Ryan Thomas Schmitz - The University of Texas at Austin

Copyright
by
Ryan Thomas Schmitz
2009

The Dissertation Committee for Ryan Thomas Schmitz Certifies that this is the
approved version of the following dissertation:
Deceit, Disguise, and Identity in
Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares
Committee:
Cory Reed, Supervisor
Madeline Sutherland-Meier
Michael Harney
Douglas Biow
Susan Deans-Smith

Deceit, Disguise, and Identity in
Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares
by
Ryan Thomas Schmitz, M.A., B.A.
Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin
May, 2009

Dedication
Para Denise

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor Cory Reed for his untiring direction
throughout the research and writing of this dissertation. I am also indebted to the
helpful feedback and encouragement of my committee: Professors Madeline
Sutherland-Meier, Douglas Biow, Michael Harney, and Susan Deans-Smith. I
would also like to thank Nicolas Poppe and Brian Price for their consistent advice
in academic matters. Finally, I thank my family without whose support this
dissertation would have been impossible.
v

Deceit, Disguise, and Identity in
Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares
Publication No._____________
Ryan Thomas Schmitz, PhD
The University of Texas at Austin, 2009
Supervisor: Cory A. Reed
One of the most salient characteristics of Cervantes’s literary production is his
fascination, one might even say his obsession, with the human capacity for
transformation. Nearly all of his plays, novellas, and novels feature characters that adopt
alternative identities and disguise or dissimulate their true, original selves. The Novelas
ejemplares (1613) encompass a veritable cornucopia of characters that pass themselves
off as another. There are women who pass as men, Christians as Turks, Catholics as
Protestants, and noblemen as gypsies, among many others. Identity, or at least its
appearance, is represented as fluid and malleable. By creatively controlling the signs that
they project in public, the characters of the novellas demonstrate a remarkable ability to
adapt to innumerable contingencies. Similarly, subjects of the Spanish empire, driven
particularly by ethno-religious and socio-economic motives, utilized craft and guile to
conceal their identity or simulate another. On a theoretical level, both in Spain and
vi

throughout Europe, intellectuals explored the human capacity for transformation, and
there emerged a new sense of interiority. As Stephen Greenblatt observes, in the
Renaissance, “there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of
human identity as a manipulable, artful process” (2). In this study I examine the
abundance of deceit and disguise in Cervantes’s collection of twelve novellas within the
work’s sociohistorical context. Specifically, I analyze how the novellas are embedded in
two particular threads of cultural discourse on human identity: Spanish social history and
early modern European intellectual history.
vii

Table of Contents
List of Illustrations..............................................................................................ix
Introduction............................................................................................................1
Chapter One: An Exemplary Model Among the Savage Other:
Honor, Virtue, and Caritas in La gitanilla .................................................22
Chapter Two: Prudence, Sincerity and the
Body’s Betrayal of the Dissimulated Self..................................................75
Chapter Three: Transformations of Identity
in the Novelas ejemplares...........................................................................112
Chapter Four: Cervantes’s Meditation on Artifice:
The Demystification of Life and Literature in
El casamiento engañoso and El coloquio de los perros.............................159
Conclusion..............................................................................................................210
Bibliography............................................................................................................223
Vita..........................................................................................................................230
viii

List of Illustrations
Illustration 1: Sincerità ................................................................................221
Illustration 2: Cardsharps .............................................................................222
ix

Introduction
Deceit, Disguise, and Identity
in Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares
One of the most salient characteristics of Cervantes’s literary production is his
fascination, one might even say his obsession, with the human capacity for
transformation. Nearly all of his plays, novellas, and novels feature characters that adopt
alternative identities and disguise or dissimulate their true, original selves. The Novelas
ejemplares (1613) encompass a veritable cornucopia of characters that pass themselves
off as another. There are women who pass as men, Christians as Turks, Catholics as
Protestants, and noblemen as gypsies, among many others. Identity, or at least its
appearance, is represented as fluid and malleable. By creatively controlling the signs that
they project in public, the characters of the novellas demonstrate a remarkable ability to
adapt to innumerable contingencies. Similarly, subjects of the Spanish empire, driven
particularly by ethno-religious and socio-economic motives, utilized craft and guile to
conceal their identity or simulate another. On a theoretical level, both in Spain and
throughout Europe, intellectuals explored the human capacity for transformation, and
there emerged a new sense of interiority. As Stephen Greenblatt observes, in the
Renaissance, “there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of
human identity as a manipulable, artful process” (2). In this study I examine the
abundance of deceit and disguise in Cervantes’s collection of twelve novellas within the
work’s sociohistorical context. Specifically, I analyze how the novellas are embedded in
two particular threads of cultural discourse on human identity: Spanish social history and
early modern European intellectual history.
1

In his study Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early
Modern Europe, Perez Zagorin defines “dissimulation” and “simulation” as two sides of
the same coin:
In the Latin from which they derive, both have virtually identical
meanings. Dissimulatio signified dissembling, feigning, concealing or
keeping secret. Simulatio also meant feigning or a falsely assumed
appearance, deceit, hypocrisy, pretense or insincerity. The two words
might therefore be used interchangeably, each denoting deception
with the further possible connotation of lying. For precision's sake,
however, we can also say that in a strict sense dissimulation is
pretending not to be what one actually is, whereas simulation is
pretending to be what one actually is not. (3)
In early modern Spain there was an abundance of both dissimulation and simulation. Due
to numerous sources of intolerance and persecution, subjects of the Spanish empire
actively engaged themselves in disguising their beliefs and/or ethno-religious ancestry. On
the other hand, being recognized as nobility brought with it important privileges, honor,
and power; thus, socio-economic motives also functioned as a catalyst to simulation and
dissimulation.
Throughout medieval and early modern times in Spain a central point of discourse
on identity revolved around blood and descent. As Teofilo Ruiz observes, throughout the
fifteenth century a common cultural myth, spun by poets, chroniclers, and other learned
men, “was based on the notion of an uninterrupted line of descent from the Visigoths”
2

(68). Ancestry was a powerful element in the formation of the collective identity of
Iberians, as Ruiz explains:
The Visigothic lineage, which played a significant role in legitimating kingly
power and the Reconquest from the ninth century onwards, was appealed
to with a vengeance again in the late Middle Ages. In short, descent from
the Visigoths—as opposed to mixed descent from Moors or Jews—
conferred nobility. It gave those who could claim Gothic ancestry a clean
and pure bloodline, which then became associated with valour, honour, and
other chivalric virtues in the fifteenth century. (69)
Throughout the late fifteenth and sixteenth century the estatutos de limipieza de sangre,
or blood purity statutes, illustrate the existing preoccupation with blood, race, and
nobility. Ruiz notes that, “Essentially, these laws banned anyone of Jewish descent from
certain public or ecclesiastical positions, even though they might have been faithful
Christians for more than a century” (69). Later, the blood purity statutes become the
criterion for admission to religious orders, to the colegio mayores of universities, and to
the prestigious Military Orders. Perez Zagorin observes how subjects of the time utilized
methods to counteract the statutes’ influence: “blood purity became an obsession among
Spaniards, giving rise to its own brand of dissimulation as aspirants to honors and
positions sought to prove their eligibility by fictitious genealogies concealing any stain of
Jewish ancestry” (42).
As with the Inquisition, investigations into the purity of one’s ethno-religious
ancestry often depended on denunciation. Thus, how one appeared to his or her peers
3

was of paramount importance; public space thus becomes something of a stage where one
must take care to gain the right reputation. As J.H. Elliot observes, the natural result of
these practices was a general sense of suspicion and mistrust all of which, ultimately,
created the need for disguise and dissimulation:
Since the testimony of even one malevolent witness could ruin a
family’s reputation, the effect of the statues of limpieza was in many
ways comparable to that of the activities of the Inquisition. They
fostered the general sense of insecurity, encouraged the blackmailer
and the informer, and prompted desperate attempts at deception.
Names were changed, ancestries falsified, in the hope of misleading
the linajudo, the professional who travelled around collecting oral
evidence and scrutinizing pedigree. (Elliot, 223-224)
The Spanish society that Cervantes observed in his lifetime, then, was adept at the
practice of dissimulation and simulation. Additionally, it is only natural that in such an
atmosphere the ability to attentively read signifiers of identity was an important skill.
After all, in order to effectively denounce one’s neighbor one must accurately interpret
signs and see through the masks that he might project.
In addition to Spanish social history, Cervantes’s novellas demonstrate a clear
participation in discourse on disguise and identity that was carried out among
Renaissance thinkers in Spain and throughout much of Europe. As I will analyze in more
detail in chapter two, a new sense of individualism emerged in early modern Europe. As
John Martin observes, "there was something significantly new about the way in which
men and women in the Renaissance began to conceptualize the relation between what
4

they saw as the interior self on the one hand and the expressions of one's thoughts,
feelings, or beliefs on the other" (Inventing Sincerity, 1322-1323). This new sense of
interiority manifested in important shifts in meaning in key ethical terms. Cervantes’s
characters in the Novelas ejemplares, through their experiences with dissimulation,
demonstrate a keen sense of this emerging phenomenon. The novellas also reflect some
of the most important discussions that Renaissance thinkers undertook, including
examinations of the flexibility of the self, the role that literature has in providing its
readers with exemplary models, and the importance of the individual’s civic role.
Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares, then, are engaged in a double-threaded discourse on
human identity and disguise; they participate in dialogue with important considerations in
Spanish social history and European intellectual history.
Many readers of the Novelas ejemplares have argued that the collection of twelve
novellas must be treated as a whole unit. Cervantes, after all, invites his reader in the
prologue to extract their “sabroso y honesto fruto... así de todas juntas, como de cada una
por sí” (I, 52). Joaquin Casalduero, for example, contends that: "Sólo si nos damos
cuenta de que la colección es un organismo, en el cual cada novela tiene su función,
podremos penetrar en la esencia de cada una en particular" (20). Much scholarly debate
has centered on identifying the principles or patterns that unite the twelve tales with
arguments ranging from thematic to structural to autobiographical links. 1 For Casalduero
the central theme of love gives the collection its coherence; for Werner Krauss, the
novellas are united by their autobiographical background (Boyd, 18); for William
Clamurro, it is dangerous to attempt to reduce Cervantes’s Novelas “into a unifying
5

framework;” and yet, he asserts that, “each of the Novelas embodies a vision of the
interlocking problems of individual identity and social order (xi).
Other scholars contend that patterns of typological classification give the novellas
structure. 2 Most of these efforts divide the tales into opposing categories of “romance”
and “satire,” or “idealistic” and “realistic.” In “Cervantes: A Question of Genre,” E. C.
Riley posits three basic types: 1)”predominantly romance,” 2) “predominantly
novelistic,” and 3) “mixed” or “hybrid” (77-78). The first group includes El amante
liberal, La fuerza de la sangre, La española inglesa, Las dos doncellas, and La señora
Cornelia. Riley contends that these tales of adventure or love are characterized by
features traditionally associated with romance-style narratives: idealized stock characters
(young, good-looking and of higher social classes), exotic or remote settings, complex
plot developments that rely on peripety and anagnorisis, and happy endings that
reestablish social order via marriage. The predominantly novelistic tales, including
Rinconente y Cortadillo, El licenciado Vidriera, El celoso extremeño, El casamiento
engañoso and El coloquio de los perros, involve characters that are not superior to most
humans in age, social class or physical attractiveness and the plots are less “artificial” and
take place in more familiar territory. Finally, Riley classifies La gitanilla and La ilustre
fregona as generic hybrids that blend romance and novelistic elements in an experimental
manner.
My own approach, while heeding Clamurro’s caveat to resist a reductive reading,
is centered on a recurrent pattern that manifests in each of the twelve tales as well as the
prologue; I contend that the concept of eutrapelia and its closely related variant tropelía
form the foundation and essential spirit of the Novelas ejemplares.
6
3 In other words,

Cervantes, while never losing sight of his overarching goal of providing honest
entertainment, constructs his novellas around tricks, illusions, or deceits (tropelías) that,
in an apparent paradox, aim to lead the reader to “desengaño,” disillusionment, self
knowledge, and understanding. Although each of the novellas is centered on some type
of deceit, it is not until the final tale that the term “tropelía” is defined. 4 Fittingly, it is the
very embodiment of deceit, the witch Cañizares, who explains that the “ciencia que
llaman tropelía ... hace parecer una cosa por otra” (II, 337). The science of making one
thing appear as another is precisely what the many crafty characters of the Novelas
ejemplares do. In order to appreciate Cervantes’s ongoing engagement with the linked
concepts eutrapelia and tropelía, we will make a brief excursion into the terms’
philological evolution and their appearances in Cervantes’ collection.
One of the earliest critical readers of the novellas was Fray Juan Bautista de
Capataz, who on the 9 th of June 1612 gave his official approval of Cervantes’s collection,
highlighting the theme of “la eutropelia,” which Saint Thomas Aquinas defined as
“honest entertainment” (I, 45). Capataz asserts that
... juzgo que la verdadera eutropelia está en estas Novelas, porque
entretienen con su novedad, enseñan con sus ejemplos a huir vicios y
seguir virtudes, y el autor cumple con su intento, con que da honra a
nuestra lengua castellana, y avisa a las repúblicas de los daños que de
algunos vicios se siguen, con otras muchas comodidades... (I, 45)
In book 4 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines the Greek term eutrapelia as the
just mean in recreation and humor. While being excessive with recreation and humor was
the habit of the bomolochos, who Aristotle explains were “buffoons... [that were] eager to
7

e humorous by any means and aiming at causing laughter rather than saying what is
proper or causing no pain to the one laughed at," being deficient in humor and recreation
was typical of the agroikos who were “boorish” and despised for their coarse stiffness
and unwillingness to participate in humorous activities (75-76). The stress that Aristotle
places on not causing pain “to the one laughed at” reverberates throughout Cervantes’s
literature. His characters repeatedly state that the use of deceit for “graciosas burlas” is
an accepted practice as long as one takes care to not harm third parties; as the narrator of
the Quijote asserts, “Porque no son burlas las que duelen, ni hay pasatiempos que valgan
si son con daño de tercero” (II, 842). Aware that, as the writer of fictions and thus
creator of illusion and artifice, he was engaged in the use of deceit, Cervantes appears to
be exceedingly conscious of maintaining himself within Aristotle’s just mean.
Although he does not use the term eutrapelia explicitly, Cervantes explains in a
detailed fashion how his novellas provide his readers with wholesome recreation. He
writes in the prologue, “Mi intento ha sido poner en la plaza de nuestra república una
mesa de trucos, donde cada uno pueda llegar a entretenerse, sin daño de barras; digo sin
daño del alma ni del cuerpo porque los ejercicios honestos y agradables, antes
aprovechan que dañan” (I, 52). The ludic quality with which he imbues his novellas is
highlighted by the metaphoric billiards table, and he expresses his concern to not lead his
reader into immoral territory in the game’s terminology, “sin daño de barras,” which is an
expression that will reappear throughout his tales. 5 He further justifies his collection,
pre-emptively defending his readers from possible harangues of idleness, stating, “no
siempre se está en los templos; no siempre se ocupan los oratorios; no siempre se asiste a
los negocios, por calificados que sean. Horas hay de recreación, donde el afligido
8

espíritu descanse” (I, 52). He points out that the human desire for a temporary escape
from duty manifests in the very structure of public spaces: gardens, fountains and poplar
groves (I, 52). Starting with the prologue of the Novelas ejemplares, then, the
Aristotelian notion of eutrapelia is established as a central conceptual component of the
collection of novellas. Cervantes invites his reader to embark on a temporary flight from
duty, to enter a sort of parenthetical space outside of the normal business of everyday life
where he/she can join the novellas’ protagonists in a voyage into unknown territory and
to view life from a new perspective. Such a novel vantage point frees the perceptions
from the tyranny of habit, and may promote clarity and new understanding.
The fact that Cervantes is engaged in an extended meditation on identity is clear
from the very first sentence of his prologue. Before expressing his desire to place his
novellas in Spain’s plaza (“la plaza de la república”) as if they were a billiards table, he
offers to place his own image in the world’s square. He playfully states that since the
prologue of the first part of Don Quijote went so poorly (“no me fue tan bien”), he might
instead ask a friend to depict his image, “... y con esto quedara mi ambición satisfecha, y
el deseo de algunos que querrían saber qué rostro y talle tiene quien se atreve salir con
tantas invenciones en la plaza del mundo a los ojos de las gentes...” (I, 50-51). Like so
many of his characters that take extreme caution with the image they project while
moving through public space, Cervantes is painfully aware of his exposure to the public
gaze, “a los ojos de las gentes” (I, 51). It is impossible to know to what extent the self
portrait in words that follows is sincere and transparent or to what extent it is simply a
mask, fashioned for his appearance on the world’s plaza; what is clear, however, is that
9

