REALITY AND REALISM IN THE EXEMPLARY NOVELS

Abstract

The Exemplary Novels have not proved an easy subject of criticism because of their obviously disparate form, and recent attempts to explain their “intention” have tended to emphasize this fact. Professor Casalduero has much of value to say, as when he rejects any attempt to fit the Cervantine tale within the narrow confines of nineteenth-century realism, or when he insists upon the need to keep in mind the beliefs and the way of life of the seventeenth century if we wish to examine the characters and plots of these stories in any depth. When, however, he proceeds to analyze their structure, his imagination tends to run away with him into a private world of geometric patterns, personifications and semi-allegorical meanings. One puts his monograph down in puzzlement and the precise nature of Cervantes' realism—that is, his verisimilitude—remains undefined.

BSS Subject Index:

• SPAIN — LITERATURE — GOLDEN AGE/16th–17th CENTURIES — DRAMA/THEATRE & PERFORMANCE-HISTORY
• THEORY OF LITERATURE — SPAIN, PORTUGAL & LATIN AMERICA — ALL PERIODS & GENRES
• CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, MIGUEL DE (1547–1616) NOVELAS EJEMPLARES
• BAROQUE
• ROATEN, DARNELL HIGGINS (b. 1916)
• SÁNCHEZ ESCRIBANO, FEDERICO
• SPAIN — LITERATURE — THEORY OF LITERATURE — ALL PERIODS & GENRES
• WÖLFFLIN, HEINRICH (1864–1945)
• REALISM/REALISMO
• NOVELAS EJEMPLARES [M. DE CERVANTES]

Notes

¹ Sentido y forma de las “Novelas ejemplares”, Buenos Aires, 1943. One of the shortcomings of this suggestive survey is the author's failure to subordinate; thus, he treats as of equal value such an inferior and over-written romance as El A mante liberal and such a subtle and delightfully economical story as Rinconete y Cortadillo. On the other hand, his thesis that Cervantes' characters are essentially “ideal” produces some of the best points of the study. Cf., for example, the argument of the Introducción.

²“Cervantes, El Pinciano and the Novelas ejemplares,” Hispanic Review, XVI, 1948, pp. 189–208. This article attempts a very welcome non-pietistic analysis of the stories, very few of which are regarded as fully achieved.

³ Op. cit., pp. 11–12.

¹See, for example, E. Moreno Báez, Lección y sentido del Guzmán de Alfarache, Madrid, 1948; articles by A. A. Parker (MLR, XLII, 1947), T. E. May (MLR, XLV, 1950), and P. N. Dunn (Bull. Hisp., LII, 1950), on the Buscón; and the articles by E. M. Wilson (Revista de la Univ. de Buenos Aires, IV, 1947, and Bull. Hisp., LI, 1949) on La Vida es sueño and Peribáñez respectively.

² Op. cit., pp. 198–199.

³One should not forget that Américo Castro, in his famous monograph on Cervantes, drew attention to the consistency of the writer's ideas and beliefs throughout all his works, although Castro's precise formulation of Cervantes' “philosophy” would not now meet with the unanimous agreement of a younger generation of Hispanists.

⁴Cf. Casalduero, op. cit., pp. 22–24.

¹Cf. Casalduero, op. cit., pp. 9, 11–12, 38–40, where he stresses the ideological nature of the Exemplary Novels as he sees them.

²For Cervantes' reception in seventeenth-century England, see the article by E. M. Wilson, Bull. Hisp., L, 1948, pp. 27–52. Cf. also my short note, “James Mabbe and La Española inglesa,” Revue de Lit. Comp., XXIII, 1949, pp. 80–85, in which I have given some evidence that the early English readers of the Exemplary Novels preferred those of a conventional and unoriginal kind. Casalduero (op. cit., p. 12) mentions the same point.

¹Cf. Casalduero, op. cit., pp. 51–57 and 157–162, for his interpretation of the figures of Preciosa and Costanza in terms of contemporary ideals, religious and other. It might be added, in view of the remarks now to follow, that this same critic draws attention (p. 36) to the symbolic value of Preciosa's nomadic life.

²In spite of the popularity of La Gitanilla in the nineteenth century (when, e.g., it inspired Weber's opera Preciosa), and in spite of the somewhat detailed treatment of Preciosa and the gipsy community, it cannot really be held that such a novel is a forerunner of a literary vogue that implied an imaginative acceptance of the picturesque for its own sake and that was innocent of any of the practical moral issues to be found in the Exemplary Novels.

