REVIEWS

Higuera, Henry. Eros and Empire: Politics and Christianity in Don

Quixote. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995. x+207 pp.

Readers who seek reason behind Don Quixote's madness will find Higuera's
exploration of love, imperialism, and Christianity in Don Quixote intriguing.
This revised doctoral dissertation ("The Empire of Love: The Problem of Chris-
tian Politics in Don Quixote," University of Toronto, 1983) interprets Cervantes'
novel as a critique of sixteenth-century, Spanish political and theological ideol-
ogy. Higuera argues that the knight's pursuit of empire and glory, driven by
"love for a higher being—the divinely beautiful and all-powerful Dulcinea,"
discloses the greatness and the insanity of Spanish imperialism as well as the
ideological contradictions inherent in Christian caritas (1-2). By extension,
Higuera finds in Don Quixote an Erasmian-style questioning of the truthfulness
of revealed texts, particularly the Bible.
Early in his preface, Higuera acknowledges an inspirational debt to the late
Allan Bloom (The Republic of Plato, Shakespeare's Politics [with H. Jaffa], The Clos-
ing of the American Mind). Higuera's term, "Bloomian," seems apt in many ways
to describe what some will see as strengths and others as weaknesses in Eros and
Empire. Higuera targets "an audience interested in political philosophy and the-
ology as well as in Don Quixote," but he excludes "literary critics" as a reader-
ship both difficult and "unnecessary" to satisfy (ix). The bibliography includes
many familiar benchmarks of Cervantine criticism before 1980, but it does not
recognize the critical dialog after that time or the contributions of recent literary
theory. The approach combines features of new-critical and historical analysis,
with the aim of interpreting Cervantes' intended meaning relative to the intel-
lectual currents in Spain and Europe in the sixteenth-centry. Bloom's disciplined
faith in the value of reason seems to inspire Higuera's meticulous reading of
Cervantes' text against his background sources and also his efforts to extract
subtle nuances and make the text point to a larger meaning. True to his mentor,
Higuera works with the most canonical sources in Western thought: Plato, Aris-
totle, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Vives, Erasmus, Luther, Machiavelli.
Higuera further posits working assumptions essential for his interpretation.
First, he casts Don Quixote against the background of an ideologically "turbu-
lent time" marked by the Council of Trent, the "neo-Thomistic revival," a
"flourishing of natural law theories on international relations," the develop-

PERSPECTIVAS EN LOS ESTUDIOS CERVANTINOS. Robert M. JOHNSTON. Henry Higuera. «Eros and Em
 ment of a "sophisticated philosophical understanding of Christian love/'
Machiavellian ragione di stato, Lutheranism, and challenges to the historical ac-
curacy of hagiographies and even the Bible, led by scholars such as Erasmus
and Vives (4). Second, while he concedes that Cervantes may not have been a
political theorist with a complete doctrine of his own, Higuera insists that he
was necessarily steeped in the the political ideas of his day and that he used his
novel to field criticism of conventional beliefs. He therefore expands the novel's
satire of the books of chivalry to include the features of the Christian world view
they represent.
Higuera divides his study into four sections. The first (Chapters 1 &2) ex-
amines Don Quixote's love for Dulcinea as the motivation for his imperialism
and as an analogy for the relation of the soul to God, based on parallels between
the books of chivalry, the Bible, and Catholic tradition. Behind Don Quixote's
love for Dulcinea (Chapter 1) Higuera finds the Classical and Renaissance con-
vention of the love of beauty as love for a beautiful woman, the adoption of this
concept by Dante, the Italian neo-Platonists, and the Spanish Mystics to repre-
sent the relation of the soul to God, and its use in chivalric literature as the in-
spiration for heroism. The books of chivalry assume that a knight's inclinations
to violence, courage, revenge, war, and conquest of empire all naturally derive
from devotion to a beautiful lady. Thus, Don Quixote "believes that one can
unite almost every intense desire or impulse that a man like him can have and
can achieve one object that can satisfy them all, all at once—if one has truly been
in love"(21). Chapter 2 explores this notion of Don Quixote's all-encompassing
love as an allegory for the relation between the soul and God as conceived by
Christian theologians.
The second section (Chapters 3 - 5 ) , examines contradictions in Don Quixote's
politics of empire and carries further the comparison between the mad knight's
ideas, the books of chivalry, and the Bible. In the early episodes of the novel (eg.
the battle with the Bizcayan squire in 1:8-9), Don Quixote exhibits impulses, par-
ticularly rage and vengefulness, supported by the books of chivalry but contra-
dictory to Christian love. Higuera's investigation of vengeance and "just war"
in Thomasian natural law and in sixteenth-century theologians such as Erasmus,
Vives, las Casas, Sepulveda, and Vitoria, shows that Don Quixote's vengefulness
has no rational, theological justification. Don Quixote's speeches on Arms and
Letters (1:37-38) and the Golden Age (1:11) (both addressed in Chapter 4) reveal
that he values the justice and peace of the Golden Age much less than he does
the military success and glory to be won in its restoration. His understanding of
the Bible (via the Books of Chivalry) has "rough antecedents among Christian
theologians and a certain plausibility in its own right" (71), but Augustine and
the Catholic tradition on the one hand and Erasmus on the other both condemn
this might-makes-right idea of political order (66-67). In chapter 5, "Emperors
and Robbers," the comparison of Don Quixote with Reinaldos de Montalban
(from the books of chivalry) and with Roque de Guinart (Don Quixote 11:60)
turns up characteristics which link Don Quixote with Machiavelli's ragione di
stato. Cervantes' point, Higuera argues, is that "the biblical portrayal of politics
is i n c o h e r e n t . . . . it promises too much to men who feel called to be its heroes.

