandit of Part II of the Quijote,
compelling gures because of their audacity to oppose the law and the inven-
tiveness that their free lifestyles display. Cervantes was fascinated by that life,
as he demonstrates in Rinconete and Cortadillo through the positive por-
trayal of Monipodio and his criminal brotherhood in Seville. Monipodio,
whose name suggests that he has lost a leg or a foot, presides over a gallery of
thugs, pimps, and prostitutes. He rules Seville from his house by trafcking in
200 Bride Who Never Was

pleasure and violence (the way Celestina controlled Salamanca from hers).
Pimps and whores with colorful nicknames and outrageous habits parade
through Monipodios house as Cervantes indulgently resorts to words drawn
from their lingo, the language of germana. Some of the nicknames allude to
physical traits that individualize them, like Juliana la Cariharta, who presum-
ably has a full facecari from face and harta from sated or full. Her
boyfriend Repolidos name suggests that he is hairless, probably as a result of a
venereal disease. Monipodio is extremely hairy, an intimation of sexual prow-
ess. His brotherhood is an alternative society, a counter-utopia over which he
presides like a sage Sancho over the Island of Barataria. In that utopia people
and things acquire new names according to their features, which are con-
tingent, the product of accidents, like violence and illness. Therefore it is a
language in the making, not a received and frozen codethe aws and corre-
sponding names are like rebirths into new identities. Laws are drawn up ad
hoc according to need. They are in ux, like the language in which they are
cast and like picaresque ction. In writing about pcaros Cervantes was learn-
ing about himself and his art.
Besides the somber, pessimistic tone, Cervantes also rejects from the pica-
resque, particularly Alemns, the singular point of view that allows that brave
and bizarre world to be ltered through the wit of a single character. Cer-
vantes very often allows characters to tell their lives, but always in a dialogic
context in which they can be interrupted, as with the broken tales of Part I of
the Quijote discussed in an earlier chapter. In Part II other characters relate
their lives and many do in The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda; it is a com-
mon narrative device. But what Cervantes always avoids is the monologic
confession-style narrative that Lazarillo inaugurated. Most critics have at-
tributed this rejection of the picaresque rst-person narrative to Cervantes
perspectival approach to reality. Leo Spitzer wrote a memorable piece on how
this is manifest in Cervantes own style and even his choice of words. It seems
clear that Cervantes preferred to present various versions of events from mul-
tiple points of view, something dramatized to great comic effect in Part I of the
Quijote in the episode of the barbers basin. Erich Auerbach, in a polemical
chapter of his book Mimesis, proposed that the Cervantean was precisely this
refusal to be pinned down on anything. One of literatures pleasures for
Cervantes is to twist things around, to look at them from various angles, to
point out the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly, and to astonish with
the ability to hold together what appear to be contrary, multifarious, and
mutually exclusive views of reality and of human nature, including its mani-
festations among the criminal and marginal elements of society.
Multiple perspectives are also in keeping with the Renaissance probing of
 Bride Who Never Was 201

the self whose main exponent is Montaigne. Montaignes irony is often the
clash between voices within his own inner self, as it is also in Cervantes, with
the prologue to the 1605 Quijote being the best example. Cervantes penchant
to represent the real through the eyes of criminals is because they are, by their
very natureGins is the modelduplicitous, protean, apt to lie to save their
skins or just for the fun of it. Gaiety, joy, taking pleasure in wit and fancy are
very much a part of the criminals character as Cervantes portrays them and
also as he sees himself as author. He is the rst writer to nd a kinship with
them and to see his craft in relation to theirs in the deepest sense. In doing this,
Cervantes is also breaking with the implicit mimetic, literalist pact between
the picaresque and the legal discourse from which it draws its form, and the
attendant aura of culpability that peaks in the Guzmn. The law as limit and
possibility of his discourse is enabling only in the breach, in the act of being
twisted and turned as it is subjected to the freedom of the imaginationthe
freedom that Don Quijote grants Gins when he releases him from his chains.
The gayest, most liberating prank of the pcaro-author is to use legal discourse
to make literature by removing its constraints and links to authority and
punishment.

While, as I have said before, it is impossible to discern why Cervantes orga-
nized the twelve pieces in Exemplary Stories the way he did, there is no deny-
ing that there must be something to his having placed last The Deceitful
Marriage and The Dialogue of the Dogs, as there must be to The Gypsy
Girl being rst. I would say that the concluding linked storiesthe only
time Cervantes did thisare last because they make up a bold experiment
with narrative form. They are last because there is no beyond; Cervantes
reaches here the limits of storytelling. Together the stories are a version of the
framed narrative, a device that harkens back to the dawn of Western story-
telling, which arrived in Spain from its Eastern sources through the Arabic side
of its culture, as Mara Rosa Menocal has studied. This is the tale within
which another is told, as in The Thousand and One Nights. But in the baroque
context of Cervantes later work they also constitute a play of illusion, not
unlike the episode of the Cave of Montesinos in the Quijotean innitely
receding sequence of tales within tales from which, as from a labyrinth, it is a
challenge to escape.
But, surprisingly for such kind of story, the theme and ambience is contem-
porary, realistic in the extreme, save for the fact that the framed story is told by
a dog. In other words, this is not a story that happens in a fabulous, remote era
with idealized or stock characters. So on the one hand the work is a highly
202 Bride Who Never Was

sophisticated literary game, while on the other it portrays a world of soldiers,

rogues, prostitutes, and dogs. Illusions here are drawn from a current and
fallen present time, not from a distant, blatantly ctional region of the past, a
world of knights and damsels in distress, with dragons and other fabulous
monsters typical of the chivalric romance or the fairy tale. It is an audacious
blending of the picaresque with the most radical literary ction. A mixture of
high and low styles, it is an explosion of narrative forms and even of literary
discourse and of language itself. The blend of oral and written traditions
ironically brings back the linked stories to their popular origin. Framed narra-
tives of this kind, some of them in the shape of brainteasers or riddles, are part
of the popular tradition, as are fantastic stories about animals with human
qualities, including speech. Cervantes has his characters allude to the obliga-
tory classical sources (Aesop, Milesian tales), but animal parables, legends,
and even jokes abound in oral lore too. Today they nd renewed life in car-
toons and video games.
The narrative scene of Cervantes linked stories is the rst variation on the
picaresque that he performs. In Lazarillo the rogue tells his life to a judge. In
The Deceitful Marriage Ensign Campuzano speaks to his friend, Licentiate
Peralta. (Lesley Lipson has opted for Graduate Peralta, but as in the case of
The Glass Graduate, licenciado, as the dictionary of the Spanish Academy
states, is usually the form of address for lawyers, so I will use Licentiate to
retain that link to the law. Moreover, as I have indicated in a previous chapter,
most graduates of the period had law degrees.) Peralta, with his mildly ridicu-
lous name (Pera-altahigh pear) is a lawyer, a jurist of some sort, but he is
not acting in that capacity as he listens to his friends story and later as he reads
the manuscript of The Dialogue of the Dogs. The coercive situation is no
longer in effect; Campuzano is not seeking exculpation and Peralta is not
discharging his professional duties. Still, the fact that Peralta is a lawyer makes
him a specialized reader, one whose opinion about the veracity of The Dia-
logue of the Dogs is worth having. He is presumably trained in reading and
determining the validity of a deposition. With regard to The Deceitful Mar-
riage he is ostensibly prepared to gauge how the lovers fool each other by
misusing the law. Campuzanos and Estefanas is a complicated and hilarious
anecdote, perhaps the funniest in Exemplary Stories. Like The Call of the
Blood it reads like something drawn from a record of court proceedings: the
case of the soldier fooled by a oozy who lost all his money and wound up in
the hospital to boot.
This frame tale, although the most conventional in outward appearance of
the two interlocked stories, is quite daring even if seen against the background
of the preceding stories in the book and of Cervantes work in general. It is a
 Bride Who Never Was 203

story in which marriage is deconstructed, so to speak, as a social and legal

institution as well as a narrative device. The Deceitful Marriage is like a
story told backward, from a false beginning that should be an ending (the
marriage) to a nale that is a complete disintegration and winds up in illness
and possibly temporary madness. As we know, marriage is the traditional
ending of many tales, both popular and literary, and plays such a role in many
of the stories in Cervantes novels. It brings closure to the trials and adventures
of lovers separated by a variety of incidents; channels desire to the proper end
of legitimate reproduction; establishes a new family, a basic unit of social,
civil, and religious life; and generally restores the order upset by loves inherent
recklessness. From a legal standpoint it is essentially a contract, from a re-
ligious one a sacrament. In the theater marriage (often multiple) is the typical
comic ending, as opposed to a tragic one in which order is not reestablished.
In The Deceitful Marriage the institution of matrimony, instead of being a
restitution of order, is the crime itself, and the man, instead of being the
perpetrator of the burla (the deceit, or engao) is its victim instead. He is the
one who tells the story, as the con woman ees, the last in a series of inversions
of roles. (It is the man who usually makes himself scarce to evade respon-
sibility or even the police.) Estefana manipulates the customs, conventions,
and laws that make marriage possible to violate the laws, customs, and con-
ventions of the institution. The Deceitful Marriage shows how love and the
law can be corrupted to accomplish the opposite of what regulated desire is
expected to achievethis is one of the things that make it so original and is
another of the unnarratable stories that I have been teasing out of Cer-
vantes work. Estefana speaks the language of love and the law in reverse, as if
we played an audiotape backward and heard nothing but noise. The comic in
the story is not restored order but the erasure of order or even of its possibility.
Estefana goes scot-free, even if she is left with faked jewelry, while Cam-
puzano winds up in the hospital with syphilis, his wifes parting gift, a delayed-
action revenge for his own deceits, which are tame in comparison to hers. The
picaresque often involves a duel of wits, such as the ones between Lazarillo
and his masters. In his duel with Estefana, Campuzano is much the loser. Her
ight at the end is an intimation of pure freedom, like that of the prisoner of
sex after Don Quijote releases him. Estefana disappears too, never to be heard
from again (though she must also be sick). The suggestion is that she is outside
the law (hence of the story and of writing), living a presumably carefree exis-
tence and bilking other Campuzanos.
The overarching irony of the entire situation is that the marriage between
Campuzano and Estefana is one in which the bride and groom enter without
any illusions regarding love and beyond all conventions concerning innocence
204 Bride Who Never Was

and purity. Theirs is supposed to be a marriage with no private illusions and

sustained by no public hypocrisy, free of all potential conicts. Estefana
makes perfectly clear that she has been a woman of loose morals, no virgin
bride she, who is willing to settle down to a comfortable retirement in the
company of a man who will legitimize her status. She is a whore, as she tells
him with coy circumlocutions and feigned sincerity: Ensign Campuzano, it
would be folly to try and pass myself off as a saint. I have been a sinner and I
still am (p. 239) [Seor Alfrez Campuzano, simplicidad sera si yo quisiera
venderme a vuesa merced por santa. Pecadora he sido, y an ahora lo soy (III,
p. 225)]. As compensation for her deciencies and unsavory traits Estefana
will provide him with a home and all the pleasures that her ample experience
in all matters promises. Campuzano, though he realizes that she is not exces-
sively beautiful (p. 239) [no era hermosa en extremo (III, p. 224)], wants to
have a good time, but only for a time, and enjoy her and the attentions she
will give him before going off to war. In exchange he will support the house
with the small capital represented by his ashy jewels. He knows, of course,
that these are counterfeit, so his plans are not long range. Estefana, on the
other hand, is aware that her occupancy of the house will be shortthough
not as brief as it turns out to beso her plan is to make a quick getaway
with the loot. A marriage without mutual or self-deceptions about chastity or
beauty turns into an escalating series of deceits and counterdeceits; a love
rmly planted in desengao, in disillusionment, turns into a dangerous play of
illusions.
Estefana uses law and custom to dupe the ensign. She begins by declaring
herself to be bereft of family and fortune: I have not inherited wealth from
either parents or relations (p. 239) [Ni de mis padres ni de otro pariente
hered hacienda alguna (III, p. 225)], which is probably a truthful statement
about her social and economic condition. As we have seen there was no place
for single women in Habsburg Spain, other than becoming nuns, so it is clear
that the motive for her actions is to nd one, even if impermanent and based
on falsehood and crime. That place will literally be the house that she offers
the ensign, one that she is occupying temporarily with the consent of the
owners. The house is the tangible symbol and foundation of marriage, of
respectability and enfranchisement, both of which she lacks. The word casa is
the etymological root of the word for marriage in Spanish: casamiento. As the
caustic Sebastin de Covarrubias put it in his Tesoro: casado. El que ha
contrahido matrimonio, porque luego le obligan a poner casa y pucheros
(Married: he who has married, because they make him set up house and
provide the soup). (The pun is lost in English.) To be married is to be housed,
as it were, to found a casa, meaning a family which, if noble, would be called
 Bride Who Never Was 205

the casa Mendoza or casa Manrique, like house of York in English. The
house and the bodies of the spouses are the physical components of a mar-
riage. So Estefanas deceit is based on falsifying the house, the legal site of
sanctioned cohabitation, the very ground of marital union and civil existence.
In the period casa was the unit of population; households, not individuals,
were counted. Population gures were based on the number of vezinos, which
meant families living separately in their own houses. From the very beginning
of Spanish, asserts Corominas, vezino appears with its two principal mean-
ings, which are: each one who has house [casa] and a place in a town, very
frequent in archaic documents and exemptions [fueros], and one who lives
next to another. (Estefanas rst crime is to dispose of the house and
everything in it as if it were all hers, a form of theft, of course, not to mention
an abuse of trust. The next crime and sin is to set up house with Campuzano
having married him under false pretenses and without intention of remaining
with him as a wife. A deeper pun, perhaps just embedded in the word itself and
unintended on the part of Cervantes, is the one suggested by casa (house) and
miento (I lie).
Their marriage is properly sanctioned by civil and canon law, a further irony
and perhaps their gravest civil and religious transgression. The business side
of it is taken care of with Campuzanos moving in with his jewels, by which as
a man he completes and grounds the family unit and provides it with nancial
substance. Estefana purports to give in dowry not only the house but all its
contents, some of which she claims to have created herself by her own labor.
The religious ceremony, though not described in great detail, does take place
in the manner prescribed by civil and canon law, including the banns: our
betrothal was settled upon there and then and we set about getting ourselves
registered as bachelor and spinster of the parish, and during the three holy
days that came together at Easter, the banns were read and on the fourth day
we were married. The ceremony was attended by two friends of mine and a
youth whom she introduced as her cousin (p. 240) [aquella vez se concert
nuestro desposorio, y se dio traza como los dos hicisemos informacin de
solteros, y en los tres das de esta que vinieron luego juntos en una Pascua
se hicieron las amonestaciones, y al cuarto da nos desposamos, hallndose
presentes al desposorio dos amigos mos y un mancebo que ella dijo ser primo
suyo (III, pp. 22627)]. Campuzano fears the binding nature of marriage in a
legal and religious sense. Once Estefana disappears he rues that whether I
like it or not, shes mine and Im stuck with her (p. 245) [mal que me pese, es
prenda ma (III, p. 233)], meaning that no matter what and where she might
be, she is still his wife and he is responsible for her and liable for her actions.
They have both violated the law and committed a mortal sin by deling a
206 Bride Who Never Was

sacrament of the church. Annulments would be possible if one or the other

were to prove that he or she entered into the marriage under false pretenses,
but since both did, it is unlikely that this would come to pass. The marriage
was executed with crooked intentions, but it was a marriage and would re-
main so till death did they part. This legal aspect of the union is no illusion
and no deceit, though, of course, the fact is that by her disappearance, becom-
ing a fugitive from justice, the marriage is over for all practical purposes.
The implication is that what Estefana has done to Campuzano is her modus
operandithat she has done it before and will do it again. She is a serial bride
who is a menace to marriage as institution.
Cervantes has manipulated narrative form in the same way that his charac-
ter Estefana, who is like an author within the ction, has manipulated the law.
She has tricked the trickster and Cervantes has toyed with our expectations as
readers. When the story begins it seems inevitable that the soldier, decked out
in all his fake nery, is about to fool this veiled lady, who appears so demure
that she barely shows him a hand. The story is about to follow a conventional
pattern leading up to a seduction and disappearance by the soldier, which he
has already prepared by protesting that he is on the verge of being transferred
abroad. Instead there is a marriage that comes too soon in the plot to be an
ending and that is too devoid of conict to promise any: she is no deowered
virgin seeking redress, and they are not from different social classes and hence
unable to wed. When the marriage takes place and there follows a period of
matrimonial bliss, the story seems to have ended without really having begun.
The unexpected return of the true owners of the house unravels the series of
lies, fabrications, and frauds perpetrated by Estefana and her accomplice (her
cousin was most likely her pimp). Conicts arise after marriage, not in the
form of tragedy, as we have come to expect, but as a complete breakdown of
the story: one protagonist vanishes and the other is admitted to a hospital
where he temporarily loses his mind. The absence of tragedy in postmatri-
monial life, together with the comic beginning that should have been the
nale, make The Deceitful Marriage a formless, unnarratable story, like that
of the prisoner of sex discussed in chapter 1. There is no ending to the story,
only a nonending of sorts and the transition to the next, which turns it retro-
spectively into a mere preamble or pre-textliterally a pretext, a nonstory,
forever stalled in a beginning-ending devoid of recognizable shape. A story
that seems to have been taken out of an archive of court cases leads to a literary
text, a blatant ction that becomes its ending. The legal is transformed into
literature by means of this process. The progeny of the dubious marriage of
Estefana and the ensign is The Dialogue of the Dogs: deceits, lies, impos-
tures, and Estefanas bolt to freedom yield a literary text in the making, a
 Bride Who Never Was 207

work in progress. With marriage pulverized, love and the law exploded, the
stability of all discourses is unsettled to beget literature. The story that follows
is Estefanas and Campuzanos magic child, like the two puppies that are born
from La Montiela, a witch. An inverted picaresque, a love story turned inside
out, The Deceitful Marriage engenders The Dialogue of the Dogs, a meta-
picaresque, in which the conventions of the new genre are given further twists
and turns leading up to another nonending, an interrupted or broken tale
if there ever was one. Estefana and Campuzano rival Gins as picaresque
authors.

The Dialogue of the Dogs begins with a painstaking discussion about its own
possibility of being, the process by which the text came about, and throughout
its entire length the two protagonists bicker and banter about the appropriate-
ness of what is being narrated. Only the Quijote surpasses this tale in self-
reexive convolutions. But, as in the Quijote, particularly the 1605 prologue,
all this is done with a air and lightness that adds to the mirth, not with any
heavy-handed theoretical disquisitions like those by the canon of Toledo in the
Quijote, Part I. It is all part of the fun, which begins with the hapless ensign
trying to convince his lawyer friend that the dogs did speak and continues with
the animals witty repartee. It is obvious, from the very beginning, that Cer-
vantes is writing much more than a parodic takeoff on the picaresque. The
story is really a probe into the issue of authorship (his own), the possibilities of
ction, and the nature of literature in a world ruled not by the abstract Renais-
sance ideas but by the enabling and at the same time constraining forces of
the law.
The notebook that the ensign turns over to Licentiate Peralta to read is
called both novela and coloquio, and he tells his friend that he wrote from
memory what he had heard the dogs say during a night in which he feigned
being asleep. This is how he describes the creation process:

There is another matter, said the Ensign, for since I was listening so atten-
tively and my mind was in such a sensitive state, while my memory was
receptive, sharp, and unpreoccupied by other thoughts (thanks to the large
quantity of raisins and almonds I had eaten), I learned it all by heart and the
following day I wrote down all that I had heard in virtually the same words,
without looking for rhetorical ourishes to embroider it, nor adding or sub-
tracting anything to improve it. The conversation did not take place on a
single night, but two consecutive nights, although I have only onethe life
story of Berganzawritten down. I intend to write the story of his compan-
ion Scipio (which was narrated on the second night) when I can see that this
208 Bride Who Never Was

one does not meet with disbelief or, at the very least, derision. Ive got the
dialogue tucked away in the front of my shirt. I put it in dialogue form to
avoid having to insert Scipio said, Berganza replied which tends to lengthen
the narrative. (p. 249)

[Pues hay en esto otra cosadijo el Alfrez: que como yo estaba tan
atento y tena delicado el juicio, delicada, sotil y desocupada la memoria
(merced a las muchas pasas y almendras que haba comido), todo lo tom de
coro, y casi por las mismas palabras que haba odo lo escrib otro da, sin
buscar colores retricas para adornarlo, ni qu aadir ni quitar para hacerle
gustoso. No fue una noche sola la pltica, que fueron dos consecutivamente,
aunque yo no tengo escrita ms de una, que es la vida de Berganza, y la del
compaero Cipin pienso escribir (que fue la que se cont la segunda noche)
cuando viere, o que sta se crea, o, a lo menos, no se desprecie. El coloquio
traigo en el seno; pselo en forma de coloquio por ahorrar de dijo Cipin,
respondi Berganza; que suele alargar la escritura. (III, pp. 23738)]

There is both an explicit and implicit confession of authorship in this state-

ment, particularly if one looks at the original Spanish. There is no question
that, having heard what the dogs said and re-created it from memory the next
day, as he claims, the product could hardly be a verbatim transcription. I wish
to underline the gap between oral performance and transcriptionbetween
voice and textto dispel any notion that, as the ensign suggests, he merely
practiced some sort of stenography. The text is the result of a literary elabora-
tion in which decisions about style intervened: the avowed effort not to use
rhetorical ourishes and the adoption of the dialogue form. The ensign, more-
over, wants to see what kind of reception the rst dialogue has before writing
the second, which he has presumably still stored in his memory. He wants
critical feedback, a reader, to help him complete his work in progress. Cam-
puzano needs Peralta the same as Berganza needs Scipio and Cervantes needs
uswhat he wants and gets from his reader is the fundamental literary pact
whereby the reader accepts temporarily the ctionality of what he reads. The
time of reading is that span, which is experienced by Peralta while Campuzano
dozes off, as if to erase his concrete, tangible self from the operation. The scene
of literary creation is thus set up in all its dynamic force, with an unnished
text being consumed by a reader and an implied author whose presence is only
virtual.
What is said indirectly about the process of creation is even more telling.
The ensign is ill, as we know, and his mental faculties are sharpened by his
sickness and by the cure to a point beyond the normal. He is in a state of
heightened awareness and imaginative enervation: physically weakened but
on a mental high. It is just the kind of physical and mental state to promote
 Bride Who Never Was 209

literary creation. Sotil, the word he uses to describe his state of mind, means
both fragile and sharpsotil ingenio was a praiseful way of referring to a
poet in the Golden Age. The ensign has been so debilitated by his treatment
that Scipio thinks that he is in no condition to listen: there is a soldier close by
undergoing a sweat treatment, but at the moment he will be more inclined to
sleep than listen to anyone (p. 252) [aqu cerca est un soldado tomando
sudores; pero en esta sazn ms estar para dormir que para ponerse a escu-
char (III, pp. 24445)]. We know since Plato that poets write as in a spell
(Phaedrus), and the ensign is in such a mood. Of course, it is one that was
brought about by love. He is literally suffering from loves maladysyphilis
which is very funny in the context of the literary tradition of the sick lover
poet. The ensign is an author in the throes of overwrought inventiveness and
creativity due to a venereal disease, truly Venuss plague. Loves poetic labor
has been reduced to this condition of the writer. One should not discount
either that the hospital from which he is emerging is called Hospital de la
Resurreccin. The ensign has died and been resurrected, transformed from
soldier into writer by loves effects, which are in this case dramatically physi-
cal. He turns out to be a more daring author than Gins de Pasamonte.
But like Gins, what Campuzano is telling in his novela is the story of his
life, both as he has lived it and as he would have liked to have lived it. It is a life
transformed by the hallucinatory state in which he nds himself, but it is a true
confession, the intimate if cryptic disclosure of his innermost selfof his
sufferings and his longings. The clue to understanding the profoundly per-
sonal nature of the text Campuzano has written is where he keeps the manu-
script before he turns it over to Peralta. In the translation he says, Ive got the
dialogue tucked away in the front of my shirt (p. 249), but in the original it
reads, el coloquio traigo en el seno (III, p. 238), which means I bring the
dialogue in my breast. Seno also meant, according to Covarrubias, el
hueco que haze la vestidura the hollow made by a garment), but its main
sense is breast or bosom. The association is made clear further down
where it reads: sac del pecho un cartapacio (III, p. 238), translated as
With this he drew a notebook from his breast (p. 249). The implication is
that Campuzano brings his text close to his heart because it is guratively close
to his heart and he values it so. The novela and dilogo are accounts of the
ensigns two lives: the rst a novelized account of the one he has lived, his
picaresque autobiography; and the second, to be told by what Freud would
call his superego, is the one he would like to have lived. The story of Berganzas
life (his name suggests bergante, a worthless rogue) is the encodedlike
a nightmareaccount of Campuzanos sordid life. Scipios (the name sug-
gests military grandeur) is the life he aspired to have. (Scipio, of course, is an
210 Bride Who Never Was