¹Cf. op. cit., pp. 200–201.

²One notes that La Gitanilla and Don Quixote have this in common that their main locale is central Spain, a region which nature would seem to have intended for certain kinds of Odysseys. One wonders what an allegorist would or could do with Don Quixote !

¹For analysis and comment on the “social” essence of Quevedo's Buscón, see T.E. May's “Good and Evil in the Buscón: a Survey”, MLR, XLV, 1950, especially pp. 323 et seq. The late W. J. Entwistle had some revealing remarks on the break-down of the aristocratic ideal in the Russian novel, in his study, “The Byronism of Lermontov's 'A Hero of our Time',” Comp. Lit., I, 1949, pp. 140–146.

²Cf. Casalduero, op. cit., pp. 82–83, where he considers the gaiety of the Rinconete and the significance of Rinconete's final judgment of the cofradía. The second point is dealt with in a diffuse and over-ambitious manner. It may be added that Cervantes saved himself from accusations of bordering on the blasphemous by making it clear that Monipodio and his followers did not go to confession and that they went to church only on certain occasions. Cervantes would also here recall to the reader that mixture of social degeneration and religious queerness that belonged to alumbrados and the like (see T. E. May's pertinent note, “ 'Picaro': a Suggestion,” Romanic Review, XLIII, 1952, pp. (7–33.)

¹Darnell H. Roaten and F. Sánchez y Escribano, Wölfflin' Principles in Spanish Drama 1500–1700. Hispanic Institute in the United States, New York, 1952. Pp. 200. $3.50.

²Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunstgesckichtliche Grundbegriffe. Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst (1915; 9th ed., 1928); Engl. trans., Principles of Art History (New York, 1949).

¹“The plot of a Baroque play must unfold in accordance with a determined ideology and must end with a pre-determined effect whose meaning should be sufficiently clear to be understood without undue difficulty. But every effort is made to conceal the path that is followed and the end to which it tends” (p. 121).

¹On the contrary, they mislead. Cf. the statement: “For a full comprehension of the formal and ideological nature of Fuenteovejuna, it is necessary to realize that formally the theme of Nobles vs. the People is the dominant one but that ideologically the motif of the Defence of the Monarchy is of primary importance. This apparent obscurity, depending on a shift of the formal accent to what is really a secondary ideological theme, affords an illustration of the displacement of the axis so familiar to students of seventeenth-century painting” (p. 106). “Displacement of the axis” would to my mind constitute a dramatic defect. There is no such displacement in Fuenteovejuna, and certainly no obscurity.

¹“La Vida es sueño,” in Revista de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, IV, 1947, pp. 61–78.

²The most extraordinary coupling of Wölfflin's principles with an elementary misunderstanding of text and dramatic situation occurs in reference to Rosaura's speech to Segismundo in Act III, when she comes to join forces with him in his battle against Basilio (lines 2690–2921). This speech, it is stated, “cannot even plead for justification on the ground that it is exposition, since it recapitulates much information already given. It can be understood only on two bases—ideological and formal. Ideologically it helps to clinch the teaching on divine grace and free-will. Formally it interrupts the logical line of action, as Baroque form demands.” The speech is largely recapitulation for the audience but not for Segismundo, to whom it proves that his experiences in the palace could not have been a dream since Rosaura, by recounting them, reveals that she witnessed them. Further, it explains why Rosaura joins forces with Segismundo (a “strange” action which the authors could previously account for only by viewing Rosaura as divine grace): since Clotaldo has refused to avenge her honour, Segismundo, who is about to fight Basilio and Astolfo, is the only man left to whom she can turn for help. The text contains all this explicitly but no “teaching on divine grace”. The speech has an essential and crucial function and does the exact opposite of interrupting “the logical line of action”. So much for the “demands” of “Baroque form”.

¹The varied ways in which dramatic unity is achieved by the thematic relation of subplot to main plot is a large subject which still awaits systematic study. A comparable type of thematic unity exists in the English drama of the period. Cf. “The subplot is a device which the nineteenth century rejected, as loose and untidy.… It is true that the Elizabethans sometimes built a play from two quite unconnected stories, but this happens far less frequently than it is usual to suppose. For the subplot was contrasted and not interwoven with the main action: it reflected upon it, either as a criticism or a contrast, or a parallel illustration of the same moral worked out in another manner, a kind of echo or metaphor of the tragedy.” M. C. Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy, Cambridge, 1935, p. 46.

²Much of this play may be by Mira de Amescua.