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ShapingExperience:Narrative
in Cervantes
Strategies
PeterN. Dunn
I
One of the most influentialbooks to appear in our time on the
historyof the novel is TheRiseoftheNovelby Ian Watt.1Watt'sbook
placed that rise in the land of Defoe and Fielding; consequently,
since 1957 hispanistshave been raisingtheirvoices, more in anger
than in sorrow. More recently,historiansof literatureas well as
novelistshave increasinglycome to agree withthe protesters.2So we
hispanistscan now look back with satisfaction,knowing that the
abducted infantgenre, the novel, has finallybeen restored to its
rightfulparent, like the heroines of La gitanillaand of La ilustre
fregona.Our storyhas a happyending,as all such storiesshould. Our
champions have returnedwiththe prize,and the prize is the bright,
shiningclich6 whichsaysthatCervantesis the fatherof the modern
novel. Afterso happy and so providentiala conclusion, it would
surelybe unmannerlynot to bask in the steadyglow of thatcliche.
Even so, some scholars,have puzzled and debated over its authenticity:is Don Quixotereallya novel?What should be the appropriate
generic description,not only of Don Quixote,but of all the various
prose worksof Cervantes?Should theybe classifiedas novel or as
romance?
1 Ian Watt, TheRise theNovel(London: Chatto and Windus, 1957).
of
The tide turned with David Grossvogel, The Limitsof theNovel, (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell UP, 1968); Robert Alter, Partial Magic The Novel as a SelfconsciousGenre
(Berkeley: California UP, 1978); Walter L. Reed, An Exemplary
Historyof theNovel
(Chicago: Chicago UP, 1981).
2
Press
MLN 109 (1994): 186-203? 1994 byThe JohnsHopkins University
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187
as
It is generallyrecognized that several of the Novelasexemplares
well as the Trabajosde Persilesy Sigismundaare composed in the
traditionof romance. So how do we explain the factthatthe "father
of the novel",who wrotethe supreme parodyof romance, persisted
in writingromances? There have been various attemptsto answer
this question during our century.In the early decades, scholars
could confidentlyassert that the so-called "idealist" stories were
composed relativelyearly,whereas the so-called "realist"ones belonged to a later,more matureperiod.3 It is not difficultto identify
the prejudices that underlie that argument,and the biographical
model that sustainsit. The Trabajosde Persilesy Sigismunda(1617)
caused the greatest embarrassment,being a full blown romance
unredeemed byparody.It has been suggestedthatCervantesbegan
the Persilesas early as the 1590s, and could not bring himselfto
abandon it,although the antiromanceof Don Quixotegivesproofof
how greatlyhisjudgment had matured.Other criticshave held that
it was the workof his decliningyears.4So thislarge, expansive and
complex workhas had the distinctionof being dismissedas a prodand also of his dotage, asjuvenilia and
uct of Cervantes'simmaturity
also as senilia. These examples show clearly that the question of
genre has been hopelessly entangled with the equally obstinate
problem of the chronologyof the worksin prose.
whichis one of
Manyyearsago I suggestedthatLa senoraCornelia,
is
the least read of the Novelasexemplares
(it usually dismissed as
and
was
neither
naive nor early.On
naive
thereforean earlypiece)
the contrary,it showsmuch of the mature,serene, and deliberately
playfulimplausibilitythat we find in the romantic comedies with
which Shakespeare graced his later years.5A little later, Ruth El
Saffarin her book NoveltoRomancetried to turnthe whole critical
traditionaround, suggestingthat a chronologyof the Novelasejemplarescould be based on Cervantes'increasingdetachmentfromthe
postulatesof documentaryrealism.6That did not workverywell, so
it was not unreasonable of Edward Riley to propose, with a fine
3 Abundant documentation can be found in Dana B. Drake, Cervantes:
A Critical
Bibliography
(Blacksburg:VirginiaPolytechnicInstitute,1968).
4 Juan BautistaAvalle-Arcesummarizesthe conjectureson datingthe Persilesin his
ed. (Madrid: Castalia, 1969), 14-16.
5 "Las Novelas
ed.J. B. Avalle-Arceand E. C. Riley
Ejemplares",in Suma cervantina,
(London: Tamesis, 1973). The essays in this collection were writtenin the late
1960's.
6 NoveltoRomanceA StudyofCervantes'
'Novelasejemplares'
(Baltimore:JohnsHopkins UP, 1974).