from start to finish his Novelas ejemplares are engaged in a prolonged exploration of
questions of disguise and identity.
Although there is a vast number of critical readings of Cervantes’s Novelas
ejemplares that have helped shape my approach, there are four scholars whose work has
particularly influenced my analyses: Alban Forcione, Ruth El Saffar, Barbara Fuchs, and
William Clamurro. Alban Forcione has written what are, in my mind, the most insightful
and enlightening studies on Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares. In Cervantes and the
Humanist Vision: A Study of Four Exemplary Novels (1982), he explores Cervantes’s
masterful inventiveness with the various genres at his disposal and the novellas’
treatment of such key themes to Erasmian humanism as, "freedom and individual
fulfillment, domestic and social organization, knowledge and education, language and
literature, sinfulness and moral action, and the need for a general sanctification of the
secular world" (20). Forcione’s approach entails a rigorous examination of the literary
and intellectual context in which Cervantes wrote his tales, and yet it does so without
losing sight of the novellas themselves. 6 Instead of searching for concrete transmissions
of Erasmism in Cervantes’s tales Forcione seeks, instead, “configurations of ideas and
methods of exposition linking the two writers rather than concrete verbal
correspondences” (20). Forcione’s approach, given as it is to a broad construction of the
spirit of an intellectual movement, and sensitive to the complex fabric to which the
novellas belong, has served as a model for my own research.
Forcione’s second work on the Novelas ejemplares, titled Cervantes and the
Mystery of Lawlessness (1984), analyzes the Casamiento engañoso and the Coloquio de
los perros with particular attention given to how Cervantes exploits the “aesthetic
10

potential in the ugly” (5). As in his previous study, Forcione examines Cervantes’s
engagement with literary genre, arguing that in this pair of novellas he has created a
“satirical hybrid” containing elements of the Menippean satire and the picaresque novel
(24). He contends that, “By combining the intellectualizing, analytical methods of the
former with the fictionalizing methods of the latter, Cervantes created a work of
tremendous variety in subject matter, style, rhythm, and tonality...” (100). Most
impressively, as is true of his first study, Forcione illuminates Cervantes’s tales with
pertinent analyses of the literary, philosophical, and theological connections and
implications of these novellas and with penetrating surveys of the central groups of
images and themes.
In From Novel to Romance: A Study of Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares, Ruth El
Saffar makes astute observations about important patterns in Cervantine characters’
motives for fleeing their home communities and adopting alternative identities. Although
I find her overarching argument, that Cervantes’s literature demonstrates a trajectory
moving from the novel to romance which thereby determines the composition date for
each of the Exemplary Novels, to be unconvincing, her clear analyses of the novellas and
perceptive observations about the protagonists’ efforts to reconstruct their lives make her
study an essential read. For example, she notes that the protagonists of what she terms the
“late works” are “exemplary in their acceptance of their given role in life and in their
devotion to a transcendent reality,” while those of the “early works” try to remake their
lives, “They reject the circumstances into which they have been born and show no faith in
any reality beyond the one they perceive” (13). The protagonists of the early works,
are in flight from a reality with which they cannot successfully deal. All
11

are cerebral in that they rely on their intelligence, ingenuity, or understanding
to fill up the emptiness of their lives; all fail in fact to understand their past or
to control their future; and all find that the present state of suspension in
which they have willfully sustained themselves is an illusion from which
all—some happily and some tragically--must fall before their story ends. (16)
On the other hand the central characters of the later tales,
...endure their fictional state. They neither choose it nor invent it. Though
a flaw in their own personalities, or a mistaken choice, may have
participated in causing their subsequent alienation, their prehistory is
desirable and peaceful, and the later characters do not consciously seek
escape from it. They work and wait for the end of their trials. They seek a
way out of fiction. (15)
While her pursuit of a putative development in Cervantes’s thought and literary creation
might recall the hospitalized mathematician of the Coloquio de los perros, whose vain
attempts to square the circle leave him constantly frustrated, El Saffar’s recognition that
there are distinct reasons for the characters’ fashioning of an alternative identity has
contributed significantly to my approach. Chronological considerations aside, she rightly
perceives patterns in the manner in which characters of the novelistic mode differ from
those of the romance mode. 7 Furthermore, as will be evident in my readings of particular
novellas, El Saffar’s interpretations of the structure of the novellas and the spiritual and
psychological development of their characters has significantly influenced my
understanding of Cervantes’s collection.
12

Barbara Fuchs’s Passing for Spain: Cervantes and the Fictions of Identity is an
insightful study on how the concept of passing is important both to Spanish society of the
late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and to Cervantes’s novellas. Her prose is lively and
lucid and her overarching thesis is convincing; she demonstrates how Cervantes’s
numerous scenes of passing call into question the supposedly rigid and impermeable
categories that authorities attempted to use to classify the subjects of the Spanish empire.
Fuchs argues,
Even as Spain becomes increasingly intolerant of ethnic and religious
differences within its population, these literary scenes of passing suggest
the impossibility of drawing rigid boundaries between often
indistinguishable subjects. Cervantes’s fictions thus present a challenge to
the enterprise of national consolidation according to essentialized
hierarchies. (3)
Her chapter on El amante liberal, for example, demonstrates how Cervantes makes veiled
critiques of Spain. Fuchs analyzes the “cultural and religious transactions of Spanish
subjects at the frontier of Christendom” (63). She contends that the abundant cases of
Turks passing as Christians and Christians as Turks not only challenge the absolute
distinctions between the two, “stressing the porosity of borders in the eastern
Mediterranean” but they also mount “a critique of Spanish empire in disguise” (64).
The fact that the novella is neither set in Spain nor features Spaniards as its main
characters does not diminish the possibilities for a critique of the Spanish Empire. On the
contrary, the Sicilians’ interaction with the Turks functions both as a stand-in for the
“Spanish imperial self” and as a contrasting reflection of the metropolis. The novella’s
13

vision of “Sicilian openness,” for example, stands in stark contrast to the social policies
of exclusion and intolerance found at the center of the empire (68). Fuchs also argues that
the novella mounts a “scathing critique of very Spanish habits” through its critique of the
Turk’s institution since, “Once the text has established that Turks and Christians are
constantly dressing up as one another, it can cloak its pointed censure of Spanish ways in
a highly orthodox critique of the Turk” (76). Mahamut’s detailed exposé of the “violent
empire” and its institutions “recalls in no uncertain terms the processes, documents, and
offices of the Spanish imperial bureaucracy” (77).
Impressively fusing broad sources from histories of trans-cultural relations in the
Mediterranean to literary analyses—not only from Cervantistas but also from scholars
focused on English, Italian, and Latin American literature, Fuchs’ examination of the
intricacies of passing in this novella is most impressive. Nevertheless, Fuchs’s work—
dealing as it does with a mere three of the twelve novellas— only begins to elucidate the
complex and layered workings of disguise, deceit, and dissimulation in the Novelas
ejemplares. As she, herself, points out in the introduction, there is “much work to be done
on the precise imbrications of gender, religion, and incipient notions of race with
emerging national identities” (8). One of my aims, then, is to extend a similar approach to
other novellas. Fuchs’s study has significantly contributed to my interest in the
connection between Cervantes’ novellas and Spanish social history with regards to
disguise and identity, and her approach has influenced my own, particularly in chapters
one and four.
William Clamurro’s Beneath the Fiction: The Contrary Worlds of Cervantes’s
Novelas ejemplares present a sustained exploration of issues of identity, language, and
14

society in Cervantes’s collection. Clamurro observes that, “... in nearly all of the Novelas
ejemplares, the resolution of problems of lost and found identities and the overcoming of
conflicts created by ‘disturbances’ in a given social order form the major thematic
component” (5). His convincing reading of La ilustre fregona, for example, highlights
the heterogeneity of discourse and how this represents different social strata and the
complexity of individual identity. Clamurro reads the inn as a social middle ground, a
space where members of different social status interact and the textual emphasis on
heteroglossia can emerge. As will be evident in my third chapter, his reading of El
amante liberal has shaped my own interpretation of the tale. More generally, his
hermeneutical approach, privileging questions of identity and social order have
consistently served as a point of departure for my considerations.
Although my chapters are ostensibly devoted to considering Cervantes’s novellas
with relation either to Spanish social history or Renaissance intellectual history, in
actuality each chapter incorporates elements of both threads. Chapters one and four are
focused primarily on issues pertinent to disguise and identity within Spanish society;
chapters two and three concentrate on how Cervantes’s tales participate in dialogue with
humanist’s concepts about the flexibility of the self and how the shift in meaning in
several key ethical terms reflect an emerging change in thinking about selfhood and
interiority. Nevertheless, such a strict division is not possible as these two threads of
discourse overlap and intertwine. For example, although in my first chapter my central
focus is on how La gitanilla contains an implicit social critique of certain Spanish
customs, it does so through dialogue with the speculum principis tradition, a topic that
15

engaged humanists throughout Europe. Likewise, my consideration of how the body
betrays the dissimulated self in chapter two is primarily centered upon the emergence of a
new understanding of selfhood in Renaissance Europe, and yet a strong impetus for the
revised signification of prudence and the birth of the notion of sincerity is intimately
linked to the persecution of subjects for their unorthodox beliefs. The two threads of
historical discourse that I analyze, then, are inextricably woven together.
In chapter one I demonstrate how Cervantes exploits the polarizing tendencies of
romance literature in order to make a veiled critique of Spanish society. The gypsy
community with whom Preciosa lives is depicted as a pack of incorrigible thieves and
they are associated with the devil. Although the dominant society is not explicitly
depicted in such negative terms, I contend that a careful analysis demonstrates that its
members are equally given to the practice of deceit, institutionalized thievery,
authoritarian morality, and patriarchal repression of women. Preciosa, who was born to
the orthodox Spanish community and raised among the gypsies, is an exemplary figure
that overcomes the faults of each group and she leads the highborn, gypsy-disguised
Andrés to a proper vision of love. Additionally, in contrast to Spanish leadership, she
embodies the essential traits of the perfect prince of Renaissance literature. Through her
poems of praise to Queen Margarita and Saint Anne, her scathing observations, and her
virtuous actions, Preciosa makes a subtle critique of the orthodox Spanish society and
points the way to purification and regeneration. Cervantes, then, is himself engaged in
disguising his own objectives as he adroitly dresses this tale in the robes of romance and
yet ultimately makes a guarded commentary on Spanish society’s shortcomings.
16

In chapter two I explore the way in which involuntary bodily reactions
undermine protagonists’ attempts to conceal their authentic identity or important
information about them. The tensions inherent to dissimulation, including discreet
speech and continued vigilance over one’s performance of an alternative identity,
repeatedly overwhelm the characters of the Novelas ejemplares and they inadvertently
reveal intimate elements that they had intended to hide in an interior space. By applying
two fascinating studies by early modern European historian John Martin to Cervantes’s
collection of novellas, I analyze how Cervantes’s protagonists reflect a significant shift in
discourse on selfhood that is evident throughout Renaissance Europe. In their struggles
between the opposing poles of prudence and sincerity, the protagonists of the Novelas
ejemplares embody a new sense of interiority that was emerging in early modern Europe.
In chapter three I examine Cervantes’s participation in humanist dialogue about
the flexibility of self, and the human capacity for transformation. While numerous
scholars have positioned Cervantes at the end of a crisis in humanist thought, I contend
that the Novelas ejemplares demonstrate a firm faith in human regeneration and self-
knowledge. The role of literature in an individual’s education is evident throughout
Cervantes’s tales; the novellas’ characters repeatedly overcome their trials by applying
lessons they had previously learned from literary examples and historical models.
Furthermore, animal imagery throughout the collection supports important humanist
concepts, best illustrated by Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, which
posited that humans have no fixed position and therefore have the ability, unique among
all creatures, to either degenerate to the level of the beast or ascend towards a divine
condition. Cervantes’s characters move along two separate scales of transformation;
17

while the tales encompass an abundance of temporary lateral shifts of appearance, they
also entail clear cases of vertical movement. That is, characters descend to sub rational
conditions and are likened to animal, plant, and fossil forms of life; alternatively, many
overcome these periods of degradation and shed brutish vices, become morally refined,
and undergo spiritual renovation, ascending towards a more perfect condition.
In chapter four I analyze Cervantes’s closing pair of novellas, El casamiento
engañoso and El coloquio de los perros, focusing on patterns of images related to dress,
deceit, and artifice with an eye to the collection’s social milieu. As the numerous
imposters and charlatans of each novella strive to dupe one another, the important role of
attire comes into focus. Terms related to clothing (“prenda,” “vestido,” etc.) accrue
polysemic qualities as Cervantes crafts an elaborate meditation on the nature of artifice.
Several important episodes of this two-tiered work reflect the multifaceted manifestation
of dissimulation and simulation in Spanish society of the time. The tales’ characters
engage in ethno-religious and socio-economic passing, demonstrating numerous ways in
which subjects fluidly slipped in and out of categories of identity. Through their efforts
to attain social mobility, Cervantes demonstrates the human folly of focusing on
appearances and highlights the paramount importance of inner virtue.
Woven into the fabric of each of these novellas, and uniting them despite their
great variety, is a consistent examination of human identity and disguise; Cervantes’s
tales reflect the deep anxieties of a Spanish society that was actively engaged in
projecting, dissimulating, and reading others’ identities; additionally, they participate in
prominent discourse with early modern European thinkers about selfhood and the
interrelations between the interior and exterior aspects of the individual. In his
18

prologue’s meditation on the notion of eutrapelia, his novellas’ consistent treatment of
the theme of disguise, and his final novella’s explicit definition of the phenomenon
tropelía, Cervantes effectively links his collection into an organizing principle and gives
artistic expression to his exploration of deceit, disguise, and identity.
19

Notes
1 See Boyd’s introduction to A Companion to Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares for a succinct review of
readers’ attempts to demonstrate the unifying patterns that bring coherence to the novellas (17-27).
2 For an original approach to the question of genre classification in the Novelas ejemplares, see Howard
Mancing’s “Prototypes of Genre in Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares,” which applies concepts from
cognitive sciences to the taxonomy of the Novelas.
3 My reading of the Novelas ejemplares from the angle of the tropelía-eutrapelia motif has been influenced
by Bruce Wardropper’s excellent analysis of the concepts and Cervantes engagement with them, titled “La
eutrapelia en las Novelas ejemplares de Cervantes”. See also Colin Thompson’s “Eutrapelia and
Exemplarity in the Novelas ejemplares” in Boyd’s excellent companion.
4 The term first appears in the collection’s fifth tale, El licenciado Vidriera, when the innkeeper vows to
make a vast variety of Spanish wines appear before the protagonist, “sin usar de tropelía” (II, 48). It’s
signification, however, is not explained as it is in the final novella.
5 The innkeeper’s wife, in Coloquio de los perros, claims, “hago este oficio muy limpiamente y sin daño de
barras;” Seiber cites Autoridades defintion of the term: “Frase con que se explica lo mismo que sin peligro,
riesgo, ni gasto o desperdicio de alguno” (emphasis added, II, 326).
6 This is precisely what other scholars fail to achieve; many Cervantistas that take a historical approach
venture so far into the historical context that they forget to illuminate the tale itself. These critical methods
are perhaps best illustrated by Agustín G. Amezúa y Mayo’s Cervantes: creador de la novela corta
española, a work that is more impressive in the vastness of its consideration of historical background,
literary influences, and speculations regarding Cervantes’s life than it is in its actual analysis of the novellas
themselves. Furthermore, Amezúa’s tacit assumption that Cervantes’s tales may be based on a particular
life experience that the author had or a narration that he had heard is literal-minded and dismissive of the
creative capacity of the writer. Although I find them more informative than Amezúa’s tomes, Joseph
20

Ricapito’s Cervantes Exemplary Novels and Carroll Johnson’s Cervantes and the Material World also
demonstrate this tendency to err too far from Cervantes tales into the historical context, such that one
wonders to what destination has the interesting intellectual wandering led one.
7 Eric Kartchner rightly points out an important flaw in El Saffar’s argument: “Perhaps the most troubling
aspect of El Saffar’s analysis is the near total absence of the undisputably (sic) idealistic Galatea, a work
published twenty years before Don Quijote I... El Saffar never comes to terms with the fact that La Galatea
does not represent the same type of fiction that she professes for the early novels, that La Galatea
exemplifies a type of idealistic fiction clearly associated with the later fiction that El Saffar labels romance”
(38).
21