allusion to Scipio Africanus, Hannibals conqueror, but perhaps also to Scipio

Emilianus, who reduced Numancia.) If told, Scipios life would be Campu-
zanos wish-fulllment dream, which is perhaps why it is left untold.
Another revealing detail is that Campuzano sleeps as Peralta reads, and the
ensign awakens on his own the moment his friend nishes reading. It is as if the
reader were tapping directly into the writers dream world, which both leave
when the reading stops. Campuzano has turned his lifes experiences into
literature by a highly inventive transformation of the picaresque autobiogra-
phy, of the legalistic relacin. At the end, the benevolent critic Peralta gives
author Campuzano his approval: Although this dialogue may be invented
and never really took place, I consider it so well written that the Ensign may
proceed with the second, and he adds, I appreciate the craftsmanship of the
dialogue and its inventiveness, so be satised with that (p. 305) [Aunque
este coloquio sea ngido y nunca haya pasado, parceme que est tan bien
compuesto que puede el seor Alfrez pasar adelante con el segundo. . . . Yo
alcanzo el articio del Coloquio y la invencin, y basta (III, p. 231)].
What Berganza has told is a picaresque autobiography, Campuzanos, fol-
lowing and twisting the conventions of the relacin by the use of literary
devices attributed to the authors heightened mental state. First he tells where
he was born, the Seville slaughterhouse, and then he moves on to relate the rest
of his life until the moment he and Scipio discover that they have the ability to
speak and to reason like humans. This is the conversion that makes the auto-
biography possible, though here it is a truly radical one from animal to man. In
picaresque novels the protagonists life, after leaving his parents, consists of
terms with various masters until he reaches maturity. In The Dialogue of the
Dogs the mutation is easy, as the dogs naturally have owners whom they
serve and from whom they learn the bad and the good, like the pcaro. The
lives of picaresque protagonists begin with dubious births. Their parents are
criminal themselves, as with Lazarillo, Guzmn, and Pablos, and their moth-
ers so promiscuous that their legitimacy is questionable. There is a strong
suggestion of determinism (here is where Salillass theories come in), promoted
by the rogue as he attempts to exculpate himself: how, coming from such a
background, could he have turned out otherwise? In Cervantes tale this con-
ventionality of the picaresquethe rogues problematic birthis blown up
grotesquely with the possibility that at least Berganza, but probably both
dogs, were children of La Montiela, a witch. The story, as told by La Caizares
to Berganza, is that La Camacha, the top witch, jealous of the younger La
Montiela, transformed her babies into dogs. The story of this birth is compli-
cated by Berganzas earlier statement that he was born in Seville, and by
Scipios very pedantic and skeptical commentary on the matter. The most
 Bride Who Never Was 211

compelling element, however, is the role of the witches in the birth of the dogs,
because this constitutes the origin and beginning of the dogs lives, and pre-
sumably also of the text. It impinges upon both the start and nish of The
Dialogue as it explains potentially their very ability to speak and reason and
points at a future beyond the end, even beyond the untold life of Scipio, which
is the more immediate impending but postponed narrative.
The suggestion that the dogs are the witchs brood reveals that the ensign is
anxious about his origins, full of regret for his slothfulness, lack of initiative,
and the various petty crimes that he may have committed in the past, perhaps
with a previous Estefana. We need not subject the story to a psychoanalytical
reading to gure out that his mother was probably a whorish, Celestina type
(not unlike Estefana), that he had to learn to live by his wits in a world in
which the criminals and the police were indistinguishable, and that he was not
to ever tell the truth about himself in a direct manner. This is another reason
why he turns to literature: both to hide the truth about himself and to seek
a deeper one. Peralta relieves him of his melancholy reections on his life
by praising the manuscript and encouraging him to write the next one, the
one that will be blatantly imaginative, wish-fullling, joyous, and quixotic.
Shame, regret, the wear and tear of life on the soul can be transformed into
literature. Ironically, Campuzano has also his fugitive bride to thank; through
the dubious vehicle of loves illness, she transformed him from a tramp into a
writer, which allowed him to tap into the depths of his subconscious to be
reborn with a renewed and profound awareness of who he is.
Gins de Pasamontes picaresque biography was stalled by the continuation
of his life, which made a conclusion impossible until a sincere conversion to
the good occurred or death intervened, foreclosing writing either way. Cam-
puzano has solved that dilemma by taking his own picaresque life to a dif-
ferent, more blatantly literary level, taking the devices of the picaresque and
blowing them up, as it were, to reveal their ctionality and to probe deeply
into the question of form and meaning. The principal device that appears to
suffer in this process is the single point of view, which has now become double.
More importantly, however, he has removed the literal obligation of pica-
resque ction and allowed it to incorporate the realm of dreams, hallucina-
tions, and desires. This he accomplishes by transforming the rogues into dogs,
releasing himself from the constraints of the human to reveal a more profound
vision of the human. What makes this possible is love and its legal and re-
ligious bond, marriagethe ultimate acceptance of legal adulthood and civil
existence as a vezino. This is a step Gins had not taken, giving his gure and
virtual picaresque a callow complexiondeath is far off, I am not attached, I
can have as many adventures as I want and worry later about the end of my life
212 Bride Who Never Was

and the form-giving nale of my book. Campuzanos fraudulent marriage and

resulting loves illness is the threshold he crosses toward a more mature con-
ception of his life and of writing. Submitting and violating the institution, the
contract, allows him to envision other dimensions of life and experiment with
new forms of writing. Casamiento and engaoso, marriage and deceitful are
the nearly oxymoronic pair by whose friction Campuzano discovers the con-
straints and releases of the social and even religious covenants that govern
desire: the point at which love and the law can produce truly uncanny visions
and shapes. When Riley asks in his ne piece on these stories whose auto-
biography is it anyway, the answer has to be Cervantes own, of course.
Cervantes is the child of his own created bride.
 12

Cervantes Literary Will:

The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda

It is likely that The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda would not have
been the enigma that it has been for criticism had Cervantes not made it
a point to praise this work in such vehement terms and dramatic circum-
stancesalmost literally as he lay dying. Nearing the end he seemed to pin his
hopes for immortality on this very strange novel that we know he had no
chance to revise and polish. The diminishing number of chapters in the last
two books shows that Cervantes rushed to nish at whatever cost to balance
and symmetry. His statements on the Persiles are clear, direct, and have ringed
in Cervantes criticism for four centuries. In the 1613 prologue to Exemplary
Stories he wrote: After them [the Exemplary Stories], if life does not desert
me, I shall offer you The Travails of Persiles and Sigismunda, a book which
dares to compete with Heliodorus, unless it takes a drubbing for its boldness
(p. 5) [Tras ellas [Novelas ejemplares], si la vida no me deja, te ofrezco los
Trabajos de Persiles, libro que se atreve a competir con Heliodoro, si ya por
atrevido no sale con las manos en la cabeza (I, p. 65)].
In the 1615 dedication to Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses (Eight Come-
dies and Eight Interludes) he wrote: Afterward will come the great Persiles,
and later Las semanas del jardn [Weeks of the Garden], later still the second
part of La Galatea, if my elderly shoulders can carry such a load (Luego ir el
gran Persiles, y luego Las semanas del jardn, y luego la segunda parte de La
Galatea, si tanta carga pueden llevar mis ancianos hombros).

213
214 Cervantes Literary Will

Again in 1615, in the dedication to the Count of Lemos at the front of the
Quijote, Part II, he made his most elaborate statement:

and with this I take my leave, offering your Excellency The Travels of Persiles
and Sigismunda, a book which I shall nish within four months, Deo volente,
and which is sure to be either the worst or the best written of books of
entertainment in our tonguebut I must say that I repent of having said the
worst. For according to the opinions of my friends, it will attain the highest
possible excellence. Come, your Excellency, with all the health we can wish
you; Persiles shall be ready to kiss your hands, and I your feet, as your Excel-
lencys servant, which I am.

[y con esto me despido, ofreciendo a Vuestra Excelencia Los trabajos de

Persiles y Sigismunda, libro a quien dar n dentro de cuatro meses, Deo
Volente, el cual ha de ser o el ms malo o el mejor que en nuestra lengua se
haya compuesto, quiero decir de los de entretenimiento; y digo que me arre-
piento de haber dicho el ms malo, porque segn la opinin de mis amigos ha
de llegar al estremo de bondad posible. Venga Vuestra Excelencia con la salud
que es deseado, que ya estar el Persiles para besarle las manos. (p. 623)]

He signed the dedication to the Persiles, also to Lemos, on April 19, 1616,
almost six months after writing these words. Four days later he died.
As Manuel Durn puts it, It seems probable that Persiles and Sigismunda,
Cervantes last novel, was his favorite work. It is certain that he never invested
as much care and love in the composition of any of his other works. But
would Cervantes have attained the fame he did with only, or with mostly, this
book? The answer has to be no. The Persiles is an important book because it
was written by the author of the Quijote. It is a bold experiment, as Cervantes
claimed, and it is a very interesting work because of it, but it is uneven,
showing both that Cervantes nished it in a hurry and that he had been at
work on it for many years. It was affected by the changes or waverings in style
that he underwent during a long period. It seems apparent, for instance, from
internal and external evidence that between the two halves of the Persiles, each
composed of two books, stands the massive effort of the Quijote. Even if one
adheres to the notion (as I do) that Cervantes works, lumped in the last
decade of his life, are difcult to set in chronological sequence, much less an
evolving progression, it is impossible to deny that the Persiles is a patchwork,
the quilt left of a work in progress that the author tinkered with throughout
his creative life.
For a reader who knows Cervantes from the Quijote the disappointments
are many. The Persiles lacks a character of the stature of Don Quijote, one that
became a literary myth like Don Juan and Faust. It does not have a Sancho to
 Cervantes Literary Will 215

bring with him the world of peasants and pcaros, with its rich language and
wealth of popular lore. Lacking a Sancho, the Persiles is missing the mirth and
the humor of the Quijote and the mixture of high and low rhetorical styles.
With few exceptions, the characters of the Persiles speak in the stilted speech
of the Neoplatonic abstractions that most of them represent; they never stray
from the noble style. They lack intimacy and believability, steadfast as they are
in their convictions. The landscape, except for the chapters of book III that
unfold in Spain and that were obviously written after the Quijote, is conven-
tional and bookish, particularly that of the northern regions that Cervantes
drew from relatively obscure sources. The Persiles does not have the degree of
self-reexiveness found in the Quijote, though it does have some. If the Per-
siles was Cervantes literary will, as Marcel Bataillon has claimed, what legacy
did he intend to leave, and why and how was he so deluded as to not see that
his most enduring masterpiece would be the Quijote? Was it merely a work of
his dotage? The Persiles shows some of the same baroque tendencies as the
Quijote, Part II. Matters concerning love and the law are elevated to abstract
principles or reduced to bare beginnings. The plot goes well beyond that
Barcelona beach that drew a vague barrier between Spain and the rest of
the world, giving this novel a decidedly international dimension already an-
nounced in the Catalan episodes of the Quijote. The book, in fact, has a global
dimension that is both spatial and temporal; it encompasses the world, even
the universe, and the whole span of human history from the cave to Saint
Peters cathedral in Rome. As Edward Dudley brilliantly put it: this novel [the
Persiles] begins with a terrifying picture of human sacrices in a savage king-
dom and closes amid the baroque splendor of Rome. This reminds us that the
glittering world of the Spanish Habsburgs not only reached around the world
but to the gates of heavenwhere entry proved more difcult. This reach,
or overreach, is, it seems to me, what Cervantes had in mind when he spoke in
such superlative terms about the project. I will proceed with my analysis very
deliberately, aware that most nonspecialized readers have not read the Per-
siles, including most Hispanists.

The full title of the book is Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, historia
septentrional, rst translated into English as The Wanderings of Persiles and
Sigismunda: A Northern Story (1854)the most recent translation is entitled
The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda: A Northern Story. The hesitation in
translating trabajos stems from the multiple meanings of this word and the
interference of its common meaning as works in the sense of labors. But I
would actually prefer that word, labors, because it conveys what Cervantes
216 Cervantes Literary Will

tried to say with trabajos. I believe that trabajos is meant here as labors
in the sense of loves labors and also in that of Herculess labors, which in
Spanish is rendered as los trabajos de Hrcules. So trials, wanderings,
tasks, and ordeals together would encapsulate what Cervantes means by
Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda: the tribulations of these lovers in attain-
ing their long-desired and persistently postponed union. The names of the
protagonists are meant to be strange and obviously ctional: Persiles, who
goes by the name Periandro, and Sigismunda, who calls herself Auristela.
There are few Sanchos, Teresas, Toms, Aldonzas, or Roques in this book.
There is a Spaniard named Antonio and a few others with comparable names
in book III, when the group reaches Spain. Northern Story is meant to recall
the Aethiopica and compete with it in geographical originality by situating the
action in a region rarer, more remote, and hence perhaps more appealing to
the reader than Africa. The northern scenes of the rst two books is a literary
conceit meant to excite the readers curiosity. It is the equivalent of an inter-
planetary setting in todays ction and lm.
The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda was published posthumously by Cer-
vantes widow in 1617, a year after his death. The book was well received by
the public, indeed it was, according to Durn, an immediate success compa-
rable to that of Don Quixote. The years that followed its posthumous publica-
tion in 1617 witnessed ten editions in Spanish, translations into French, Italian
and English, and imitations in drama and prose ction. This success was not of
short duration: in the eighteenth century, new editions, translations, and imi-
tations continued to appear. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a
serious scholar, the Swiss Jean-Charles Simonde de Sismonde, could claim, in
his De la littrature du midi de lEurope, published in 1813, that many readers
considered it to be Cervantes masterpiece.
The Persiles continued to have inuence on novelists through the nineteenth
century. A novel like Alessandro Manzonis I promessi sposi (The Betrothed,
182527) still shows traces of it. But its critical reception declined sharply
during the second half of the century, in the age of realism. The inuential
literary historian Marcelino Menndez Pelayo believed that writing the Per-
siles was a sterile task on Cervantes part. The unchanging characters, the
highly rhetorical dialogues, the allegorical cast of the plot, the sheer arti-
ciality of the whole ensemble did not appeal to those imbued in the poetics of
realism or accustomed to reading realist novels.
Being the least realistic of Cervantes work, the Persiles was viewed by many
as a step backward in the development of his works and of the novel as a
genre. The Quijote and some of the exemplary stories, on the other hand,
seemed like worthy and determining precursors of the modern novel, even of
 Cervantes Literary Will 217

the experimental ction that emerged with the avant-garde in the twenties of
the last century. It was only in the latter years of that century that the Persiles
began to receive serious critical attention, and revealingly, an avant-garde
Latin American writer like Alejo Carpentier showed a predilection for it as
early as 1949. He uses a quotation from the Persiles as epigraph of his trail-
blazing The Kingdom of this World. Carpentier realized the potential of Cer-
vantes novel as precursor of magical realism, the trend that he was initiating
with his own novel (much more about Carpentier in the next chapter). The
critical attention that the Persiles has received of late has been sustained and
sophisticated, though no one harbors the illusion that it will dethrone the
Quijote as Cervantes masterpiece.
The Persiles is a Byzantine romance in the style of Heliodoruss Aethiopica.
Byzantine romances, as we saw when discussing the story of Ricotes daughter,
were long narratives with complicated plots and no character development,
leading to a climax in which, after numerous bizarre adventures, usually in-
cluding spectacular shipwrecks and cliff-hangers, the beleaguered lovers meet
and marry. Throughout the protagonists display uninching devotion to each
other and obstinate chastity in the face of constant temptations. The readers
attention is held by the suspense about what will happen, but also by the desire
to know what already happened, for the origins of the protagonists and their
sorrows is unknown until the end. The best example is, of course, Heliodoruss
novel, the one Cervantes cites as his model.
Heliodoruss Aethiopica, the oldest and best of the Greek romances, was
rst brought to light in modern times in a manuscript from the library of
Matthias Corvinus, found at the sack of Buda (Budapest)in 1526 and printed
at Basle in 1534. There are two sixteenth-century Spanish translations, one
from 1554 and the other from 1587probably the one Cervantes read,
though obviously he could have seen both. The rst translation was from the
1547 French translation; the second was done by comparing a Latin transla-
tion and a Greek text. One can understand why a book such as this would
become popular in the sixteenth century. Along with the chivalric romances it
provided the kind of entertainment that a new class of readers would crave,
and that the recently developed printing presses could deliver in sufcient
numbers. The plot, reduced to its barest components, is as follows.
The daughter of Persine, wife of Hydaspes, king of Aethiopia, was born
white. Fearing an accusation of adultery, the mother gives the baby to the care
of a gymnosophista naked philosopher from India. The child is nally taken
to Delphi and made priestess of Apollo under the name of Charicleia. Theo-
genes, a noble Thessalian, comes to Delphi and the two fall in love. He car-
ries off the priestess with the help of an Egyptian employed by Persine to
218 Cervantes Literary Will

look for her daughter after her abduction. Numerous adventures befall the
lovers: there are storms at sea, attacks by pirates and bandits, wars, am-
bushes, betrayals, mistaken identities, sudden recognitions, live characters
confused with dead ones, dead ones who speak, witchcraft, and other obsta-
cles of every imaginable kind that postpone the happy ending. But after many
adventuresmany trialsthe chief characters meet at Mero at the very mo-
ment when Charicleia is about to be sacriced to the gods by her own father.
Her true birth is made known, and the lovers marry. The rapid succession of
events, the variety of the characters, and the elegance of the style give the
Aethiopica great appeal. But it is above all the suspenseful plot that character-
izes it and made it popular. The Aethiopica shows at every turn that Homer
and Euripides were Heliodoruss favorite writers. He, in turn, was imitated by
major European authors, not just by Cervantes. Racine planned a play based
on the novel, and the early life of Clorinda in Tassos Jerusalem Delivered is
almost identical as that of Charicleia. As in todays Hollywood, the presses
were avid consumers of new and old storiesthey needed plots.
The plot of the Persiles is just as contrived as that of the Aethiopica. Persiles
is the prince of Thule and Sigismunda the daughter of the king of Friesland.
For reasons unknown to other characters and to the reader, they have had to
leave their respective lands and embark upon a laborious journey to Rome
pretending that they are brother and sister. They travel under the false names
of Periandro and Auristela. Their trip begins in the glacial northern regions of
Europe and moves to the North Pole, where they are taken hostage by barbar-
ians whose religious and political beliefs demand that they sacrice beautiful
women to their gods. Through various adventures, involving cross-dressing,
mistaken sexual identities, willed deceptions, and other ruses, they manage to
escape, acquiring along the way a host of fellow travelers, some of them quite
improbable. Antonio, for instance, is a barbarian, but the son of a Spaniard
and desirous to visit his fathers country, so they head in the direction of the
Iberian Peninsula. They nally reach Lisbon as the third book begins. The next
two books take them through Portugal, Spain, France, and nally Italy. The
Spanish episodes are reminiscent of the Quijote and some of the exemplary
stories. In a few there are the familiar conicts involving unequal marriages,
and crimes and punishments of various kinds. At one point, in Murcia, the
moriscos help the Moors from Morocco raid a Spanish town. Invented con-
icts, and others drawn from literature, mingle with real and contemporary
ones. In Rome, not before a few last capers, they nally obtain a papal blessing
for their union, their true identities are revealed, and their long-postponed
marriage realized. This stark summary leaves out many stories in which the
protagonists participate and many others involving secondary characters. One
 Cervantes Literary Will 219

of the commonly used, and sometimes abused, narrative devices is to have a

newcomer tell his or her life. Some of these lateral adventures are as self-
contained and independent as those in the Quijote, Part I and the pieces in
Exemplary Stories.

Alban Forciones two books from the seventies truly began the modern criti-
cism of the Persiles. Prior to his work the most sustained had been Joaqun
Casaldueros relentless allegorical reading and that of his critics, particularly
William Entwisle. In Cervantes Christian Romance Forcione maintains that
the overarching allegorical meaning of the Persiles is the movement of univer-
sal history and the destiny of the individual soul as understood by the Christian
religion. The protagonists do travel from a largely pagan north to Rome, the
epicenter of Roman Catholicism. Forcione appeals to a loose concept of alle-
gory, derived from Northrop Frye and presumably characteristic of romance,
falling somewhere between myth and naturalismit would be realism. This
exibility allows him to account for the many elements of the Persiles that do
not quite t into a strict allegorical scheme. For instance, all the episodes in
book III that are contemporaneous take place in Spain and are realistic, as well
as the considerable number of self-reexive moments in the novel. Forciones
virtues and follies as a critic stem from his adherence to Northrop Fryes
Anatomy of Criticism with fundamentalist fervor. The insights stem from his
application of the notion of romance to Spanish texts, a concept alien to
criticism in that language. Its use claries for us much about the Persiles
because it reveals and explains the nature of its modelthe Greek romance,
called in Spanish novela griega or novela bizantina. His blindness results from
imagining that Cervantes was writing with and against a critical construct
devised by Frye in the twentieth century as part of his own compelling critical
ction. All of the exceptions and deviations from romance that Forcione is
forced to note in the Persiles lead one to ask why he uses Fryes concept at all.
To do so, as he does, is as mechanical an a priori attribution to the work as
Casaldueros allegorical reading, a simplistic this-for-that exercise.
Forcione was more convincing in his earlier book, Cervantes, Aristotle, and
the Persiles, in which he studied the work in relation to literary theory in the
Renaissance and baroque. He writes what I consider the best description of the
Persiles seen in terms of the critical and theoretical debates of the period:

if it could ever be said that a work of literature is almost exclusively a product

of literature and literary theory, it could be said of Cervantes nal work Los
trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. Everywhere the eclectic character of the
220 Cervantes Literary Will

work is visible: in its undisguised appropriation of scenes and passages from

Virgils Aeneid and Heliodorus Ethiopian History, in its inclusion of an Ital-
ian novella and many brief reminiscences from biblical tradition, medieval
romance, and other works of classical antiquity, and in its presentation of
various recurrent topics of imaginative literature which are as old as literature
itself. Moreover, the specic literary theories which inspired the fusion of so
many widely disparate elements into a coherent whole are everywhere appar-
ent in its texture. They are revealed in occasional digressions about aesthetic
problems and in brief remarks of the self-conscious narrator drawing atten-
tion to the criteria governing his selective process in the inclusion of a specic
element. But more basically they become deeply embedded in the action of the
work itself informing an extended dramatic situation and its development in
the second book.

Forcione and Durn agree that the blueprint of the Persiles is already pres-
ent in the conclusion reached by the canon of Toledo in chapter 47 of the
Quijote, Part I about the romances of chivalry:

and the whole thing being expressed in an agreeable style and ingenious
invention, that borders as near as possible, upon the truth, will, doubtless,
produce a web of such various and beautiful texture, as when nished, to
display that perfection which will attain the chief end and scope of such
writings, which, as I have already observed, is to convey instruction mingled
with delight. Besides, the unlimited composition of such books gives the au-
thor opportunities of showing his talents in epics, lyrics, tragedy and comedy,
and all the different branches of the delicious and agreeable arts of poetry and
rhetoric: for, epics may be written in prose as well as verse. (I, 47, p. 411)

[Y siendo esto hecho con apacibilidad de estilo y con ingeniosa invencin,

que tire lo ms que fuere posible a la verdad, sin duda compondr una tela de
varios y hermosos lizos tejida, que despus de acabada tal perfeccin y hermo-
sura muestre, que consiga el n mejor que se pretende en los escritos, que es
ensear y deleitar juntamente, como ya tengo dicho. Porque la escritura desa-
tada destos libros da lugar a que el autor pueda mostrarse pico, lrico, tr-
gico, cmico, con todas aquellas partes que encierran en s las dulcsimas y
agradables ciencias de la poesa y de la oratoria: que la pica tan bien puede
escrebirse en prosa como en verso. (p. 550)]