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PETER N. DUNN
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land. If it is in a new land, thatland becomes his home and the land
of his posterity,and since that posterityincludes his audience, the
and ideologicallyequivalent to a renew home is both structurally
and Vergil'sAeneidare both highlyelaborated
turn.Homer's Odyssey
formsof thisbasic narrative,in the heroic mode. This structure,like
all such structures,can be exploited in order to transgressthe
norms that it denotes. In a nonheroic mode, the protagonistmay
returnwithno greaterprize than a knowledge of his own foolishness: such is the parable of the Prodigal Son, a veryeconomical
version, pared rightdown to the bare line of the plot. It is not
difficultto recall worksof literaturefromall periods thatare modGulliver's
elled on thisjourney pattern: TomJones,Pilgrim'sProgress,
Travels,Candide,Lolita,to name a few.In outline, thisis the prototypicallyheroic patternof narrative.A son sets out witha purpose:
to avenge his father'sdeath, or an insult,perhaps. Or a champion
setsout to retrievea precious stolen object thatsymbolizesthe identityof the community,and which will make him into a splendid
representativeof the communitywhen he returns.This same basic
structurehas characterized both epic and romance; the firstof
these,epic, linkingits narrator,itshero and itsaudience in a circle
of mutual approbation and reinforcement;the second, romance,
reflecting,originally,an aristocraticcaste's fantasiesabout itselfand
its world.15When Aristoteliantheoristsof literatureclaimed that
prose fictionmay be classifiedas a kind of epic, theysanctioned a
reading of Don Quixoteforthe tracesof both epic and romance that
are in it, and Cervantesplayswiththis ambivalence: a prettyexamof theoryand praxis.
ple of the intertextuality
Don Quixote returnsfrom his firstsally,not in victorybut in
defeat,and he realizes thathe should have had a squire. He took up
his role so hastily,and mastereditscodes so incompletelythathe has
to returnin order to begin again; thisunderscoresthe comic nature
of both the hero and his narrative.Then, if we focus on his sorry
state and set it against the narrativeparadigms,we see that he has
broughtback no prize, no magic ring or golden fleece, no secret
15 But heroes of medieval romance often
begin theirstorynot knowingwho they
are. And FredricJameson has pointed out thatmanyheroes of romance approach
their tasksnaively,unaware of what is required of them: this,too, is relevantto a
reading of Don Quijote.See his "Magical Narratives:Romance as Genre," in New
Literary
History7 (1975), 135-63.This article is valuable forits correctivecritiqueof
NorthropFrye'sidea of a "natural"world,and of the good/evil dichotomyin Frye's
A Studyof theStructure
of Romance(Cambridge:
widely read The Secular Scripture:
Harvard UP, 1976).
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II
Everythingthat I have designated as the pattern of romance-a
journey, trialsendured, rewardattained,restorationof original order, or attainmentof new integration-all of this can be found
elsewherein the worksof Cervantes.It most obviouslydescribesthe
but it is also susceptibleof the most intriguground plan of Persiles,
ing and unexpected variations.It is easilyidentifiedin such stories
where the high born youngman
as La gitanillaand La ilustrefregona,
in
order
to prove himselfworthyof the
abases
himself
voluntarily
humble girl who is eventuallydiscovered to be his social equal. In
these cases, where desire is put to various tests and purified,the
journey is a descent into a lower social or moral world of disorder
and temptation.The gypsysocietyof La gitanillais, fromthisstandpoint, a demonic subworld,made alluringby reason of its perverse
freedoms; an amorphous world, one in which there is ceaseless
movementwithno point of arrival,no terminus,and throughwhich
the hero mustpass unsullied,surrenderinghis aristocraticpersonal
name for the generic one of Andres (andros,'man') Caballero. He
emergesfromthislower region of trialand temptationbearing the
prize,the pricelessPreciosa, and is finallyrestoredto his familyand
to his distinguishedname.17
offerssome interestingvariations
The novella El celosoextremeno
and innovationson thispattern,whichis easilymissed.The journey
motifis still present,but it appears in two parts. First,the young
Carrizales leaves the home of his noble parents and squanders his
inheritance,"como un otro Pr6digo", as the narratorsays.Next, he
goes to the Indies to repair his fortune,which he does with such
success that he returnsto Seville loaded withgold ingots. On the
passage out, we are told that he suffereda change of heart and
resolvedto become a new man. Here Cervantesemploysthe potential of the journey to plot a change in the self as well as to mark
is full
stagesin the pursuitof externalgoals. But thistransformation
of irony; the hidalgo has gone from extreme to extreme, from
to nouveauriche,a change which is not a deep transforspend-thrift
mation at all. He is immenselyrich in barren metal but no richerin
spiritand character.When Carrizalesreturnsto Spain he findsthat,
unlike the Prodigal Son, he has no survivingfriendsor relatives.His
17 For a similar
reading,see RobertterHorst, "Une Saison en Enfer:La gitanilla",
in Cervantes
5 (1985), 87-127.
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same essential elements of narrativepattern,although those elements are truncated, and the proportions are radically altered.
