Civil Oratory in Cervantes's La Numancia

Abstract

An analysis of several important discourses in Cervantes's La Numancia demonstrates the playwright's detailed knowledge of the art of rhetoric in the classical tradition. Cervantes employs rhetoric to characterize his fictional creations in the play, especially Scipio, the Roman commander, and the Numantine women. Further, by allowing the Numantine women a voice in the town's deliberations, Cervantes signals the possibility and potential of rhetoric as a means of civic discourse in his own time.

Keywords:

• Miguel de Cervantes
• characterization
• classical rhetoric
• deliberative rhetoric
• La Numancia
• women and rhetoric

Notes

1. “[R]hetoric is the functional organization of discourse, within its social and cultural context, in all its aspects, exception made for its realization as a strictly formal metalanguage […]. In other words, rhetoric is all of language, in its realization as discourse” (Valesio 7).

2. Though the conception of rhetoric began to change in the nineteenth century, the classical strain continued to be an important aspect (Conley 236). World War I and the experiences lived by the men in the trenches marked a more radical shift in how traditional rhetoric (and poetics) were viewed (Conley 261–62). Kennedy sees a renewed interest in and importance of classical rhetoric in the twentieth century (241).

3. Riley, for instance, states that Cervantes “probably made more use of poetics than of rhetorics, and of works in the vernacular than works in Latin, although not necessarily to the exclusion of either” (10). For other specific examples of Cervantes's use of classical rhetoric, see, for instance, Lukens-Olson, Mackey, and Wyszynski, “Mulier” and “Progymnasmata.”

4. Though the Estudio de la Villa had fallen on hard times because of the Jesuits’ Colegio Imperial, during Cervantes's time it still prepared adolescents for university studies (Canavaggio 43), a program in which Cervantes would have probably found himself “translating the classics, doing Latin composition and commenting on themes in prose and verse” (Byron 76) and certainly beginning or continuing his study of rhetoric.

5. Prosopopeia, also called imitation, was a well-known exercise from the progymnasmata, or rhetorical exercise books, students used while learning the fundamentals of rhetoric.

Lope de Vega also viewed characters’ speech as an important precept in drama:

Si hablare el rey, imite cuanto pueda

la gravedad real; si el viejo hablare,

procure una modestia sentenciosa;

…

El lacayo no trate cosas altas

ni diga los conceptos que hemos visto

en algunas comedias extranjeras… (vv 269–71; 286–88)

6. Temperance, according to the Ad Herennium, is “self-control that moderates our desires [cupiditatem]” (163).

7. For the demonstrative speech, the Ad Herennium refers to courage as “actions base and unworthy of the brave men and considered beneath their dignity… death ought to be preferred to disgrace; no pain should force an abandonment of duty” (167).

8. The progymnasmata were rhetorical exercises undertaken by students to practice certain aspects of rhetoric. These were not generally fully developed rhetorical speeches. The most common textbook in use through the Renaissance was Aphtonius's book, though Hermogenes's text was also popular. For more on these rhetorical exercises, see Apthonius and Clark. For the use of the progymnasmata in Golden Age literature, see López-Grigera and Wyszynski, “Progymnasmata.”

9. This captatio benevolentiae is one of the main purposes of the exordium, the aim of which is to make the listeners “receptive, well disposed and attentive” (Ad Herennium 13).

10. Ian Maclean points out that silence is one of the virtues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so was the ideal for all women (25).

11. Elsewhere, Armstrong-Roche does recognize that the Numantine Senate is associated with liberty and a participatory deliberation (“Imperial” 189).