Forcione goes as far as to speculate that the hundred pages of a romance of

chivalry that the canon says that he has written may very well be the rst draft
of the Persiles. The theory would be more persuasive if this novel had been a
chivalric romance, but it is still a plausible assumption. In any case, I agree that
in the Persiles Cervantes is eclectic in his appropriation of form even more
than he was with the chivalric romances, but there is no protagonist to medi-
 Cervantes Literary Will 221

ate the process, as in the Quijote. When he says that he is competing with
Heliodorus Cervantes means it: he is not following him slavishly but improv-
ing upon him. Cervantes attempted to do the same with all the other genres at
which he tried his handand I mean his hand.
Cervantes was experimenting in the Persiles with what became the senti-
mental novel. This is one of the false starts in the book because it is not
followed through satisfactorily. But it is one of the forward-looking elements
of the Persiles, a new road to take after the Quijote. Not following up on the
Quijote was not only a matter of physical but also of intellectual and artistic
exhaustion. There was little more to do along those lines, no way that Cer-
vantes could surpass himself in that regard. (This is the lesson Pierre Menard
heeded in Borgess well-known story, which I will take up in the next chapter.)
So I believe that Cervantes saw in a formula of what would become the senti-
mental novel a fresh path to follow. All of this experimentation is happen-
ing concomitantly, of course, for he was writing and revising these books
including the Quijote, Part IIat the same time. The Persiles was to be a
detailed analysis of the psychology of love through the interaction of several
protagonists caught in a complicated web of erotic relationships. The individ-
ual psychology of each character is not as important as the dynamic among all
of them, making apparent the gradations, subtle differentiations, and clashes
that constitute love as the concrete manifestation of desire in the broadest
sense. The Persiles would be a scholastic summa of love, an intricate ma-
chinery of feints and moves, of pursuits and evasions, parallel to the syllogistic
machinery of Neo-Thomist argumentation. The novel is like a structuralist
construct, made up of binary oppositions in which the characters are like func-
tions and the settings and actions arranged according to contrasting pairsa
large theorem of desire. The feeling most explicitly dissected is jealousy as a
motivating force, the thrust that raises and lowers the splenetic temperature of
the lovers and pushes the plot along.
A simulacrum of canon law is what organizes this complicated love con-
structthe injunction against incest. But it keeps desire simmering at the same
time, with ashes of transgression that titillate the characters as well as the
readers. This balancing act is the pith of form in the Persiles, a tightly enforced
symmetry of desire and interdiction, of love and the law. For practically the
entire length of the novels protracted and proliferating plot the protagonists
pretend to be brother and sister; not until the very end can they make known
the true nature of their love and their desire to be united in matrimony. Decep-
tion and playacting overcome attraction temporarily and organize love rela-
tionships on false appearances, casting desire in a thick mesh of feigned and
concealed feelings. Sentimental life can be subjected to form through the law,
222 Cervantes Literary Will

but form can be attained only in the counterfeit world of art. Everything that
happens is fake, save love itself, a deep-seated Platonic force whose projected
dance of shadows deceive and delight at the same time; life is subject to the
rules of art. Love is submitted to the law of art, for societys organization is like
a work of art, a work of art in the making. It is as if life were organized by the
dukes butler in the Quijote, Part II, as if it were a pageant not just in the forest
but throughout a vast geography encompassing a primitive North and a ba-
roque South as well as the sweep of human history. I believe that this grandiose
conception is the reason why Cervantes put so much stock in the Persiles.
Nothing like it had been tried before on this scale.
Such a conception of life as art, including sentimental life, is behind all the
incidents involving paintings, particularly those about the large canvas depict-
ing the whole span of the characters adventures. Within the ction of the
novel it is painted to facilitate telling their story to the curious they encounter
along the way. But it is also as an attempt to transfer narrative ction to the
realm of the pictorial because, if all of life is art, then all arts share the same
conception and are translatable one to another. The painting is like one of
those vast canvasses by VelzquezLas lanzasrepresenting a historical mo-
ment, but even more ambitious in its temporal range and coverage. Art, all art,
is all-encompassing: monumental. This baroqueness is what characterizes the
Persiles and brings it close to the Quijote, Part II, but it goes further. The
hallmark of this baroqueness is strangeness because in it everything is seen at a
distance against a background, not blending with it. Cervantes art in the
Persiles is the art of the rare and strange, often a mixture involving the primi-
tive and the ultracivilized designed to astonish the reader. The primitive in the
novel, as in Gngoras Soledades and Calderns Life Is a Dream, is a con-
trived primitive; it draws its features not from itself but from its contrast with
the highly cultured. Nothing escapes art, not even what would appear to be
primitive. In the Persiles the names are strange, the geography of the rst part
is exotic in the extreme, with all those cold countries so remote to his potential
readers. Even the model, the Aethiopica, is strange, beginning with its cacoph-
onous full title in Spanish: Historia etipica de los amores de Tegenes y
Clariclea.
The rst two books of the Persiles are the ones redolent with the exotic.
There are no pages like this anywhere else in Cervantes work. His northern
world is exotic by its very temperaturecoldness gives the landscape a re-
mote, lunar kind of blankness. It is the whiteness of the empty page or the
unpainted canvas, a degree zero of representation, like the back of the picture
Velzquez is painting in Las meninas. The arctic setting is designed to inspire
awe, even fear. Ships are trapped in ice, characters trudge through snow, the
 Cervantes Literary Will 223

sun seems to be forever absent. Some of the barbarians live in caves, others in
very primitive dwellings. They are dressed in pelts. Their customs and beliefs
are odd, apparently devoid of the most basic Christian virtues. This is as close
as Cervantes came to creating fantastic literature. It is true that the cold, dark
North stands in contrast to the bright, warm South. The primitive is dark, the
civilized is luminous. But besides this allegorical requirement, there is obvious
relish in the invention of such a bizarre environment and weird characters.
The chronicles of the discovery and conquest of the New World may be
among the sources of exoticism in the Persiles. Cervantes drew much informa-
tion about the North from travel books and geographical treatises, many of
which were very fanciful by our standards of accuracy. But the Spaniards
account of their adventures in America and their foundation there of new
societies after defeating and subjecting to their rule the native populations
may very well be the main inspiration for the early chapters of the Persiles.
Although the barbarians of the rst two books of the novel are more akin
to Eskimos than to Aztecs or Incas, their depiction as strange people with
primitive customsparticularly religious and sexualrecall familiar themes
in works by Columbus, Hernn Corts, Bernal Daz del Castillo, Gonzalo
Fernndez de Oviedo, and others. A central topic in these works is the contrast
between the laws of native populations and those of the invading Europeans
and the polemic about why and how to impose on them an alien legislation.
This is a burning topic during the sixteenth century with which Cervantes was
surely familiar. It dovetails with the thrust in his work toward an increasingly
abstract and foundational consideration of the law, with his interest more in
its origins and principles than in the details of its codication and application
in specic cases. The Isle of Barataria episodes in Part II of the Quijote show
this tendency, as discussed in a previous chapter. American natives were the
embodiment of human groups that could be classied as barbarians, if adher-
ing to the etymological and classical origin of the word as those who do not
speak wellthose, that is, who do not speak our language.
Eduardo Gonzlez and Diana de Armas Wilson have explored how in the
episodes with the barbarians Cervantes seems to be probing the root of the
human psyche as it develops in social lifeindeed, as he makes up the laws.
Gonzlez, through a Lacanian reading, proposes that Cervantes is presenting a
society that is not only pre-Oedipal but even pre-sexual. The cross-dressing
and undifferentiated desire are those of beings who are monosexual rather
than homosexual. The issue of homosexuality was a favorite one among
chroniclers of the discovery and conquest of America, perhaps because the
practice was popular among certain groups, but more likely because its correc-
tion and punishment were one of the excuses to subject the natives to Spanish
224 Cervantes Literary Will

rule. For de Armas Wilson Cervantes is formulating the ideal of an all-male

society as the subconscious desire behind the barbarians organizationa
society that excludes females that would in turn be the hidden origin of pa-
triarchy, the origin of the Law and of the laws. For her the unfolding of the
Persiles suggests the possibility of a society that incorporates the otherness of
woman by becoming capable of speaking both the language of the paternal
law and that of the subverting woman. She nishes her passionate and very
smart book thus: At the threshold of the Persiles, and at the close of his life,
Cervantes primal couple shows readers how men and women can become
bilingual. It is this kind of collaboration that signies the real labors of
Cervantes titlelearning the language of the Other.
I nd this to be more wishful thinking than what there is in the Persiles.
After all, the story does end in Rome, the Rome of Saint Peter and of the
foundation of the church. The popes blessing is needed for the culminating
marriage with which the book ends. The pope, successor to Saint Peter, is the
very embodiment of the father and of the Law. It is true, however, that Cer-
vantes has presented the pre-legal and the arch-legal together, as opposite
poles of the human. Alexander A. Parker, expanding and rening Forciones
allegorical interpretation, writes:
the work has a three-fold structure in which each recurrence of the pattern of
the quest is enacted in a different dimension of history. The three stages are
rst humanitys emergence into primitive barbarism, secondly the develop-
ment of civilization, and thirdly the age of Christianity. The last two were
traditionally called the Law of Nature (where reason is the only guide) and the
Law of Grace (where reason is illuminated by Revelation). The pattern is a
geographical one: rst a desolate arctic region, then the lands and islands of
Northern Europe, then the journey from Lisbon (where the travellers land) to
Rome. From the North Pole to Rome: that is the symbolical trajectory of the
work. The pattern of the book is therefore humanitys progress from barba-
rism, through humanistic civilization, to Christianity, and the lives of the
protagonists demonstrate the same progress in the individual sphere; rst the
tempestuousness of passion, secondly the emergence of reason, and thirdly
the acceptance of religious faith.

This baroque synthesis of barbarism and civilization is the books motive

force, only that its drive is not a sequential or teleological quest toward its
realization. Prey to desire, the characters oscillate between its two poles; in the
Persiles this pendular movement is the storyor, better, the many, many
stories.
Also in consonance with the elevation of the law to an abstract or more
general level observed in Part II of the Quijote, love conicts in the Persiles are
 Cervantes Literary Will 225

cast against a backdrop not of civil or criminal but of canonical law: hence its
close formal association with Scholasticism. Throughout the book the pro-
tagonists engage in what is for all practical purposes an incestuous relation-
ship: they are lovers who feign being brother and sister, making lial love the
mask of erotic desire. There is much titillation in a sexual relation that is
forever postponed, deected, and sublimated. The lovers outwardly obey an
injunction against a faked relationship to comply with the incest prohibition,
which, as we have seen since chapter 1 of this book, is among the crimes still
considered sins by Spanish law in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This
counterfeit of law and compliance is operative throughout, and only at the
end, in Rome, the seat of canonical authority, is the prohibition lifted as the
sham is revealed and truth prevails. But until then, the masquerade of love and
the law gives the book its shape. As in the dukes house in Part II of the
Quijote, very profound matters are being dealt with, but all at a ctional level:
only that here they nally reach or announce a conclusion in the consumma-
tion of Persiless and Sigismundas love. The truth puts an end to ctions and to
the bookthe truth is not the story nor does it provide form. In the novels
unfolding ctitious compliance with the incest prohibition allows for the plot
to be expanded and complicated by delaying a conclusion that would bring the
novel to a premature ending, abolishing form. This meshing of canon law and
artistic form is the Persiless baroque core, which, as in Calderns theater,
blends theology and art to generate an intricate, subtle, and multilayered
work. It is a complicity of love and the law that accounts for the books very
status as a work of art.
The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda is not a failed Greek romance because
it was never intended to be one. It is not a Christian romance in the sense that
the characters pilgrimage is unusually or contentiously Christian or Catholic.
Theirs is a pilgrimage to light, but the end of the journey is not just an apotheo-
sis of fulllment or revelation. The protagonists were Christian from the be-
ginning, but hardly pious in a fanatical or ostentatious way. They wanted to
reafrm their faith by complying with a requirement that they imposed on
themselves in a manner similar to the self-imposed obstacles of courtly love.
The plot of the Persiles is an amplication of courtly loves programmatically
retarded and forever delayed consummation of love. Arriving at Rome before
the marriage can take place is little more than a required restraint to fulllment
that, as observed, allows for the development of the plot, the emergence of
various adventures, and the enjoyment of artistic creation. Life can become art
only through postponement of the end. The delay of the ending is like holding
off death. This concurrence of death and sexual fulllmentembedded in
some languages like French, in which orgasm is called the little death
226 Cervantes Literary Will

makes of desire a headlong rush into selfor mutualannihilation. This is

the reason for so many tragic love stories. The art of love, the art of loving
art, in shortis the elaboration of techniques for the pleasurable postpone-
ment of delight. I believe that this is the signicance of the protagonists jour-
ney to Rome, what is beneath the conventional movement toward Saint Peters
church. Since I know that this may seem odd and perhaps even gratuitously
heretical or sacrilegious, I will restate it in a more direct way.
The elaborate voyage to Rome and to amorous satisfaction that makes up
the Persiles is meant to delay the lovers union because postponing the end
delays death and generates pleasure in the process. The life of Persiles and
Sigismunda after their marriagewith its long progeny projected to great-
grandchildrenis dealt with in one sentence, whereas reaching Rome takes
all of four books. I cannot help bringing up also in this inversion and sub-
version of values that I am proposing here that Rome and love make up a
palindrome in Spanish: roma-amor. Rome is love in reverse and vice versa.
The Persiles is made up of such complicated linguistic, tropological, symbolic,
and allegorical schemes. Its texture is made up to be slowly, deliberately,
caressed, enjoyed in all its ne and rich complexity. This baroque is baroque in
the extreme and very like certain kinds of Oriental art. The strangeness men-
tioned before is an ingredient in this pleasure-giving dimension of the book
and an essential component of its delaying stratagems. Cervantes did not
create in the Persiles a work to be nished in one gulp, but one to be savored
slowly, lest you get to Rome too quickly. Cervantes labored to create a vast
textual machine in which all parts meshed throughout so that the smallest
piece would contain, as in a nutshell, the whole. This very combination of
fragment and whole, of the smallest unit and the overarching structure, is itself
representative of the inner workings of this vast combinatorial: the large and
the small, polar opposites, combined, conjoined to generate both pleasure and
meaning: pleasure because of the unexpected, astonishing interaction of op-
posites, which join instead of cancel each other; meaning because the contrast
of differences is at the base of signication. Languagepace Saussureis
constituted by such a concert of correlated contrasts.
The desire to construct such a signifying machine is, like many other aspects
of the baroque, a return to a medieval practice. The faade of any great Gothic
cathedral reveals how all levels of signication and representation are inter-
connected by explicit and implicit references to the Bible, the church fathers,
and the entire ensemble of organized doctrine. It is the sort of signifying unity
that we nd in Dante. Of course, this kind of sublime textual and doctrinal
correspondence is no longer possible in the baroque, which is why it produced
awed or unnished masterpieces like Gngoras Soledades and Cervantes
 Cervantes Literary Will 227

Persiles, but not a Divine Comedy. (Joyces Ulysses was the last attempt to
achieve it.) The signifying axis has been broken by the reemergence of the
classical world in the Renaissance, by the breakdown of the medieval world-
view as the result of the discovery and conquest of America and by the scien-
tic discoveries of the early seventeenth century. The presence of the chronicles
of the discovery and conquest in the Persiles signals to what degree Colum-
buss journey ruined the possibility of pilgrimage by abolishing the centered-
ness of medieval cosmology and symbolismthe earth and Rome are no
longer the only centers, perhaps not even the most important.
The kind of textuality to which Cervantes aspires, and this is also a medieval
recovery, calls for an innite commentary. Every detail, every gure is related
to and contains the whole. Critical analysis should disdain no component as
irrelevant or unimportant, no matter how small. Conscious (and fearful) of
this, I will limit my commentary to chapter 1 of book I which, being the
beginning should contain (or aspire to) the whole. For the sake of clarity I will
proceed from large to small and apply conventional categorizations of gures
and levels of meaning. In the text these are all present at the same time and on
the same plane, of course.
The beginning of the Persiles reads as follows:

At the top of his voice Corsicurbo the barbarian was shouting into the narrow
mouth of a deep dungeon which seemed more a tomb than a prison for the
many living bodies buried there. And although the terrible and frightening din
could be heard both near and far, no one clearly understood his words except
the miserable Cloelia, whose misfortunes held her locked in those depths.
Have that young man we committed to you two days ago, Cloelia, the
barbarian was saying, hauled up here bound by this rope Im letting down
and keep his hands tied behind his back just as they are; and see if among the
women of the last group of prisoners there might be one who deserves our
company and the pleasure of the light of the clear sky above us and the fresh
air surrounding us.
At this point he let down a thick rope, and after a short time he and four
other barbarians pulled up a youth with the rope tied tightly under his arms.
He seemed to be about nineteen or twenty years old and was dressed in rough
linen like a sailor, but handsome beyond all possible exaggeration. First the
barbarians checked his manacles and the cords that tied his hands behind his
back. Then they shook out his hair, which covered his head with countless
rings of pure gold. When they had cleaned his face, which was covered with
dust, such marvelous beauty was revealed that it amazed and softened the
hearts of those who were to be his executioners. The countenance of the
gallant youth showed no signs of distress; on the contrary, with eyes that even
seemed happy, he lifted his face and surveyed the sky, saying in a clear and
228 Cervantes Literary Will

calm voice: I give thanks to you, oh immense and merciful Heavens, for
youve brought me out here to die where your light may shine upon me and
you didnt leave in those dark cells where my death would have been shrouded
in black shadows. For I am a Christian and shouldnt want to die in despair,
but my misfortunes are such that they lead, and indeed, almost compel me to
desire death.

[Voces daba el brbaro Corsicurbo, a la estrecha boca de una profunda maz-

morra, antes sepultura que prisin de muchos cuerpos vivos que en ella es-
taban sepultados. Y aunque su terrible y espantoso estruendo cerca y lejos se
escuchaba, de nadie eran entendidas articuladamente las razones que pronun-
ciaba, sino de la miserable Cloelia, a quien sus desventuras en aquella profun-
didad tenan encerrada.
Haz, oh Cloeliadeca el brbaro, que as como est, ligadas las
manos atrs, salga ac arriba, atado a esa cuerda que descuelgo, aquel man-
cebo que habr dos das que te entregamos; y mira bien si, entre las mujeres de
la pasada presa, hay alguna que merezca nuestra compaa, y gozar de la luz
del claro cielo que nos cubre y del aire saludable que nos rodea.
Descolg en esto una gruesa cuerda de camo, y de all a poco espacio, l y
otros cuatro brbaros tiraron hacia arriba, en la cual cuerda ligado por debajo
de los brazos, sacaron asido fuertemente a un mancebo, al parecer de hasta
diez y nueve o veinte aos, vestido de lienzo basto, como marinero, pero
hermoso sobre todo encarecimiento.
Lo primero que hicieron los brbaros fue requerir las esposas y cordeles con
que a las espaldas traa ligadas las manos. Luego le sacudieron los cabellos,
que como innitos anillos de puro oro, la cabeza le cubran. Limpironle el
rostro, que cubierto de polvo tena, y descubri una tan maravillosa her-
mosura, que suspendi y enterneci los pechos de aquellos que para ser sus
verdugos le llevaban.
No mostraba el gallardo mozo en su semblante gnero de aiccin alguna;
antes, con los ojos al parecer alegres, alz el rostro, y mir al cielo, por todas
partes, y con voz clara y no turbada lengua dijo:
Gracias os hago, oh inmensos y piadosos cielos!, de que me habis
trado a morir adonde vuestra luz vea mi muerte, y no adonde los obscuros
calabozos, de donde ahora salgo, de sombras caliginosas la cubran. Bien
querra no morir desesperado a lo menos, porque soy cristiano; pero mis
desdichas son tales, que me llaman, y casi fuerzan a desearlo.]

The Persiles begins in medias res, as is customary in Byzantine romances.

We nd Periandro (Persiles) in a dark pit hearing, but not understanding,
Corsicurbos shouts. The barbarian is asking that the handsome young man be
pulled out and put on a raft for unknown purposes. The play of opposites is
immediately set up: the barbarian is coarse, the young man beautiful; Cor-
 Cervantes Literary Will 229

sicurbo expresses himself in an incomprehensible language, the young man in

articulate speech; the barbarians live in a pre-civilized state, the young man is a
Christian. It goes on. But the point is that the structure is one of binary
oppositions by which each of the contrasting qualities is augmented. The
young mans beauty is great in the measure in which Corsicurbo is grotesque.
The barbarians vessels are mere logs tied together, the barest minimum of craft
and industry, whereas the ship to which Periandro is taken is large and well
equipped. This is what one could call the tropological level: the pit is like a
tomb but is lled with live bodies. But the act of pulling Periandro out of the
pit is clearly symbolic of birth. He is brought out to life like a newborn from
the womb. Again, there is a joining of opposites because when Periandro later
faints on the deck of the ship, it says that he regains consciousness as if from
death to life (p. 19) [como de muerte a vida (p. 54)]. The protagonist makes
his rst appearance as if coming to life from death. In the Persiles human life is
reduced to its lowest point, here to its very beginning by leaping from death.
Life and death are also engaged in a pendular swing of opposites as absolute
beginnings and ends.
But Periandro is also pulled from darkness to light, which adds to the scene
an allegorical dimension and suggests already the entire journey from the dark
North to the bright South, from pre-Christian ignorance to Revelation. In this
allegorical level the meaning of the barbarians is claried. They live in a pre-
Christian era and engage in savage rituals, such as killing and cremating beau-
tiful young men to feed their ashes to their aspiring rulers. This is a con-
spicuous distortion of the Eucharist, perhaps even a probe into its origin as
dogma, meaningful only at the allegorical level; otherwise it is just a bizarre
custom. But the main allegorical components are dark and light, which also
evoke death and life, now in a spiritual sense. The clash between darkness and
lightliterally a chiaroscuroalso recalls the opposition at the core of the
Persiles between movement and stasis, between pilgrimage as a journey from
ignorance to Revelation, from the Law of Nature to the Law of Grace, and the
continued interchange of light and darkness throughout.
This conict is not explicitly resolved in the book, which, of course, makes
the joint presence of light and dark prevail over the prevalence of one or the
other. The baroque way of the Persiles implies that Revelation and light might
dwell in Rome, but also darkness and desire; as Quevedos memorable sonnet
says, Buscas a Roma en Roma, oh peregrino/y en Roma a Roma misma no la
hallas (You look for Rome in Rome, O pilgrim / and Rome in Rome itself you
cannot nd). Persiles and Sigismunda engage, while in the Eternal City, in
adventures such as the ones that brought them there, and the whore who tries
to seduce the young man is one of the best-drawn characters in the book. The
230 Cervantes Literary Will

Rome of the seventeenth century had been involved in not a few internal and
external conicts of its own and had even been sacked by Charles Vs troops in
1527. In the baroque everything is provisional and liable to become its op-
posite in no timeliterally. Cervantes awed prose epic conceals its true
grandeur in the failed effort to make it perfect. Love and the law stalk each
other in Rome, origin of Roman law, former center of the civilized world and
the universe, in search of a sublime fusion that is not quite realized, except in
the road that led to the formerly Eternal City.
I believe that one can discern in the preceding discussion the grandeur of the
Persiles as a literary project and why Cervantes considered the work so impor-
tant. It is signicant that he did not achieve success and insignicant that the
product is so awed. As an aesthetic construct holding together art and life by
turning life into art it is as ambitious and insane as Don Quijotes mad effort to
make the world conform to the rules of chivalry. In this the Persiles was very
appropriate not so much as a project of Cervantes dotage as of the end of his
life: an all or nothing bet when both all and nothing were at stake.
 13

The Novel after Cervantes: Borges and Carpentier

Historians, critics, and theoreticians of literature are all after the origin
and nature of the literary imagination, no matter what terminology or method
they use, and I am no different. What I have been pursuing in my study of the
intertwined and interdependent forces of love and the law in Cervantes is the
spark, the pith of his creativity, at the intersection of discourses issuing from
those drives, a crossroads at which stories take shape in language. My point
has been that with the advent of the modern state, aided by the printing press,
a new kind of narrative emergesthe noveland that this genre is about legal
conicts and their resolutions because the new social conditions are unstable
and leading to radical changes that will not come about fully until the eigh-
teenth century. The new developing social structure consists of an incipient
leveling of classes, the feeling that through the law commoners and peasants
can appeal to codes and kings that will protect them from the powerful, and at
the same time that the new laws identify them as potential transgressors. This
identicationin the civil and even police senseliterally comes from the
development of the notarial arts and the organization of record keeping and
archives, such as the one in Simancas.
The new protagonist has a leading role, to be sure, but he is also a criminal,
or a potential one. Since he or she is telling his or her own story in the
picaresque, the narrators culpability extends to that of the writer himself.

231
232 Novel after Cervantes

Authors, who are no longer aristocrats or clergymen, are subject to laws and
liable to be punished, as Cervantes himself was more than once. The charac-
ters and authors crimes are often of passion, as desire leads them afoul of the
new legislation, while simultaneously they are protected by it if their misad-
ventures lead to marriage. Marriage and prison are the most common ways of
bringing the author-protagonist criminals to justice. The many love stories in
the Quijote, including the knights adoration of Dulcinea, are subject to re-
strictions imposed by the law. Those who go astray are caught, are forced to
confess, and are punished or marriedor punished by marrying. If in telling
their stories they deviate from the truth they will be interrupted to let what
really happened emerge. The novel, whose prose of the world, of the everyday
transactions of citizens, was partly derived from the notarial arts, will be the
textual vehicle that emerged to contain all of these stories.
The novels connections to the law will continue to the present: epiphany
while in Sevilles jail remained as an enduring origin, an indelible trace. The his-
tory of the novel and the law takes two paths, one internal and the other exter-
nal. The internal one, which is the more important of the two and is vast in
numbers and persistent through time, involves the proliferation of protago-
nists who are fugitives from the law, who commit crimes and are punished.
These crimes are often of a sexual nature or involve a conict of love. The list is
endless, from Jean Valjean in Victor Hugos Les misrables and Rastignac in
several by Balzac to Raskolnikov in Dostoyevskys Crime and Punishment.
Emma Bovary is progressively ground down by the law for her sexual miscon-
duct and proigacy. Huck and Jim are fugitives in The Adventures of Huckle-
berry Finn, and Hester Prynne is punished for her erotic misdeed in Haw-
thornes The Scarlet Letter, perhaps the perfect love-law story of the nineteenth
century. Nabokovs Lolita is the confession of a sex offender whose obsession
with the nymphet elevates her to the roster of great ladyloves of the West,
from Beatrice and Laura to Joyces Molly Bloom.
In modern Latin America the examples are many, like Gabriel Garca Mr-
quezs Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a short novel about a crime of passion
drawn from archives that has a sixteenth-century air to it: a groom slays his
wife on their wedding night when he discovers that she is not a virgin. But the
archetypal story is Manuel Puigs The Kiss of the Spider Woman, in which the
lovers, two men, a political activist and a gay, are jailed together for their
respective transgressions against the law and love. In their cell, the gay man
seduces the activist by telling him the plot of movies that he has seen. Storytell-
ing is used to transcend the prison and to make the hard-boiled revolutionary,
whose mind is lled with ideological formulas, more sensitive. Among the
descendants of the love-law dyad are entire subgenres like the detective novel
 Novel after Cervantes 233

and the novela judicial, the novel whose focus is a trial. Many of these become
movies and, of course, television shows, such as Witness for the Prosecution or
Perry Mason. There is a whole subgenre of lms and TV shows about trials.
The external path is the history of the novels brushes with the law, in other
words the series of novels that have provoked trials or the persecution of their
authors. Here the list is also quite extensive, but the highlights are Madame
Bovary and Ulysses. Flauberts novel was deemed an outrage to good mor-
als, but the author was nally acquitted. The trial, however, turned the book
into a best seller, a pattern that would be repeated throughout history and
which made authors long for a loud scandal to promote their books. Joyces
controversial novel provoked a well-publicized trial in the United States when
its importation was prohibited because of its presumably pornographic con-
tent. A diligent judge made the heroic effort of actually reading Ulysses and
allowed its circulation in the United States. Other cases, including one involv-
ing Henry Millers Tropic of Cancer, also received some publicity, but the
longest record of censorship, persecution, prosecution, and connement of
novelists belongs to totalitarian regimes. In many cases the political nature of
repression was masked as a defense against immorality (communist and fas-
cist regimes are moralistic and puritanical in the extreme). The Soviet Union,
of course, has the record for this sort of activity, surely because its repressive
state was the longest lasting of the totalitarian societies in Europe. In Latin
America there have been quite a few cases of political harassment. The most
recent and notorious involve the Cuban governments relentless persecution of
Reynaldo Arenas, who was jailed often and had his manuscripts conscated.
Arenas was brought up on a morals charge as a homosexual to censor his
literary production, whose recurrent theme, above all in Hallucinations, is
persecution and ight. His story, as told by himself in Before Night Falls, later
turned into a lm, is one that a contemporary Cervantes could have written. It
is like the story of the captive in the Quijote, Part I, a prisoner who persistently
tries to escape, frequently by spectacular means. In the twentieth century the
love persecuted by the law is often homosexual love, the bte noire of repres-
sive regimes, as it had been with the Holy Ofce of the Inquisitionthe worst
fornicacin calicada.
Instead of providing a survey of love and the law in the novel after Cer-
vantes, which could make up another book, I shall concentrate on two texts
that, like Puigs and Arenass, have inspired my approach: Borgess Pierre
Menard, Author of the Quijote and Carpentiers The Harp and the Shadow.
Borgess famous short story, a dismantling of Cervantes canonization in
Spanish-language criticism and the biography of a gure of dubious morality, a
potential criminal, told by someone who is perhaps a Nazi, allows me to build
234 Novel after Cervantes

my own critical construct on the ruins of the bridge between grammar and the
imagination, between the law and literature. Carpentiers novel, with Queen
Isabella of Castile as one of the protagonists, brings me back to the beginnings
of this book, to the moment when the centralization of the Spanish state and
the expansion and codication of the law made possible the emergence of the
picaresque.