Once again, the mythicdescent is disguised in the everydayreality
of a great and populous city.The two boyswho, fromthisperspective,maybe viewedas a singleprotagonist,have both lefthome, and
theirlifeis unmistakablya road. Arrivingin Seville,the boysare led
into the underworld,fromwhichwe do not see thememerge. Here
again is our mastertropeof thejourney and the road, withinitiation
into knowledgein the netherregion. And Cervantesplaysa double
intertextualgame of closure/non closure: he refusesto close the
structuralloop at the same timeas he mimicsthe ambiguous closure
of his picaresque antecedents.And once again we note how oftenin
his writingthe reduction of mastertropes and mythsto fragments
and allusions is made to signifyuncentered existences, crippled
sensibilities,lack of selfawareness,or other significantlack.
Thus far,all our examples have seemed to confirmthe observation thatCervantesemployedthe patternsof epic or romance structureand the formsof mythwithdeliberate sophistication,not automatically,and not just because they were privileged as historic,
transliterary
givens.He makes us read themratheras normativefictions,as metaphorsfororder. As signifierstheyare capable of modulation and modification,interferenceand fragmentation.Normativefictionsand structuresare alwaysripe forparody and irony.
Finally,in the most astonishingof all the shorterworks,El casawe can observethe experience
miento
enganosoy Coloquiode losperros,
of the charactersand the experience of readingbeing shaped bythe
most elaborate and the most elusive of narrativeconfigurations.
we
Here, at the conclusion of the collectionof the Novelasejemplares,
man's
have to process the most dubious information(one
highly
suspect account of his fraudulentmarriage,followedby two dogs'
convincingaccount of the human world). Whom would we rather
believe,a man or a dog? Then we puzzle overwhichis the container
and which the contained. The temporalityof thiscompound narrativeis artfullydisrupted.As readers, our engagementwitha textis
necessarilya linear process determinedbyour existencein time,but
here we are compelled to confrontthe text'sblatanttransgressions
of linearity,time aftertime.
This final piece in the collection goes far beyond anythingCervantes had attemptedbefore. The Coloquiorepresentsthe experience of narratingin the dialogic relationbetweenthe twodogs,who
are more thanjust tellerand listener;theyare the narratingselfand
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his shakycondition
syphilis,and his "pinitos"and "traspies"reaffirm
and our expectationof an amorous adventureto be related.An old
friend sees him and greets him, barely recognizing him in his
changed condition.They have not metfora long time.Here, within
a fewlines of the start,are twothreadsforthe reader to pursue,two
tracesof earlierevents:a friendship,and an amorous misadventure.
Neither of them correspondswiththe beginningof any of the narrated events,and we are leftin suspense as to where theybegin.
Observe how many times we have to begin reading. First,at the
opening wordsof the text;next,as we observea friendshipmakinga
new start;then at the beginningof the alferez's
storyof his Casamiento;then the discussion of the two men; then the storyof the dogs;
afterwhich we eagerly await the verdict of the skeptical reader,
Peralta, on the storyhe and we have been reading.
If we disentangle the temporal sequence that Cervanteshas so
cunninglyravelled up, we discoverthathe begins his tellingalmost
at the end of the sequence, as two friendsare united and express
mutual astonishment.And it is not untilwe reach the finalwordsof
the whole,in whichtheyagree not to discussfurtherthe question of
the truthof the Coloquio,but to go out togetherto "recrearlos ojos
del cuerpo, pues ya he recreado los ojos del entendimiento"-not
until then do we perceive thatthe renewal of friendship,thisinsignificantevent,has been the real climax, the recognitionscene of
and the reading
the untoldstory.What the tellingof the Casamiento
of the Coloquiodo is reconstitutean eventas the characters'experience. The reader who at firstsimplyobservestwomen embracingat
the gate of the city,comes to understandit fromwithin,as a recognition,a recognition.Between thisbeginning and the closure, stories are told,incorporatedas flashbacks;but these flashbacksdo not
relate to the main narrativeas flashbacksusually do; theyexplain
nothing,theyreveal no hidden cause, provide no complementary
angle of vision. Instead of explaining,or creatingsuspense in the
principal narrative,they displace it, and even efface it from the
attentionof the reader. Here is one of many ways in which Cervantes challenges the reader's expectations concerning structure,
temporalsequence, and causality.It is also his wayof problematizing the reader's desire forstories.
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evil (pace Forcione) may be what needs to be read back into the
Novelas.21
The road, I repeat, is a companionable one. In the varied worlds
of Cervantes,solitarinessis found to be the most dangerous condition,solipsismthe worstsin, as the source of destructivefantasies.22
Friendshipis the wayof escape fromsolipsismand despair. If one
friendcan suspend his skepticism,his irritabledisbelief,so faras to
read the otherfriend'sfantasiesof talkingdogs, and then conclude
"No volvamos mas a esa disputa", "let us go outside, and see" (II,
359), perhaps that dog's despairingview of the world may not be
entirelytrue.23
Wesleyan
University