Chapter One
An Exemplary Model Among the Savage Other:
Honor, Virtue, and Caritas in La gitanilla.
In nearly all of the twelve tales of the Novelas ejemplares Cervantes adheres to a
fairly consistent narrative pattern; the protagonist, having either fled home or been taken
from it by force, encounters an alternative community perceived as “other.” While the
alterity of this group differs—it may be based on ethnicity, social or economic status,
nationality, religion, or gender—what is consistent throughout each specific case is the
infiltration of the protagonist into this alien group. He changes his name, dons the
appropriate clothing, learns to speak like the group’s members, adopts their customs, and
ultimately passes as a member of the community. This binary narrative structure of “self
and other” or “center and margin” is a common element of romance and it typically
manifests in what Northrop Frye calls, “the polarization of ideal and abhorrent worlds”
(79-80). 1
As apparent targets of a forceful rhetoric of difference, the “abhorrent worlds” or
marginal communities in the Novelas ejemplares are commonly referred to as “demonic”
and “barbarian.” In the first three novellas alone Cervantes’s narrators and protagonists
from the orthodox community apply these terms to the gypsies of La gitanilla, the Turks
of El amante liberal, and Monipodio and his gang of thieves in Rinconete y Cortadillo (I,
104, 109; I, 147; I, 211). As Teofilo Ruiz observes, this type of definition of self by
contrast with a “savage other” was a common element of early modern Spanish
narratives: “The construction of national communities entailed exclusionary self-
definitions: representations of self were predicated on, and bolstered by, representations
22

against others” (97-98). This is precisely the type of ethical polarity that Cervantes
invokes in his novellas: the innately superior protagonists descend to a lower demonic
sphere and must overcome a series of obstacles before being granted the reward of
marital bliss and reintegration with their orderly home community.
Cervantes’s creative energies, however, were too refined to simply follow the
conventions of any one literary mode blindly. As Alban Forcione points out in his
seminal work Cervantes and the Humanist Vision,
... [Cervantes] proceeds with absolute freedom and sovereign control of
his medium. His engagement with all available literary resources is that of
a writer who understands thoroughly their potentialities and exploits them
independently for his own particular needs... [in the Novelas ejemplares]
there is hardly a tale that fails to deviate in some radical way from the
expectations that its traditional ingredients would arouse in its audience.
(28)
Perhaps this is most true of La gitanilla, where Cervantes’s initial engagement with a
romantic narrative thrust departs from the conventional ethical polarities of self and
other, and ultimately raises questions about the values and customs of both communities.
Despite initially appearing as a utopian society based on freedom, friendship and
communion with nature, the Gypsy community, as Forcione has convincingly
demonstrated, is a “false paradise” plagued by lust, incest, patriarchal tyranny, and
violence (Humanist Vision, 191). The orthodox Spanish community, however, when
scrutinized carefully, is equally contemptible: it is a society afflicted by corruption,
flattery, greed, distrust, and ceremonialism. Cervantes’s exemplary figure, Preciosa, is
23

from both of these spheres—by birth she is an aristocrat, but her “crianza tosca” is
attributable to her being raised among the gypsies—yet she overcomes the vices of each
community and offers, instead, her clear vision of matrimony based on trust and genuine
friendship, which serves as the foundation for an orderly, well-functioning community (I,
62).
In this chapter I examine how Cervantes exploits the polarizing tendencies of
romance in La gitanilla in order to mount a shielded critique of Spain. By harnessing the
Gypsies to the Natives of Spain’s New World territories, Cervantes’s novella paints a
portrait of savage otherness lurking in the liminal spaces of the empire that ostensibly
contrasts with the civilized customs and form of government found at the center of
Spanish power. However, in stark contrast to the ideal prince of the speculum principis
tradition –which depicts the prince as a fountain from which life-giving waters flow to all
of his subjects—in La gitanilla, Cervantes depicts a nation that has fallen to an imperfect
state because of improper leadership and the corrupted customs of the court. Through
comparative readings of New World chronicles, contemporary political treatises, and
other writings by Cervantes on morality and the speculum principis tradition, I tease out
the complex threads of critical discourse in Cervantes’s liminal tale of the Novelas
ejemplares. Amidst the corrupted dystopian communities of the margin and center,
Preciosa emerges as an exemplary figure embodying the virtues of leadership harmonious
with Christian piety, rational love, and the proper foundation for the family, community,
and state.
24

II. Portraits of Fallen Communities
From the very first lines of La gitanilla the gypsies are represented as a
threatening, barbaric other. The narrator asserts that theft is an essential component of
their identity:
Parece que los gitanos y gitanas solamente nacieron en el mundo para ser
ladrones: nacen de padres ladrones, críanse con ladrones, estudian para
ladrones, y, finalmente, salen con ser ladrones corrientes y molientes a
todo ruedo, y la gana de hurtar y el hurtar son en ellos como ac[c]identes
inseparables, que no se quitan con la muerte. (I, 61)
The institution of thieving is so inextricably imprinted on their being, such an essential
component of their identity, that it can only be removed by death. In further support of
this initial image, throughout the novella the gypsies are repeatedly associated with
demonic forces; their ability to tell fortunes, their sharp wit, and their daring, biting
commentary cause various characters to refer to them in diabolical terms. When Preciosa
demonstrates precocious wisdom, uncanny for someone of her age, her abuela asserts:
“Satanás tienes en el pecho muchacha” (emphasis added, I, 87). The tiniente, in response
to Preciosa’s audacious reference to his wife’s falls, retorts, “El diablo tienen estas
gitanas en el cuerpo” (emphasis added, I, 82). The narrator, whose inconsistent
observations regarding both the Gypsies and the aristocrats I shall analyze in more detail
below, refers to the Gypies thus: “aun entre los demonios hay unos peores que otros”
(emphasis added, I, 109). Lastly, even Preciosa herself represents the gypsies’ unique
25

talents and abilities with reference to demonic powers: “...tienen por maestros y
preceptores al diablo y al uso” (emphasis added, I, 77). Repeatedly throughout the
novella, then, the gypsies are depicted as thieves, in whom the devil resides, spurring
them to commit impertinent acts and empowering them with unique skills and
knowledge.
In addition to being associated with the devil, the gypsies of La gitanilla are also
linked to a community that, like them, was a marginated group inhabiting a liminal space
of the Spanish empire. In explaining their disdain for the sanctioned punishment and
abuse of “azotes” and “las galeras” the gypsy elder, curiously utilizing a term from the
Aztecs of Mexico, asserts: “no lo estimamos en un cacao” (I, 105). As De Armas Wilson
highlights,
In this utterance the more ‘prestigious’ language of Castilian is being
deployed by a marginated culture, Spanish gypsies, who invoke Nahuatl,
the language of an equally marginated culture, to describe their
victimization. Spain’s inner and outer ‘others’, in short, are harnessed
together here in a potential transatlantic dialogue about values. (87)
The harness linking the victimized subjects at the periphery of the Old and New World
territories of the Spanish empire is drawn tighter still when Cervantes refers to gypsy
customs as reflecting Native American practices; the narrator states that they buried
Andres’s mule, saddle, and gear “a uso de los indios, que sepultan con ellos sus más ricas
preseas” (emphasis added, I, 106). Cervantes’s gypsies, then, are represented as innately
predisposed to theft, functioning in tight relations with the devil, and are linked to another
community perceived as primitive and barbaric that inhabited the marginal spaces of
26

Spain’s world empire.
The orthodox Spanish society in La gitanilla is not represented in such explicitly
negative terms: its members are not accused of being incorrigible thieves, nor are they
associated with the devil. In fact, in similarly deterministic sounding pronouncements, the
young aristocratic males of the Novelas ejemplares are repeatedly depicted as inherently
virtuous. The narrators’ abundant references to their innate moral superiority are
presented as a foregone conclusion, implied by their noble blood or high birth. In La
gitanilla the narrator explains Juan/Andrés thus: “correspondiendo a su buena sangre, con
cada hurto que sus maestros hacían se le arrancaba el alma” (I, 109). Carriazo of La
ilustre fregona is described in similar terms; “un príncipe en sus cosas: a tiro de escopeta,
en mil señales, descubría ser bien nacido, porque era generoso y bien partido con sus
camaradas” (II, 62). In La española inglesa, Queen Elizabeth chooses Ricaredo as
captain based on the superior abilities he is assumed to possess due to “la sangre de dó
venís...” (I, 251). In La señora Cornelia the protagonists equate noble blood with
inherent bravery: “por parecerles que el ejercicio de la armas…principalmente asienta y
dice mejor en los bien nacidos y de ilustre sangre” (II, 241). 2 Thus, the young aristocrats
of the Novelas ejemplares are pronounced to possess such innate superior qualities as
empathy, generosity, and bravery.
There are numerous points to consider, however, that seem to undermine such
broad, all-encompasing pronouncements. For one, as many scholars have recently
observed, the aristocratic protagonists’ actions in the novellas often directly contradict the
narrators’ bold assertions about their innate virtues. For example, in a convincing
reading of La ilustre fregona, Edwin Williamson points out that Cervantes dwells at
27

considerable length on the episode of Carriazo’s imprisonment “in order to question
whether the boys really are saved from social disgrace by some innate attachment to
virtue or by something more prosaic and less creditable, namely money” (660).
Similarly, in La gitanilla, E. Michael Gerli notes how Preciosa’s response to Don Juan’s
early advances, in which he proudly refers to his lineage, compels him to adopt the ironic
gypsy name Andrés Caballero. Gerli contends, “The onomastic paradox is clear: honor
and respectability are not the products of birth or social station. They are the result of the
interaction of conscience, will and a natural disposition toward good which all men must
discover within themselves as Preciosa implies when responding to Adrés’s suit” (34-
35). 3
Another point to consider with regards to the repeated pronouncements of innate
moral superiority attibuted to the young aristocrats, and perhaps most important to any
objective reading of the Novelas ejemplares, is the fact that Cervantes both in other
works of fiction and in the Novelas ejemplares themselves, asserts the very opposite
notion. In the first part of Don Quijote, for example, Dorotea proclaims that "la verdadera
nobleza consiste en la virtud" (I, 308). Later, in the second part, Don Quijote expresses
the same idea, “la sangre se hereda , y la virtud se aquista, y la virtud vale por sí sola lo
que la sangre no vale” (II, 711). Finally, Preciosa’s firm proclamation supporting the
human capacity for transformation and the individual’s ability to fashion him/herself
regardless of origins undermines the narrator’s deterministic assertions:
La que es más humilde planta,
si la subida endereza,
por gracia o naturaleza
28

a los cielos se levanta
…Si las almas son iguales,
podrá la de un labrador
igualarse por valor
con las que son imperiales. (I, 121)
Preciosa’s highly optimistic senitiment echoes the Italian humanist Pico della
Mirandola’s belief in our ability to mold ourselves and thus elevate ourselves to a god-
like status. In Oration on the Dignity of Man Pico relates a fable about creation
explaining the proper position and nature of each creature. Unique among all creatures,
man has an indeterminate nature and is assigned no fixed abode, form or function. God
informs Adam of his unique situation among all beings:
We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor
immortal so that thou... mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou
shalt prefer. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate to the lower forms
of life, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul's
judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine. (225)
As I will demonstrate with further analysis below, Preciosa’s praise for humility, and her
contention that an individual of humble origins can, “si la subida endereza,” elevate
him/herself to a higher form, is one of the most important components of La gitanilla and
its utopian vision of purification and regeneration of the individual, community, and state
(I, 121).
Given the contradictory voices found throughout Cervantes’s work—some
asserting a hard determinism, others an optimistic perspective on human
29

transformation— it is not surprising that scholars have interpreted the Novelas ejemplares
in widely divergent fashions. In Hacia Cervantes, Américo Castro contends that, with
the success he had acquired with the first part of Don Quijote, Cervantes suddenly felt he
belonged among the highest and most important moral circles of Spain and that, in the
Novelas ejemplares, he had transformed from a critical outsider into a moralizing and
responsible member of the establishment. He asserts: “El escritor rebelde se hace, en
cierto modo, académico” (341). Likewise, Frank Pierce argues that, throughout the
Novelas ejemplares, Cervantes expresses an “aristocratic” view of society and proves
himself to be a "conservative believer in social values" (135-136). William Clamurro
concurs: “[Cervantes’s] view of society and morality…is conservative and orderly” (5-6).
Other readers, like Gerli and Williamson mentioned above, have highlighted elements of
the novellas that were common to novelistic discourse, such as irony and ambiguity, and
have demonstrated how Cervantes utilized them to parody and thus subvert Byzantine
and chivalric romance structures and motifs.
Regardless of one’s interpretation of the narrators’ deterministic pronouncements
and lavish praise for the aristocrats, the orthodox Spanish society in La gitanilla is clearly
represented as a community plagued by corruption, flattery, greed, distrust and
ceremonialism. In the very first mention of the court it is depicted as a place, “donde todo
se compra y todo se vende” (I, 63). As the novella progresses, it becomes clear that
“todo” not only refers to goods, but to favors and the outcome of judicial matters as well.
Preciosa takes on the role of satirical gadfly of the court when the abuela’s band
of gypsy girls visits the tiniente’s household. The central collection of images for this
episode is set up in the previous scene where Preciosa’s performance elicits a veritable
30

torrent of coins. The public’s donations are equated to life-giving precipitation: “llovían
en ella ochavos y cuartos,” and “Granizaron sobre ella cuartos,” (emphasis added, I, 66-
67). Her collection of the coins is spoken of in terms of gathering a harvest: “hecho, pues,
su agosto y su vendimia...” (I, 67). The lieutenant’s household, on the other hand, is
described as a barren land that yearns for rain: The tiniente’s wife is waiting for the
Gypsies “como el agua de mayo” (I, 77). When she first sees Preciosa she cannot help
but refer to her beauty in terms of precious metals and jewels: she has “cabello de oro,”
and “ojos de esmeraldas” (I, 77). The collection of images of fertility, wealth, and
abundance that are associated with Preciosa stand in stark contrast to the sterility and
utter poverty of the lieutenant’s household. In order to pay for the telling of her
buenaventura the lieutenant’s wife looks for a coin: “Echó mano a la faldriquera la
señora tenienta, y halló que no tenía blanca. Pidió un cuarto a sus criadas, y ninguna le
tuvo, ni la señora vecina tampoco” (I, 78). The desperate search for a coin continues as
señor Contreras rebukes the tenienta’s plea for a loan, claiming his “veinte y dos
maravedís” are already pledged to another. Finally, one of the young ladies of the house,
“viendo la esterilidad de la casa,” asks Preciosa if she will accept a silver thimble as
payment (emphasis added, I, 79).
Frustrated by the stinginess she finds here, Preciosa becomes cynical and makes
pointed critiques of the corrupted orthodox Spanish community. When charging for her
fortune telling she states, “soy como los sacristanes: que cuando hay buena ofrenda se
regocijan” (I, 78). Turning her attention from the Church’s flaws to those of the state,
she admonishes the lieutenant’s naive attempt to introduce honest practices into a
thoroughly corrupt institution: “Coheche vuesa merced, señor tiniente; coheche, y tendrá
31

dineros, y no haga usos nuevos que morirán de hambre” (I, 81). As Focione has rightly
noted, with Preciosas’s scathing cynical observation that “in the perverted world of the
palace the knave (truhán) receives more respect than the discreto, Cervantes is offering a
brief but powerful glimpse of the notorious corruption that afflicted the court of Philip
III” (Humanist Vision, 209).
Consistent with Preciosa’s critical remarks, observers of the court of Philip III
noted the predominance of bribes at all levels of bureaucracy. In Julián Juderías’s “Los
favoritos de Felipe III: Don Pedro Franqueza, Conde de Villalonga,” a clear image of the
Court emerges, consistent with the depiction at the beginning of this novella, as a place
where anything could be purchased and where the highest bidder was granted his will.
The Venetian Ambassador Bon observed of Count Franqueza: "...su deseo [de sobornos]
es tan público y tan sabido del mismo Rey, que en él no se estima ya como vicio ni en los
negociantes como temeridad, sino como cortesía y deuda el regalarle, " and further, "que
él y la Condesa su mujer no tenían otro fin más que engrandecerse recibiendo de todos,
así de hombres de negocios, asentistas, como de pretendientes, todas las dádivas y
presentes que podían negociar y granjear, y todo lo que se les daba, así por extranjeros
como por naturales de los reinos, iba en arcas y cofres cerrados" (325). As we shall see
in more detail below, the early decades of the seventeenth century in Spain were marked
by a pervasive sense of decline, a crucial component of which was attributable to the
widespread corruption in the court.
The image of corruption created by Preciosa’s satirical remarks about the
degenerate practices of the court is further supported in La gitanilla by additional
32