In his classic Books of the Brave, Irving Leonard records how, by the spring of
1605, as the annual eets made their way to the New World, numerous copies
of the just published El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha crossed
the Atlantic. In fact, by his sedulous calculations, Leonard estimates that a
good portion of the books rst printing made the voyage, and that not a few
of the volumes met a fate common to travelers at the time by sinking to the
depths of the ocean. But many did make it to the ports of Spains American
empire, and a mere two years after the publication of Cervantes book (in
1607) the gures of the knight and his squire made their appearance in a Lima
carnival. There is much signicance in this journey of the books, not the
least of which is that their excursion was strictly speaking illegal, given that
the shipment of novels to the colonies had been forbidden by the zealous
Spanish crownthe novel was already being policed. We know, however,
again thanks to Leonard, that because of the imperial bureaucracys lax dis-
charge of its duties, this prohibition was mostly observed in the breach, as
were other government decrees, which were greeted with the cagey formula
se acata, pero no se cumple (complied with, but not implemented). The
Quijotes early and furtive journey to what would become Latin America
pregures the books rich and perplexing legacy in the literary history of the
region, where this classic of the language would be read and rewritten in ways
that reveal much about its founding and revolutionary role in the history of
ction.
How the Quijote has been rewritten in Latin America in contrast to Spain is
important because these rewritings issue from disparate strands in the literary
tradition of one single language; hence their differences are a signicant lesson
about a literary works connection to its national origins. In Spain, the Quijote
underwent a process of canonization that began in the eighteenth century, just
as the Spanish American colonies were starting on the ideological and political
road that led to independence. The canonization of Cervantes book in Spain
eventually involved the identication of Spanishness with the novels hero,
and its conception a kind of telluric birth from the volksgeist: that source in
which the romantics placed the birth of writing of both the law and literature
 Novel after Cervantes 235

proper to a people, as we saw in an earlier chapter. Cervantes had presumably

expressed the very essence of Spainor allowed it to express itself through
himand this is what made the Quijote a classic of the language and the
founding of the nation. This yearning may be for a reenactment of the twin
births of literature and the law, of having grammar be the ultimate law and
poetry its most important expression.
The identication of the book with Spain climaxed in the Generation of 98,
when the question of national identity reached a crisis, provoked by Spains
crushing defeat in the Spanish American War. As the last of the Spanish colo-
nies in America were becoming independent, the beatings suffered by proud
Don Quijote became a national myth to help Spaniards bear their countrys
valiant but unsuccessful battle with the new Knight of the White Moon: the
modern, powerful, fully armed United States of America. Nothing typies
better the incorporation of Don Quijote into the national mythology than the
disastrous naval battle of Santiago de Cuba, when Rear Admiral Pascual Cer-
vera y Topete lost the entire Spanish eet in an insanely heroic act ordered by
the Spanish government.
But the preceding does not apply to Latin America, where the Quijote was
not part of any national mythmaking. It was around 1898, as a matter of fact,
that Modernismo, the rst literary movement begun in Latin America, was
peaking and exerting inuence back in Spain. Modernismo and Noveintaio-
cho constitute a parting of the waters in Spanish-language literary history,
although they share some common traits. How has Cervantes been read and
rewritten by Latin Americans who cannot identify with Spanish obsessions
about a Spanish essence while writing in Spanish? How can one read a classic
in ones own language without being involved in a process of monumentaliza-
tion, cultural self-probing and even nationalistic or ethnic narcissism? The
recovery of the Quijote by literature took different paths in Spain and Latin
America, as did that of the baroque poets.
Borges taught Latin American writers (including Carpentier) how to assimi-
late the innovations of European modernism, and also that they (the Latin
Americans) were a part of that movement, in spite of their perceived geograph-
ical or even cultural marginality. He also taught them how they were and at
the same time were not part of the Spanish literary tradition, with the test case
being the Quijote. In fact, Borges wrote with some irritation about how the
Spanish were misreading the novel. In a 1947 special issue of Sur to com-
memorate the four-hundredth anniversary of Cervantes birth, Borges wrote:
What paradoxical glory that of the Quijote. The bureaucrats of literature
exalt it, they see (they have decided to see) in its negligent style the acme of
Spanish prose, and a jumbled museum of archaic terms, malapropisms, and
236 Novel after Cervantes

proverbs. Nothing makes them happier than to pretend that this book (whose
universality they never stop proclaiming) is a kind of Spanish secret, kept from
other nations on earth but accessible to a select group of villagers (Paradjica
la gloria del Quijote. Los ministros de la letra lo exaltan; en su discurso negli-
gente ven (han resuelto ver) un dechado del estilo espaol y un confuso museo
de arcasmos, de idiotismos y de refranes. Nada los regocija como simular que
este libro (cuya universalidad no se cansan de publicar) es una especie de
secreto espaol, negado a las naciones de la tierra pero accesible a un grupo
selecto de aldeanos). Carpentier, for his part, taught Latin American writers
how to turn Latin American history into narrative ction; or, better yet, how
early American historiography and the novel were linked at birth, with the
linchpin being Cervantes.
How can a literary tradition cohere within a language without the ideologi-
cal and emotional grounding of a sense of nationality? How can a literature
continue to exhibit continuities over historical divideshow does an origin
endure through and in spite of history? With the Quijote anointed as the vessel
of the very essence of the language and spirit of the nation, how can a Latin
American writer presume to rewrite that which is essentially tied to the nation
that his own nation struggled not to be? One could also ask if this is not a
fundamental American condition, the search for origins that are nondetermin-
ing and stand precariously on a break with the past? And wouldnt the very
quest constitute a profoundly contradictory operation, the search for a non-
essential kind of essentialism? Perhaps this is the fate of all American literary
efforts and the rst lesson to be learned from Borgess and Carpentiers compli-
cated rewritings of the Quijote.
In modern Spain, then, the Quijote is read because it is associated with the
essence of language and nationhood: therefore with a motivated conception of
the origins of language and literary tradition, with a genealogically determined
birth of the text. In Latin America the Quijote is read for its suggestion of its
unmotivated conception in language, hence by delving into origins that are
contingent because they are historical (Carpentier) or that pitilessly question
themselves by denying their own legitimacy (Borges). Borgess and Carpen-
tiers relative foreignness to Spanish surely inuenced their skepticism, their
refusal to easily recognize an enabling connection between language and the
imagination, and between language and the shape, cohesiveness, or meaning
of the literary text. But it may also reect Cervantes own deepest disbelief, as
reected in the air of improvisation and serendipity attendant to the plot
structure and details of Part Ithe notorious olvidos cervantinos (Cervantean
oversights) that may constitute the farthest questioning in the Quijote about
the coherence of the work and even that of the authors own self, truly perilous
 Novel after Cervantes 237

cracks of nihilistic madness. The lack of motivation is what provokes the turn
to Cervantes play of authorship. Another slightly foreign Latin American
author (lets just say Argentine), Julio Cortzar, obviously focused on chance
and improvisation as crucial factors of literary creation in his Hopscotch,
elements that he may have also derived from the Quijote. Morelli (notice the
non-Hispanic name), the internal author in Cortzars novel, is a modern
version of the narrator in Cervantes book. Melquadess manuscript in One
Hundred Years of Solitude and the various textual plays with the status of
writing in I the Supreme and the character of Patio are all turns to the second
most important character created by Cervantes in the Quijote: not Sancho but
the authoror authorsin the ction. By insisting on these elements a Latin
American reading of Cervantes masterpiece uncouples creation from any es-
sence that gives the text an ontologically determined or revealing order. The
second lesson to be learned from Latin American rewritings of the Quijote is
that Cervantes as a gure of the author is more important than Don Quijote
the character, whereas in the Spanish readings Don Quijote is more important:
Cervantes in Latin America, Don Quijote in Spain.

Borges rst read Cervantes in English and Carpentiers forays into his fathers
library were mostly in French. The point of departure of Pierre Menard,
Author of the Quijote is that Menard was not even a Spanish speaker by birth
or upbringing. This fact is crucial in Borgess reading of Cervantes book, as
suggested by that story and other texts. Columbus, whose writings Carpentier
places at the beginning of Latin American ction in The Harp and the Shadow,
was not a native Spanish speaker either, but he wrote his famous accounts of
the discovery in that language. A nonnational origin of writing is fundamental
in Borgess and Carpentiers conceptions of the origins of narrative, in clear
opposition to the Spanish readings of Cervantes, grounded in the romantic
bonding of language, the nation, and literature. In this regard Pierre Menard,
Author of the Quijote is a kind of mufed yet wildly subversive manifesto.
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote is an experiment in authorship
without the presumed determinations of the role in the post-romantic era.
Menard, as author of the Quijote, lacks the essential qualities of an author
within the doctrines originating in romanticism: (1) he is not of the nationality
dened by the language of the work; (2) he is not a native speaker of the
language in which the work is written (this does not necessarily followhe
could be of another nationality but a native speaker; and (3) he is not a
contemporary of the work, from which follows that he has experienced more
history (in his case three centuries) than the original author, having therefore
238 Novel after Cervantes

knowledge of subsequent developments of the works nation of origin and

language. We know from Menards visible (p. 444, emphasis in the original)
work that he was interested in abstract systems, ahistorical and disconnected
from emotion or experience: for instance, chess or the elaboration of a poetic
language so pure that it in no way resembled everyday speech. Menard wants
to write a Quijote without the espaoladas (p. 448, Hispanicizing bouta-
des) that Maurice Barrs or Dr. Rodrguez Larreta would have recommended
(p. 53). (Maurice Barrs was an anti-Semitic novelist who developed a the-
ory of the collective unconscious of clearly fascistic connotations.) This would
be a Quijote without a Spain self-consciously Spanish that turned the book
into an occasion for patriotic toasts, grammatical arrogance, obscene de luxe
editions (p. 94) [una ocasin de brindis patriticos, de soberbia gramatical,
de obscenas ediciones de lujo (p. 450)]. The key here is grammar, which to the
deluded Spaniards would be the common ground of language, literature, and
an enduring national origina law. Menard, for his part, faces the task of
writing or rewriting the Quijote as a Latin American author would: in posses-
sion of the language but not quite a part of its history, tradition, and even
grammar. He is, in this sense, a radical outlaw. To imagine a literature
without the nation is Borgess radical experiment in Pierre Menard, Author
of the Quijote at the height of the nationalistic frenzies of the 1930s, some of
which led to fascism, as in the case of Barrs, or, as we shall see, the very
narrator of the story.
But why the Quijote? Why not Pierre Menard, Author of The Divine
Comedy? Or Pierre Menard, Author of The Brothers Karamazov? For two
reasons. The rst is that, after all is said and done, the fact is that Spanish was
Borgess language of choice for his work, and it is the language of his own
nation, Argentina, a new polity far in time and space from the origins of
Spanish (some would say also grammatically distant from that language). I say
choice because he could have decided early in his career to become an English,
German, or perhaps even French author because of family background and his
Swiss upbringing. He could have been a Pessoa, an author who seems to have
been invented by Borges, or an Apollinaire, or a Conrad (all authors who
wrote in languages other than their own). These were all options and examples
that Borges may have had in mind when he wrote Pierre Menard, Author of
the Quijote. But because Spanish was indeed the language in which he wrote,
Borges was moved to speculate about how he belonged to it or it belonged to
him, and how he was or was not a part of its legacy. The Quijote had to loom
as the grandest literary creation in Spanish. This is why there is an agonistic
tone in Borgess story, which styles itself as a kind of elegy to the recently
deceased Menard, as if it had been the prodigious effort to complete his task of
 Novel after Cervantes 239

rewriting the Quijote that had killed him. Because Menard was unable to
nish his work, though the narrator confesses that he likes to read or think of
the entire novel as if it had been written by Menard. It is in the inconclusive-
ness of his task and in Menards dying that we nd in Borges a romantic
substratum, a glorication after all of the author that, on the surface, the story
appears to deny. This is the contradictory core of Pierre Menard, Author of
the Quijote.
The second reason why Menard attempted to write the Quijote (and not
some other work) is precisely that Cervantes had made available to Borges and
even exhausted most possible experiments about authorship, from the very
notion of authority to the connection of language and nationality to cre-
ationwas not the Moorish historian Cide Hamete Benengeli the author of
the original Quijote? This was not in any of the other masterpieces that Men-
ard might have chosen, or if so only because they had derived it from Cer-
vantes. Cervantes created himself as author surrounded by several doubles as
the second most important character in the Quijote. The author of the Quijote
is that manifold character that includes (at least) the narrator, Cide Hamete
Benengeli, and the translator. In him (in them) Cervantes gave us a prolix and
dizzying dramatization of the modern mind in search of knowledge of self and
of the inner workings of the literary imagination. In that quest the mind found
itself and the complex operations by which it invents itself as it creates litera-
ture. It is a fragile constructionan unbearable lightness of beingfraught
with self-doubt and surrounded by mirages of its own making. To speak, to
write, this emerging self must create yet another, like the friend who comes to
Cervantes aid in the 1605 prologue, who will give him a temporary and
precarious sense of being, or the student who recognizes him on the road in the
prologue to the Persiles. There is no selfsame projection outward, and creation
must take the guise of someone elses work or someone elses look: a found
manuscript, written in a language not known by the narrator, who must seek
help to have it translated, a friend or stranger who answers back, a Gins de
Pasamonte, an Ensign Campuzano, and so on. This self is a creation that
babbles, I invent myself, therefore I might be, not I think, therefore I am,
as Descartes would famously say a few years later. Because invention, even of
self, is too grand an illusion and agency is always compromised by uncertainty.
This frail self is, ironically enough, Cervantes most enduring characterit
has a resilient kind of fragility. The venue of expression is necessarily irony, the
resignation to always be of at least two minds, particularly about oneself.
In the Quijote the modern mind nds that literature, as a human product,
cannot escape the limitations of the human; hence the author can only feign to
be outside of his work looking in, controlling his ctional world externally like
240 Novel after Cervantes

Maese Pedro his puppet show. This modern agent, who thinks and writes and
invents and therefore is, has no nationality. In this Cervantes is anticipating
Vico and pointing to the universalism of the Enlightenment. Need we rehearse
again the Quijotes games of authorship, where the origin of the text is, as best
as it can be ascertained, a Moorish historian with a penchant for lying? Or the
process by which the text is generated, involving a translation by someone
whose competence seems to be only that he knows the languages in question,
and allows himself the impudence of appending a marginal note to the effect
that This same Dulcinea so often mentioned in the history, is said to have had
the best hand at salting pork of any woman in La Mancha (I, 9, p. 53) [Esta
Dulcinea del Toboso, tantas veces en esta historia referida, dicen que tuvo la
mejor mano para salar puercos que otra mujer de toda la Mancha (I, p. 108)].
This intrusive translator also intervenes to question the authority of the au-
thor, as if wanting the reader to believe that he has re-created and annotated
the work as he performed his modest task.
Borges latches on to this elusive quality of the Quijotes author. Is Menard
like Cide Hamete or like the translator? If the Moor was indeed a liar, Menard
had a penchant for writing the opposite of what he believed in, as the narrator
of Borgess story claims. Cervantes made Menard possible by being himself a
Spanish author without espaoladas because he lived before the history of
Spain made exceptionalism a mode of inquiry, a self-reection and a self-
display before a Europe from which it felt increasingly distant. Menard is the
Cervantes Cervantes would have been in the twentieth century had he been
able to skip the Spanish eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: a Cervantes, that
is, who could have been an Argentine educated in Geneva and working in a
Buenos Aires library. Borgess implicit identication with Menard also belies
the rejection of the romantic in his story.
In the nal analysis Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote proves that it is
impossible to leap out of history and uncontrollable contingency: that both
encourage the tendency to err. The narrator of Borgess story gives 1602 as the
date for the Quijote (it is 1605, as we know) and clearly misreads the fragment
about history that he quotes by not taking into account that it is parodic.
Cervantes did not write seriously truth, whose mother is history (p. 94) [la
verdad, cuya madre es la historia (p. 449)].
Who is the narrator of Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote, and what
other misreadings does he add to this proliferating collection? Why does he
focus on that passage on history? And why does he refer to the readers of the
magazine where the partial list of Menards publications appear as deplor-
ables, adding that they are few and Calvinist (if not Masonic and circum-
cised) (p. 88) [son pocos y calvinistas, cuando no masones y circuncisos
 Novel after Cervantes 241

(p. 444)]. Was he, in spite of his criticism of Maurice Barrs, an ultra-Catholic,
anti-Semitic fascist? Menard, whom he is eulogizing, was certainly a literary
thief, whose new technique for reading was one of deliberate anachronism
and fallacious attribution (p. 95) [tcnica del anacronismo deliberado y de las
atribuciones errneas (p. 450)].
Creation appears as an act of theft accompanied by prevarication and even
perjury, no less. Borgess story is also the biography of a delinquent told by
someone of highly dubious moral and political leanings: the law and its viola-
tion stand, again, at the source of storytelling.

As in Borges, in Carpentier the important gure is Cervantes, not so much
Don Quijote. The Harp and the Shadow, written when Carpentier knew that
he was dying of cancer, is the most sustained treatment of Cervantes available
in modern Latin American ction, one that incorporates Borges. He sets up a
prolix series of intertextual associations between his novel and The Trials of
Persiles and Sigismunda, Cervantes last book, because like him, Carpentier is
summing up his life and works on the brink of death, and also, as Frederick A.
de Armas has shown, in this work the Cuban author found a source for his
theory of magical realism. Carpentier is also drawn to the fantastic, imagina-
tive quality of the Persiles as an afrmation of the power of ction, and estab-
lishes a connection between the misty and mysterious world of Iceland with
which Cervantes opens his novel and the supposed trip to those regions under-
taken by Columbus early in his career. Columbus, it should not be forgotten,
was also arrested and returned to Spain in shackles at one point, a fugitive
from justice.
Carpentier clearly wants to link Columbus to Cervantes and Cervantes to
himself as authors to speculate about the nature of literature and specically
the Latin American narrative tradition. He is following Pierre Menard in
this, of course. In The Harp and the Shadow Columbus is summing up his life
on his deathbed as he awaits the priest who will administer the last rites.
Carpentier was to die two years after the publication of The Harp and the
Shadow, Cervantes died four days after signing the Dedicatoria to the Per-
siles, and Pierre Menard is already dead in the story. The authors death is a
prominent feature in all these ctions because they hold in the balance the all
or nothing of beginnings and ends and the pressing need for telling the truth in
such portentous moments. Like the Persiles, The Harp and the Shadow closes
in Rome, where it began, as if to mark the nality and transcendence of their
endings.
Another association between Columbus and Cervantes is through Maese
242 Novel after Cervantes

Pedros (that is, Gins de Pasamonte) Retablo de las maravillas, mentioned

several times in The Harp and the Shadow. When the admiral returns in
triumph and goes on a promotion tour of his discovery, he sets up a show for
the king and queen in Barcelona, in which he dresses up the Tano Indians
whom he brought over and displays them at court. He calls this company his
Spectacle of the Marvels of the Indies (p. 100) [gran compaa de Retablo de
las Maravillas de Indias (p. 133)]. The translation erases the allusion to Cer-
vantes one-act play El retablo de las Maravillas (something like Pageant of
Marvels) and Maese Pedros puppet show. Carpentiers association of Co-
lumbus with CervantesGins de Pasamonte as Maese Pedro is also in the
backgroundis revealing of his own probe into his vocation and practice as a
writer. This is largely contained in Columbuss musings as he remembers his
life on the brink of death, when he again alludes to the Retablo: When I
search through the labyrinth of my past, in this my nal hour, I am astonished
by my natural talents as an actor, as the life of the party, as a wielder of
illusions, in the style of the mountebanks in Italy who, from fair to fairand
they often came to Savonabrought their comedies, pantomimes and mas-
querades. I was an impresario of spectacles, taking my Pageant of Marvels
from throne to throne (p. 120) [cuando me asomo al laberinto de mi pasado
en esta hora ltima, me asombro ante mi natural vocacin de farsante, de
animador de antruejos, de armador de ilusiones, a manera de los saltabancos
que en Italia, de feria en feriay venan a menudo a Savonallevan sus
comedias, pantomimas y mascaradas. Fui trujamn de retablo, al pasear de
trono en trono mi Retablo de Maravillas (p. 160)]. Cervantes projections as
author in the Quijote provide Carpentier with a character to play, as he as-
sumes the role of Columbus on his deathbed meditating on his record as
writer. Carpentier shrouds this meditation in a vast historical and speculative
mantle.
Carpentier was obsessed with the discovery of the New World and its im-
pact on the writing of history and ction. Here the association of Columbus
with Cervantes is most signicant. Simplied, the road from the admiral to the
author of the Quijote would go like this. By irrefutably demonstrating the
roundness of the earth, leading to the Copernican revolution and a new con-
ception of the universe as innite, Columbus made possible Montaignes de-
tached ironic perspective, such as he displays in his famous essay On Canni-
bals, to which there are direct allusions in The Harp and the Shadow. The fact
that the world is now known not to be the center of the universe has decen-
tered Western thought. The inversion of values implicit in Montaignes text is
dramatized in the speech by one of the Tanos that Columbus has brought
back to the Old World, a hilarious passage in which the Europeans are mer-
 Novel after Cervantes 243

cilessly assessed from the outside. It is Montaignes irony that makes Cer-
vantes and Carpentiers possible. (Knowing Carpentier, I know that he would
not have disdained the cryptogram CCCC: Columbus-Copernicus-Cervantes-
Carpentier.) The consequences of the cleave on historical and literary dis-
course caused by the discovery is The Harp and the Shadows central theme.
Carpentier dramatizes it by focusing on the ambiguities surrounding Colum-
bus and his writings.
But The Harp and the Shadow is of particular relevance to my theses in this
book because in it Carpentier has returned to the origins of the modern novel
by going precisely to the very moment and characters in history when our
story begins: Queen Isabella of Castile and Christopher Columbus. He has
also cast that story within a framing story centered on a trial: the one at which
Columbuss beatication, leading to canonization, is debated and a verdict
rendered. The judicial nature of the story is deeper, however, as is its relation
to the picaresque and criminals confessions. Columbus is on his deathbed
preparing himself for the arrival of the priest who will hear his confession and
administer the last rites. What he is in the process of doing is what in the
Catholic Church is called an act of contrition, a review and summary of
ones sins in preparation to telling them to the confessor. It is an inner con-
fession, a silent rehearsal of what will be the actual story told to the priest. So
the narrative situation of the criminal-sinner telling his case to a person in
authority is in the background, only that here it is a confession sanctioned by
canon law instead of civil codes. This is the reason why Columbus vows to tell
all, as Gins de Pasamonte was awaiting the end of his own life to be able to
tell the entire story, and as Guzmn undergoes a conversion to the good before
telling his life up to that moment. Totality is a requirement, an unreachable
goal, as we saw also in The Dialogue of the Dogs. The novelty here is that in
The Harp and the Shadow we never read the actual confession but are privy
only to a virtual one; it is literally a pre-text in all the senses of that word: a text
that precedes the text, a the text that offers excuses for wrongs committed, the
text that takes the place of another that will never be told, like Scipios forever
postponed autobiography. The reader knows that what he reads is an unreli-
able text, if there ever was one. Columbus is a worse liar than Cide Hamete
Benengeli. On the verge of death, like Scheherazade, Columbus will embroider
on his memories and lie even to himselfhe is at the point and place to create
literature out of life. The one confession he does make is precisely the biggest
lie (or, perhaps better, the biggest lay)an affair with Queen Isabella.
The Harp and the Shadow projects back the history of the New World, of
its incorporation into Western history, as the grandest love story imaginable:
a steamy tryst between the queen and the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. The
244 Novel after Cervantes

