The themes of sacrifice, death, and patriotism are
interpreted in terms of the Classical ideal of pro patria mori. I analyze the relation
between the land and its inhabitants, and how the destruction of
the land by the Romans demands the sacrifice of the numantinos, following the model of
the Christian martyr. Scipio’s first objective is to destroy
the land, so the numantinos have to purify his land with their
blood and achieve redemption with their death. Thus the river
Duero’s prophecy and the predictions of Fame can be fulfilled
in the new Spain. As with Christ, the special destiny of Spain is
marked by suffering and redemption.
A possible source for the creation of Don Quijote and
Sancho Panza is found in one of the most famous troupes of the
commedia
dell’arte: the compagnia di Gelosi. In order to do this, it
utilizes a Bakhtinian analysis of the Recueil Fossard, an iconographic document that
suggests that Cervantes knew the members of this compagnia. First, their onomastics
and physical appearance are very similar to those of Don Quijote
and Sancho. Moreover, Cervantes took the plot for his
entremés «El viejo celoso» from
the Gelosi’s homonymous Il
vecchio geloso. Finally, some plots, situations, and
burlesque motifs of the afore mentioned compagnia are articulated in
Don Quijote. In
conclusion, Cervantes very likely knew the compagnia either personally or through
the Recueil Fossard,
and relied on some of their physical and psychological traits for
the creation of his characters.
The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive
theoretical reflection on the criteria that organize
Don Quijote's
stylistic diversity. All the linguistic levels in this novel are
related to the diversity of «worlds» under which events
and characters are presented (and therefore interpreted by the
reader). For every world of reference there is an attitude towards
language, which is ultimately the consequence of a reception
process I define as narrative stylization. I intend to demonstrate
that the word style in Don
Quijote (and therefore in this new framed study of
stylistics) must be understood as a process that involves not only
the use of language itself (its rhetorical praxis), but also the
manner in which the text's world of reference is presented. This
process will allow us to comprehend the underlying intention of the
diverse styles present in Don
Quijote, which is closely connected to the main problem
of the novel: that of Alonso Quijano's belief in the continuity
between the word of his experience and the worlds described in the
literature of his time.
This article uses the «Curioso
impertinente», the story of Fernando and Dorotea, and the
adventure of the wineskins to clarify basic questions about the
concept of identity in Don
Quixote, Part I. What really lies behind the words
« "Yo sé quien soy” and
other formulae with which characters define
themselves? There is a gap between characters» statements
about their identity and their unconscious beliefs about it. The
article shows how this fragmented text, full of subtextual
contractions, resulted from the struggle between the feudal
ideology of the nobility and the newly emerging mercantile
literalness.
Se examina la muerte de don Quijote bajo la
óptica de la teoría speech-act: su fin es sacar a luz cómo el
protagonista representa su propia muerte para respaldar su fama
mundana, esto según las normas convencionales de la muerte
cristiana tales como se revelan en el Arte de ayudar y disponer
a bien morir de Joan de Salazar. Al morirse, el protagonista
cede la palabra a los supervivientes, quienes toman control de la
historia de don Quijote, de manera que se reflejen sus propios
intereses e interpretación. El estudio concluye con un
análisis de varias perspectivas filosóficas sobre la
muerte, entre ellas las de Derrida, Ferrater Mora, Sartre y Simmel,
lo que revela que la muerte de don Quijote deja la novela abierta a
lecturas especulares. En ellas los lectores se ven a sí
mismos en la novela y leen de manera retrospectiva cierta
significación en la vida del protagonista y en la novela
misma.
Los lectores de las Novelas ejemplares de
Cervantes suelen dividir los doce cuentos en dos grupos
genéricos, pero muchas veces con criterios imprecisos o
arbitrarios. Si empleamos los conceptos de categorización
que han desarrollado en recientes años Eleanor Rosch y
George Lakoff, entre otros, podemos describir dos prototipos de
género: romance y novela. Basándonos en
estos prototipos, podemos categorizar las doce novelas según
dos modelos generales. Lo que resulta no es un dualismo absoluto
entre dos categorías mutuamente exclusivas sino un continuo
entre dos polos teóricos. Consideradas así, las
novelas cervantinas ilustran un principio genérico que
concuerda con la más reciente psicología
cognitiva.
By focusing on its fragmentary nature, an aspect that
critics have viewed either as deficiency or as rupture that must
subjected to the concept of textual unity, this article proposes a
reconsideration of the structure of Cervantes' «El licenciado
Vidriera» . I suggest that the faults
attributed to the novela may be better understood in the sense of
breaks and fissures, movements aimed toward discontinuity that come
to represent the narrative's substratum. As basis or foundation of
the tale, the breaks and fissures are interpreted as an
antistructure, and in that sense in «El licenciado
Vidriera» one finds a narrative without
basis or foundation -similar to that of «El coloquio de los
perros» - which grows and develops in a
fragmentary manner. The emphasis placed on breaks and fissures also
leads to a reflection on the question of the origin and purpose of
the narrative. The end result of such consideration is the
realization that in this exemplary tale there is a drive toward the
displacement of beginnings and
ends.