instances of venality. Preciosa’s putative grandmother praises the universal power of
money, reprimanding her for not taking the “cien escudos” that Juan offers:
Mira, niña, que andamos en oficio muy peligroso y lleno de tropiezos y de
ocasiones forzosas, y no hay defensas que más presto nos amparen y
socorran como las armas invencibles del gran Filipo: no hay pasar
adelante de su plus ultra. (I, 89)
The irony here, of course, is that the protection that the gypsies receive comes not from
any benevolent social policy instituted by the monarchy, but rather his image on a coin,
which serves to bribe a judge. The abuela highlights the leverage that money provides
her, affirming, “ “si alguno de nuestros hijos, nietos o parientes cayere, por alguna
desgracia, en manos de la justicia, ¿habrá favor tan bueno que llegue a la oreja del juez y
del escribano como destos escudos, si llegan a sus bolsas?” (I, 88). She then proceeds to
enumerate three specific instances in which she escaped punishment with “un jarro de
plata,” “una sarta de perlas,” and “cuarenta reales de a ocho” (I, 88). The early reference
to the court as a place where all can be bought and sold accrues new shades of meaning
as the pervasive quality of corruption continues to manifest throughout La gitanilla.
If the previous episode implicates the gypsies and judges in corrupt dealings, the
novella’s denouement entangles members from all levels of society and projects the
image of a judicial system that has become totally deficient. Having run the soldier who
slapped him through with his sword, Juan/Andrés awaits his trial. Preciosa pleads with
the Corregidor and his wife: “Si dineros fueren menester para alcanzar perdón de la
parte, todo nuestro aduar se venderá en pública almoneda” (I, 126). Later, when the
abuela claims to have a resolution, asserting “haré que estos llantos se conviertan en
33

isa,” and returns with a coffer, the Corregidor, don Fernando de Azevedo, clearly
anticipates a bribe and appears eager to hear the offer: “El Corregidor, creyendo que
algunos hurtos de los gitanos quería descubrirle, por tenerle propicio en el pleito del
preso, al momento se retiró con [la abuela] y con su mujer en su recámara” (I, 127). With
the news that Preciosa is the daughter of the Corregidor, and that she’s marrying the
aristocrat disguised as a gypsy, the mayor and uncle of the dead soldier realizes that he
won’t get the retribution he had hoped for: “el cual sabido por el alcalde, tío del muerto,
vio tomados los caminos de su venganza, pues no había de tener lugar el rigor de la
justicia para ejecutarla en el yerno del Corregidor” (I, 133). The coercive power of cash
assures Andrés/Juan’s acquittal: “recibió el tío del muerto la promesa de dos mil ducados,
que le hicieron por que bajase de la querella y perdonase a don Juan” (I, 133). In this
social order, then, corruption is so deeply entrenched that the mayor both foresees the
outcome of his charges and fatalistically accepts the terms. Furthermore, the practice of
corruption in this episode is universal; all subjects participate regardless of social station.
III. Reflections of Self in the Other
Given the universal participation in bribes and practices of fraudulent acquisition
in La gitanilla, it is fruitful to reconsider the opening lines of the novella in which the
narrator depicts the gypsies as incorrigible thieves. Carroll Johnson observes a parallel
between the aristocratic order and that of the gypsies:
What would happen to the logic of this sentence if instead of gitanos it
said nobles or hidalgos, and instead of ladrones it said dirigentes or
gobernantes? Absolutely nothing; the logic would remain intact. We
34

would still be talking about a genetically defined subgroup, born into
society with a genetically determined mission, raised apart from the rest of
society in order to prepare them to achieve their genetically determined
destiny. (Material World, 96)
Although applying the term “genetics” to the seventeenth century is anachronistic—the
terms “blood,” or “lineage” would be more in line with contemporary thought—
Johnson’s observation raises an important point about the two communities: each society
is continually defined in terms of the other. As both the numerous scenes from the
novella we have analyzed above and historical accounts testify, not only are both groups
raised in relative exclusion in order to prepare them for an apparently biological mission,
the terms ladrón and gobernante often times shared the same referent. In many ways the
gypsy community appears to be an inversion of the orthodox Spanish community; a quick
comparison of each community’s characteristics demonstrates a point-for-point contrast
between them. A closer analysis, however, reveals that each is actually a slightly
distorted reflection of the other and through this “shadowing” technique Cervantes is able
to cloak a social critique of orthodox Spanish society.
The elder gypsy’s description of his community at the center of the work entails
an ostensible contrast with the values and customs of Juan de Cárcamo’s home
community. The excessive pomp and artifice of the court are nowhere present among the
gypsies, “la libre y ancha vida nuestra no está sujeta a melindres ni a muchas ceremonias”
(I, 101). Unlike the courtiers, the gypsies live in communion with nature, observing the
cycles of the planets and stars and thriving on the abundant resources that the natural
35

world offers them. Furthermore, the elder gypsy delineates his community’s virtues in
direct opposition to typical characteristics of the court:
No nos fatiga el temor de perder la honra, ni nos desvela la ambición de
acrecentarla, ni sustentamos bandos, ni madrugamos a dar memoriales, ni
[a] acompañar magnates, ni a solicitar favores. Por dorados techos y
suntuosos palacios estimamos estas barracas y movibles ranchos; por
caudros y países de Flandes, los que nos da la naturaleza en esos
levantados riscos y nevadas peñas, tendidos prados y espesos bosques ...
(102)
Thus, in place of the courtiers’ constant worry about maintaining and increasing honor,
which compels them to flatter grandees as they struggle to gain their favor, the gypsies do
not feel the need to impress anyone; in place of the luxurious palaces of the court, they
value the mobility of their camps; instead of an artistic representation of nature the
gypsies live in a landscape worthy of a painting. In short, in direct contrast with the
courtiers’ way of life, freedom, a primitive naturalism, and communion with nature
characterize gypsy existence.
The vices that plague the tiniente’s household, underlined by Preciosa’s pointed
critiques, are opposed in a precise manner to the gypsies’ customs. Whereas the
lieutenant’s home is a portrait of selfish greed and sterility—no one can offer a coin to
Preciosa so that the tiniente’s wife can have her fortune told and when the labradora
offers her thimble she petulantly insists on receiving her own buenaventura—the gypsies
appear to live in an authentic community united in friendship and free from envy. The
elder gypsy asserts, “Nosotros guardamos inviolablemente la ley de la amistad: ninguno
36

solicita la prenda del otro: libres vivimos de la amarga pestilencia de los celos” (I, 101).
Once again, the gypsy community is defined in contrast to the orthodox Spanish
community.
Despite his efforts to depict the gypsy community as a harmoniously functioning
utopia, however, the elder gypsy reveals some key information that severely undermines
the idealistic portrait he intends to paint. Their “ley de la amistad,” which seems to imply
a prosperous community rooted in a magnanimous spirit of sharing, is, in actuality, firmly
based on a violent patriarchal repression of women. The gypsy community prevents
adultery by enforcing an authoritarian judicial system that privileges swift and savage
punishment and denies their women due process;
no vamos a la justicia a pedir castigo; nosotros somos los jueces y los
verdugos de nuestras esposas o amigas; con la misma facilidad las
matamos y las enterramos por las montañas y desiertos como si fueran
animales nocivos; no hay pariente que las vengue, ni padres que nos pidan
su muerte. Con este temor y miedo ellas procuran ser castas, y nosotros,
como ya he dicho, vivimos seguros. (I, 101)
The chastity of the gypsy women contrasts sharply with that which Preciosa professes in
her discussions with Juan. Instead of being chaste because of fear, Preciosa stresses the
importance of freely willed chastity and mutual trust. The very first trial that Preciosa
assigns to Juan is for him to overcome his initial jealousy and to trust in her “honestidad;”
she states: “el primero cargo en que quiero estaros es en el de la confianza que habéis de
hacer de mí” (I, 87). For Preciosa, chastity is an autonomous moral decision, not
something to be enforced by external law.
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There are several other key points that undermine the utopian flavor of the gypsy
community and which serve as a foil to Preciosa’s concept of rational love. Their
practice of abandoning wives when they grow old, permitting men to choose a more
youthful and sexually appealing substitute when it suits them, 4 contrasts with Preciosa’s
insistence on founding marriage not on sexual desire but friendship and with her notion
of marriage as a lifetime commitment. Thus, she clearly informs Juan, “la prenda que
una vez comprada, nadie se puede deshacer della sino con la muerte” (I, 104). She
stresses that there is plenty of time to contemplate one’s prospective wife, to “mirarla y
remirarla, y ver en ella las faltas o las virtudes que tiene,” but her disagreement with her
community’s treatment of women and approach to marriage could not be more clearly
stated: “yo no me rijo por la bárbara e insolente licencia que estos mis parientes se han
tomado de dejar las mujeres, o castigarlas, cuando se les antoja; y como yo no pienso
hacer cosa que llame al castigo, no quiero tomar compañía que por su gusto me deseche”
(I, 104). Forcione rightly notes that Preciosa’s repeated emphasis on correct vision, the
“ojos del entendimiento,” which emphasizes circumspection in choosing a life partner, is
parodied by the “elder’s exhortation of the youth [Juan] to look at the physical
endowments of the maidens and decide which one will please him the most” (Humanist
Vision, 190).
In addition to details in the elder gypsy’s speech that undermine his own
rhetorical objectives, at several points in the novella the gypsies’ actions hint at possible
fissures in the elder gypsy’s idealistic portrait of his community. Just four pages after the
elder gypsy claims that they live “free from the bitter plague of jealousy,” the gypsy girls
prove to be envious of the fact that Preciosa has such a gallant suitor, which prompts the
38

narrator to note that, “la envidia tan bien se aloja en los aduares de los bárbaros…” (I,
105). Yet another ambiguous detail that undermines the elder gypsy’s glossy depiction of
his community manifests in Juan’s response. He initially praises the “políticos
fundamentos” and “tan loables estatutos” of their order, but then makes an unconscious
slip in his diction that reveals his true opinion (I, 103). He states, “desde aquel punto
renunciaba la profesión de caballero y la vanagloria de su ilustre linaje, y lo ponía debajo
del yugo, o, por mejor decir, debajo de las leyes con que ellos vivían” (I, 103). Juan’s
unintentional reference to submitting to the yoke clearly shows that he sees their
community as primitive and authoritarian.
Despite the narrator’s attempts to distance the gypsies with rhetoric of social
exclusion, depicting them as savage thieves with few redeeming qualities, and the elder
gypsy’s similar attempts to define his community in direct contrast with orthodox
Spanish society, when considered carefully it becomes clear that each community is, in
actuality, a reflection of the other. Alban Forcione, in an astute observation that
underscores Cervantes’s narrative strategy in this novella, writes that the gypsies of La
gitanilla,
...seem to come off no better than such conventional romance antagonists
as witches, wolves, and sea-monsters. However, if the reader looks
closely at Cervantes's gypsies, he discovers that their perverse social
order, with its institutionalization of thievery, its patriarchal repression of
women, and its authoritarian morality, resembles the real world of the
gypsies or any other ‘threatening other’ a lot less than it does the socio-
political establishment of Spain. He then realizes that Cervantes is
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exploiting the power in the ethical polarization and utopian social visions
of romance to make him truly understand the meaning of the values
underlying his own society but hidden behind their counterfeit versions
projected by the abundant propaganda and doctrinaire romances of the
period. (Afterward, 350)
Although it is represented in less explicit terms, the orthodox Spanish community in La
gitanilla is, like the gypsies, a “perverse social order” (Afterward, 350). Both
communities are professionally devoted to a form of theft—not the creation of wealth,
but rather the extraction of it from another’s possession; both, in their degenerate
marriage customs, serve as a foil to Preciosa’s alternative vision, which stresses the
autonomous free will of the individual and the use of one’s rational capacities to choose a
life-long marriage partner; and, finally, the two communities are linked throughout the
novella in the imagery associated with each of them.
In addition to the analogous professional proclivities of theft/bribes to which the
gypsies and the orthodox Spaniards devote themselves, several details throughout La
gitanilla underline the two communities’ shared vocations even further. When the
gypsies speak of their daily “work” of stealing from others, they do so in terms of
taxation: “...volvían a Madrid a coger la garrama” (I, 83). The “garrama,” as Harry
Sieber points out, referred to the tax that Muslims paid to their princes. 5 Thus, the
gypsies depict themselves as sovereigns, entitled, like the members of a governing body,
to contributions from all members of society; their stealing is spoken of as if it were
institutionalized taxing. It is significant, too, that they are linked not to the governing
practices of Spain, but rather to another socially marginalized group perceived as
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“other”—the Muslims. Undoubtedly, Spaniards of the time were heavily burdened by
taxation. 6 Cervantes, himself, worked as a commissary officer in Andalusia dedicating
himself to the requisition of grain in order to help build the “Invincible Armada” and was
thus painfully aware of the stress that such taxation put on the people. 7 Nevertheless, he
is careful here to connect the theft of the gypsies not to the taxes imposed by the Spanish
government, but to those that Muslims had collected from their subjects.
The professional affinities of the gypsy and orthodox Spanish communities are
also reflected in the narrative of the aristocrat Clemente whose flight from Spain due to
his involvement in a homicide serves as a reminder of a central component of Spain’s
economy at the time. Clemente (Don Sancho) plans to take passage to Genoa, Italy
aboard a silver shipment that originated in the Americas since he has family contacts that
work in the banking industry. As Carroll Johnson observes:
Don Sancho [Clemente] identifies himself as an aristocrat engaged, albeit
as a parasitic hanger-on, in the unproductive passage of precious metals
from America through Spain to Genoa. His brief narrative evokes the
extraction and exploitation of a form of wealth that was already there and
already valuable and that is not subject to any operation of manufacture
that would increase its value...In short a typical aristocratic-style
operation: retrograde, parasitic, and unproductive. (Material World, 101)
Thus, much like the gypsies’ devotion to the extraction of innocent people’s private
goods from their pockets and purses, Spain, itself, was involved in the extraction of silver
from the mines of the New World. As I will analyze in more detail below, it is
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significant, too, that these resources are not absorbed into the Spanish economy but rather
slip through the ports of Seville and Cartagena reaching their final destination in Italy.
Yet another manner in which the two communities reflect one another has to do
with the marriage customs common to each group. As I have already demonstrated, the
gypsy marriage customs, with their brutality to women and focus on sexual pleasure
instead of friendship, serve as a foil to the vision that Preciosa expresses to Juan
immediately after his initiation to the gypsy community. The depiction of marriage
customs among the orthodox Spanish community, however, is presented in equally
depraved terms and similarly stands in opposition to Preciosa’s concepts. Unlike
Preciosa, who insists that, “las pasiones amorosas en los recién enamorados son como
ímpetus indiscretos que hacen salir a la voluntad de sus quicios,” members of the
privileged order court their marriage partner in a manner similar to the gypsies, guided by
passion instead of reason (I, 85).
In addition to Juan, who quickly submits to the “discreción y belleza de Preciosa”
before he has even met her, Juana la Carducha becomes infatuated with Juan (Andrés
Caballero) and proposes marriage to him, basing an extremely important life-changing
decision on merely having seen him dance (I, 83). Even though he is surprised by the
suddenness of la Carducha’s marriage proposal— “Admirado quedó Andrés de la
resolución de la Carducha, y con la presteza que ella pedía”— her courting of Juan is
strikingly similar to Juan’s own hasty pursuit of Preciosa (I, 122). They both become
infatuated with their beloved not because of any personal communication that had
occurred between the two, but rather due to observing him/her in a public performance.
Furthermore, they each attempt to persuade their love interest by referring not to any
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virtues of character that they possess, but rather to their social status and wealth. In his
courting of Preciosa, Juan immediately displays his “hábito” of nobility and asserts that
“soy hijo único, y el que espera un razonable mayorazgo. Mi padre está aquí en la Corte
pretendiendo un cargo, y ya está consultado, y tiene casi ciertas esperanzas de salir con
él” (I, 84). Similarly, Juana Carducha relies on her family’s wealth to convince Juan to
marry her: “yo soy doncella y rica; que mi madre no tiene otro hijo sino a mí, y este
mesón es suyo, y amén desto tiene muchos majuelos y otros dos pares de casas” (I, 122).
The courtship customs of each of these aristocrats contrasts sharply with Preciosa’s, 8
which privileges circumspection—the use of “los ojos del entendimiento”—and
completely disregards gifts and promises: “A mí ni me mueven promesas, ni me
desmoronan dádivas, ni me inclinan sumisiones, ni me espantan finezas enamoradas;” (I,
85). Thus, the members of the orthodox Spanish community are depicted, like the
gypsies, as careless and guided by passion, not reason, in their pursuit of life-partners.
As Forcione points out, the patriarchal repression of women and the authoritarian
morality of the gypsies are equally evident in the orthodox Spanish community. Upon
returning to her biological parents don Fernando de Azevedo and doña Guiomar de
Meneses, Preciosa transforms from an exceptionally independent young lady who
obstinately guards her free will—insisting, “la ley de mi voluntad...es la más fuerte de
todas,” and “mi alma... es libre, y nació libre, y ha de ser libre en tanto que yo quisiere”—
into an obedient daughter who voluntarily subjugates her will to that of her parents (I,
103). The shift is clearest when one considers the manner in which Preciosa expresses
her feelings for Juan. Before her true identity is known Preciosa transparently professes
her love for Juan, “Señora mía, si sabéis qué es amor, y algún tiempo le tuvistes, y ahora
43