negative ruling in the case of Columbuss beatication is due, above all, to his
lasciviousness, whose tangible proof was an illegitimate child. His other sin is
to have introduced slavery to the New World. We are dealing here with a
Columbus guilty of the atrocities of colonization, not just lust. In line with
other novelistic protagonists, he is a criminal preparing his confession, which
also turns out to be a sin and a crime because it is deliberately false. This is not
a Columbus t for statues. Is his love affair with the queen a displacement of
his lust and guilt into a wish-fulllment dream meshing eros and the will to
power? Here is an original sin (or fantasy) for the ages, fornicating with the
Catholic queen (one wonders what the punishment would be according to the
Inquisitions classications). It was during her reign, as we know, that the new
legislation began to be drawn up at the cortes de Madrigal and Toro and the
early compilations that led to the all-important one of 1567. It was her mar-
riage to Ferdinand that began the process of unication of the Peninsula and
of the Spanish legal system. Queen Isabella stands for the law in The Harp
and the Shadow, while Columbus represents love and desire, expressed both
through his ambition and spirit of adventure and nakedly by his relationship
with Isabella, which begins right at the encampment of Santa Fe, from which
she and Ferdinand were conducting the assault of Moorish Granada. Christo-
phers and Isabellas adulterous union is a parody of the Neoplatonic fusion of
opposites under the heat of passion: love and the law meet in the bed in which
discoverer and queen frolic, and out of which America and modern history
emerge like their illegitimate children. Carpentier had an allegorical penchant,
and this is the loftiest one he created, only that the love of these two exalted
personages is so improbable and so physical that the novel turns into a huge
joke, a burla like those created by the duke and duchess in Part II of the
Quijote. It is a grand imaginative prank to have Columbus and the Catholic
queen together in bed; it is the novels and Carpentiers most daring deviation
from history, the hottest imaginative spark. It is the lie of literature.
The Neoplatonic background of The Harp and the Shadow, I believe, is a
rereading and interpretation of one of the early, and certainly most important,
books written by an American: Garcilaso de la Vega el Incas Royal Commen-
taries of the Incas. A contemporary of Cervantes, el Inca was born in Cuzco of
an Incan mother and a conquistador of noble lineagein fact of the lineage of
great poets like Garcilaso de la Vega, the Marqus de Santillana, and Jorge
Manrique. Through his father El Inca was also related to his contemporary the
great baroque poet Gngora. Garcilaso grew up in the viceroyalty of Peru, but
moved to Spain as a young mestizo and son of a union that was not sanctied
(his father married a Spanish lady, not his Incan mother), where he became an
accomplished humanist and translator into Spanish of that most inuential
 Novel after Cervantes 245

book of Neoplatonic philosophy, Leone Hebreos Dialoghi damore. It was

there that he changed his name not just to that of his father but to that of his
ancestor Garcilaso de la Vega, already recognized as the greatest poet in the
language and whose works were much in fashion at the time (I have pointed
out some of the many allusions to him in the Quijote). Later he wrote his
masterpiece, The Royal Commentaries of the Incas, in two parts. The rst told
the history of Inca kings in Peru before the arrival of the Spaniards, the second
the violent story of the civil wars among the conquerors, in which his father
played a signicant though ambiguous role (he was accused of conniving with
enemies of the crown). Together, as William Ilgen argued in a beautiful article,
the two parts of The Royal Commentaries of the Incas constitute a Neo-
platonic fusion of the authors two warring sides, accomplished by an act of
lovethe act of writing. Part I is about his mothers legacy, Part II about his
fathers. The conqueror and the Incan maiden produced this illegitimate son,
rst American author, by an act of love, and he in turn through another
produced this book, whereby he bound his legacies in harmonious beauty.
This is in the background of Carpentiers mock allegory about the birth of
America as the bastard child of Columbus and Queen Isabella. In the novel,
Columbuss impression (or lie) that his enterprise was forged in bed with the
queen and that their love attained a Neoplatonic purity is clear. As he revises
his life he says: In my life there came one surpassing moment when, setting
my sights high, very high, I abandoned the lust of my body and ennobled my
mind with a complete communion of spirit and esh, and a new light illumi-
nated the darkness of wayward actions and thoughts (pp. 15354) [en mi
vida un instante prodigioso en que, por mirar a lo alto, lo muy alto, desa-
pareci la lujuria de mi cuerpo, fue ennoblecida mi mente por una comunin
total de carne y espritu, y una nueva luz disip las tinieblas de mis desvaros y
lucubraciones (pp. 19798)]. Against such loftiness and purity we have the
scenes in which the admiral romps with Columba, as he calls the queen, in the
intimacy of their lovemaking. Columbus is deluded on this other bed, his
deathbed, as he recalls his life and passes judgment on it. Memory lies and his
lies are still driven by desire, the desire for greatness, the lust for immortality.
This is a Columbus-Carpentier that is human, all too human, and this is the
reason why his candidacy for sainthood is denied.
In Columbus we have another author who is not a native of the language in
which his text is written. This was a grave irreverence on Borgess part because
he was dealing with the greatest monument of the Spanish language. But the
matter is very serious in Carpentiers novel too. In The Harp and the Shadow
the foreign author is none other than the inaugural one of the Latin American
literary canonin traditional histories and anthologies of Latin American
246 Novel after Cervantes

literature the rst text is always a fragment from Columbuss Diary. To make
the matter even more complicated, that Diary, as we know, does not exist as
such. It was lost. All we have are the quotations inserted by Fray Bartolom de
las Casas in his compendious Historia de las Indias, some of which are recon-
structions. Like the Quijote, the founding text of the Latin American literary
tradition is a quilt of languages, citations, translations, and rewritingsits
existence is like a Borgesian puzzle. But it is the origin. This is why The Harp
and the Shadow is like an Aleph of Latin American literature, with oblique
allusions toand quotations fromclassics, like Esteban Echeverras El
matadero, Sarmientos Facundo, Nerudas Canto general, Lezama Limas
Rapsodia para el mulo, and so forth. It is as if Columbuss modest letters
and reports contained, like kabbalistic vessels, all the future texts of the Latin
American literary tradition.
There is a parallel subplot to this in the tangential story about Columbuss
body, parts of which would have had to be kept in the Vaticans archive of
relics had he been sainted. This is a macabre prank of Carpentiers to under-
score the elusiveness of the textual origins and always debated legitimacy of
the admirals texts. The authenticity of Columbuss remains is a matter of
dispute, with Havana, Seville, and Santo Domingo claiming to have the real
ones. Columbuss last material cipherhis relicsare as ambiguous as his
texts and as elusive as his birthplace: they lack a veriable beginning and end.
Carpentiers shadowy gure also appears in the background of this story, if we
remember that he wrote his novel after learning that he was dying of cancer.
Because The Harp and the Shadow is also the chronicle of a cadaver foretold:
Carpentiers, who will become one in Paris but will wind up at Havanas
Cementerio de Coln, as if guided a destiny foreseen by Carpentiers ghoulish
imagination to merge, if not with the admirals bones, at least with his name.
This point bears repeating: the inaugural text of Latin American literature is
not, like the Poema de mo Cid, the kernel of Castilian letters according to
traditional philology, but the diaries of a Genoese of uncertain linguistic and
cultural lineage. The foundation of Latin American literature is a hybrid text
written in faulty Spanish and rewritten by Carpentier, a Menard whose Span-
ish was not native either. The link between natural language and literature is
broken in Carpentier because for him, a baroque, creation is always artful,
never natural. But there is an even more personal connection in all this, linking
unnatural language to lies and to the origin of the literary.
The narrator in the Quijote says that Benengeli, being an Arab, was some-
thing of a liar, as we saw. We have already also seen that Menard was wont to
write exactly the opposite of what he felt or believed. Carpentiers Columbus,
 Novel after Cervantes 247

as he prepares for his nal journey, tells himself about the many lies that he has
told, not only to his men in that fateful rst voyage but also in his manuscripts:
I made up an imaginary past designed to take the place of the Savona tav-
ern. . . . I quickly pulled out of my sleeve an uncle who was an admiral; and I
made myself a graduate of the University of Pava in whose cloisters I had
never set foot in my whole damn life (p. 63); So I resorted to a lie, a decep-
tion, the constant lie in which I was going to live (and this I will tell the
confessor) (p. 73); And the evidence of those falsehoods is here, in these
drafts of my accounts of my voyages that I keep under my pillow, and that I
pull out now with trembling handterried of itselfto reread what in these
nal moments seems to me like a vast Repertory of Lies(p. 84); Of the seven
Indians we captured on the rst island, two have escaped. And we are lying to
the ones who are left (another deceit), denying our intention of taking them to
Spain (p. 90) [fui hacindome de una mitologa destinada a hacer olvidar la
taberna de Savonahonrars padre y madre!, con dueo lanero y quesero
arrimado a las canillas de sus barriles, diariamente trabado en trifulcas con
borrachos impecuniosos. De repente, me saqu de las mangas un to almi-
rante; me hice estudiante graduado de la Universidad de Pava, cuyos claustros
jams pis en mi jodida existencia (p. 85); Por ello me resolv a recurrir a la
mentira, al embuste, al perenne embuste en que habra de vivir (y esto s lo dir
al franciscano confesor a quien ahora espero) (p. 97); Y la constancia de tales
trampas est aqu, en estos borradores de mis relaciones de viajes, que tengo
bajo la almohada, y que ahora saco con mano temblorosaasustada de s
mismapara releer lo que, en estos postreros momentos, tengo por un vasto
Repertorio de Embustesy as lo dir a mi confesor que tanto tarda en ap-
arecer (p. 112); De los siete indios que habamos capturado en la isla primera,
dos se nos haban fugado. Y a los que nos quedaban tena engaados (seguan
los embustes) negando que tuviese intenciones de llevarlos a Espaa (p. 120)].
All these references to lies, we are now allowed to suspect, are oblique
allusions to Carpentiers own lies and obfuscations about his life. The biggest
of these bs turned out to be precisely about his birthplace. In the speech
accepting the Cervantes Prize, delivered in the presence of King Juan Carlos
no lessCarpentier mentions Havana as the city where I was born. But
now we know that this was a lie that he had sustained through all of his life,
and that he had been born instead in Lausanne (Switzerland), making the issue
of his birthplace a polemical one, as Columbuss has been. This revelation may
also nally account for Carpentiers notorious and stubborn French r when
speaking Spanish, which dogged him all of his life and made some, like Juan
Marinello, write that in the Havana of the twenties he was sometimes taken
248 Novel after Cervantes

for a foreigner. I believe that Carpentier must have gured that he would
eventually be found out, and in these words spoken through Columbus he is
offering a veiled apology to be understood posthumously.
The subject of lies in Carpentier is not to be taken lightly, as mere titillation
and gossip. To lie is a serious activity that brings up in The Harp and the
Shadow rather important issues, including the nature of ction, as Cervantes
suggested by creating Cide Hamete Benengeli. In lying Columbus (and Car-
pentier) is creating or constructing a self, but is that not the way we all build
our self-image in this post-Freudian era? There is in lying a radical disconnec-
tion from the truth of the self as possibility and as actual performance, as
enunciation. But the act of lying itself is its own truth, like literature. Lying to
oneself, of course, is a more complicated act, which raises the issue of irony
and has at its root a measure of self-censure and even self-loathing that is
evident in Columbuss musings and even points at their source in Augustine. Is
ones sense of self also a pack of lies? What isnt a lie? Finally, for now, the
question is how is lying different from writing literature? Is literature not a
socially sanctioned form of lying? Beyond each work, if lying is the foundation
of the canon in Columbus, how can literature be edifying, almost in the literal
sense of apt to build monuments or become a monument itself, like the one of
Don Quijote and Sancho in Madrids Plaza de Espaa?
The disturbing point here is that Borges and Carpentier, following Cer-
vantes lead, nd literature and language fraught with lies, inconsistencies, and
discontinuities, all of which taken together may constitute a deeper kind of
truth about humankind. Carpentier was obviously aware of this and con-
fronts the issue of truthfulness with yet another prank. The other narrator of
The Harp and the Shadow is Pope Pius IX, Mastai Ferreti, who is pondering
the issue of whether or not to put forth the beatication of the admiral. Of all
the narrators mentioned here, Pope Pius IX is the only one institutionally
endowed with infallibility. But he also fails. He culls what he thinks is the truth
about the admiral from the record and forwards the petition to have him
beatied, only to have it denied at the trial years after his death. It is no trivial
prank for Carpentier to assume the voice of a pope. It was to several popes that
Pietro Martyre dAnghiera, perhaps more than Columbus the original Latin
American narrator, addressed his elegant history of the New World in the last
decades of the fteenth and early sixteenth century (Pietro Martyre was yet
another writer who did not use his native language, but he solved the issue by
writing in a language that no longer had native speakers: Latin). Mastai Fer-
retis failure to canonize Columbus is the nal meaning of Carpentiers sear-
ing meditation on literature and authorship, not to mention self-knowledge
 Novel after Cervantes 249

and self-projection. The canon, not even the inaugural founding text, can be
anointed with infallibility, particularly an American canon.
That the trial in this novel is a mock trial for beatication elevates the legal
to the otherworldly, but always with an ironic wink: it is like a rehearsal of the
nal judgment. The otherworldly in The Harp and the Shadow is the realm of
literature, represented in the novel by allusions to Inferno IV, the canto in
which limbo appears. A quotation from that canto is the epigraph to the last
section of Carpentiers novel. The souls of all the great gures of antiquity who
were not Christians only because they lived before Christ are placed in limbo.
They dwell there in a marvelous castle, in the timelessness of eternity, with a
faint smile on their facesneither happy nor sadforever engaged in conver-
sation about their works. Aristotle, Homer, Virgil are all there as in a per-
petual seminar on literature and philosophy. The same timeless quality obtains
in the trial about Columbuss beatication, in which writers from various
epochs appear as witnesses. The whole thing is like a translation of the history
of the novel, with crimes, punishments, archives, confessions, into a transcen-
dental realm leading to a kind of immortality, the only one imaginable in the
modern erathat hall of fame of literature whose register would today be
Harold Blooms The Western Canon. Its archive would be my own Myth and
Archive, literalized in The Harp and the Shadow by that lipsanatec, or reposi-
tory of ostea sacra (sacred bones), the relics classied and stored for future use
in churches throughout the world. The joke here, of course, is that there were
no authentic bones of Columbus, as there are none of Cervantes. Their last
worldly remains have disappeared, their texts their only trace, but as literature
these still bear evidence of the desire that shaped them: they are, to remember
Quevedo, dust in love.
 Notes

Introduction
1. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, tr.
Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953 [German original 1946]);
Alexander A. Parker, Literature and the Delinquent: The Picaresque Novel in Spain and
Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967).
2. Stuart B. Schwartz, Pecar en las colonias: Mentalidades populares, Inquisicin y
actitudes hacia la fornicacin simple en Espaa, Portugal y las colonias americanas,
Cuadernos de historia moderna (Madrid: Universidad Complutense), no. 18 (1997), pp.
5167.
3. Jean Canavaggio, Cervantes, tr. J. R. Jones (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990 [1986]),
p. 129.
4. Georges Bataille, Les larmes dEros (Paris: Pauvert, 1961).
5. Denis de Rougement, Love in the Western World, tr. Montgomery Belgion. Rev. ed.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983 [French original 1940]).
6. Alexander A. Parker, The Philosophy of Love in Spanish Literature: 14801680
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1975).
7. Quintiliano Saldaa, La criminologa de El Quijote (notas para su estudio), Revue
hispanique 68 (1926), p. 552; Rafael Salillas, La criminalidad y la penalidad en el
Quijote, El ateneo de Madrid en el III centenario de la publicacin de El ingenioso
hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha, conferencias (Madrid: Imprenta de Bernardo
Rodrguez, 1905), pp. 85118; Rafael Alvarez Vigaray, El derecho civil en la obra de
Cervantes (Granada: Editorial Comares, 1987), p. 43; Horacio N. Castro Dassen, El

251
252 Notes to Pages 13

derecho en Don Quijote (Buenos Aires: Aray, 1953), pp. 78 (but Castro Dassen also
speaks of Cervantes reading and studying the law, though not in a university context);
Ivo Domnguez, El derecho como recurso literario en las novelas ejemplares de Cervantes
(Montevideo: Publicaciones Lingsticas y Literarias del Instituto de Estudios Superiores
de Montevideo, 1972), p. 78. Others who have written on the law in Cervantes are:
Rodolfo Batiza, Don Quijote y el derecho: Cultura jurdica de don Miguel de Cervantes
(Mexico City: Librera de Manuel Porra, 1964); V. Carreras y Artau, La losofa del
derecho en el Quijote (Gerona: Carreras y Mas, 1903); Ignacio R. M. Galbis, Aspec-
tos forenses en la obra cervantina: El Quijote a la luz del derecho natural, in Cervantes:
Su obra y su mundo, actas del I congreso internacional sobre Cervantes, ed. Manuel
Criado de Val (Madrid: Edi-6, S.A., 1981), pp. 699705; Antonio Martn Gamero,
Jurisprudencia de Cervantes (Toledo: Fando e Hijo, 1870); Jos Prez Fernndez, Ensayo
humano y jurdico de El Quijote (Madrid: Imprenta Pueyo, 1965).

Chapter 1. The Prisoner of Sex

1. Edward Dudley has written in The Wild Man Goes Baroque: The role of love in
the Quijote is often overlooked in favor of more abstract considerations, but there is a
valid case for the proposition that love, that is, the relation between the sexes, is the basic
concern of the entire book. The Wild Man Within: An Image in Western Thought from
the Renaissance to Romanticism, ed. Edward Dudley and Maximillian E. Novak (Pitts-
burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), p. 119.
2. I base this generalization in the following statement by Bruce W. Wardropper in his
classic article on Caldern de la Barcas comic plays: In a comedy like Casa con dos
puertas these tragic dimensions [in the wife murder plays] are missing. The bachelors and
spinsters in our kind of play are not one esh. At most they are bound by a promise of
marriage which society and the Church recognize as provisional. It is no crime, no sin, to
break off an engagement. And in the skirmishings of courtship, in the prelude to mar-
riage, what will, after the ceremony, be a matter of life and death is just a risky game.
Calderns Comedy and His Serious Sense of Life, Hispanic Studies in Honor of Nich-
olson Adams, ed. John Esten Keller (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance
Languages and Literatures, 1966), p. 186.
3. Rougement, Love in the Western World.
4. Jos Antonio Maravall, The Origins of the Modern State, Journal of World His-
tory 6, no. 4 (1961), pp. 789808. It may be well to remember here that Ferdinand of
Aragon was one of the models for Machiavellis The Prince.
5. J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain: 14691716 (New York: St Martins Press, 1967), p. 75.
6. See Roberto Gonzlez Echevarra, Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American
Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). See also Francisco Romero de
Castilla y Perosso, Archivo general de Simancas (Madrid: Imprenta y Estereotipa de
Aribau y Compaa, 1873); and the recent edition of the Instruccin para el gobierno del
archivo de Simancas (ao 1588) (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura-Direccin eneral de
Bellas Artes y Archivos, 1989).
7. Francisco Toms y Valiente, El derecho penal de la monarqua absoluta (siglos XVI-
XVII-XVIII) (Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 1969).
 Notes to Pages 412 253

8. Cristbal de Chaves, Relacin de la crcel de Sevilla, ed. Jos Esteban (Madrid:

Clsicos El Arbol, 1983).
9. Richard L. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile: 15001700 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1981), p. 127.
10. Ejecutar el delito de noche o en despoblado eran circunstancias agravatorias,
porque en realidad disminuan las posibilidades de defensa y de auxilio a la vctima; su
cercana a la alevosa es clara; pero suele aludirse, especialmente a la de ejecutar el hecho
en yermo, con independencia de la alevosa. Toms y Valiente, El derecho penal de la
monarqua absoluta, p. 350.
11. Ibid., p. 252.
12. Gonzalo Martnez Dez argues that torture as a method of obtaining confessions
came from Roman law, not from the Visigoths, who did not include it or softened it in
their codes from the time they invaded the Peninsula until the Moorish invasion. It was
revived in the Siete partidas, which were inuenced by Bologna and with the resurgence
of Romanism during the Reconquest. It was abolished in the early nineteenth century. See
his La tortura judicial en la legislacin histrica espaola, Anuario de historia del
derecho espaol 32 (1962), pp. 223300.
13. Diccionario de autoridades (Madrid: Gredos, 1963 [172639]), 34, p. 38.
14. Sebastin de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espaola, ed. de Martn
de Riquer (Barcelona: Editorial Alta Fulla, 1987 [1611]), folio 300, recto.
15. Ibid., p. 854, folio 134, recto.
16. Kagan writes in his Lawsuits and Litigants: By the 1580s, law students at Sala-
manca numbered just over thirty-eight hundred, a gure that represented well over half of
the total number of students registered at the university (p. 142). And: Most educators
of the period believed that educations primary purpose was to prepare students for the
vita activa et civile, and in this context law was considered as the culmination of prelimi-
nary training in Latin, the classics, rhetoric, and philosophy. Law, moreover, was thought
to provide students with knowledge of the peaceful, ordered world of Imperial Rome,
which so many thinkers and statesmen in the sixteenth century sought to construct anew
in the guise of the Monarchia Christiana (p. 144).
17. Furthermore, universities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly
the larger ones, were notorious for their riotous life; drinking, gambling, and whoring
were common distractions. Richard L. Kagan, Students and Society in Early Modern
Spain (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 203.
18. I am following here the article by my good friend Stuart B. Schwartz, Pecar en las
colonias.
19. Don Juan also says mozo soy when he is caught with Isabela by his uncle and
the king. He tells his uncle Don Pedro: mozo soy y mozo fuiste;/y pues que de amor
supiste,/tenga disculpa mi amor. (I, 6264). I quote from Tirso de Molina: Comedias,
ed7th ed. , ed. Amrico Castro (Madrid: Clsicos Castellanos, 1963), p. 150.
20. In the Spain of the sixteenth century the distinction between crime and sin is
blurred as the gravity of the offence increases. This is certainly the case with incest. As
Toms y Valiente writes: Delito y pecado sern as realidades ms que paralelas con-
vergentes, y su gravedad se grada en cierto modo recprocamente. En los casos en que la
ley humana castiga acciones como la hereja, el adulterio o el incesto, tales delitos son
254 Notes to Pages 1221

graves y pueden penarse severamente porque encierran una grave ofensa a Dios, es decir,
porque son pecados mortales. El derecho penal de la monarqua absoluta, p. 221.
21. un pecado que llaman en latin incestus, que quier tanto dezir, como pecado que
ome faze yaziendo a sabiendas con su pariente, o con parienta de su muger, o de otra con
quien ouiesse yazido, fasta el quarto grado; o si yoguiesse alguno con su madrastra, o con
madre, o ja, o con su cuada o con su nuera, o si alguno yoguiesse con muger de Orden o
con su ajada o con su comadre, Cuarta partida, ttulo II, ley 13. I am quoting from Las
siete partidas del Sabio Rey D. Alfonso el Nono, copiadas de la edicin de Salamanca del
ao 1555 (Valencia: Joseph Thoms Lucas, 1758), partida IV, p. 27.