PERSPECTIVAS EN LOS ESTUDIOS CERVANTINOS. Robert M. JOHNSTON. Henry Higuera. «Eros and Em
 The result is incoherent aspirations: a project that combines characteristics of hu-
manist radical pacifism with universal imperialism and ragione di stato" (82).
In Chapters 6, 7 and 8, which he offers as "the intellectual crux" of his book
(5), Higuera examines the disintegration of Don Quixote's conception of love
and his imperial enterprise. Chapter 6 argues that the lowliness of Dulcinea's
real-world counterpart, Aldonza Lorenzo, undermines and finally destroys
the knight's confidence in love and heroism. After Don Quixote's penance in the
Sierra Morena (1:25-26) and his vision in the Cave of Montesinos (11:22-23), the
theme culminates with the Duke and Duchess' pageant (11:34-35), where Dul-
cinea changes from a superhuman being to a creature who evokes pity, self-
mortification, and penitence. Thus, "[t]he hoax presents Don Quixote and his
heroic project as superfluous to Dulcinea. Heroism is not condemned, it is sim-
ply irrelevant to the most important issues of human life and fate" (102-30). The
theme of Dulcinea's duality compares to the theological debate concerning the
meekness of Christ versus the greatness and power of God. Don Quixote's in-
ability to coordinate his military activities with Dulcinea's lowly alter ego re-
flects the "difficulties encountered in reconciling the more martial aspect of the
Bible and of Christian cultures with Jesus who was born in a stable and even-
tually crucified" (106). Higuera reads these episodes to suggest that man's end
is self-abnegation and penance, that he is offensive to God and unworthy, and
that all actions on earth fall short of pleasing Him. Under these circumstances,
ragione di stato has as much justification as other political theories.
Under similar scrutiny, other aspects of Don Quixote's world view self-
destruct, with further implications for Christianity. In Chapter 7, the inconsis-
tencies in Don Quixote's concept of the ideal human society in his speech on the
Golden Age reflect corresponding contradictions in the Bible. New Testament
writers, Higuera contends, had an insufficient and confused understanding of
"human psychology" and of "the moral prerequisites and political dimension
of healthy friendship and true concord" (120). Cervantes is telling us that here,
as with the theme of caritas, the ancient philosophers, particularly Aristotle,
"saw more clearly" (120). Higuera concludes: " . . . if one accepts the Bible as
authoritative and then in an effort to reconcile Reason and Revelation, tries to
reconcile it with what one thought of nature beforehand, one is led into forced
interpretation of the texts on the one hand and inconsistent judgments of nature
on the other" (121).
In Chapter 8, Higuera uses Don Quixote's, Grisostomo's and Marcela's ideas
of love to deconstruct the New Testament understanding that love is the desire
for "union and reciprocity" (137). Though Don Quixote and Grisostomo differ
on fundamental points, their attempt to unite earthly and ascendant loves
stands them in opposition to Marcela, in whom Higuera discerns Cervantes'
own voice. Marcela's speech contradicts not only Grisostomo but also Chris-
tianity, since she denies that love must be reciprocal and that beauty must '"sub-
ject the will'" (132-33). Grisostomo commits suicide because Marcela undoes
his faith in the relation between the beauty of the celestial order and the beauty
of erotic love. Since heroism, glory, and justice do not derive from love, the po-
litical and the erotic dimensions of Don Quixote's love for Dulcinea cannot be