le tenéis a vuestro esposo, doleos de mí, que amo tierna y honestamente al mío”
(emphasis added, I, 126). Moments later, having reclaimed her identity as Constanza de
Azevedo y de Menses, in response to her parents’ question whether she felt any “afición a
don Juan” Preciosa meekly answers, “no más de aquella que le obligaba a ser agradecida
a quien se había querido humillar a ser gitano por ella; pero que ya no se extendería a más
el agradecimiento de aquello que sus señores padres quisiesen” (I, 129). She only dares
to express her love for Juan with a deep sigh, which her mother interprets well, “entendió
que suspiraba de enamorada de don Juan” (I, 129). The previously proud and resistant
young lady who had a clear moral vision and a tremendous force of will power is now
completely submissive. She is literally silenced by her father; “Calla, hija Preciosa... que
yo, como tu padre, tomo a cargo el ponerte en estado que no desdiga de quién eres” (I,
129). She no longer has an autonomous will, but rather is a possession of her parents; the
patriarchal repression of women, a vice that plagued the gypsy community, is thus
equally apparent among the orthodox Spanish order.
One final way in which the two communities reflect one another is in the pairs of
images associated with each throughout the novella. Robert Ter Horst notes that “images
in La gitanilla are coins with obverse and reverse faces,” and that there is a “contagious
interplay between the fallen and elevated worlds ...each [sphere] is a mode and reflection
of the other” (92-3). For example, he observes that while the aristocrats proudly display
the insignias that demonstrate their membership in one of several military orders, the
gypsies possess their own hábitos; they use this term to refer to the wounds on their backs
received in punishment for crimes and thus convert “the signs of infamy into a badge of
honor” (92). Like the aristocrats, the gypsies take pride in their emblem: “Cuanto más,
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que el que es azotado por justicia entre nosotros, es tener un hábito en las espaldas que le
parece mejor que si le trujese en los pechos, y de los buenos” (I, 105).
Similarly, each group is associated with imagery related to birds of prey, which
highlights the aggressive, and transgressive, manner in which they acquire resources.
The gypsy elder relates their adroit skills in theft thus, “No hay águila, ni ninguna otra
ave de rapiña, que más presto se abalance a la presa que se le ofrece que nosotros no nos
abalanzamos a las ocasiones que algún interés nos señale” (I, 102). Perhaps surprisingly,
we find the same birds of prey plaguing the court; in her poem dedicated to Margarita of
Austria, Preciosa sings:
Vivas, ¡oh blanca paloma!,
que nos has de dar por crías
águilas de dos coronas,
para ahuyentar de los aires
las de rapiña furiosas;
para cubrir con sus alas
a las virtudes medrosas. (I, 69)
Thus, despite the fact that the gypsy and orthodox Spanish communities attempt
to define themselves in contrast with one another, they are, upon closer analysis, slightly
distorted mirror-reflections of one another. Both are imperfect, fallen, corrupted societies
equally engaged in self-deceit: the elder gypsy erroneously depicts his community in
utopian terms, evoking man’s prelapsarian state of harmony with nature and among the
individuals in the community but his message is undermined in numerous ways shortly
thereafter. Similarly, the orthodox Spanish community, despite attempts to distance itself
45