Chapter 2. Spanish Law and the Origins of the Novel

1. Ramn Menndez Pidal, La epopeya castellana a travs de la literatura espaola,
2nd ed. (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1959), p. 43. Also: Los invasores germnicos aportarn
una nueva concepcin sobre la funcin social de la justicia fundada en una autonoma
personal ms amplia de los hombres libres frente al poder del Estado, limitando as la
iniciativa del poder pblico en la investigacin y represin penal. El delito era ante todo
una ofensa personal, y el proceso, una relacin social teida de carcter privado. Mar-
tnez Dez, La tortura judicial, p. 233.
2. See Irene Zaderenko, El procedimiento judicial de riepto entre nobles y la fecha de
composicin de la Historia roderici y el Poema de mo Cid, Revista de lologa espa-
ola 78 (1998), pp. 18394. A somewhat dated, more comprehensive study is Alfonso
Otero Varelas El riepto en el derecho castellano-leons, in his Dos estudios histrico-
jurdicos (Rome: Cuadernos del Instituto Jurdico Espaol, no. 4, 1955), pp. 782.
3. Jacob Grimm, Von der Poesie im Recht, in Kleinere Schriften 6 (1882) (Hildes-
heim: Olms, 1991), pp. 15291; John A. Alford and Dennis P. Seniff, Literature and Law
in the Middle Ages: A Bibliography of Scholarship (New York: Garland, 1984), p. 5.
4. Colin Smith, The Making of the Poema de mo Cid (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), p. 81.
5. Charles M. Radding argues that the renewal had begun in Pavia in his The Origins of
Medieval Jurisprudence: Pavia and Bologna, 8501150 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1988).
6. John A. Alford, Literature and Law in Medieval England, PMLA 92, no. 5 (1977),
pp. 94849.
7. Ibid., p. 941.
8. Smith argues, based on internal evidence, that Per Abat was, at least, a civil lawyer
(as opposed to a canonical one). At the very least, he says, Abat was a notary: He [Abat]
was no mere outsider with an amateur interest, but a practising professional, to judge by
the detail that he deals in, the precision and unapologetic air of his terminology, and his
occasional mildly pedantic addition of matter not wholly relevant to plot or characterisa-
tion. He was at the least a notary, but beyond that, was acquainted with legal aspects of
marriage at high social levels and with affairs within the competence of the monarch
(The Making of the Poema de mo Cid, p. 79). On the author of La Celestina, see
Stephen Gilmans The Spain of Fernando de Rojas: The Intellectual and Social Landscape
of La Celestina (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), particularly pp. 3004.
 Notes to Pages 2127 255

9. Jos Bono, Historia del derecho notarial espaol, 2 vols. (Madrid: Junta de Decanos
de los Colegios Notariales de Espaa, 197982).
10. I have written on this in The Life and Adventures of Cipin: Cervantes and the
Picaresque, collected in my Celestinas Brood: Continuities of the Baroque in Spanish
and Latin American Literature (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 4565; and
more broadly in my Myth and Archive. See also Parkers Literature and the Delinquent.
11. Angel del Ro, Historia de la literatura espaola, rev. ed., vol. 1, Desde los orgenes
hasta 1700 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963 [1948]), p. 25.
12. Smith, The Making of the Poema de mo Cid, p. 77.
13. I am following in this the classic work by A. P. dEntrves, Natural Law: An
Introduction to Legal Philosophy (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1951).
14. Juan Ruiz (Arcipreste de Hita), Libro de buen amor, ed. Julio Cejador y Frauca
(Madrid: Clsicos CastellanosEspasa Calpe, 1963), p. 62.
15. Maravall, The Origins of the Modern State.
16. In Lawsuits and Litigants, Kagan writes: Outwardly, the royal judiciary in the six-
teenth century had many of the bureaucratic characteristics of modern government. . . .
But the resemblance ends there. It was actually closer to what Max Weber described as a
patrimonial bureaucracy. . . . Ofce in such bureaucracies is not conceived as a public
trust . . . but part of the private patrimony of the ruler (p. 166).
17. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).
18. See Maravall, The Origins of the Modern State,pp. 8034.
19. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, p. xx.
20. The Recopilacin contains 6,377 laws taken from among a total of more than
200,000an enormous number and yet only part of the total for a century of life (it
means an average of one law per day, granting that the Sunday was sanctied). Javier
Malagn Barcel, The Role of the Letrado in the Colonization of America, The Ameri-
cas 18, no. 1 (1961), p. 11. See also Francisco Mrquez Villanueva. Letrados, consejeros
y justicias (artculo-resea), Hispanic Review 53 (1985), pp. 20127.
21. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, p. 7.
22. Covarrubias offers this remarkable description of the discipline of the prisoners in
the galleys, which uncannily anticipates some of Foucaults: Tiene cosas particulares la
galera, que bastan a formar un buen volumen; pero yo slo quiero ponderar lo que
importa la disciplina, que la mayor parte de la chusma de los que estn al remo, son
hombres facinorosos, que cada uno por s traha alborotado un pueblo, sin poderse
averiguar con l, y dozientos dstos en una galera estn tan domsticos y disciplinados,
que a slo un silvo del cmitre ponen con tan gran presteza por obra lo que se les manda,
que parecen un pensamiento, sin discrepar uno de otro, como si todos ellos fuessen
miembros de una sola persona y se governassen por ella (Tesoro de la lengua castellana o
espaola, p. 621).
23. No es exageracin decir que caer en las redes de la justicia era una autntica
desgracia, que comportaba graves consecuencias difcilmente evitables, se fuese o no
culpable (Toms y Valiente, El derecho penal de la monarqua absoluta, p. 182); Siendo
as la situacin, lo mejor que poda hacer un individuo cuando se vea envuelto como
sujeto principal o secundario en una causa penal, era huir (p. 183).
256 Notes to Pages 2734

24. For details see the previously mentioned Romero de Castilla y Perosso, Archivo
general de Simancas; and Instruccin para el gobierno del archivo de Simancas.
25. As, la comn tradicin romanista, el mbito europeo de los sucesivos movi-
mientos culturales de la Edad Media, la difusin de la imprenta, las universidades y tantos
otros factores, produjeron la homogeneidad de trato de los problemas jurdicos penales, y
la similitud y parentesco entre las legislaciones y las obras cientcas elaboradas en todos
los pases europeos (Toms y Valiente, El derecho penal de la monarqua absoluta, p.
113). Kagan writes: Insistence on written procedures meant also that most lawsuits
consumed reams of paper, or as one royal visitor to the chancillera of Valladolid put it:
There are pleitos of ten thousand and twenty thousand pages (Lawsuits and Litigants,
p. 37). He adds: Briefs were so important that many litigants had their briefs printed and
elaborately bound at considerable expense (p. 61). The reason for this was also the
prestige that writing well acquired: both advocates and attorneys appear with increasing
frequency in the documents and literature of the fteenth century, and by the end of the
century the number of legal practitioners, qualied and unqualied, was increasing so
rapidly that the crown in 1495 required every new advocate to have studied both canon
and civil law at a recognized university for a xed term of years (later set at ve) (p. 63).
He adds: As letrados, advocates prided themselves on their learning and detailed knowl-
edge of law, and many were apt to display this expertise publicly in court . . . many of the
briefs they prepared were intentionally padded . . . to impress the judges (p. 69).
26. Antonio de Nebrija, Vocabulario espaol-latino (Madrid: Real Academia Espa-
ola, 1951 [1495]), fol. a. ii. v.
27. The entire passage in which this famous statement appears, which is the rst
sentence of the prologue to the Gramtica, in which Nebrija dedicates the work to the
queen, reads as follows: Cuando bien conmigo pienso, mui esclarecida Reina, i pongo
delante los ojos el antigedad de todas las cosas que para nuestra recordacin y memoria
quedaron escriptas, una cosa hllo y sco por conclusin mui cierta: que siempre la
lengua fue compaera del imperio; de tal manera lo sigui, que junta mente comenaron,
crecieron y orecieron, y despus junta fue la caida de entrambos. Gramtica de la
lengua castellana, ed. Antonio Quilis (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Ramn Areces, 1989),
p. 109.
28. See my Celestinas Brood.
29. Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in
Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987).
30. Auerbach, Mimesis.
31. Saldaa, La criminologa de El Quijote.
32. Toms y Valiente, El derecho penal de la monarqua absoluta, p. 127. Lazarillo de
Tormes also refers to his situation as a caso.
33. Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espaola, p. 316.
34. Smith, The Making of the Poema de mo Cid, p. 81.
35. Castro Dassen, El derecho en Don Quijote, pp. 12427.
36. Ignacio Rodrguez Guerrero, Tipos delincuentes del Quijote, 2 vols. (Quito: Edi-
torial Casa de la Cultura, 1966). For other work on law in Cervantes see the bibliography.
37. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, p. 20. This is an idea Kagan repeats several times:
Beginning in the mid-fteenth century, Castile entered a prolonged period of demo-
 Notes to Pages 3542 257

graphic change and economic expansion (p. 133); the changes set in motion by eco-
nomic expansion and population growth were the fundamental cause of much of the
increase in litigation recorded in Castiles courts (p. 136).

Chapter 3. Engendering Dulcinea

1. Courtly love in Spain has been studied by Otis Green in Spain and the Western
Tradition: The Castilian Mind in Literature from El Cid to Caldern, particularly volume
1 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), and more recently by Parker in The
Philosophy of Love in Spanish Literature. I have also proted from Robert Folgers
Images in Mind: Lovesickness, Spanish Sentimental Fiction, and Don Quijote (Chapel
Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 2002).
2. Ruth El Saffar and Diana de Armas Wilson make the following statement concerning
the purpose of their edited volume, Quixotic Desire: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on
Cervantes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993): The contributors to this volume
express, albeit in vastly different ways, what we see as a common vision of the Cervantes
unconscious, one that undermines the Freudian story in ways similar to the work of post-
Freudian writers such as Melanie Klein and Abraham and Torok. Kleins excavations in
the pre-oedipal real reveal the origins of the Terrible Mother in the childs frustration and
rage when she fails him. Although she is a source of gratication, her power to reject allies
her with Kali and Medusa and all the mythological gures that portray the monstrous
aspects of woman. It is precisely those aspectsthe terrifying, death-dealing, rejecting
aspects of the mother/goddessand the corresponding failure of the father to rescue the
son from her that Cervantes exposes in his works (p. 17).
Although my reading of Dulcinea here could perhaps be aligned with this view, I am
not comfortable with Freudian or revisionist-Freudian readings of Cervantes. I detect in
the editors statement much wishful thinking, as if it were possible, or more to the point
desirable, to turn Cervantes into a critic of Freuds patriarchal theories, thereby making
him acceptable to contemporary feminist doctrine. Don Quijote, because of his age and
the scanty details about his ancestry, is safely beyond the reach of the family romance
required to mount a Freudian (revisionist or not) attack on his works. Don Quijote is free
to invent himself, and because of his Christian faith, he is beyond original sin and guilt.
Cervantean irony, too, makes it difcult to make any ideology disguised as method stick
when applied to his work. The effect of irony is ux and transformation, so the gruesome
psychoanalytic melodrama, with its stock charactersterrifying mothers, castrating fa-
thers, and frightened childrenis dissolved by the laughter. There are valuable insights in
some of the pieces contained in this book, but Cervantes works (and his subconscious)
are, on the whole, out its of reach.
3. Schwartz, Pecar en las colonias.
4. See the entertaining and informative Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography, by Marion
Meade (New York: Penguin, 1991 [1977]).
5. Peter Gay, The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, vol. 2, The Tender Passion
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
6. Amrico Castro has argued that illiteracy was a sign of not being a converted Jew, as
reading, writing, and intellectual activities in general were associated with them. Old
258 Notes to Pages 4248

Christians like Sancho boasted of not being able to read and write. De la edad con-
ictiva: Crisis de la cultura espaola en el siglo XVII, 3rd ed. (Madrid: Taurus, 1972).
7. Toms y Valiente, El derecho penal de la monarqua absoluta, p. 47.
8. Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, tr. and ed. John Jay Parry (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 150.
9. Toms y Valiente writes: Segn una ley de las Partidas el estupro de mujer virgen
que no fuera monja se castigaba con la prdida de la mitad de los bienes si el estuprador
era ome honrrado, y con azotes y cinco aos de destierro en una isla si era ome vil.
Pero en la prctica esta ley no se cumpla; usualmente se impona la pena que el Derecho
Cannico sealaba a este delito, que era la de casarse con la estuprada o dotarla con una
cantidad de dinero jada por el juez; a esta pena alternativa se aada por costumbre de
los jueces castellanos otra de privacin de la libertad, para satisfacer con ella la vindicta
pblica. En resumen; el estuprador poda o casarse, o dotar, o ser preso, a su eleccin. El
derecho penal de la monarqua absoluta, p. 361. Kagan also adds: Virginity, for exam-
ple, was a highly prized asset for girls seeking a suitable marriage, yet court records of the
Habsburg era indicate that countless young women, often under the promise of mar-
riage, surrendered their ower and virginity to some insistent male. Such promises, then
as now, were easily broken; the difference is that it was customary in the sixteenth century
for the dishonored girl, through the ofces of her father, brother, or guardian, to bring the
man responsible into court. . . . the accused was given the alternative of either marrying
the girl or providing her with a dowry sufciently large as to render her attractive to other
prospective mates. Lawsuits and Litigants, p. 240.
10. Ruiz, Libro de buen amor, 2, p. 38.
11. Ciriaco Morn Arroyo, Dulcinea, in En un lugar de la Mancha: Estudios cervan-
tinos en honor de Manuel Durn, ed. Georgina Dopico Black and Roberto Gonzlez
Echevarra (Salamanca: Ediciones Almar, 1999), p. 209.
12. Andre Michalski, El retrato retrico en la obra cervantina, in Cervantes: Su obra
y su mundo, actas del I congreso internacional sobre Cervantes, ed. Manuel Criado de
Val (Madrid: EDI-6, 1981), pp. 3946. The author provides a useful survey of the rhetor-
ical portrait throughout Cervantes work.
13. Carroll B. Johnson, Madness and Lust: A Psychoanalytical Approach to Don
Quixote (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). I am not persuaded by John-
sons entertaining book. The niece plays a very small role in the book.
14. Diego Angulo Iiguez writes (and I translate loosely) that the Arabs, in representing
Medusas head, turned the blood that dripped from her neck into a beard, and the
beautiful Greek feminine head was transformed for centuries into the horrible face of a
giant. It comes into the West in this guise because of the technical superiority of Arabic
astronomical treatises, and appears so in Alfonso el Sabios Lapidario: La mitologa y el
arte espaol del renacimiento (Madrid: Imprenta y Editorial Maestre, 1952), p. 10.
15. Jocobo Sanz Hermidas Aspectos siolgicos de la duea dolorida: La meta-
morfosis de la mujer en hombre, Actas del tercer coloquio internacional de la Asocia-
cin de Cervantistas (Alcal de Henares, 1216 Noviembre 1990) (Alcal de Henares:
Anthropos-Editorial del Hombre, 1993), pp. 46372. Sherry Velasco makes valuable
connections between Cervantine masculine women and Juan Huarte de San Juans Exa-
men de ingenios in her Marimachos, Hombrunas, Barbudas: The Masculine Woman in
 Notes to Pages 4869 259

Cervantes Cervantes 20, no. 1 (2000), pp. 6978. Mary S. Gossy takes a more contem-
porary approach of the dyad Dulcinea-Aldonza in her Aldonza as Butch: Narrative
and the Play of Gender in Don Quijote, in Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writ-
ings, ed. Emilie L. Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith (Durham: Duke University Press),
pp. 1728.
16. Javier Herrero, The Beheading of the Giant: An Obscene Metaphor in Don Qui-
jote, Revista hispnica moderna, ao 29, no. 4 (197677), pp. 14149.
17. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, tr. Neville Coghill (Baltimore: Penguin,
1959), p. 117.
18. Volumen complementario, p. 484.
19. For details concerning the presence of Dante in this and other episodes of Part II,
see William T. Avery, Elementos dantescos del Quijote (segunda parte), Anales cervan-
tinos (Madrid), 1314 (197475), pp. 336.
20. Javier Herrero, Who Was Dulcinea? (New Orleans: Graduate School of Tulane
University, 1985), pp. 1718.

Chapter 4. The Knight as Fugitive from Justice

1. Chaves, Relacin de la crcel de Sevilla.
2. As quoted in Volumen complementario, p. 275.
3. See John M. Hill, Voces germanescas, recogidas y ordenadas (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press Publications in the Humanities, 1949).
4. See Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American
Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), and Jorge Maach, Inda-
gacin del choteo, 2nd. ed. (Havana: La Vernica, 1940 [1928]).
5. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (New York: Atheneum, 1966
[1957]).
6. Though there are debates about the exact date of composition of the book, it can be
safely said that the story had circulated in manuscript in the decades prior to its publica-
tion. The bibliography on this topic is endless. The best studies are to my mind Claudio
Guilln, Toward a Denition of the Picaresque and Genre and Countergenre: The
Discovery of the Picaresque, in his Literature as System (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1971), pp. 71106 and 13558; Fernando Lzaro Carreter, Lazarillo de Tormes en
la novela picaresca (Barcelona: Ariel, 1972); Parker, Literature and the Delinquent; and
my own The Life and Adventures of Cipin: Cervantes and the Picaresque, in Celes-
tinas Brood, pp. 4565.
7. Salillas, La criminalidad y la penalidad en el Quijote.
8. Ibid. See Pcaro, in Joan Corominass Diccionario crtico etimolgico castellano e
hispnico, cuarta reimpresin (Madrid: Gredos, 1997), 4, pp. 52023.
9. A. R. Nykl, Pcaro, Revue hispanique 77 (1929), pp. 17286. Nykl refutes this
theory, which had been advanced by De Haan.
10. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, p. 127.
11. Martnez Dez, La tortura judicial en la legislacin histrica espaola.
12. Javier Herrero, Sierra Morena as Labyrinth: From Wildness to Christian Knight-
hood, Forum for Modern Language Studies 27, no. 1 (1981), pp. 5567.
260 Notes to Pages 7282

13. The quotes are from Las siete partidas, Setena partida, ttulo I, ley 9; Setena
partida, ttulo VIII, ley 3; Setena partida, ttulo XXXIV, ley 4.

Chapter 5. The Amorous Pestilence

1. The Volumen complementario contains ample bibliographical information on pp.
35657n317.2.
2. Herrero, Sierra Morena as Labyrinth.
3. For a brilliant consideration of this topic, see Thomas Greene, The Light in Troy: Imi-
tation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).
4. Rougement, Love in the Western World. I have also been informed by Octavio Pazs
beautiful update of courtly loves legacy in his La llama doble: Amor y erotismo (Bar-
celona: Seix Barral, 1993).
5. Although I give the page number of Smolletts translation here I have had to recon-
struct the translation, for he left out that the uncle was a priest and missed completely the
legal inection that I discuss regarding poder.
6. Corominas, Diccionario crtico etimolgico castellano e hispnico, 4, pp. 17677;
Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espaola, p. 808.
7. Que no vala la carta del Rey, que donzella o biuda case contra su voluntad.
Don Alonso en Alcala peticion. 31. era 1386. Do Enrique. II. en Burgos era de. 1411
pe. 4. Do Iuan. I. en Burgos era. 1417. pe. 19.
Si acaesciere que por importunidad nos mandaremos dar alguna carta, o manda-
miento, para que alguna donzella o biuda, o otra qualquier, aya de casar co alguno,
contra su voluntad, y sin su cosentimiento, mandamos que la tal carta non vala: y que por
ella fuere emplazado, que no sea tenudo de parecer ante nos, y por no parecer no incurra
en pena alguna (Recopilacin de 1567, p. 39).
LEY XI
Que ningun seor apremie ninguna su vasalla para que case contra su voluntad.
Don Iuan.I. en Valladolid: ao de. 1385. peti. 7. Do Enrique. II.en Burgos era. 1411.
peticion. 4.
Mandamos q ningunos de los grandees de nuestros reynos, ni personas que tengan va-
sallos, apremien a ninguna duea ni donzella a que case contra su voluntad con ninguna
persona: ni assi mesmo apremien a los padres y madres de las tales mugeres para que se
hagan los tales casamientos, so pena de la nuestra merced. Y mandamos que sobre ello se
den nuestras cartas a quienquiera que las pidiera para el cumplimiento de ello (p. 40).
8. de mejor condicin es el varon que la muger en muchas cosas, e en muchas ma-
neras, assi como se muestra abiertamente en las leyes de los Titulos de este nuestro libro,
que fablan en todas estas razones sobredichas. Partida 4, ttulo XXIII, ley 2.
9. I am availing myself here of both Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o
espaola; and Corominas, Diccionario crtico etimolgico castellano e hispnico; as well
as Enrique Alcaraz Var and Brian Hughes, Diccionario de trminos jurdicos: Ingls-
espaol-spanish-english, 6th ed. (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 2002).
10. Volumen complementario, p. 301.
11. The link between Grisstomo and St. John Chrysostom has been pointed out
earlier by critics. Anthony Cascardi mentions that the names of the two main charac-
 Notes to Pages 8296 261

ters in this episode derive from the hagiographic tradition: Like his friend Ambrosio,
Grisstomo bears a saintly name; they recall Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Ambrose
(Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age [University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1997], p. 229). Carroll Johnson had already noted the irony in Cer-
vantes naming of Grisstomo: To say the least, Chrysostom goes well beyond Saint Paul
in recommending celibacy over marriage. His work enjoyed great inuence, and On
Virginity is one of the standard sources of support for the dogma of the virginity of Mary.
The name of Marcelas ill-fated lover, in other words, leads the reader, through an ironi-
cal Cervantine about-face to an unimpeachable source of justication for the life-style
that Marcela herself as adopted (Madness and Lust, p. 97).
12. See Herman Iventosch, Cervantes and Courtly Love: The Grisstomo-Marcela
Episode of Don Quijote, PMLA 89 (1974), pp. 6476. In a subsequent issue there was
an exchange of letters on the matter between Iventosch and Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce.
13. This is what Robert Folger contends in his well-argued and researched Images in
Mind: Love Sickness, Spanish Sentimental Fiction, and Don Quijote (Chapel Hill: North
Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 2002).
14. Ibid.
15. Frederick de Armas has skillfully teased out of the poem not only the Virgilian
elements derived from the pastoral, but even some that seem to reect the Aeneid, which
gives it an unsuspected epic cast (Cervantes and the Virgilian Wheel: The Portrayal of a
Literary Career, in European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Re-
naissance, ed. Patrick Cheney and Frederick A. de Armas [Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2002], pp. 26885). This adds value to the Cancin desesperada because it
thickens its eld of allusion to a pagan classical world within which Grisstomos suicide
is more congruent and increases his heterodox daring. But, to my mind, the Cancin
remains a hackneyed Renaissance poem.
16. There are two excellent articles on Don Quijotes and Marcelas speeches: Mary
Mackey, Rhetoric and Characterization in Don Quijote, Hispanic Review 42 (1974),
pp. 5166; Thomas R. Hart and Steven Rendall, Rhetoric and Persuasion in Marcelas
Address to the Shepherds, Hispanic Review 46 (1978), pp. 28798.
17. Renato Poggioli, The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 17374.
18. Hart and Rendall, Rhetoric and Persuasion in Marcelas Address to the Shep-
herds, p. 296.
19. Muerte civil meant that the person lost all rights, except the right to will property
after death. Through it the individual ceased to exist for the law.

Chapter 6. Broken Tales

1. Vicente Gaos, El Quijote y las novelas interpoladas, in his Claves de la literatura
espaola (Madrid: Guadarrama, 1971), pp. 18990.
2. I am following these books about the case: Andrea Peyser, Mother Love, Deadly
Love: The Susan Smith Murders (New York: Harper, 1995); George Rekers, Susan Smith:
Victim or Murderer? (Lakewood, Colo.: Glenbridge, 1996); Linda H. Russell and Shirley
Stephens, My Daughter Susan Smith (Brentwood, Tenn.: Authors Book Nook, 2000).
262 Notes to Pages 97105

3. Anthony G. Armsterdam and Jerome Bruner, Minding the Law (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 2000).
4. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed.
Michael Holquist, tr. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1981).
5. Edward Dudley writes the following about Cardenios injunction against interrup-
tions: as he proceeds it becomes evident that the real reason is that he is autistic and
wants above all not to be challenged in his dubious interpretation of the events. Only in
this way can he continue to blame fate (suerte) for what has happened. In reality the
events were all of his own making. The Wild Man Goes Baroque, p. 132.
6. Dudley maintains that Luscinda is not a virgin, that she and Cardenio had physical
communications before they met Don Fernando (ibid., p. 133). I see no evidence of this.
When Cardenio says that Luscinda cannot marry another because she is already his wife,
he means that they are betrothed to each other, not that they have consummated their
love. It seems to me out of character that the fainthearted Cardenio would have gone as
far as to deower Luscinda.
7. Francisco Rodrguez Marn, ed., El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha
(Madrid: Atlas, 1947), 2, pp. 33940n27.
8. Ren Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, tr.
Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965 [French original
1961]).
9. But in fact he [Cardenio] is an anti-Don Juan, a lover who has isolated himself from
his beloved, and this is the basis of his neurotic attraction for Fernando, the real Don
Juan. Both these young men are depicted by Cervantes as having serious sexual hang-ups,
and their none-too-healthy attraction for one another stems from their weakness. Dud-
ley, The Wild Man Goes Baroque, p. 129.
10. Partida II, ttulo XV, ley 2. The Partidas already argue that favoring the rstborn
male in matters of inheritance, particularly of kingdoms, prevents the properties dis-
memberment and weakening. See Alfonso el Sabio, Las siete partidas, II, pp. 17374.
11. Partida V, ttulo V, ley 2.
12. The legislation on mayorazgos in Cervantes time had been laid out in the Nueva
recopilacin of 1567. I am using the copy of this recopilacin in Madrids Biblioteca
Nacional, contained in the Repertorio de la Nueva Recopilacin, published by Diego de
Atienza in 1571. There is a more accessible reprint of the 1640 recopilacin published by
Editorial Lex Nova (Valladolid, 1982), in ve volumes, where the legislation on mayo-
razgos from the 1567 recopilacin is reprinted (2, pp. 1216).
13. Elliott, Imperial Spain, p. 103.
14. Rodrguez Marn, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2, p. 230.
15. Diccionario de la lengua espaola (Madrid: Real Academia EspaolaEspasa
Calpe, 1956), pp. 1, 186.
16. It may be well to recall here the already quoted passage by Kagan: Virginity, for
example, was a highly prized asset for girls seeking a suitable marriage, yet court records
of the Habsburg era indicate that countless young women, often under the promise of
marriage, surrendered their ower and virginity to some insistent male. Such promises,
then as now, were easily broken; the difference is that it was customary in the sixteenth
 Notes to Pages 105108 263

century for the dishonored girl, through the ofces of her father, brother, or guardian, to
bring the man responsible into court. . . . the accused was given the alternative of either
marrying the girl or providing her with a dowry sufciently large as to render her attrac-
tive to other prospective mates. Lawsuits and Litigants, p. 240.
17. See Zaderenko, El procedimiento judicial de riepto entre nobles y la fecha de
composicin de la Historia roderici y el Poema de mo Cid.Riepto means to tell again the
story of the insult. Covarrubias devotes two brief entries to it in his Tesoro de la lengua
castellana o espaola: riepto: Es segn la ley de partida acusamiento que faze un
dalgo a otro por corte, profaandol de la traicin o del aleve que le hizo; e tom este
nombre del riepto, que es una palabra de latn que quiere dezir recontar otra vez la cosa,
diziendola la manera como la zo, etc. Demanera que la ley le da la etymologa del verbo
repeto, is, vide supra verbo repto (p. 910). repto: Acusacin que pone un hidalgo
contra otro de alevosa; porque le haze culpado y reo se dixo reptar, y tal acusacin repto.
Es trmino castellano antiguo, de que usan nuestras cornicas y las leyes de la partida, las
quales le dan otra etymologa (pp. 9056). Toms y Valiente explains that the crown
made such duels unlawful to preserve for itself the right to punish and further harness in
the nobility by reducing their rights, but that it was unsuccessful and both kinds of
recourse survived together in the sixteenth century: Lo ms frecuente era la venganza
privada. Con lo cual el binomio ofensa-venganza privada, propio de las sociedades no
controladas por un poder pblico fuerte y ecaz detentador del ius puniendi; coexista
con la teora y legal pareja de conceptos delito-pena. He aqu una de las profundas
contradicciones de aquella sociedad regida por la Monarqua Absoluta. El derecho
penal de la monarqua absoluta, p. 48. The Council of Trent also prohibited the riepto,
canon 19, 25 session. Don Quijote invokes his right to riepto in the Duea Rodrguez
episode in Part II.
18. Herrero, Dudley, and Allen all speak in one form or another of the redemption
brought about by Don Quijote at the inn. Dudley observes that only the conicts that are
brought to the inn nd resolution. Herrero gives this a religious dimension. I have trouble
taking this seriously because Don Quijote is, after all, a ridiculous madman, and while it
could be argued that Gods providence is so pervasive and mysterious as to bring about
redemption through the agency of such a character, the opposite could also be argued:
that providence, chance, or whatever determines the course of events is a serendipitous,
comic force that does characteristically have its way in such laughable fashion. I have
trouble nding much solemnity and piety in the Quijote, without my denying that it is a
profoundly Christian book. See John J. Allen, The Providential World of Cervantes
Fiction, Thought 55, no. 217 (1980), pp. 18495; Dudley, The Wild Man Goes Ba-
roque; and Herrero, Sierra Morena as Labyrinth.
19. Herrero, Sierra Morena as Labyrinth, p. 55.
20. Luis A. Murillo, El Ur-Quijote, nueva hiptesis, Cervantes 1 (1981), pp. 4350;
Mara Antonia Garcs, Cervantes in Algiers: A Captives Tale (Nashville: Vanderbilt
University Press, 2002). The latter is by far the most complete and compelling study of
Cervantes captivity and its relation to his work. But it seems to me reductive to propose,
using trauma theory, that the experience in Algiers accounts for Cervantes devel-
opment into an author and much less to explain the Quijote. There were thousands
of captives in Algiers, but only one wrote the masterpiece. Cervantes turn to the
264 Notes to Pages 109113

autobiographical toward the end of the book is one more way of including himself in the
ction to create his favored innitely receding sequence and also to state obliquely that
even those truths that we think closest to us because they pertain to our lives can become
ction, or are indeed ctions. Garcss book, nevertheless, is very valuable to appreciate
the historical, cultural, and political background of the captives tale.
21. Ciriaco Morn Arroyo criticizes Francisco Mrquez Villanuevas interpretation,
who claims that Zoraida, a typically Cervantean character, exercises her desire for free-
dom within a religious context but not motivated by religion. Religionthat is, becom-
ing a Christianallows her to be free, even at the expense of bringing grief to her father,
Agi Morato. Morn Arroyo claims, on the contrary, that the whole tale takes place
within very precise theological guidelines, which he puts forth by quoting (mostly) from
Saint Thomas Aquinas. His point is that the issue of baptism is dealt with in a very strictly
theological way (she has not been baptized because she has not been in mortal danger,
and the baptism of adults should take place after learning about the faith, except if faced
by a life-threatening danger). The same is true, he maintains, regarding Zoraidas use of
her fathers wealth and her leaving him behind in grief. Conversion to Christianity justi-
ed any break with natural relations of kinship, if these came into conict with the duty
to convert that anyone who had heard about the Christian doctrine had. All of this
sounds plausible, but it is hard to imagine Cervantes as a theologian, and much less as a
Scholastic theologian. See Morn Arroyos La historia del cautivo y el sentido del Qui-
jote, Iberoromania (Tubingen), no. 18 neue folge (1983), pp. 91105. Mrquez Villa-
nuevas study is contained in his Personajes y temas del Quijote (Madrid: Taurus,
1975).
22. Volumen complementario, pp. 31617.
23. Edward Dudley, The Endless Text: Don Quixote and the Hermeneutics of Ro-
mance (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 260.
24. The last episode of the book is the prologue. Read from next to last page of
Prlogo, which gives the text a circularity and self-enclosed characterthere is no
outside authority to determine its shape.

