Text, body, and the early modern Spanish literary field in three Exemplary Novels of Cervantes

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between textualized bodies and the early modern Spanish literary field in three of Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares: La gitanilla, El licenciado vidriera, and the intertwined El casamiento engañoso/El coloquio de los perros. Each novel portrays initially marginalized characters whose textualized bodies are connected to their ultimate achievement of renown for their remarkable talents. Cervantes, moreover, links these tales to each other through the presence of the three licenciates in the collection, each of whom represents a distinct role in the literary field. The names of the three licenciates—Pozo, Rueda, and Peralta—reflect the prophecy at the center of El coloquio de los perros, which in turn represents the tension experienced by the dominant yet dominated author in pursuit of distinction.

Keywords:

• Cervantes
• Novelas ejemplares
• Gitanilla
• Licenciado vidriera
• Casamiento engañoso
• Coloquio de los perros
• literary field
• Bourdieu

Notes

Notes

1 For Bourdieu, a field is “a separate social universe having its own laws of functioning independent of those of politics and the economy.”

2 For more on the economic underpinnings of La gitanilla, see Johnson, Presberg, Resina, Dunn, Forcione (Humanist), ter Horst, Koch, and Clamurro.

3 Critics who have discussed Preciosa’s connection to poetry include El Saffar (101–02), Selig (273–76), Chacón y Calvo (246–67), Casalduero (58), Forcione (Humanist 215–22), Ruiz Pérez (63–64), and Sáez.

4 Speaking to Preciosa, the gypsy woman declares, “Satanás tienes en tu pecho, muchacha. ¡mira que dices cosas que no las diría un colegial de Salamanca! Tú sabes de amor, tú sabes de celos, tú de confianzas: cómo es esto, que me tienes loca, y te estoy escuchando como a una persona espiritada, que habla latín sin saberlo?” (1: 107)

5 See for example Otis H. Green’s ““El Licenciado Vidriera: Its Relation to the Viaje del Parnaso and the Examen de Ingenios of Huarte.”

6 Sybil Dümchen refers to Vidriera as “bodiless.” (118).

7 In his critical edition of the Novelas ejemplares, Amezúa proposes that these verses are inspired by Aeneid VI, 853 (“parcere subiectis et debellare superbos”), while Waley proposes that they are more likely related to the Magnificat (“Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles”) (211).