from the thieving gypsies by defining itself in opposition to these “demonic barbarians,”
is equally devoted to corrupt practices. Despite the fact that Andrés Caballero’s first
thieving lesson brings to light a deeply ingrained Christian sense of caritas—the narrator
affirms that, “con cada hurto de sus maestros hacían se le arrancaban a él el
alma...conmovido de las lágrimas de sus dueños”— this noble conscience does not seem
to trouble the other members of Juan’s community (I, 107). Although Juan’s empathy is
attributed to his “buena sangre,” others of equally high birth demonstrate a complete lack
of Christian charity, accepting bribes, exploiting the powerless, and extracting wealth
from the unprotected. Ultimately, the gypsy and orthodox Spanish communities of La
gitanilla are reflections of one another: both are fallen, corrupted societies plagued by
institutional thievery, patriarchal repression of women, and authoritarian morality. The
supposedly “orderly” and ideal “home” community to which the romance protagonists
return is in dire need of purification and regeneration; the optimistic vision for the proper
foundation of the Christian family and society is to be found in Preciosa’s idealistic
poems.
IV. Utopia, Speculum principis, and the Regeneration of the Declining Empire
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both in Spain and other
European nations, humanists, royal counselors, and writers of religious literature
produced political treatises called guías, relojes, or consejos for princes, or speculum
principis in Latin. Angelo J. Di Salvo summarizes their contents thus:
These political treatises contain much more than advice or counsel. The
Spanish guides include political, ethical as well as moral precepts,
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discussions on war and peace, expositions on the principles of decorum
and moderation, the means to counteract corruption, and more
importantly, the practice of the Christian theological and cardinal virtues.
(43)
These treatises stressed the importance of the concept of the prince not only as the
“representative and upholder of Roman Catholicism,” but also as the model for his
subjects, embodying Christian virtues and directing the reform of Christian society (44).
The ideal prince is likened to a shepherd who tends to his sheep before himself; a father
to his people, devoted to the protection of all of his subjects, especially the poor, weak,
and needy; the upholder of justice and the source from which his people’s welfare is
expected to flow like an abundant stream.
Running throughout La gitanilla, particularly in the novella’s poems, there is a
consistent critical discourse that echoes the central themes of the speculum principis
tradition. The vices that plague the Spanish court—corruption, lavish pomp, idleness, a
judicial system bereft of justice, and an utter disregard for the protection of those in
need—are contrasted with model figures, and the virtues they embody, who offer a
hopeful vision of purification, regeneration, and a release from the present fallen state.
Preciosa’s songs of praise to St. Anne and Queen Margarita reflect many of the same
concepts found in the political treatises of the time; they simultaneously critique the
shortcomings of contemporary Spanish leadership and propose a vision of a community
functioning in harmony with Christian virtues.
Three seminal texts from the Speculum principis tradition encompass the central
concepts and images that emerge in La gitanilla: Erasmus’s Instituto Principis Christiani
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(Education of a Christian Prince) (1516), Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), and Spanish
writer Antonio de Guevera’s Relox de príncipes (1529). Erasmus enumerates the
Christian virtues that the prince must possess: “wisdom, justice, moderation, foresight,
and zeal for the public welfare” (140). The Dutch humanist stresses that the prince must
model himself on Christ; “He should be taught that the teachings of Christ apply to no
one more than to the prince” (148). Like God, the good prince “should freely do works of
kindness for everyone without thought of compensation or glory...[and] should be readily
accessible for all the needs of his people” (159). The prince was to serve his people like
the mind does the body: “The mind dominates the body because it knows more than the
physical body, but it does so to the great advantage of the latter rather than to itself”
(175). As such, he was a source of welfare for his people, “Any good that the body
possesses is drawn from the mind as from a fountain. How unbelievable it would be and
how contrary to nature, if ills should spread from the mind into the body, and the health
of the body be corrupted by the vicious habits of the mind” (176).
Although it is not a formal guide to princes, Thomas More’s Utopia embraces a
similar vision of the prince. Recalling imagery used by Erasmus, More’s interlocutor
Rafael Hytholodaeus asserts “...a people’s welfare or misery flows in a stream from their
prince, as from a never-failing spring” (10). Also in line with Erasmus’s concept,
Hytholodaeus emphasizes the magnanimity of the leader, stating that his duty is “to take
more care of his people’s welfare than of his own, just as it is the duty of a shepherd who
cares for his calling to feed his sheep rather than himself” (27). A central feature of the
Utopian’s community is the fact that property is communal; Hytholodaeus contends that,
“as long as you have private property, and as long as cash money is the measure of all
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things, it is really not possible for a nation to be governed justly or happily. For justice
cannot exist where all the best things in life are held by the worst citizens; nor can anyone
be happy where property is limited to a few” (30-31).
Similarly, Guevara’s Relox de príncipes praises the Golden Age and laments the
corrupted conditions of the present day, “la miseria humana que tenemos agora” (215).
The Golden Age evoked by Guevara demonstrates a striking similarity to the description
that the elder gypsy gives of his community and resembles many of Don Quijote’s most
memorable speeches as well. Guevara writes:
...todos vivían en paz, cada uno curava sus tierras, plantava sus olivos,
cogía sus frutos, vendiava sus viñas, segava sus panes y criava sus hijos;
finalmente como no comían sino de sudor proprio, vivían sin perjuyzio
ageno. ¡O!, malicia humana, ¡o!, mundo traydor y maldito, que jamás
dexas las cosas permanecer en un estado; (215)
This bucolic time recalls both the elder gypsy’s depiction of his community living in
harmony with nature as the “señores de los campos,” (I, 101) and Don Quijote’s repeated
references to that uncorrupted epoch. For example, in book one, as he picks up a handful
of acorns, the knight states,
Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos aquellos a quien los antiguos pusieron
nombre de dorados, y no porque en ellos el oro, que en esta nuestra edad
de hierro tanto se estima, se alcanzase en aquella venturosa sin fatiga
alguna, sino porque entonces los que en ella vivían ignoraban estas dos
palabras de tuyo y mío. Eran en aquella santa edad todas las cosas
comunes. (I, 75)
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The communal spirit of that age contrasts with the references to the greed and violence of
the present day. Don Quijote further sings the praises of that epoch, “Todo era paz
entonces, todo amistad, todo concordancia... [la madre tierra] sin ser forzada, ofrecía por
todas las partes de fértil y espacioso seno, lo que pudiese hartar, sustentar y deleitar a los
hijos que entonces la poseían” (I, 75).
Accompanying the friendship, peace, and harmonious communion between
humans and nature, the Golden Age was also a time when justice was intact: “No había la
fraude, el engaño ni la malicia mezclándose con la verdad y llaneza. La justicia se estaba
en sus propios términos, sin que la osasen turbar ni ofender los del favor y los del
interese, que tanto ahora la menoscaban, turban y persiguen” (I, 75). The knight’s
remarks are consistent with the portrait of the court in La gitanilla, where everything is
bought and sold; where bribes, favors, and deceit impede any sense of true justice.
Similar to the three highly influential political treatises I have analyzed thus far,
Don Quijote offers his own miniature speculum prinicpis to Sancho before the latter takes
the staff and governs the ínsula of Barataria. Although there are farcical details in the
knight’s advice—for example his concern with Sancho’s hygiene, exhorting him to cut
his finger nails and avoid garlic and onions—the overall spirit of his counsel is both
serious and consistent with the seminal texts of the tradition. Don Quijote stresses the
importance for Sancho to know his place in the scheme of things and maintain his
humility: he advises Sancho to “temer a Dios,” and “conocerte a ti mismo,” which will
prevent him from inflating himself “como la rana que quiso igualarse con el buey” (II,
710). Don Quijote emphasizes the importance of compassion and mercy for his subjects
and to maintain justice and equality: “Procura descubrir la verdad por entre las promesas
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y dádivas del rico como por entre los sollozos e importunidades del pobre” (II, 711). In
line with the texts of Guevara, More, and Erasmus, then, Don Quijote’s praise for the
Golden Age and his counsel on correct governance express both a dissatisfaction with
contemporary leadership—its corruption, greed, gratuitous violence, and deceit—and a
nostalgia for a simpler, more harmonious past community where humans flourished in
peace with nature and with one another.
In the songs she devotes to her models, her critiques of the gypsy and orthodox
Spanish communities, her clear moral vision, and the images that describe her as
shepherdess, protector, and wellspring of resources for her community, Preciosa
embodies the virtues of the perfect Christian prince highlighted by the seminal texts I
have analyzed above. Juxtaposed to the false utopia of the gypsy community and the
corrupted condition of the orthodox Spanish society of La gitanilla, Preciosa’s vision of
matrimony entails a structure of community that cultivates the wellbeing of all members,
permits the development of the autonomous individual will, and is firmly based on
caritas and honest empathy for others.
Repeatedly in La gitanilla, Preciosa is associated with images that place her in the
role of shepherdess, leading and protecting her group of gypsy girls. As they leave the
gambling hall, she is depicted in terms that recall Thomas More’s concept of the prince as
shepherd: “antecogió sus corderas y fuese en casa del señor teniente, quedando que otro
día volvería con su manada” (emphasis added, I, 77). Throughout the novella Preciosa
serves as a moral guide to both the gypsy girls in her troupe and to Juan de Cárcamo. We
are told that the romances that the gypsy girls sang were “todos honestos,” and that “no
consentía Preciosa que las que fuesen en su compañía cantasen cantares descompuestos,
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ni ellas los cantó jamás, y muchos miraron en ello, y la tuvieron en mucho” (I, 66). With
regards to Juan, although he initially envisions himself in a superior role to Preciosa,
vowing to “levantar a mi grandeza la humildad de Preciosa, haciéndola mi igual y mi
esposa,” it becomes immediately clear that she will be the one to refine Juan, guiding him
in a moral ascent towards perfection (I, 84). The young aristocrat, led by the precocious
gypsy girl, learns to overcome his jealousy and to reassess his courtship customs—
relying on “los ojos del entendimiento” instead of his initial infatuation based on
ephemeral passions (I, 85).
Preciosa further embodies the model prince in that she stresses, in contrast to her
abuela and the Spanish government of the time, the importance of channeling resources
to all levels of the social strata. Immediately after the abuela’s speech, in which she
convinces Preciosa to accept the “cien escudos” from Juan, Preciosa demonstrates the
virtues of a good leader, suggesting that they share this gold with all of the girls, “que ha
mucho que nos esperan, y ya deben de estar enfadadas ” (I, 89). The grandmother,
however, is not so magnanimous, asserting, “Así verán ellas monedas déstas, como ven al
turco ahora”(I, 89). She then proceeds to squeeze more money out of Juan, persuading
him to give the girls some coins. Preciosa again shows a concern for sharing her earnings
with the group after their dance at the Cárcamo household: “dijo a sus compañeras que le
trocaría y le repartiría con ellas hidalgamente” (I, 97). The grandmother, we are later
told, always kept “parte y media de lo que se juntaba” (I, 98-99). Similar to the Golden
Age envisioned by Don Quijote, when property was communal and people were not yet
aware of the terms “tuyo y mío,” Preciosa demonstrates a consistent concern for equal
distribution of wealth and the welfare of her entire community. Like the analogies of
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Erasmus and More, which speak of the prince as a “never-failing spring” from whom the
people’s welfare flows in a stream, Preciosa makes it rain coins upon them, and, “como el
agua de mayo,” she is a wellspring that channels resources to all of her “corderas” (I, 77).
Preciosa’s concern for the wellbeing of all of the members of her group also
contrasts with imagery associated with the Spanish government in the novella.
Clemente’s escape from the authorities aboard a shipment of bullion passing from the
New World, through Seville, and on to its final destination of Genoa highlights the
Spanish government’s failure to channel resources into its economy to the benefit of all
members of society. Fernand Braudel calls the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries “the age of the Genoese” because of the large number of Genoese bankers and
merchants who played a central role as moneylenders to the Spanish monarchy (I, 394).
The abundant supply of New World bullion that Spain extracted over the course of the
sixteenth century, like water unabsorbed by infertile soil, seeped through the Spanish
economy finding more stable ground in Italy. The nutrients of these resources failed to
trickle down to the common Spaniard; instead, they were used to pay off the debt the
Spanish government had accrued due to its wars in England and Flanders as well as its
attempts to defend against the plundering of English and Moorish pirates.
Preciosa’s generosity, which she expresses as a willingness to distribute her
earnings “hidalgamente,” is thrown into further relief when one considers the numerous
references to the stinginess of the Genoese made in La gitanilla (I, 97). Clemente is
intimately associated with a Genoese merchant in Seville, whom he describes as a
“grande amigo del Conde mi pariente, que suele enviar a Génova gran cantidad de plata”
(I, 115). One can assume that his cutting remark to Preciosa, then, noting the miserly
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tendencies of the Genoese, is based on experience; he asserts, “no soy rico ni pobre; y sin
sentirlo ni descontarlo, como hacen los ginoveses sus convites, bien puedo dar un escudo,
y dos, a quien yo quisiere” (I, 91). Ruth Pike, in a convincingly argued essay “The Image
of the Genoese in Golden Age Literature,” notes that there was a crucial contrast in the
“pattern of values” of the Spaniards and the Genoese; Whereas the ideal Spaniard, the
hidalgo, 9 was concerned first and foremost with fame and was largely unconcerned with
material wealth, the ideal man of the Genoese was a frugal merchant who valued
monetary success above all else (705-708). Pike also notes that many Spanish writers of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries blamed the Genoese for Spain’s declining
fortunes. She contends that these writers believed “that Spain was the prey of the profit-
seeking Genoese who, through their commercial and financial machinations, had
succeeded in stealing that nation's American treasure, and of crippling her economy"
(705). As Barbara Fuchs writes, “Often, the animosity towards [the Genoese] was part
and parcel of a larger critique of Spain’s European empire” (55). Thus, while Preciosa’s
liberal practices are in line with the image of the ideal prince, they contrast sharply with
the habits of her putative grandmother, the Spanish empire, and the Genoese merchants
who controlled much of the bullion that Spain had extracted from its New World
territories.
It is also important to remember that Clemente must flee Spain because of his
involvement in a homicide in which he and his master became entangled due to the
authoritarian and patriarchal courtship customs of orthodox Spanish society. Unable to
pursue his loved one openly because his parents “aspiraban a casarle más altamente,”
Clemente’s master is forced to seek her under the cover of night (I, 114). When they find
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ival suitors at her door they are quickly engaged in a duel, which leads to their crime.
The stress placed on the pressures of this youth to maintain “la voluntad sujeta como
buen hijo a la de sus padres” exemplifies the patriarchal repression common to both of
the fallen communities I have analyzed above and contrasts with Preciosa’s method of
choosing a life-partner based on one’s free-will and rational judgment, without concern
for the wealth or social status of one’s partner (I, 114). Clemente, then, as a double foil
to Preciosa, embodies the failings of both typical Spanish courtship customs and the
Crown’s inability to direct its resources to the good of its subjects.
The songs of praise that Preciosa sings to her models, Saint Anne and Queen
Margarita, incorporate the same images, critiques of present leadership, and hopeful
vision of purification and regeneration that manifest in the texts of the speculum principis
tradition. It is apparent that Preciosa sees reflections of herself in her models, as the
description she gives of each could equally apply to her; Preciosa’s songs stress the
essential virtue of humility, each woman’s role as a generator of abundance and protector
of the weak and needy, and describes them employing natural imagery associated with
prospering plants ascending heavenward via their respective matrimonial unions.
Preciosa addresses her song to Saint Anne using a descriptor that contains her own name,
“Árbol preciosísimo,” and proceeds to describe the heavenly family, Joachim and Anne,
and the crucial moment in history when divinity entered humanity. Like the ideal prince,
this model for Christian wedded love is associated with abundance and providing
sustenance for all:
Santa tierra estéril,
Que al cabo produjo
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Toda la abundancia
Que sustenta el mundo. (I, 65)
She also depicts Saint Anne as a defender of those in need, “el refugio/ do van por
remedio/ nuestros infortunios,” recalling the role that Erasmus and More envisioned as a
central component of the ideal prince (I, 65).
Preciosa describes the relationship between Anne and her Grandson, Christ, in
language that recalls her own relationships with Juan and Clemente:
En cierta manera,
Tenéis, no lo dudo,
Sobre el Nieto imperio
Piadoso y justo. (I, 65)
This “imperial sway” that the humbly born Anne has over Christ parallels that of Preciosa
over both Clemente and Juan. The former makes first mention of such language in his
poem praising Preciosa:
Sobre el más exento pecho
tienes mando y señorío,
de lo que es testigo el mío,
de tu imperio satisfecho. (emphasis added, I, 76)
Clemente repeats this idea in his second poem to Preciosa; he writes that she “Ciega y
alumbra con sus soles bellos, / su imperio amor por ellas le mantiene” (emphasis added,
I, 96). Juan similarly speaks of the power that Preciosa exerts over him, asserting that he
is willing to forfeit “coronas e imperios” for Preciosa (I, 103). At the novella’s climax
Juan again speaks of his love for Preciosa with references to world power; while being
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held in a jail cell for murder, the corregidor informs the nobleman dressed as a gypsy that
Preciosa has revealed the latter’s true identity, to which Juan responds: “Pues Preciosa no
ha querido contenerse en los límites del silencio y ha descubierto quién soy, aunque esa
buena dicha me hallara hecho monarca del mundo, la tuviera en tanto, que pusiera
término a mis deseos, sin osar desear otro bien sino el del cielo”( emphasis added, I, 133).
Finally, when Preciosa participates in Juan and Clemente’s amoebean song she asserts
that the humble soul of a peasant can equal those that are imperial:
Si las almas son iguales,
Podrá la de un labrador
Igualarse por valor
Con las que son imperiales. (I, 121)
This repeated reference to love and empire, especially when considered in the context of
the major themes of the novella—proper partnership in Christian marriage as the
foundation of family, and by extension, community—contains various possible levels of
meaning. For one, just like her model Anne, Preciosa aspires to great (imperial) heights
despite her apparently humble origins; love, like imperial power, exerts a control over
those involved. Yet another possible significance of this motif has deeper and broader
implications; Juan de Cárcamo’s rejection of the path of honor, pursuing Preciosa’s love
instead of the fame he could have acquired from fighting in Flanders and his willingness
to trade imperial power for rational and true love with Preciosa, can be read in a
synecdochic light. By turning his back on the entrapments of honor, the expansion of
territory, and concern for world power, Don Juan proscribes a solution for Spain’s
decline that involves a reassessment of the nation’s priorities, values, and customs. 10
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Such an interpretation gains validity when we consider important critiques of Spain’s
world empire that manifest in Preciosa’s second ballad.
Fifteen days after her song devoted to St. Anne, Preciosa returns to the court to
sing a romance about Margarita of Austria. As was the case with her song to St. Anne, it
is clear from the beginning that Preciosa sings of an exemplary figure that she has taken
as a model; the two are linked in the sets of adjectives ascribed to each of them—wealth,
jewels, and high worth. Preciosa sings:
--Salió a misa de parida
la mayor reina de Europa,
en el valor y en el nombre
rica y admirable joya. (I, 67)
In line with the ideal prince, who, modeling himself on Christ, takes a position between
celestial and earthly spheres, Margarita’s intermediate orientation is alluded to: “...es
parte/ del cielo en la tierra toda” (I, 68). Also harmonious with the portrait of the ideal
prince, Margarita is depicted as a protector of the common people; Preciosa sings of the
“alegría universal” of the “muchachos” and the “hombres” who have gathered in the
streets and plazas to ask Margarita to defend them:
Vivas, ¡oh blanca paloma!,
que nos has de dar por crías
águilas de dos coronas,
para ahuyentar de los aires
las de rapiña furiosas;
para cubrir con sus alas
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a las virtudes medrosas. (I, 69)
It is important to note that the masses’ petition for protection from the birds of rapine
comes after a series of twelve quatrains in which the royal court is described in
allegorical terms. The false appearances, flattery, pomp, and luxury of the court are
repeatedly mentioned:
Y para que todo admire
y todo asombre, no hay cosa
que de liberal no pase
hasta el extremo de pródiga. (I, 69)
Ambassadors from the far reaches of Spain’s empire are personified by their place of
origin; once again, the ostentation of the court is highlighted:
Milán con sus ricas telas
allí va en vista curiosa;