Chapter 7. The Politics of Love and Law

1. See the introduction to Alonso Fernndez de Avellaneda, El ingenioso hidalgo Don
Quijote de la Mancha, ed. F. Garca Salinero (Madrid: Castalia, 1987), p. 31.
2. Dudley, The Wild Man Goes Baroque, p. 119.
3. Raymond R. MacCurdy and Alfred Rodrguez, Algo ms sobre la visitacin sub-
terrnea de Sancho Panza, Crtica hispnica 3, no. 2 (1981), pp. 14147. They write:
El paralelo que estudiamos, con ofrecer una curiosa parodia de una parodia, resulta,
asimismo, una manera de espejo reector de todo el proceso creativo de Cervantes en su
obra maestra (p. 143). And also: Cervantes elabora con la aventura sanchopan-
cescapor lo menos para el lector que recoja todos los indicios que siembra el nove-
listauna innovadora y, a la vez, socarrona re-parodia-. Con ello toca el gran novelista,
adrede, los lmites estticos de su propio proceder artstico. Pues lmite de la creacin
pardica parece ser, y lmite innovador e insuperable, una auto-parodia que es, adems,
parodia de una parodia (p. 145).
 Notes to Pages 114119 265

4. The irrepressible Covarrubias has the following to say under alvedrio: Y otras
vezes arbitrio vale tanto como parecer que uno da; y el da de oy ase estrechado a
signicar una cosa bien perjudicial, que es dar traas como sacar dineros y destruir el
Reyno; porque de ordinario los que dan estos arbirtrios son gente perdida. Verdad es que
a estos tales pocas vezes se les da oydos, porque como ha de pasar el arbitrio por hombres
de ciencia y de conciencia, se los rechaan, y entre otros males que hazen es acovardar a
los que podran darlos, por el mal nombre que han puesto a este genero de suplir neces-
sidades y remediar faltas. Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espaola, p. 108.
5. Elliott, Imperial Spain, p. 294. For Elliotts more recent and exhaustive treatment of
Spains problems see his The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in the Age of
Decline (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).
6. Elias Rivers, Cervantes y Garcilaso, Homenaje a Jos Manuel Blecua (Madrid:
Gredos, 1983), pp. 56570. Rivers sees the presence of Garcilaso as part of a retrench-
ment into a kind of classicism. These are the allusions to Garcilaso in Part II: in chapter 8
there is an allusion to Garcilasos Egloga III; in chapter 12, the sonnet that the Caba-
llero del Bosque recites is very Garcilasian; Lorenzo de Miranda is a poet in the Garcilaso
mold in chapter 18; in chapter 46, Don Quijotes own poems sound very much like
Garcilaso; in chapter 58, the Arcadians are prepared to do a reading of a Garcilaso
eclogue; in chapter 69, during Altisidoras funeral, a whole stanza from Egloga III is
inserted in the poem read out loud, and when in the next chapter the musician is quizzed
about this he practically says that Garcilaso is part of a general poetic discourse, and
hence need not be acknowledged as source.
7. See Manuel Durn, La ambigedad en el Quijote (Xalapa: Universidad Vera-
cruzana, 1960).
8. See my Cervantes y la narrativa hispanoamericana moderna: Borges y Carpentier,
Unin (Havana), ao 10, no. 37 (1999), pp. 413. This essay is incorporated into the last
chapter of the present book.
9. Amrico Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes. Anejos de la Revista de Filologa Es-
paolaAnejo VI (Madrid: Imprenta de la Librera y Casa Editorial Hernando, 1925),
p. 249.
10. Green, Spain and the Western Tradition, 4, p. 44.
11. See Helmut Hatzfeld, Baroque Style: Ideology and the Arts, Bucknell Review 7,
no. 2 (1975); pp. 7179; also my Celestinas Brood and Los dos nales de La vida es
sueo: Una lectura cervantina, in Literatura y pensamiento en Espaa: Estudios en
honor de Ciriaco Morn Arroyo, ed. Francisco La Rubia-Prado (Newark, Del.: Juan de la
Cuesta, 2003), pp. 5575.
12. Jos J. Arrom, Esquema generacional de las letras hispanoamericanas: Ensayo de
un mtodo, 2nd ed. (Bogot: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1977), p. 66.
13. See chapters 2 and 3 of Ciriaco Morn Arroyos Nuevas meditaciones del Qui-
jote (Madrid: Gredos, 1976), pp. 58159. Morn Arroyo traces convincingly the per-
vasiveness of Neoscholastic discourse in the period and its echoes in Cervantes prose. I
am less convinced by the underlying thesis of his book that the Quijote is shot through
with Neoscholasticism.
14. See my Myth and Archive.
266 Notes to Pages 119141

15. Richard M. Morse, Political Foundations, in Man and Society in Latin American
History, ed. Sheldon B. Liss and Peggy K. Liss (New York: Praeger, 1972), pp. 7278.
16. Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966).
17. Helmut Hatzfeld has noticed that Velzquez liked to paint people at work, as in Las
hilanderas and La fragua de Vulcano. See his excellent Artistic Parallels in Cervantes
and Velzquez, Estudios dedicados a Menndez Pidal (Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Cientcas, 1952), 3, pp. 26597.
18. Manuel Durn, Cervantes (New York: Twayne, 1974), p. 107.
19. Giuseppe Mazzotta, Cosmopoiesis: The Renaissance Experiment (Toronto: Uni-
versity of Toronto Press, 2001).
20. Simone Pinet, El Amads de Gaula como arte de marear: En torno a la nsola non
fallada, Medievalia 31 (June 2000), pp. 2335.
21. Anthony Grafton, April Shelford, and Nancy Siraisi, New Worlds, Ancient Texts:
The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 1.
22. Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo: Resemblances between the Psychic Lives of
Savages and Neurotics, tr. A. A. Brill (New York: Vintage, 1946), p. 67.
23. Ibid., 69.
24. Ibid.
25. The fullest treatment of this is in Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares.

Chapter 8. A Marriage Made in Heaven

1. Stanislav Zimic, El engao a los ojos en las Bodas de Camacho del Quijote,
Hispania 55 (1972), p. 882.
2. I quote from Rolfe Humphries translation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1955), p. 3.
3. John Sinnigen, Themes and Structures in the Bodas de Camacho, Modern Lan-
guage Notes 84, no. 2 (1969), pp. 16768.
4. I am following, almost translating, and paraphrasing Marcel Bataillon, Cervantes y
el matrimonio cristiano, in his Varia leccin de clsicos espaoles (Madrid: Gredos,
1964), pp. 23855.
5. But clandestine marriages had been forbidden since the Leyes de Toro of 1505,
issued under the Catholic kings. Here is the text of the law, incorporated into subsequent
Recopilaciones: Mandamos que el contraxere matrimonio, que la yglesia tuuiere por
clandestino con alguna muger, que por el mismo fecho el y los que en ello interuinieren, y
los que de tal matrimonio fueren testigos, incurran en perdimiento de todos sus bienes, y
sean aplicados a nuestra camara y sco, y sean desterrados destos nuestros reynos, en los
quales no entren sopena de muerte. y que esta sea justa causa para el padre y la madre
puedan deseredar si quisieren a sus hijos, o hijas, que el tal matrimonio contraxeren, en lo
qual otro ninguno no pueda acusar, sino el padre: y la madre, muerto el padre. I quote
from Repertorio de la Nueva recopilacion de las leyes del Reyno, hecho por el Licen-
ciado, Diego de Atiena, con privilegio. Impreso en Alcal, en casa de Andres de Angulo,
Ao de 1571. This volume contains the 1567 Recopilacin, with indices compiled by
Diego de Atienza. The text quoted is from libro quinto, ttulo primero, De los casa-
 Notes to Pages 141162 267

mientos, p. 280. It is reproduced, with minor changes, in Recopilacin de las leyes de

estos reynos [1640], 2, p. 2, recto. As with riepto, the crown wanted to exercise control
over all social commerce, while the people, probably the aristocrats, wanted the freedom
to do as they pleased.
6. Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes, pp. 37678n74.
7. This is also the opinion of Crisanto Rodrguez-Arango Daz in his exhaustive El
matrimonio clandestino en la novela cervantina, Anuario de historia del derecho es-
paol 25, no. 1 (1955), pp. 73174.
8. See the probing discussion of this concept in Georgina Dopico Black, Perfect Wives,
Other Women: Adultery and Inquisition in Early Modern Spain (Durham: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 2001).
9. For England see Frederick S. Boas, Ovid and the Elizabethans (London: English
Association, 1947).
10. Rudolph Schevill, Ovid and the Renascence in Spain (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1913).
11. Angulo Iiguez, La mitologa y el arte espaol del renacimiento, p. 9. This mono-
graph is particularly informative about painting and the decorative arts. See also Angulos
more narrowly focused Velzquez y la mitologa, III centenario de la muerte de Velz-
quez conmemorado por el Instituto de Espaa (Madrid: Imprenta de Editorial Magis-
terio Espaol, 1961), pp. 4962; and Hatzfelds Artistic Parallels in Cervantes and
Velzquez.
12. Angulo Iiguez, La mitologa y el arte espaol del renacimiento, p. 11.
13. Jos Ortega y Gasset, Tres cuadros del vino (Tiziano, Poussin y Velzquez),
Obras completas (Madrid: Alianza Editorial-Revista de Occidente, 1983), 2, p. 58. A
different view is expressed by Diego Angulo Iiguez, who maintains that Velzquez
simply turns his back on the idealization of pagan gods typical of the Renaissance but
does not mock them. See his Velzquez y la mitologa.
14. Jonathan Brown, Velzquez: Painter and Courtier (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1986), p. 66.
15. Ibid., 74.
16. Ibid., 253.
17. John J. Allen and Patricia Finch, Don Quijote en el pensamiento de Occidente:
Una seleccin, in En un lugar de La Mancha: Estudios cervantinos en honor de Manuel
Durn, ed. Georgina Dopico Black and Roberto Gonzlez Echevarra (Salamanca: Cole-
gio de Espaa, 1999), pp. 2335.

Chapter 9. Love and National Unity

1. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 186.
2. Angel Gonzlez Palencia, Cervantes y los moriscos, Boletn de la Real Academia
Espaola (Nmero especial para conmemorar el cuarto centenario del nacimiento de
Cervantes), 27 (194748), p. 115.
3. Mrquez Villanueva, El morisco Ricote o la hispana razn de estado, in his
Personajes y temas del Quijote, pp. 229335. This piece contains a great amount of
useful information, but it is marred by the authors perspective, which is that of a critic of
268 Notes to Pages 163176

modern Spain as a projection of the Spain of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
following the theories of Amrico Castro. According to this view Cervantes could not
have had but a negative opinion of the expulsion, being, as Mrquez Villanueva anachro-
nistically calls him, un liberal instintivo (p. 305). Ricotes statement praising the man in
charge of enforcing the order of expulsion causes Mrquez Villanueva great distress and
leads him to distortions such as the one just quoted.
4. Salillas, La criminalidad y la penalidad en el Quijote.
5. Elliott, Imperial Spain, pp. 22728.
6. Luce Lpez-Baralt, The Moriscos,in The Literature of Al-Andalus, ed. Mara
Rosa Menocal, Saymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2000), p. 476.
7. Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espaola. turco. Esta nacin es ms
conocida de lo que avamos menester, por aver venido a seorear tan gran parte del orbe;
gente baxa y de malas costumbres, que vivan de robar y maltratar a los dems. . . . Ay
historias particulares desta gente. El padre fray Gernimo Romn en la Repblica de los
Turcos haze mencin de su origen y etymologa, diziendo averse llamado turcos, porque
se davan a robar y vivan como brvaros, y eran muy pobres y no les pareca hazer agravio
a nadie tomando lo ageno (p. 983).
8. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 232.
9. As quoted by Mrquez Villanueva, Personajes y temas del Quijote, p. 264.
10. Ramn Menndez Pidal, Flor nueva de romances viejos, 19th ed. (Madrid: Austral,
1973), p. 54.
11. Marcelino Menndez Pelayo, Orgenes de la novela, ed. Enrique Snchez Reyes
(Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaeines Cientcas, 1961), 2, pp. 9091.
12. For the potential inuence of this book on the genesis of the Quijote see Bruce W.
Wardropper, Don Quixote: Story or History? Modern Philology 53 (1965), pp. 111.

Chapter 10. The Exemplariness of the Exemplary Stories

1. y es as, que yo soy el primero que he novelado en lengua castellana. Miguel de
Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares, ed. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce (Madrid: Clsicos Castalia,
1982), 1, p. 4. All quotations in the text are from this edition. I am the rst to write short
stories [novellas] in Castilian. Exemplary Stories, tr. and ed. Lesley Lipson (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 5. This volume does not contain The Call of the
Blood, which I quote from Spanish Stories and Tales, ed. Harriet de Ons (New York:
Pocket Library, 1956), pp. 2443. The translation is by Harriet de Ons.
2. Avalle-Arce writes: el mtodo de composicin cervantino implicaba escribir varias
obras a la vez, al menos en sus ltimos aos. Miguel de Cervantes, Los trabajos de
Persiles y Sigismunda, ed. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce (Madrid: Clsicos Castalia, 1970), p.
46n10. El Saffars teleology leads her to the unacceptable notion that Cervantes whole
work was moving from a realistic novel form to an idealistic, romance-style one, which
would seem to have things backward. The romance form, culminating in the Persiles,
would be the completion of a religious itinerary that took Cervantes from skepticism to
belief. See From Novel to Romance: A Study of Cervantess Novelas ejemplares (Bal-
timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).
 Notes to Pages 176186 269

3. See my introduction to The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 322.
4. Amrico Castro, La ejemplaridad de las novelas cervantinas, in Hacia Cervantes,
3rd ed. (Madrid: Taurus, 1967), pp. 45174.
5. Alban K. Forcione, Cervantes and the Humanist Vision: A Study of Four Exemplary
Stories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).
6. Bruce W. Wardropper, La eutrapelia en las Novelas ejemplares de Cervantes,
Actas del sptimo congreso de la Asociacin Internacional de Hispanistas, ed. Giuseppe
Bellini (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1982), pp. 15369.
7. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, introduction to Novelas ejemplares, I, p. 25.
8. Durn, Cervantes, pp. 7172.
9. See list provided by Ruth El Saffar in her From Novel to Romance, p. 128n21.
10. The process of discovery and its relation to trauma anticipates Freuds theories of
the uncanny in his well-known essay The Uncanny, in Creativity and the Uncon-
scious: Papers on the Psychology of Art, Literature, Love, Religion, ed. Benjamin Nelson
(New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958), pp. 12261.
11. Toms y Valiente, El derecho penal de la monarqua absoluta, p. 361.
12. Francisco Toms y Valiente, El perdn de la parte ofendida en el derecho pe-
nal castellano (siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII), Anuario de historia del derecho espaol 31
(1961), p. 70.
13. Alban K. Forcione, Cervantes and the Humanist Vision, pp. 35497; and John J.
Allen, El Cristo de la Vega and La fuerza de la sangre, Modern Language Notes 83,
no. 2 (1968), pp. 27175. R. P. Calgraft also offers a religious interpretation in his
Structure, Symbol, and Meaning in Cervantes La fuerza de la sangre, Bulletin of
Hispanic Studies 58 (1981), pp. 197203.
14. This is the reason feminist interpretations of the story, such as Marcia L. Welless
and Rosilie Hernndez Pecoraros, do not reach the disturbing core of the story, which is
not precisely a moral one, as they would wish. The same is true of Edward Friedmans
reading, which is based on a bourgeois sense of what is right that is irrelevant to The Call
of the Blood, where evil is a force beyond the ethical. See Marcia L. Welles, Rape and
Resolution of Class Conict: Cervantes La fuerza de la sangre, in her Persephones
Girdle: Narratives of Rape in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Literature (Nashville: Van-
derbilt University Press, 2000), pp. 3950; Rosilie Hernndez Pecoraro, La fuerza del
amor or the Power of Self-Love: Zayas Response to Cervantes La fuerza de la sangre,
Hispanic Review 70 (2002), pp. 3957; Edward Friedman, La fuerza de la sangre and
the Rhetoric of Power, in Cervantes Exemplary Novels and the Adventure of Writ-
ing, ed. Michael Nerlich and Nicholas Spadaccini (Minneapolis: Prisma Institute, 1989),
pp. 12556.
15. Ivo Domnguez notes that Luisicos smaternal grandparents efforts to educate him
stem from their knowledge that, because of inheritance laws, they would not be able to
will him much of their already meager fortune. It is another instance that shows Cer-
vantes familiarity with current legislation. See his El derecho como recurso literario en
las novelas ejemplares de Cervantes, p. 54. Alvarez Vigaray adds further details in El
derecho civil en la obra de Cervantes, pp. 16263.
270 Notes to Pages 187195

16. It is remarkable that Azorn (Jos Martnez Ruiz) nds the moonlight the most
memorable element in the story. See his Al margen de la fuerza de la sangre, in Con
Cervantes (Buenos Aires: Austral, 1947), pp. 3840.
17. Kagan writes: Although some humanist thinkers, notably Juan Luis Vives (1492
1540), acknowledged the importance of education in helping to mold a mans character
and wit, most Castilians believed otherwise; nature, not nurture, was the key to character,
intelligence, and personality. Blood determined a mans good qualities as well as his bad
ones. Lawsuits and Litigants, pp. 19495.
18. David M. Gitlitz, Symmetry and Lust in Cervantes La fuerza de la sangre, in
Studies in Honor of Everett W. Hesse, ed. William C. McCrary and Jos A. Madrigal
(Lincoln, Neb.: Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, 1981), p. 121.

Chapter 11. The Bride Who Never Was and Her Brood
1. In my view Claudio Guilln inaugurates the modern approach to these novels in
Toward a Denition of the Picaresque and Genre and Countergenre: The Discovery of
the Picaresque. I have written on the matter in The Life and Adventures of Cipin:
Cervantes and the Picaresque, in Celestinas Brood, pp. 4565. The bibliography on the
subject is immense so I will allude only to items relevant to my discussion. In general, the
most important studies are by Pamela Waley, The Unity of the Casamiento engaoso
and Coloquio de los perros, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 34 (1975), pp. 20112; Ruth
El Saffar, El casamiento engaoso y El coloquio de los perros, Critical Guide to
Spanish Texts 17 (London: Grant and Cutler, 1976); E. C. Riley, Cervantes, Freud, and
Psychoanalytic Narrative Theory, Modern Language Review 88 (1993), pp. 114; Al-
ban K. Forcione, Cervantes and the Mystery of Lawlessness: A Study of El casamiento
engaoso and El coloquio de los perros (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984);
and Galen Brokaw, Holistic Fiction: Cervantes El casamiento engaoso and El colo-
quio de los perros, Romance Languages Annual 10 (1999), pp. 46066. The most
thorough among these is Forciones thickly contextualized and tightly argued study of the
two Cervantes stories under discussion here. As in his work on other works by Cervantes,
Forcione provides a wealth of pertinent information regarding doctrinal, philosophical,
and theological writings of the period against which he pits the stories. The overarching
ideological mantle is the pith of form, which is predictably that of romance and drawn
from miracle stories where shape and belief coalesce in the cultural imagination. This
form is temporarily unsettled by Cervantes tales, only to be reconstituted even if only in a
virtual or proleptic fashion. Forciones work is extremely helpful but, to my mind, off the
mark because he assumes a Cervantes obsessed with theological issues (being part of a
fanatically Catholic Spain) and shufing narrative genres handed down by Renaissance
tradition (satire, romance, and so on), as if deciding which one to use or parody. Lawless-
ness is tantamount to disorder in an abstract way not related, as I try to do in this book, to
actual laws. To my mind, Cervantes take on the picaresque and on literature in general is
more independent of religious concerns and of literature itself as conceived by authors
still under the sway of Renaissance ideals. In other words, my Cervantes is more lay and
modern in his conception of narrative ction. In saying this I by no means wish to devalue
Forciones distinguished work, from which I prot more than I probably know.
 Notes to Pages 197211 271

2. Salillas, La criminalidad y la penalidad en el Quijote.

3. For a convincing expansion of these ideas, see Giancarlo Maiorinos At the Margins
of the Renaissance: Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque Art of Survival (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).
4. See Originality: The New Literary Genres, in Greens Spain and the Western
Tradition.
5. Leo Spitzer, Linguistic Perspectivism in the Don Quijote,in Leo Spitzer: Represen-
tative Essays, ed. Alban K. Forcione, Herbert Lindenberger, and Madeline Sutherland
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 22571. The piece was originally pub-
lished in 1948.
6. Auerbach, The Enchanted Dulcinea, in Mimesis, pp. 33458.
7. Quotes of the original and translation are from Novelas ejemplares, ed. Avalle-Arce;
Exemplary Stories, tr. Lipson.
8. Mara Rosa Menocal, Life Itself: Storytelling as the Tradition of Openness in the
Conde Lucanor, in Oral Tradition and Hispanic Literature: Essays in Honor of Samuel
G. Armistead, ed. John Miles Foley and Mishael M. Caspi (New York: Garland Press,
1995), pp. 46995.
9. Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espaola, 314.
10. Corominas, Diccionario crtico etimolgico castellano e hispnico, 5, p. 751.
11. My friend and Yale colleague Mercedes Carreras, a Spanish lawyer, tells me that
because of the false information wilfully furnished by the bride and groom the marriage
could be annulled according to still-current legislation in Spain. Other crimes committed
by Estefana include her illegal occupation of the house and the injury (syphilis) that she
inicted upon Campuzano. According to canon law the marriage was also invalid. All
this applied too in the time of Cervantes.
12. The falsication of family relations is what this story has in common with The
Pretended Aunt, of course. It not only constituted a fraud, it was a crime by virtue of the
fact that blood ties are at the foundation of many legal relations. The fake aunt, a
Celestina type like the witches in The Dialogue of the Dogs, uses her fake niece, passing
her off as a virgin by performing restorative surgeries on her. In so doing she is also
falsifying one of the most important assets a woman had, particularly if she planned
to marry.
13. E. C. Riley was the rst to show that the dialogic setting of the storythe frame
dialogue and the story itselfis very much like a psychoanalytic session. He begins by
recalling Freuds own fondness for this Cervantean tale, and suggests that in this (as in
other cases), literature not only anticipated psychoanalysis but actually inuenced its
development. Riley goes on to demonstrate how the episode recounting the birth of the
dogs from the witch ts with Freudian notions of the primal scene. But Riley is not
willing to take the step of saying that the whole thingboth The Deceitful Marriage
and The Dialogue of the Dogsis Campuzanos autobiography, though he does ask:
Recalling that the colloquy has been written down by Campuzano and by Cervantes,
one might well ask: whose autobiography is it anyway. Cervantes, Freud, and Psycho-
analytic Narrative Theory, p. 8.
14. Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espaola, 933.
15. Mary Gaylord has noted that gures of the author in Cervantes are consistently
272 Notes to Pages 212232

characters with one or several aws and of dubious authority. See her Cervantes Por-
trait of the Artist, Cervantes 3, no. 2 (1983), pp. 83102.
16. Riley, Cervantes, Freud, and Phsychoanalytic Narrative Theory.