PERSPECTIVAS EN LOS ESTUDIOS CERVANTINOS. Robert M. JOHNSTON. Henry Higuera. «Eros and Em
 reconciled. Higuera concludes: "Thus in general (and this is a point that can
be applied but not restricted to the Bible) it is impossible to build a rationally
coherent and realistic system of politics, with a consistent and comprehen-
sive p s y c h o l o g y . . . on the principle of erotic love, and this is so no matter
how exhalted and comprehensively good one tries to make the object of that
love" (136).
Higuera's final section (Chapters 9,10, & 11), takes on the narrative structure
of the novel in an attempt to discover Cervantes' view of the relationship be-
tween, poetry, history, and revealed truth. Chapter 9 considers Cervantes' satire
of the books of chivalry in light of the theological debate over the historical truth
of saints' lives and the Bible. Behind Cervantes' treatment of the theme of truth
and fiction in Don Quixote, Higuera discerns the basic and irreconcilable differ-
ence between Aristotelian and Christian views: the former holds poetry as rev-
elatory and thus higher than history, which is merely circumstantial; the latter
views history as equally true, since it is exemplary as well as factual. In Chap-
ter 10, Higuera's review of the narrative structure leads to the conclusion that
"Don Quixote is not only a parody of clumsy fictional devices but also a parody
of devices for passing off myth and legend as history," a theme which neces-
sarily questions the veracity of sacred writing (167).
Chapter 11 pits Cid Hamete Benengeli against the gullible second author. As
a Muslim and an "enemy of Christianity and Spain," Cide Hamete muddles his-
tory with fiction to confuse Christians and delight his Arab audience. To sup-
port this profile of Cide Hamete, from the ostensibly historical Captive's Tale
Higuera extracts two surprising ironies, which he reads as "hostile jokes"
against Christianity. First, in the novel, the Moorish girl Zoraida converts to
Christianity and follows the Captive to Spain to marry him; in contrast, her his-
torical counterpart actually married a notorious renegade king of Algiers. Sec-
ond, according to Higuera's calculation of the fictional chronology, at the same
moment when the Captive delivers his account of the Christian victory at Lep-
anto, the Spanish Armada is being sunk in the English Channel (August 1588).
Higuera's Cide Hamete takes "malicious pleasure in the fact that in the most
historical episode in Don Quixote, history does not bear out either a miraculous
conversion or the military triumph of Roman Catholicism" (172-73). Thus, Cide
Hamete's manuscript is a "semihistorical antichivalric and anti-Christian lam-
poon" which "satirizes . . . weaknesses in Christian politics and dogma" (174),
and which the gullible, second author accepts as history. Higuera concludes that
"Don Quixote contains an Erasmian-style analysis of how sophisticated people
come to accept fable as fact through a combination of conscious fraud and men-
tal misunderstanding "(181). If Erasmus hesitated to apply fully this analysis to
Biblical texts, Higuera sees no such hesitation implied in Don Quixote: "The ex-
istence of Cide Hamete Benengeli calls into question the historical status of the
whole Bible" (181).
Eros and Empire sets an ambitious objective. The theories of love and politics
which Higuera selects for his backdrop are complex in themselves. To follow his
gaze through the layers of Cervantine irony and the novel's narrative framing
to the author's intended meaning requires imagination as well as reason.

PERSPECTIVAS EN LOS ESTUDIOS CERVANTINOS. Robert M. JOHNSTON. Henry Higuera. «Eros and Emp
 Higuera has made an admirable effort to render his argument clear and acces-
sible: the text is free of errors and stylistically clean, and he provides frequent
summaries at the beginnings and endings of chapters. Higuera's thoughtful
attention to Cervantes' text pays off with some remarkable insights, particularly
with respect to the contradictions in Don Quixote's own thought and that of
other characters. The historical, ideological context he constructs for the novel
is instructive and his description of Cide Hamete's role in the narrative struc-
ture is both insightful and provocative.
Higuera's quest for Cervantes' ideology, however, leads him to some ques-
tionable conclusions. Similar attempts have shown that Don Quixote played
against almost any background seems unfailingly to generate meaning. One
must ask if the inconsistencies in Christian thought which Higuera finds high-
lighted are Cervantes' intended targets for satire or merely present in Don
Quixote's discourse as culturally inscribed ideas, and thus unintended victims
of the novel's complex irony. Higuera's argument works better if readers accept
his implicit assumption that there is Cervantine reason behind Don Quixote's
madness. But they must also accept his choice of episodes from Don Quixote and
of background texts. For example, references to other writings by Cervantes are
limited to passing mention of La Galatea and La Numancia. Higuera's description
of Cervantes' radical skepticism seems to contradict views expressed elsewhere
in the author's writings—for example Cervantes' apparent pride in his military
feats at Lepanto (in the Prologue to Part II of Don Quixote); and his statement re-
garding the moral, exemplary purpose of his fiction (in the Prologue to the Nov-
elas ejemplares). The assumption that Cervantes had detailed knowledge of
contemporary theological and political debates may be reasonable, but did Cer-
vantes make the same assumption about his readers? If his implied reader is as
vulnerable to deception as are his characters, the erudite message Higuera finds
would surely elude him. The themes of revealed truth versus reason, the pref-
erence for the rational wisdom of the ancient philosophers, and of reason's cri-
tique of Christianity, seem perhaps more "Bloomian" than Cervantine. In Eros
and Empire, Higuera invites us on a unique adventure into the labyrinth of Cer-
vantes' great novel. Readers can decide for themselves how much of what
Higuera sees gazing into the text is Cervantes' intention and how much is a re-
flection of Higuera (or Bloom) himself.

Robert M. Johnston
Northern Arizona University

Cervantes, Miguel de. The History of That Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote
de La Mancha. Translated by Burton Raffel. New York: Norton, 1995.

One of the most striking—and recommendable—features of Burton Raffel's

new translation of Don Quijote is his use of colloquial modern American Eng-
lish, which is not only refreshing, but perhaps will attract more (and younger)

PERSPECTIVAS EN LOS ESTUDIOS CERVANTINOS. Alan BURCH. Cervantes, Miguel de. «The History o...