las Indias con sus diamantes,
y Arabia con sus aromas. (I, 69)
Similar to the critiques of the present condition of the state found in the speculum
principis tradition, for example Guevara’s lament for “la miseria humana que tenemos
agora,” Preciosa’s romance of Queen Margarita depicts a nation that is plagued by
ineffective leadership in need of purification (215). Preciosa sings that the “mal
intencionados” are accompanied by “la envidia mordedora,” and that they take advantage
of the “bondad en los pechos/ de la lealtad española” (I, 69). The allusions to the
degenerate state of the court take on their full range of meaning when we consider the
historical background in which they are embedded. Forcione contextualizes the allusions
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to Margarita as a figure of redemption that could deliver the court from its oppressors,
explaining that:
Throughout the Catholic world the opposition of Queen Margarita to the
favorites who were destroying Spain was well known, and all who hoped
for a purification of life at the court looked to her as a savior. Thus the
Vatican advised its legate to cultivate the queen in the hope that, following
her gift of an heir to the Spanish crown, Philip might abandon his life of
frivolity and dedicate himself to serious matters. (Humanist Vision, 213)
Margarita’s death in 1611 was met with an outpouring of public grief and rage provoking
rumors that her archrival, Rodrigo Calderón, had poisoned her. 11
Similarly, J.H. Elliot describes Philip III’s reign as given to idle play and
ostentatious pomp: "Hunting, the theatre, and lavish Court fiestas occupied the days of
the King and his ministers, so that diplomatic representatives would constantly complain
of the difficulty of obtaining audiences and transacting their affairs" (Imperial Spain,
304). Favorites of the court, the Duke of Lerma central among them, had taken such
complete control of power that "Where the sixteenth century had produced innumerable
'mirors' for princes, the seventeenth century devoted its attention to 'mirors' for favourites,
on the assumption that, since they could not be abolished, they might at least be
improved" (Imperial Spain, 301-302). Preciosa’s song posits Margarita, “nácar de
Austria,” as a figure of hope that can release the nation from the favorites’ stranglehold
on the court. One of the individuals assembled in the plaza cries out, “vertiendo alegría/
por los ojos y la boca,” and praises the queen’s ability to disrupt plots and intrigues
plaguing the court:
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¡qué de máquinas que rompe!
¡qué [de] disignios que corta!
¡qué de esperanzas que infunde!
¡qué de deseos mal logra!
¡qué de temores aumenta!
¡qué de preñados aborta! (I, 70)
Like Anne, Margarita is represented as a protector of the common individual, a source of
hope, and a cure for the community’s afflicted condition.
In an insightful paper titled “Self Perception and Decline in Early Seventeenth
Century Spain,” J. H. Elliot unveils the general sense of malaise that Spaniards suffered
at the time. The spectacular successes that had characterized the sixteenth century for
Spain began to visibly falter. With the defeat of the "invincible armada" in 1588, another
official bankruptcy in 1597, major reverses in Spain's north European policies, and the
famine and plague that swept through Castile and Andalusia at the end of the century,
claiming perhaps one sixth of the population, a pervasive sense of decline afflicted
Spaniards of the early decades of the seventeenth century. They "felt an urgent need to
explain to themselves what was happening to them" (46). The powerful sense of
messianic nationalism sparked by the achievement of worldwide empire "had helped
convince Castilians that they were the chosen people of the Lord, especially selected to
further His grand design... But if Castile was indeed the right arm of the Lord, how was
the sudden series of disasters to be explained?" (46). Many felt they needed to,
"strengthen their faith, purify their intentions, and reform their manners and morals" (46).
Elliot observes that there was a widespread sentiment that,
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Spain could only be cleansed of these vices by a programme of national
regeneration beginning with the court. It was assumed that such a process
of purification would 'oblige' God to look favorably again on Castile and
continue His former mercies to it. This direct equation between national
morality and national fortune was one that weighed heavily on the rulers
of Spain, who had been taught to consider themselves personally
responsible for the defeats and the sufferings of the peoples committed to
their charge. (47)
It is precisely this sense of decline and desire for protection, purification, and
regeneration that the “hombres” and “muchachos” express in the streets and plazas in
Preciosa’s song to Margarita.
Preciosa’s ballad reaches its zenith when Margarita kneels before Mary to pray
for the well being of her family and, by extension, the nation. The humble roots of the
celestial “Señora” contrast sharply with the ostentation and pomp seen previously in the
court; similar to the depiction of her mother in Preciosa’s ballad to Anne, Mary is
referred to as “la que por ser humilde/ las estrellas pisa agora,” (I, 70). Margarita
addresses the Virgin with a significant appellation: “Lo que me has dado te doy/ mano
siempre dadivosa” (I, 70). Mary’s open, generous, and abundant hand, when juxtaposed
to the clutching talons of the favorites—the “aves de rapiña” from whom the multitudes
seek protection—illustrates the crucial difference between the present decrepit state of
affairs in the court and the ideal relationship between the prince and his subjects, which is
analogous to that seen here between Margarita and Mary. 12 In line with the
preoccupations noted by Elliot, Margarita’s prayer expresses concern for the present state
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of affairs, particularly for her husband’s daunting task of stabilizing the foundations of a
precariously positioned empire:
Las primicias de mis frutos
te ofrezco, Virgen hermosa:
tales cuales son las mira,
recibe, ampara y mejora.
A su padre te encomiendo,
que, humano Atlante, se encorva
al peso de tantos reinos
y de climas tan remotas. (I, 70)
The image of Philip III as a human Atlas, struggling to endure the weight of such
disperse territories under his command, is consistent with Elliot’s analysis of the
sentiment among Spaniards that the nation had strayed from the correct path. When
considered in conjunction with the repeated references to empire and amorous
relationships, particularly Juan’s expression of love for Preciosa in language that
demonstrates his willingness to forfeit imperial ambitions for true love, Cervantes’s
subtle critique of the Spanish empire comes into clearer focus.
Michael Gerli contends that the ballads of St. Anne and Queen Margarita function
in contrast, and notes that the comparison of figures from the Spanish court to Roman
deities calls into question the compatibility of Christian practices and empire. Whereas
the “major thematic thrust” of the ballad of St. Anne is to “state that divinity is humility’s
reward,” the song of Margarita conveys a different message. Gerli argues:
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The virtuous simplicity of the family of Christ, King of Kings and source
of all true spiritual nobility, is contrasted sharply with the pomp and
fatuousness of the court of Phillip III, described in Preciosa’s ballad
celebrating Margarita de Austria’s misa de parida. The allusions to the
royal family in the latter are not by chance couched in terms of pagan and,
specifically, Roman mythology and metaphor evoking images of a corrupt
world order that is the antagonist of the Christian ideal. (36)
One other reference in the novella connects the Spanish and Roman world orders,
highlighting, as well, the violence and abuse of power that commonly accompany empire
and that are irreconcilable with Christian ethics. When his future father-in-law, the
corregidor Fernando Azevedo, visits Andrés in his prison cell he makes a telling
comment: “¿Cómo está la buena pieza? ¡que así tuviera yo atraillados cuantos gitanos
hay en España, para acabar con ellos en un día, como Nerón quisiera con Roma, sin dar
más de un golpe!” (I, 130). While Ife notes that it was Gaius Caligula, and not Nero, who
wanted for all of Rome to have one neck so he could cut it off in one fell swoop, the
corregidor’s comments, in line with language employed throughout the novella,
demonstrate that Cervantes continuously and subtly underlines the perils of empire (I,
235). Consistent with Elliot’s portrait of a society reflecting on itself, asking where it had
begun to err, sensing that it was in need of a moral purification and a reconsideration of
its priorities, there are repeated references throughout La gitanilla to this sense of decline.
Like the image of the ideal prince of the texts of More, Erasmus, and Guevara,
Preciosa is depicted as a shepherdess, a protector of her people, and a fountain of
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abundance that channels her resources equally. In stark contrast with the two
communities in which she lives, Preciosa stands as the exemplary figure of Cervantes’s
initial novella. Her clear vision of rational love, Christian morals, and her biting critiques
of the flawed values and customs of both the gypsy society and the Spanish court
demonstrate a profound consistency with the characteristics of the ideal prince depicted
in the speculum principis tradition. Her vision of matrimonial partnership, the foundation
of family and community, is a vision of hope; like the birth of Margarita’s children,
Preciosa is a figure of purification and regeneration.
V. The Exemplary Figure Among the Marginalized, “Savage” Other.
The narrative technique of having a Spaniard infiltrate an exotic, alien community
and pass as a member of an ostensibly barbaric society is one that Cervantes shared with
an important contemporary. In the second book of La Florida, first published in Lisbon
in 1605, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega narrates the curious story of Juan Ortiz, a Spanish
soldier who took part in the expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez in 1527 and later was
held in captivity and tortured by an Indigenous chief named Hirrihigua. After avoiding
numerous cruel deaths at the hands of his captor, Ortiz received empathetic treatment
from Hirrihigua’s daughter, who mercifully allowed him to escape, sending him to a
neighboring village, “un pueblo cuyo señor me quiere bien y dessea casar conmigo, llámase
Mucoço; dirásle de mi parte que yo te embío a él para que en esta necessidad te socorra y
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favorezca como quien es" (153). In stark contrast to Hirrihigua, the magnanimous
Mucoço protected Ortiz "como a propio hermano muy querido" (155).
All told, Ortiz spent ten years living among Floridian tribes and became so
integrated into their communities that when the Spaniards from the later De Soto
expedition found him they took him for a Native American: "no llevava sino unos pañetes
por vestidura y un arco y flechas en las manos y un plumage de media braça en alto sobre
la cabeça por gala y ornamento" (160). Ortiz is initially unable to speak his native
tongue, and must resort to making the sign of the cross in order to convey that he is
Christian, “Porque con el poco o ningún uso que entre los indios avía tenido de la lengua
castellana, se la avía olvidado hasta el pronunciar el nombre de la propria tierra” (161).
To be sure, a central aim of this type of narration, with its thought-provoking
implications about the malleability of human identity, and the sheer exotic quality of
foreign customs, dress, languages, and way of life, is to arouse admiratio in the reader.
Indeed, as E.C. Riley notes, admiratio was one of the most important functions of
literature in Cervantes’s time and consisted in an effort to create wonder, awe and
astonishment: “Fundamentally it seems to have been a sort of excitement stimulated by
whatever was exceptional, whether because of its novelty, its excellence, or other
extreme characteristics” (89). Nevertheless, the narrative technique of positioning a
protagonist with whom the majority of one’s readers could presumably identify among an
exotic, marginal community also permits both Cervantes and El Inca Garcilaso to explore
questions of national identity and to challenge commonly held assumptions in an indirect
manner. Instead of denigrating the “abhorrent other,” as was typical of tales of romance,
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these two authors ultimately employ this tactic in order to present a subtle, cloaked
critique of the Spanish empire and how it had neglected to act in harmony with the
Christian practices it was advocating to its new, pagan subjects. El Inca’s apparently
tangential story of Juan Ortiz in actuality conveys a central argument of La Florida;
many putative Christians among the Spaniards ought to imitate the charity and empathy
of the Indian chief Mucoço. Similar to Cervantes’s novella, El Inca’s depiction of
Spaniards is generally favorable; nevertheless, he includes brief episodes that underline
their principle vices. For example, when an Indian captive tells the tale of Juan Ortiz to
De Soto and his crew they misunderstand him, taking "oro" for "Ortiz," their avarice
apparently helping them hear what they desired. Inca affirms: "...entendían que
llanamente dezía que en su tierra avía mucho oro, y se holgavan y regozijavan sólo con
oírlo nombrar" (157).
Spanish greed contrasts sharply with the magnanimity and selflessness of Mucoço
who protects Ortiz to the point that he loses any hope of marrying Hirrihigua’s daughter:
"lo defendió Mucoço con tanta generosidad que tuvo por mejor perder, como lo perdió, el
casamiento que aficionadamente desseava hazer con la hija de Hirrihigua..." (155). El Inca
stresses the exemplarity of his subject, an Indian worthy of imitation by Christians:
Basta representar la magnanimidad de un infiel para que los príncipes fieles
se esfuerçen a le imitar y sobrepujar, si pudieren, no en la infidelidad, como
lo hazen algunos indignos de tal nombre, sino en la virtud y grandezas
semejantes a que por la mayor alteza de estado que tienen, y están más
obligados. Que cierto, consideradas bien las circunstancias del hecho
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valeroso deste indio y mirado por quién y contra quién se hizo, y lo mucho
que quiso posponer y perder, yendo contra su proprio amor y desseo por
negar el socorro y favor demandado y por el prometido, se verá que nasció
de ánimo generosíssimo y heroico, indigno de aver nascido y de vivir en la
bárbara gentilidad de aquella tierra. Mas Dios y la naturaleza humana
muchas vezes en desiertos tan incultos y estériles produzen semejantes
ánimos para mayor confusión y verguença de los que nascen y se crían en
tierra fértiles y abundantes de toda buena doctrina, sciencias y religión
christiana. (156-157)
El Inca’s model for proper Christian behavior, then, comes from the “bárbara gentilidad
de aquella tierra,” a land that, spiritually, is sterile, barren, wild, and distant from the
center of the “buena doctrina, sciencias y religión christiana” (157). Likewise,
Cervantes’s exemplary figure Preciosa, who instructs the young aristocrat Don Juan de
Cárcamo in the proper tenants of rational Christian love, has been raised among savages,
far from the fertile epicenter of Christian doctrine. Despite this apparent deficiency she,
too, is described with images of fertility and abundance; she is a source of life, both
literally in that she receives abundant coins for her performances and spiritually as she
serves as a moral guide for her companions.
In both of these narrations the integration of a Spaniard into a community
inhabiting the liminal spaces of the Spanish empire, a group that is depicted as barbaric,
enables each author to challenge commonly held assumptions about the inherent
superiority of normative aristocratic subjects from the Spanish empire. Preciosa and
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Mucoço, despite being raised at the “savage” and “barren” margins of the empire, embody
the Christian values of charity and empathy for others, regardless of their inclusion or
exclusion in their community. Ultimately, they are the exemplary figures on whom the
reader is to model him/herself.
Before concluding this analysis of La gitanilla, I would like to consider the
research of two scholars who have made similar readings of El amante liberal and
Rinconete y Cortadillo in order to evaluate Cervantes’s use of this rhetorical strategy
throughout the Novelas ejemplares. In Passing for Spain: Cervantes and the Fictions of
Identity, Barbara Fuchs contends that the abundant cases of Turks passing as Christians
and Christians as Turks not only challenge the absolute distinctions between the two,
“stressing the porosity of borders in the eastern Mediterranean,” but they also mount “a
critique of Spanish empire in disguise” (64). Fuchs asserts that Mahamut’s detailed
exposé of the “violent empire” and its institutions “recalls in no uncertain terms the
processes, documents, and offices of the Spanish imperial bureaucracy” (77). She argues
that:
...passing becomes a rhetorical strategy of dissimulation, enabling a sotto
voce critique of Spain. Once the text has established that Turks and
Christians are constantly dressing up as one another, it can cloak its
pointed censure of Spanish ways in a highly orthodox critique of the Turk.
The novella thus expands its ironic purview from the fragility of
individual identities in a liminal space to the much heftier target of
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imperial practices with Spain and beyond. In what passes for a
conventional denunciation of Turkish ways, the text mounts an often
scathing critique of very Spanish habits. (76)
Interestingly, the very same vices that plague the court in La gitanilla, corruption, abuse,
and an utter lack of justice, are equally present in the Turkish governing society; like the
Spanish court in La gitanilla, the Turkish version is described as a place where, “todo se
vende y todo se compra” (I, 141). Fuchs points out that there is an interesting continuity
between La gitanilla and El amante liberal, which follows it. Referring to the imminent
residencia of Juan de Cárcamo’s father in the court, Fuchs notes, “The first novella thus
ends with a Spanish change of authorities and anticipates the change of Turkish viceroys
at the beginning of the second...The juxtaposition nudges the reader to recognize the
similarities between worlds that may seem very different” (79). Thus, Cervantes’s
ordering of his tales may have been a conscious effort to bring to light the intertextual
ironies of his novellas.
Carroll Johnson has similarly demonstrated that Monipodio’s patio, with all of its
reprehensible vices, reflects the defects of orthodox Spanish society in an article entitled,
“The Old Order Passeth, or Does It? Some Thoughts on Community, Commerce, and
Alienation in Rinconete y Cortadillo.” Whereas José Pascual Buxó and José Rodriguez
Luis have argued that Monipodio’s operation is a deformed mirror image of orthodox
Spanish society that ultimately demonstrates the criminal underground’s social and moral
inferiority, Johnson explores another possibility: “Let us suppose instead that, rather than
a distortion, Monipodio’s patio is something more like a microcosm, a syecdochic
representation of the larger society and the official values” (90-91). Johnson argues that
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Monipodio’s community represents the “old order” of political and religious orthodoxy
and Rinconete and Cortadillo represent the “new order,” (91). Thus, Monipodio’s society,
with its feudalistic organization reminiscent of the “father-kings” of libros de caballería,
and religious practices—such as excessive concern for the public display of one’s faith
and a veneration of saints—typical of resurgent Catholic orthodoxy, reflects the greater
Spanish society as a whole. Johnson contends that:
[Monipodio’s Patio] presents not a grotesque deformation, which would
valorize the official institutions positively by contrast, but a caricaturesque
exaggeration that throws the salient features of those institutions into
prominence and invites our critical meditation on them. (94)
For example, Monipodio’s monopoly on organized crime in Sevilla, all channeled
through his idiosyncratic house with its stage-like patio, is analogous to the Casa de
Contratación, which controlled all commerce with Spain’s American resources.
Cervantes, then, in the first three novellas, establishes a dichotomy of self and
other typical of romance. The abhorrent other, inhabiting a lower degenerate sphere is
represented as barbaric and demonic. Cervantes’s engagement with romance, however, is
not complete. Instead, he exploits the idealizing energies of romantic union, fusing these
to satirical and ironic traits more typical of picaresque literature. As Edwin Williamson
has observed of La ilustre fregona,
Cervantes used the dénouement to avoid carrying to its logical conclusion
the social critique implicit in the picaresque section of his narrative.
Instead he chooses to hide his hand: he drew back from an explicit critique
but none the less devised a narrative strategy that would allow him to
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pursue his critical interrogation of the honour-based hierarchy under cover
of a happy ending. (668)
Preciosa’s eleventh-hour transformation from a proud, autonomous young lady with a
clear moral vision into an obedient, silenced daughter of privileged society is consistent
with the narrative strategy that Williamson observes in La ilustre fregona.
As I hope to have demonstrated here, Cervantes employs a narrative technique in
La gitanilla that permits him to make a shielded, subtle critique of orthodox Spanish
society. Although it is not explicitly disparaged as the gypsy community is, the Spanish
community shares many of the vices of the barbaric, corrupt, and thieving gypsy aduar;
indeed, each community is a reflection of the other. Preciosa, like El Inca’s
magnanimous Indian chief Mucoço, is the exemplary model that provides the clear moral
vision for the regeneration and purification of a society that had gone astray. As the
“pastora” to her “corderas” she is the figure that the reader ought to follow.
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Notes
1 Cervantes plainly states his critical engagement with Greek romance in the prologue to the Novelas
ejemplares, where he describes his forthcoming Persiles as a “libro que se atreve a competir con
Heliodoro” (53).
2 In line with the assumptions of the instances I have presented here, in La fuerza de la sangre, Rodolfo’s
behavior contradicts the expectations for a noble: “Hasta veinte y dos tendría un caballero de aquella
ciudad a quien la riqueza, la sangre ilustre, la inclinación torcida, la libertad demasiada y las compañías
libres, le hacían hacer cosas y tener atrevimientos que desdecían de su calidad y daban renombre de
atrevido” (my emphasis, II, 77).
3 Other quality readings of this sort include Jonathan Burgoyne’s “La gitanilla: A Model of Cervantes’s
Subversion of Romance,” and Eric Kartchner’s monograph Unhappily Ever After: Idealism in Cervantes’s
Marriage Tales.
4 The elder states, “El que quisiere, puede dejar la mujer vieja, como él sea mozo, y escoger otra que
corresponda al gusto de sus años” (I, 101).
5 Sieber notes, “Es tributo, contribución que pagaban los musulmanes a sus príncipes, pero en el sentido
jergal, ‘hurtos’” (I, 83)
6 See Elliot regarding the significant economic stress that Philip II’s imperial adventures caused and the