Chapter 12. Cervantes Literary Will

1. Miguel de Cervantes, Obras completas, ed. Angel Valbuena Prat (Madrid: Aguilar,
1962), p. 181 (my translation).
2. From The Adventures of Don Quixote, tr. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1950), p.
466. Smolletts translation does not include this text.
3. Durn, Cervantes, p. 174.
4. El Persiles, testamento de Cervantes, nos lo muestra profundamente preocupado
por la apasionante cuestin de la verdad de la historia que relata. Marcel Bataillon,
Erasmo y Espaa: Estudios sobre la historia espiritual del siglo XVI, tr. Antonio Alatorre
(Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1966), p. 780.
5. Dudley, The Wild Man Goes Baroque,p. 116.
6. Durn, Cervantes, pp. 15556.
7. Menndez Pelayo, Cultura literaria de Miguel de Cervantes y la elaboracin del
Quijote, in Discurso acerca de Cervantes y el Quijote ledo en la Universidad Central, el
8 de mayo de 1905 (Madrid: Librera Cutenberg de Jos Ruiz, 1905), p. 14.
8. Alban Forcione, Cervantes, Aristotle, and the Persiles (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1970) and Cervantes Christian Romance: A Study of Persiles y Sigis-
munda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972).
9. Joaqun Casalduero, Sentido y forma de Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1947). Entwistles review appeared in Modern
Language Review 43 (1948), pp. 42629.
10. Forcione, Cervantes Christian Romance, 58.
11. Forcione Cervantes, Aristotle, and the Persiles, 3.
12. Forcione, Cervantes Christian Romance, 56.
13. Eduardo Gonzlez, Erase una vez una isla obstinada. . . , in La persona y el
relato: Proyecto de lectura psicoanaltica (Madrid: Jos Porra Turanzas, 1985), pp.
10752.
14. Diana de Armas Wilson, Allegories of Love: Cervantess Persiles and Sigismunda
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 252.
15. Parker, The Philosophy of Love in Spanish Literature, p. 123.
16. Miguel de Cervantes, The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda: A Northern Story, tr.
Celia Richmond Weller and Clark A. Colahan (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989), p. 17; Cervantes, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, pp. 5152.

Chapter 13. The Novel after Cervantes

1. On Balzacs legal training and its inuence on the Comdie humaine, see Harry
Levin, The Gates of Horn: A Study of Five French Realists (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1963), pp. 16768.
 Notes to Pages 233236 273

2. I am quoting from the following editions. Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote,
in Jorge Luis Borges: Collected Fictions, tr. Andrew Hurley (New York: Viking, 1998),
pp. 8895; Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote, Obras completas (Buenos Aires: Emec,
1974), pp. 44450. (The story was rst collected in Ficciones (1944), but it is signed
Nmes, 1939) The Harp and the Shadow, tr. Thomas Christensen and Carol Chris-
tensen (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1990); El arpa y la sombra (Mexico City: Siglo
XXI Editores, 1979).
3. Irving A. Leonard, Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the
Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World, ed. with a new
introduction by Rolena Adorno (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 307.
4. For the background of this see Anthony Close, The Romantic Approach to Don
Quixote: A Critical History of the Romantic Tradition in Quixote Criticism (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
5. Of course I am referring only to Spanish-speaking Latin America. A more com-
prehensive treatment would have to include Machado de Assiss Memorias postumas de
Bras Cubas, whose playful narrator is perhaps the most direct descendant of Don Qui-
jotes. I have studied the link between the Spanish and Latin American baroque in Celes-
tinas Brood.
6. See my Carpentier, crtico de la literatura hispanoamericana: Asturias y Borges,in
Isla a su vuelo fugitiva: Ensayos crticos sobre literatura hispanoamericana (Madrid:
Ediciones Jos Porra Turanzas, 1983), pp. 179203.
7. I am quoting from Nota sobre el Quijote,in Pginas de Jorge Luis Borges, selec-
cionadas por el autor, estudio preliminar de Alicia Jurado (Buenos Aires: Editorial Celta,
1982), p. 175. See also Magias parciales del Quijote, in Obras completas (Buenos
Aires: Emec, 1974), p. 667.
8. But beyond this, as an approach, perhaps even as a method, I prefer to derive my
readings of texts and plot literary history from what I conceive as the readings of an
earlier text performed by a later one: Cobra of Celestina, for instance. I do not see such
critical rewritings as anxious misreadings in a struggle for an ever elusive and undenable
originality, as does my truly dear friend and colleague Harold Bloom. I view them,
instead, as homages to the tradition, celebrations of the still living and currently relevant
(vigentes) elements of a classical text. I understand these rather as instances of sheltering
and legitimation that reactivate the classic, under whose aegis and guise the new text
emerges. I much prefer the readings embedded in the new literary text than the work by
writers turned critics about the classics (I like Terra Nostra innitely more than Cervantes
o la crtica de la lectura). I would not deny that my preference may be due to the need for
my critical intervention to draw out the reading that one literary text performs on an-
other. But it also stems from my deep-seated belief that there is an unspoken core in each
text, unchartable in all its extension, whose prime mover (whose combinatorial search
engine, one would say today) is the recycling of earlier texts motivated by new circum-
stances. The initial anxiety comes not from the facticity of tradition, but from a need to
fend off the new with the shield of the old, true, and tried: to defuse the threatening now
by subsuming it into some old myth whose efcacy has stood the trial of the ages, which is
the role mythology and religion play in traditional societies. The new text nds the
current, surviving aspects of the old and allows them to live again in itself, as itself. This is
274 Notes to Pages 237248

a critical act, act having here for me the meaning of performance, sance, funcin, show.
In some privileged texts, like the Quijote, or Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote, the
process that I have been describing is thematized, becoming the story itself.
9. When I later read Don Quijote in the original, it sounded like a bad translation to
me, writes Borges in the Autobiographical Essay, quoted in Emir Rodrguez Monegal,
Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography (New York: Dutton, 1978), p. 77. For Carpen-
tier see my Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1977).
10. I take this Rodrguez Larreta to be an allusion to Enrique Larreta, the Argentine
novelist who in La gloria de don Ramiro attempted to write in the Spanish of Philip IIs
Spain. Borgess Menard is not interested in that kind of pastiche.
11. Rita de Maeseneer has charted and enumerated the many allusions to Cervantes
and the Quijote is her excellent Cervantes y Carpentier: Una lectura mltiple, in Actas
del II congreso internacional de la Asociacin de Cervantistas, ed. Giuseppe Grilli (Na-
ples: Societ Editrice Intercontinentale Gallo, 1995), pp. 81730. De Maeseneers con-
clusion, with which I agree, is that Un repaso de las menciones ms fragmentarias en los
dems ensayos corrobora esta conclusin, ya que Carpentier recurre a Cervantes para
justicar sus propias ideas (p. 827).
12. Frederick A. de Armas, Metamorphosis as Revolt: Cervantes Persiles y Sigis-
munda and Carpentiers El reino de este mundo, Hispanic Review 49 (1981), pp. 297
316.
13. The association between Columbus and Cervantes had been made before. The two
were seen as fortuitous discoverers who stumbled upon things they did not intend to nd
and whose signicance was beyond their capacity to even understand. This association of
the two is part of the ingenio lego label attached to Cervantes, the notion that he was a
sort of untutored wit. Amrico Castro did much to dispel this notion is his 1925 El
pensamiento de Cervantes, and later scholars have abandoned the old saw of Cervantes
as the natural talent devoid of learning. But the issue is really not closed, given that
Cervantes himself, it seems to me, goes to great pains to show the gap between intention
and result in his work. Ultimately no creator can be fully conscious of the ramications or
reach of his discovery. The same is true of Columbus. It would be too much to expect for
one man to be responsible for the repercussions of a discovery as radical as his.
14. William Ilgen, La conguracin mtica de la historia en los Comentarios reales del
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, in Estudios de literatura hispanoamericana en honor a Jos J.
Arrom, ed. Andrew P. Debicki and Enrique Pupo-Walker (Chapel Hill: North Carolina
Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1974), pp. 3746.
15. Juan Marinello, Una novela cubana, in his Literatura hispanoamericana:
Hombres-meditaciones (Mexico City: Ediciones de la Universidad de Mexico, 1937),
p. 171.
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 Index
Abat, Per, 21
Acosta, Jos de, 127
Aesop, 202
Al-Andalus, 161
Alemn, Mateo, see Guzmn de
Alfarache.
Alfonso VI, 17, 18
Alfonso X (The Wise), 3, 12, 22, 71, 72,
80, 101, 102, 143, 174, 181
Alford, John A., 19, 20, 21
Allen, John J., 150, 18384
lvarez Vigaray, Rafael, xix
Amads de Gaula, 36, 37, 41, 63, 99,
112
Apollinaire, Guillaume, 238
Arabs: invasion of Spain, 23
Arbitristas, 114
Archpriest of Hita (Juan Ruiz), see Libro
de buen amor.
Archive, xv, 3, 14, 15, 16, 29, 32, 37, 62,
100, 178, 206, 231, 232; repository of
stories, 30
Archivo General del Reino (Simancas), 3,
27, 110, 119
Arenas, Reinaldo, 233
Ariosto, Ludovico, 69, 84, 160
Aristotle, 20, 62, 128, 157, 196, 249
Armas Wilson, Diana, 223, 224
Armsterdam, Anthony G., 97, 98
Arrom, Jos J., 118, 126
Astrana Marn, Luis, 178
Auerbach, Erich, xiv, 30, 200
Augustine, Saint, 56, 196, 248
Autos sacramentales, 81, 85
Avalle-Arce, Juan Bautista, 176,
178
Avellaneda, Alonso Fernndez de, 111,
112, 113, 128, 132, 149, 150, 151,
157
Avila, Juan de, 141
Bakhtin, M. M., 98
Balzac, Honor de, 79, 232
Bandello, Matteo, 56
287
288 Index
Bandolerismo (brigandage), 64; in Cata-
lonia, 164
Baroque, 1, 118, 126, 215, 224, 225,
226, 230, 235, 246
Bataille, Georges, xvi
Bataillon, Marcel, xvi, 141, 215
Bloom, Harold, 249, 273 n. 8
Boccaccio, Giovanni, xviii, 1, 2, 31, 42,
56, 143, 176
Borges, Jorge Luis, xiv, xx, 95, 113, 117,
157, 175, 178, 221, 23149
Bruner, Jerome, 97, 98
Byzantine romance, 160, 164, 171, 174,
177, 178, 217, 219, 228
Caldern de la Barca, Pedro, 3, 33, 44,
126, 142, 143, 222, 225
Canavaggio, Jean, xvi, xix,
Capellanus, Andreas, 37, 42
Carpentier, Alejo, xiv; magical realism
and the Persiles, 217, 23149; Harp
and the Shadow, 24149; The King-
dom of This World, 217
Casalduero, Joaqun, 178, 219
Castiglione, Baldassare, 57
Castro, Amrico, 117, 141, 177
Castro Dassen, Horacio N., xix, 33
Casuistry, 31, 32
Catholic kings (Ferdinand and Isabella),
xiv, 3, 6, 24, 26, 34, 127, 143, 164,
166, 167, 197, 233, 243, 244
Celestina, La, xv, 2, 4, 18, 21, 28, 37, 47,
60, 177, 200, 211
Cervantes, Miguel de: autobiographical
component of ction, 34, 212; and
Avellaneda, 112; Catholicism, 184;
commissary ofcer (tax collector), xix,
81, 104; civil and penal prole, xx;
death, 111, 132; documentos cervan-
tinos, xx, 27; knowledge of the law,
xix, 8, 68; Lepanto, 166; psychological
sophistication, 106; theology 12;
Works (other than the Quijote): Call
of the Blood, 63, 155, 17593,
Deceitful Marriage, 177, 2027,
Dialogue of the Dogs, 33, 177, 207
12, 243, Divorce Court Judge, 5,
English Spanish Woman, 177, 180,
Exemplary Stories, xix, 34, 57, 156,
163, 165, 17578, 213, Galatea, 213,
Generous Lover, 177, Glass Gradu-
ate, 178, 180, Jealous Man from
Extremadura, 42, Ocho comedias y
ocho entremeses, 213, Old Jealous
Man, 42, Rinconete and Corta-
dillo, 163, 178, 180, 199, Semanas
del jardn, 213, Trials of Persiles and
Sigismunda, 133, 156, 160, 162, 165,
176, 200, 21330, 239, Voyage to Par-
nassus, xix, 165, 241
Charles V, 8, 27, 102, 197, 230
Chateau dAmour, 21
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 2, 48
Chaves, Cristbal de, 4, 28, 55, 198
Chivalric romances, 77, 131, 158, 174
Chrysostom, Saint John, 82
Cid (Rodrigo Daz de Vivar), see Poema
de Mo Cid.
Civil death, 173
Clemencn, Diego de, 55
Cohecho (Corruption), 115, 125
Columbus, Christopher, xiv, 223, 227,
237, 24149
Comedia (Spanish theater of the Golden
Age), 3
Comedy, 5
Conrad, Joseph, 238
Convivencia, 23, 167
Copernicus, Nicholas, 117, 242, 243
Corominas, Joao, 58, 80
Corral, Pedro del, 168
Cortzar, Julio, 237
Corts, Hernn, 223
Cortes de Madrigal, 3, 64
Council of Trent, 118, 137, 141, 142, 157
Count Don Julian, 167, 172
Covarrubias, Sebastin de, 9, 31, 80,
166, 209
Criminal: and authorship, 199, 201
Cueva, Juan de la, 143

DAquitaine, Eleanor, 37, 87, 110
Dante Alighieri, xviii, 1, 5, 35, 36, 37,
39, 52, 61, 62, 69, 87, 99, 130, 226,
227, 232, 238, 249
de Armas, Frederick A., 241
De Rougement, Denis, xvii, 2, 79
Descartes, Ren, 117, 124
Desengao, 118, 127, 129
Despoblado, 6, 18, 25, 63, 64, 66, 69,
106, 131, 179, 181, 253 n.10
Daz del Castillo, Bernal, 223
Dolce stil nuovo, 36
Domnguez, Ivo, xix
Don Quijote: canonization in Spain and
Latin America, 23435; chance in its
composition, 76; closure in, 15, 72, 93,
94, 172, 174; death as, 132; repara-
tions as, 62, 63, 7374; death certi-
cate of Don Quijote, 157; geographical
precision, 32; improvisation, 77; legal-
istic tone of, 5; loose structure, 77;
plot, 62, 71, 72, 76, 93; stories drawn
from penal archive, 29; testamentary
law, 9, 79, 101, 108, 124, 172; sub-
conscious of Don Quijote, 36, 45, 50,
53; will of Don Quijote, 13132
Don Rodrigo, 167, 168
Dostoyevsky, Feodor, 232, 238
Dudley, Edward, 100, 110, 113, 215
Durn, Manuel, 126, 178, 214, 216, 220
Echeverra, Esteban, 246
Eire, Carlos, 25
Elliott, J.H., 3, 102, 114, 164, 166
El Zafar, Ruth, 176
Enlightenment, xviii, 240
Entwistle, William, 219
Erasmus of Rotterdam, 138, 140, 141,
177
Faulkner, William, 84
Fernndez de Oviedo, Gonzalo, 223
Ferreti, Mastai (Pope Pious IX), 248
Ficino, Marsilio, 57
Fielding, Henry, 57
Index 289
Finch, Patricia, 150
Flaubert, Gustave, 232, 233
Florian, Jean Pierre, 178
Forcione, Alban, xvi, 177, 18384, 219
20, 224, 270 n. 1
Fornicacin: simple, 11; calicada, 11, 14
Foucault, Michel, 27, 120
Framed narratives, 2013
Frazer, Sir James, 129
Freedom, 16, 21
Freud, Sigmund, 12829, 248, 257 n. 2
Frye, Northrop, 5556, 158, 167, 219
Fuero juzgo, 22
Fueros, xvii, 3, 22, 23, 25, 31
Galileo, 117
Gaos, Vicente, 93
Garcs, Mara Antonia, 108
Garca Mrquez, Gabriel, 232, 237
Generation of 98, 235
Genesis, 2, 19
Girard, Ren, 100
Gitlitz, David M., 190
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 82, 84,
214
Gngora, Luis de, 55, 60, 127, 142, 143,
145, 222, 226, 244
Gonzlez, Eduardo, 223
Gonzlez Echevarra, Roberto, xiii, 28,
119, 196, 249
Grafton, Anthony, 127
Greek tragedy, xvi
Green, Otis, 118
Grimm, Jacob, 19, 21
Grimmelshausen, J.J. von, 57
Guevara, Fray Antonio de, 127
Guilln, Claudio, 196
Guzmn de Alfarache, 4, 33, 56, 57, 59,
60, 61, 197, 199, 200, 201, 210, 243
Hart, Thomas R., 86
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 232
Hebreo, Leone, 245
Heliodorus, 160, 213, 216, 21718, 222
Henry IV (of France), 165
290 Index
Herrero, Javier, 52, 69, 7677
Holy Brotherhood, 3, 6, 10, 25, 30, 33,
63, 64, 69, 70, 72, 78, 110, 114, 182
Homer, xviii, 30, 36, 61, 151, 158, 249
Horace, xvi
Hugo, Victor, 232
Huguenots, 164
Ilgen, William, 245
Inquisition (Holy Ofce of), 3, 25, 37,
84, 159, 233
Irony, 52, 66, 76, 77, 78, 123, 201, 243
Jimnez de Cisneros, Francisco, 161
John of the Cross, Saint (Juan de Yepes),
85, 115
Joyce, James, 19, 36, 149, 227, 232, 233
Juan Carlos de Borbn, King, 247
Juan Manuel, Don, 31
Juana Ins de la Cruz, Sor (Juana de
Asbaje), 119
Justice, 21
Kagan, Richard L., 6, 26, 27, 33, 65
Lacan, Jacques, 223
Lafayette, Madame de, 57
Las Casas, Bartolom, 246
Law: buildings, 37; canon, 79, 84, 135,
225; clash with love, 2, 4, 37; common
(derecho consuetudinario), 135; com-
plicity with love, 53; criminal, 225;
awed by desire, 116; grammar, 19;
inuence in Cervantes narrative, xviii;
and poetry, 19; kinship to literature,
17, 20; origins of modern in Bologna,
20, 21, 27; and rhetoric, 21; and social
continuity, 2; statutory, 141, 158
Lazarillo de Tormes (Vida de), 28, 33,
56, 57, 60, 61, 196, 200, 202
Legal writing, xiv, xvi, 105, 197; and
details in ction, 30
Leonard, Irving, 234
Lesage, Alain-Ren, 57
Lezama Lima, Jos, 246
Libro de buen amor, 18, 21, 23, 24, 26,
43
Lipson, Lesley, 202
Literature: on trial, 78
Lpez-Baralt, Luce, 166
Lpez de Ubeda, Francisco, 57
Love: clash with law, 2, 4, 37; complicity
with law, xviii, 53; and chivalry, 1;
courtly, 225; criminalization of, 16;
privacy and boudoir, 37
Luna, Miguel de, 168
MacCurdy, Raymond R., 113
Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria, 196
Machiavelli, Niccol, 57, 127
Magical realism, 217
Mailer, Norman, 6
Mann, Thomas, 57
Manrique, Jorge, 244
Manzoni, Alessandro, 216
Maravall, Jos Antonio, 24, 127
Marinello, Juan, 247
Marqus de Santillana (igo Lpez de
Mendoza), 43, 244
Mrquez Villanueva, Francisco, 162
Marriage, xiv, xv, 2, 4, 5, 34, 41, 42, 77,
78, 83, 94, 109, 111, 134, 137, 151,
183, 203, 232; clandestine, 138, 158,
170, 171, 173, 174, 2045, 266 n. 5
Martyre dAnghiera, Pietro, 248
Mayorazgo, 81, 1012, 172, 174
Mena, Juan de, 143
Menndez Pelayo, Marcelino, 168, 178,
216
Menndez Pidal, Ramn, 18
Menocal, Mara Rosa, 201
Miller, Henry, 233
Modernismo, 235
Molina, Tirso de, 2, 3, 6, 10, 11, 12, 34,
44, 188, 214
Montaigne, Michel de, 57, 201, 24243
Montemayor, Jorge de, 84
More, Thomas, 127
Moriscos (expulsion of), 159, 16163,
16566, 172

Morn Arroyo, Ciriaco, 45
Murillo, Luis A., 108
Nabokov, Vladimir, 232
Natural law, 23, 68, 126
Nebrija, Antonio de, 27, 28
Neoplatonism, 39, 41, 90, 108, 118, 172,
174, 215, 222, 244, 245
Neoscholasticism, 119, 221
Notarial arts (artis notariae), 21, 27, 32,
86, 182, 198, 231, 232
Novel: connections to the law, 232; his-
tory of, xvii; modern, 19, 174
Novela judicial, 233
Novela morisca, 109, 171
Novellino (Il), 31, 56
Oedipus, 2, 13, 19, 46
Ortega y Gasset, Jos, 145
Ovid, 13537, 14245, 148, 149, 151,
154, 158, 171
Owl and the Nightingale, 21
Parker, Alexander A., xiv, xvi, xviii, 224
Parody, 77
Patronato real, 24
Petrarch, Francesco, 36, 46, 81, 84, 90,
116
Philip II, 8, 25, 27, 141, 161, 197
Philip III, 161
Picaresque, xvii, 4, 22, 30, 32, 33, 54,
5558, 60, 61, 74, 174, 194201, 215,
231
Piers Plowman, 21
Pinet, Simone, 127
Poema de Mo Cid, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22,
32, 167, 246
Poggioli, Renato, 86
Psychoanalysis, 20
Puig, Manuel, 232
Punishment, xv, xvii, xviii, 8, 12, 18, 21,
22, 25, 28, 29, 30, 62, 184, 249
Quevedo, Francisco de, 4, 33, 57, 61,
210, 229, 249
Index 291
Racine, Jean, 218
Reconquista, 23, 24, 164, 169
Relacin, 28, 197
Relacin de la crcel de Sevilla, see
Cristbal de Chaves.
Renaissance, 39, 57, 63, 78, 79, 90, 91,
92, 106, 118, 127, 141, 142, 143, 145,
148, 196, 197, 200, 227
Rendall, Steven, 86
Rhetoric, 85, 105
Rico, Francisco, 10
Riepto, 105
Ribera, Juan de, 166
Riley, E. C., 212
Ro, Angel del, 22
Roa Bastos, Augusto, 237
Rodrguez, Alfred, 113
Rodrguez Guerrero, Ignacio, 33
Rodrguez Marn, Francisco, 100, 103
Rojas, Fernando de, see La Celestina.
Roman Empire, 151, 160
Roman law, 18, 20, 22, 23, 81, 173, 230
Romance, 5556, 158, 174
Romance (ballad), 5556, 167; morisco,
171
Saldaa, Quintiliano, xix, 30
Salillas, Rafael, xix, 57, 174, 197, 210
Sanz Hermida, Jacobo, 48
Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 246
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 226
Schevill, Rudolph, 142
Scholasticism, 87, 138
Schwartz. Stuart, xvi, 11, 37
Scipio Africanus, 210
Scipio Emilianus, 210
Segundn, 1012, 103, 110, 114
Seniff, Dennis P., 19
Sennigen, John, 137
Shakespeare, William, 21, 83, 152, 171
Siete partidas, see Alfonso X (The Wise).
Sin: original, 20
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 160
Sismonde de Sismonde, Jean-Charles,
216
292 Index
Smith, Colin, 19, 22, 32
Smith, Susan, 9697
Smollett, Tobias, 9, 47, 57, 68, 90, 97,
103, 110, 131, 199
Spain: casuistry of legal system, 32;
Catholicism as ideology, 25; empire,
116, 118; exceptionalism, 240; rst
modern European state, xvii, 3, 24,
159; laws kinship to literature, 17;
legal system, xv, 244; increasingly cen-
tralized judiciary, xvii, 4, 26; litigious
society, xviii; national myth, 160, 166
70, 174, 235; penal system, 3, 8; prolif-
eration of laws, 28; Visigothic codes, 18
Spanish legal codes: Ordenanzas de
Madrigal (1476), 26; Ordenamiento
de las Cortes de Toledo (1480), 26;
Ordenanzas reales de Castilla (Orde-
nanzas de Montalvo) (1484), 26; Leyes
de Toro (1505), 26, 102; Nueva reco-
pilacin (1567), 26, 80; Recopilacin
de las leyes de Indias (1681), 26
Stendhal (Henri Beyle), 21
Suicide, 82, 87, 88, 90
Talavera, Hernando de, 161
Tasso, Torquato, 84, 160, 218
Toms y Valiente, Francisco, 8, 27, 30,
42, 43, 181
Transvestite, 43, 47, 53, 106, 130, 171
Trial scene, 18
Twain, Mark, 57, 232
Unnarratable stories, xiv, xviii, 7, 52,
185, 193, 206
Vega, Garcilaso de la, 36, 37, 46, 81, 83,
87, 108, 116, 143, 245
Vega, Garcilaso de la (El Inca), 24445
Vega, Lope de, 3, 34, 44, 168, 169,
199
Velzquez, Diego, 11924, 127, 142,
14548, 149, 156, 157, 222
Vico, Giovanni Battista, 240
Villaln, Cristbal de, 143
Villancicos, 81
Virgil, xviii, 36, 52, 84, 129, 130, 150,
157, 249
Visigoths, 18, 105, 167
Wardropper, Bruce W., 177
Weber, Max, 25
Zorrilla, Jos, 183