new tax, the millones, that was instituted in 1590 (Imperial Spain, 285-300).
7 For more on Cervantes’s duties and tribulations as a tax collector, see Jean Canavaggio’s biography
Cervantes (144-172).
8 See Preciosa’s repeated lessons to Andrés based on correct vision: “Ojos hay engañados que a la primera
vista tan bien les parece el oropel como el oro; pero a poco rato bien conocen la diferencia que hay de lo
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fino a lo falso” (I, 104). Again, later, she contends, “Nunca los celos ... dejan el entendimiento libre para
que pueda juzgar las cosas como ellas son: siempre miran los celosos con antojos de allende, que hacen las
cosas pequeñas, grandes; los enanos, gigantes, y las sospechas, verdades” (I, 111).
9 Pike contends that “In the Golden Age Spaniards created an ideal type in the figure of the hidalgo,” who
was characterized by grave serenity, composure, moderation, and discretion (705). His value was not
connected to his wealth, but rather his inner virtue. Pike writes, “In the Golden Age the hidalgo was poor
in material goods, but rich in spiritual values” (706). Pike does not consider, however, the numerous
satirical portrayals of impoverished hidalgos that also appear in Golden Age literature; too proud to work,
driven only by a desire for fame in battle, the hidalgo was also, at times, the object of ridicule.
10 The implications of Juan’s decision to forfeit the privileges that his social status afford him are
underlined by the narrator, who expresses patriarchal-like disappointment in assessing the situation:
“Caballero es Andrés, y mozo de muy buen entendimiento, criado casi toda su vida en la Corte y con el
regalo de sus ricos padres, y desde ayer acá ha hecho tal mudanza, que engañó a sus criados y sus amigos,
defraudó las esperanzas que sus padres en él tenían, dejó el camino de Flandes, donde había de ejercitar el
valor de su persona y acrecentar la honra de su linaje, y se vino a postrarse a los pies de una muchacha, y a
ser su lacayo, que puesto que hermosísima, en fin, era gitana” (I, 106).
11 Forcione cites Quevedo’s description of the situation: “Public sentiment rose to a great fury at the loss of
a queen of such excellence, and everybody was saying that the life of Her Majesty had been cut short, and
not by sickness, that ill-doers [los malos] were far more to blame for her death that illness [los males]; such
was the extremity reached by public grief that it produced such extreme kinds of ranting” (214).
12 See Ter Horst (103) for another possible interpretation of these opposing images.
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Chapter Two
Prudence, Sincerity and the
Body’s Betrayal of the Dissimulated Self
Accompanying the abundant use of dissimulation in the Novelas ejemplares are
cases in which the body betrays the individual’s desire to conceal his/her true identity.
These occurrences of psychosomatic self-delation occur when the individual cannot
maintain control over his/her conflicting desires. The demands of prudence—such as
discreet speech and constant self-surveillance over one’s performance of an alternative
identity—disrupt the individual’s mental and emotional equilibrium. The desire for
sincerity, to be transparent with another human being and to reveal what is hidden in
one’s private space, overwhelms many characters of the Novelas ejemplares and their
bodies betray their desire to dissimulate. In this chapter I analyze three types of bodily
reactions: I first demonstrate how the chest and heart are represented as the locus of the
private, intimate essence of the idiosyncratic self and how “pecho” in Las dos doncellas
is a metonym for sincerity. I then analyze the motif of fainting and blushing and the
dynamics of interior and exterior components of identity in La señora Cornelia.
In a fascinating study on the discovery of the individual in Renaissance Europe,
John Martin analyzes how the transformation in meaning of two terms—prudence and
sincerity—during the early modern period is indicative of an “increased sense of
subjectivity and individualism” (Inventing Sincerity, 1312). Although Medieval society
“had numerous writers and theologians who fashioned a deep sense of inwardness and
interiority,” ultimately, "there was something significantly new about the way in which
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men and women in the Renaissance began to conceptualize the relation between what
they saw as the interior self on the one hand and the expressions of one's thoughts,
feelings, or beliefs on the other" (Inventing Sincerity, 1322-1323). Martin traces the
evolution of the moral term “prudence” from Aristotle to the 16 th Century. For Saint
Thomas Aquinas it was a virtue that entailed the use of practical reason employed as a
guide in one’s ethical decision making; a principle of order that held “the passions and
appetites in check when these threaten one’s ability to obtain happiness or salvation”
(Inventing Sincerity, 1323). But as Aristotle’s works, particularly his Nichomachean
Ethics, were interpreted by humanists outside a strictly theological context it came to
refer to an ethical strategy and “in the work of Machiavelli, prudence was divorced
entirely from ethics” (Inventing Sincerity, 1324). Prudence, then, comes to refer to a
rhetorical posture; an awareness of what interior parts to show to the exterior world.
Martin states, "In a variety of venues, great emphasis was placed on the importance of
cultivating a certain ambiguity about one's beliefs in daily interactions" (Inventing
Sincerity, 1325).
On several occasions in the Novelas ejemplares characters meet one another and
demonstrate a keen awareness of this refashioned meaning of prudence. For example, in
Rinconete y Cortadillo the latter is extremely furtive when introducing himself to the
former; he claims to neither know where he is from nor where he is going and declares
himself quite limited in professional abilities. The older Rinconete does not trust this
ostensible humility and asserts, “si yo no me engaño y el ojo no me miente, otras gracias
tiene vuesa merced secretas, y no las quiere manifestar” (I, 194). Cortadillo admits that
he does indeed have other abilities, but that, “no son para el público” (I, 194). Rinconete
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decides to share secrets of his own “para obligar a vuesa merced que descubra su pecho y
descanse conmigo” (my emphasis, I, 194). The private, interior space that Rinconete
claims to reveal is conceived as residing inside his chest, that is, what is intimate and
personal is metonymically associated with the heart. His petition is for Cortadillo to
“descubr[ir] su pecho,” to no longer conceal the secrets he stores in his chest and to relax
his vigilant caution, that he “descanse conmigo” (I, 194).
Later, when the boys first meet Monipodio, the rustic, disproportionate and
excessively hairy leader of the gang of thieves, the latter wastes no time in his mission to
discover his new disciples’ personal histories. The narrator notes that upon approaching
the boys Monipodio “preguntó a los nuevos el ejercicio, la patria y padres” (I, 212).
Rincón, however, is resistant to this invasive inquiry; he states that the profession they
exercise is obviated by their presence before him and that revealing their regional and
familial origins is not necessary. Monipodio praises such prudence pointing to numerous
possible benefits of such a strategy:
Vos, hijo mío, estáis en lo cierto, y es cosa muy acertada encubrir eso
que decís; porque si la suerte no corriere como debe, no es bien que
quede asentado debajo de signo de escribano, ni en el libro de las
entradas…es provechoso documento callar la patria, encubrir los
padres y mudar los propios nombres; aunque para entre nosotros no ha
de haber nada encubierto... (I, 212)
The boys’ precaution, then, with such idiosyncratic markers of identity as their place of
origin and family name, is depicted as a wise tactic for self-protection. Baltasar Gracián
advised a similar strategy of prudence in his collection of aphorisms Oráculo manual y
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arte de prudencia, first published in 1647: “Aun en el darse a entender se ha de huir la
llaneza, así como ni en el trato se ha de permitir el interior a todos. Es el recatado
silencio sagrado de la cordura” (162). In line with the spirit of the times, then, Rinconete
and Cortadillo, like many of the characters of the Novelas ejemplares, have a keen sense
of dissimulation. 1
In opposition to prudence and its concomitant strategies of concealment,
silencing, and masking, the Renaissance also witnessed, according to Martin, the
“invention of sincerity” (Inventing Sincerity, 1326). Medieval authors had developed the
ideal of concordia; the virtuous individual strove to maintain harmony between the heart
and tongue, that is, between what one believed and what one said. Thus, when Lorenzo
Valla gave his sermon In praise of St Thomas Aquinas, in which, despite the title, he
actually expressed his preference for Paul and the early Fathers, he states, “What may I
do about it ... conceal what I believe? But the tongue would disagree with the heart”
(Trinkhaus, 152). Medieval writers strove to model themselves on Christ and viewed the
spiritual life as the recovery of the image of God within.
The medieval ideal of similitudo, a likeness between the human person and God,
gave way in the sixteenth century to a new conception of the individual that stressed the
uniqueness of the internal self as agent or subject. As Martin puts it, “the heart was now
not viewed as a microcosm of a greater whole but rather as an individual entity”
(Inventing Sincerity, 1333). In addition to a new emphasis placed on the difference
between individuals, the Renaissance also witnessed an “overturning of the medieval
ideal of prudent restraint on one’s emotions,” giving a “new legitimacy to the expression
of one’s emotions” (Inventing Sincerity, 1330). As we shall see in Las dos doncellas and
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La señora Cornelia characters repeatedly manifest a deep desire to profess their
innermost feelings, even when the occasion calls for a more cautious strategy.
Furthermore, Cervantes explores ontological questions related to the uniqueness of each
individual with his treatment of doubling and misrecognitions in both of these novellas.
As the locus of authentic feeling and desire as well as the interior space of
irreducible individuality, the heart, from at least the time of the Hebrew Psalms, has often
been represented as that which, effectively, one must conceal from a potentially harmful
public. 2 It was perceived to be the private enclave that one must dissimulate by using a
properly fitted mask to protect oneself from unwanted intrusions. And yet, a natural
result of the heightened use of prudence in early modern Europe was the birth of its
opposite: the desire to bare one’s heart, to share one’s authentic feelings with another, to
be, in a word, sincere. In many ways, Cesare Ripa’s influential emblem “sincerità”
epitomizes this flourishing preoccupation with being transparent. 3 Ripa described his
emblem thus:
a woman dressed in gold, who holds in her right hand a white dove, while,
with her left hand, she proffers her heart in a gracious, beautiful gesture.
The dove and the white clothing represent sincerity in its pure form,
without any falsity of appearances or artifice. The proffered heart
represents integrity, since, when a man's will is without vice, he does not
conceal the recesses of his heart but rather makes them visible to all. (qtd
in Martin, Myths, 103)
Cervantes deftly captures the pendulum’s swing between the opposing moral categories
of prudence and sincerity in his novellas Las dos doncellas and La señora Cornelia.
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II. Conflicting Desires and (Dis)covered pechos in Las dos doncellas
Las dos doncellas opens with a false recognition scene in which what appears to
be an exhausted young man arrives at an inn on a dazzling, foreign horse but, strangely,
without a servant. He unbuttons his shirt, revealing part of his chest and faints near the
water well. When awoken by the inn-keeper’s wife, he is extremely concerned about
buttoning himself back up—clearly trying to keep his “pecho” concealed—and promptly
asks for a room where he could retire and be alone.
The reader, along with the curious on-lookers at the inn, is held in suspense as to
the identity of this caballero. We are compelled to carefully attend to important details in
order to interpret just who this mysterious traveler is. The inn-keeper, his wife, and
several diners note the inconsistency in the signs they read from this handsome traveler’s
appearance: he is dressed elegantly and rides an expensive and exotic horse and yet he
comes without a servant—“todo lo cual requería no venirse sin mozo que le sirviese” (II,
203). Furthermore, he oddly pays for both beds in the room in order to ensure his
privacy—an act that completely mystifies the inn-keeper’s wife since, “no tiene él cara ni
disposición para esconderse sino para que todo el mundo le vea y le bendiga” (II, 202).
But ultimately it is the attention focused on this wayfarer’s “pecho,” both as a
conspicuous physical marker of gender and as a metonym for sincerity and the
individual’s private space, that emerges as the central motif of dissimulation in Las dos
doncellas.
The confusion, intrigue, and tension generated by the in medias res opening of
this novella are at least partially released when yet another remarkably beautiful traveler,
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Don Rafael, cleverly gains access to the first traveler’s room, overhears the latter’s
laments which are unmistakably those of a woman wronged in love, and convinces her to
bare her heart. Fittingly, it is through an appeal from his own heart, which he affirms is
not a “pecho de bronce duro” but rather one that has felt compassion and is sensitive to
her plight, that he makes his plea (II, 205). He slyly utilizes his vows of sincere empathy
to convince his interlocutor to share the source of her pain:
si esta compasión que os tengo y el presupuesto que en mi ha nacido de
poner mi vida por vuestro remedio, si es que vuestro mal le tiene, merece
alguna cortesía, en recompensa ruégoos que la useís conmigo
declarándome, sin encubrir cosa, la causa de vuestro dolor (II, 205).
After acquiring the stranger’s promise that he will neither move from his bed nor pry
further into her heart beyond what she willingly offers, and with the threat that she will
plunge her sword into her chest should he fail to keep his oath, the traveler tells her story.
She reveals that her name is Teodosia and that her mission is to seek out the
heartless Marco Antonio who, despite promises to marry her, fled their town after
receiving her love. This act, which she refers to as a “desatino,” is certainly “off the
mark” for an honorable noblewoman and it leads, in turn, to yet another impropriety that
jeopardizes both her and her family’s honor—that of disguising herself as a man in an
attempt to resolve her dilemma.
Teodosia has not, it seems, learned from her past failings. Despite having been
duped previously by the promises given by her lover, she shows little hesitation in
trusting the oath of a total stranger. Just moments before her nocturnal revelation to the
mysterious traveler she had lamented her own naiveté in believing the flimsy pledge of
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her lover: “¡Oh palabras fingidas, que tan de veras me obligastes a que con obras os
respondiese!” (II, 204). Within the first five pages of the novella, then, Teodosia has
fully exposed the intimacies concealed in her heart to two different young men and
nearly, both literally and figuratively, revealed her “pecho,” and thus her disguise, to the
on-lookers at the inn. To be sure, she is no natural at the art of dissimulation. She
appears, in fact, to be quite aware of her lack of experience in matters that require
prudence and discretion: “¡Ay pocos y mal experimentados años, incapaces de toda
buena consideración y consejo!” (II, 204). Having led a chaste and protected existence,
vigilantly protected within the walls of her parents’ home, it is not surprising that
Teodosia has not had the opportunity to refine her abilities to dissimulate. There are
numerous indications, in fact, that her learning in life has come not from experience but,
rather, from books.
Like the mad knight Don Quijote, Teodosia seem to have conceived of her plot, to
dress as a male knight and take an active role is seeking retribution from her lover, from
reading chivalric literature. While it is the narrator who compares Leocadia and her to
female warriors from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (“nuevas Bradamante y Marfisa,” II,
224), Teodosia articulates her amorous suffering with references to Olimpia’s plight in
cantos IX-XI of this epic romance. 4 During her late-night revelation to the stranger at the
inn, Teodosia explains how she devised her plan; after ripping out her hair and nearly
flooding herself in her own tears an idea comes to her: “discurrí con la imaginación, por
ver si descubría algún camino o senda a mi remedio, y la que hallé fue vestirme en hábito
de hombre, y ausentarme de la casa de mis padres, y irme a buscar a este segundo
engañador Eneas, a este cruel Vireno...” (II, 207). By equating Marco Antonio to Vireno,
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who, it will be recalled, abandoned his faithful wife Olimpia on an island off of Scotland
after marrying her and receiving the crown of Holland through her, Teodosia reveals a
proclivity for thinking of her life’s events in terms of literary models. 5 Fictitious
characters and their endeavors frame both the manner in which Teodosia expresses her
pain and how she resolves her conflicts. Cervantes, too, emulates his Italian model;
several important motifs of Las dos doncellas are evident in canto X of Ariosto’s poem:
e con tante e con sì chiare note
di questo ha fatto il suo Bireno certo,
che donna più far certo uomo non puote,
quando anco il petto e ‘l cor mostrasse aperto.
E s’ anime sì fide e sì devote
d’ un reciproco amor denno aver merto,
dico ch’Olimpia è degna che non meno,
anzi più che sè ancor, l’ ami Bireno: (10: 2)
(So many tokens of her loving heart
So many signs, Bireno has received,
Were she to tear her tender breast apart,
Hoping by this to be more believed,
No clearer certainty would she impart.
If constant souls, as well may be conceived,
Reciprocal affection justly earn,
Bireno should at least her love return.) 6
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The opened “petto” and “cuore” of the suffering Olimpia are echoed in Cervantes’s
construction of the chest/heart as a metonym of sincerity and locus of intimate emotion in
Las dos doncellas. Additionally, we see evidence of a prominent theme from La señora
Cornelia: the physical manifestations –“chiare note”—of internal experiences.
With the morning light Teodosia sees clearly that her mysterious interlocutor is,
in fact, her brother Don Rafael who instead of killing her, as she suggests, to maintain the
family’s honor, he decides to assist her on her mission of redress. He immediately takes
control of the quest and attempts to fill in the most glaring holes in his sister’s disguise;
he advises her to change her name “de Teodosia en Teodoro” and he trades their father’s
horse, an obvious sign of her true identity, for a mule (II, 211). They learn that Marco
Antonio boarded a galley in Cádiz en route to Naples and decide to intercept him in
Barcelona. Near the city, the two encounter the cross-dressed Leocadia whose adopted
identity as “señor Francisco” is even more poorly performed than Teodora’s passing as a
caballero. In addition to serving as the central conflict of the novella, since Leocadia is
like-wise seeking redress from Marco Antonio who has also abandoned her, the meeting
between the two disguised women allows for a further exploration of the dynamics of
dissimulation.
Cervantes alludes to the “pecho,” and its dual purpose of gender marker and
metonym for sincerity, once again when Teodosia and Leocadia, both disguised as men,
stand “puesto los dos de pechos” (II, 215). Teodosia immediately recognizes the signs
that Leocadia, like her, is a woman dressed as a man: “le pareció que tenía las orejas
horadadas, y en esto y en un mirar vergonzoso que tenía sospechó que debía de ser
mujer” (II, 214). Teodosia decides to corroborate her suspicion “a solas” after dinner, but
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her brother cannot help but begin to unmask Leocadia’s poorly executed disguise
immediately.
While his sister sees through Leocadia’s carelessly composed physical costume,
Rafael begins to uncover the inconsistencies in the story she tells about herself. Given
that she claimed to be, like Rafael and Teodosia, from Andalucía, Rafael asks Francisco
whose son he was since, “él conocía toda la gente principal de su lugar, si era aquel que
había dicho” (II, 214). Despite the clear warning signs that Rafael would see through her
ruse— his professed familiarity with “toda la gente principal” of her town and the fact
that he already demonstrates distrust about her proclaimed place of origin—Leocadia
cannot avoid being caught in a lie. She first proclaims to be the son of don Enrique de
Cárdenas, whom Rafael knows and “tenía por cierto que no tenía hijo alguno,” and then
tells the truth, that her father is Enrique’s brother, don Sancho (II, 215). The only
problem is that Rafael is familiar with Sancho’s family too, and he knows that the latter
only has a daughter who has the reputation of being “de las más hermosas doncellas que
hay en la Andalucía” (II, 215). Finally, Leocadia is forced to claim that she was only
trying to impress them with her lie, “fue porque me tuviésedes, señores, en algo, pues no
lo soy sino de un mayordomo de don Sancho” (II, 215).
After dinner Teodosia, who is beginning to refine her ability to perceive
dissimulation in others, if not her capacity to act on this newfound knowledge, makes an
appeal to Francisco/Leocadia to reveal his true identity. The two cross-dressed women
stand on a balcony, alone, “puestos los dos de pechos” (II, 215). Cervantes’s usage here,
which ultimately conveys the idea that the two women disguised as men are facing one
another, functions at several additional levels. For one, it serves to highlight one of the
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more salient and conspicuous gender markers that might give away each woman’s
disguise. Secondly, and more importantly for my analysis, the word choice announces the
imminent “heart to heart” between the two maidens. Their respective, discrete “pechos”
will, if only momentarily, no longer be two separate entities but rather will open and
unite. That is, the secrets that Leocadia has prudently covered and cautiously hidden in
her chest will find release when Teodosia, with pleas that echo those used previously by
her brother to pry open her own heart, persuades her to uncover that most personal realm:
her “pecho”.
The ensuing discussion, which entails a transparent confession on the part of
Leocadia, further emphasizes Cervantes’s use of “pecho” as a metonym for sincerity.
Teodosia asserts, “Vos no sois varón, como vuestro traje lo muestra, sino mujer” and,
apparently having learned how to coerce dissimulating maidens into sharing their
intimate secrets from her brother, she begs for Leocadia to confirm her assertion while
giving her a motive for such an admission: “os juro, por la fe de caballero que profeso, de
ayudaros y serviros en todo aquello que pudiere” (II, 216). And, for good measure, she
points out a glaring flaw in her disguise: “... no me lo podéis negar, pues por las ventanas
de vuestras orejas se ve esta verdad bien clara, y habéis andado descuidada en no cerrar y
disimular esos agujeros con alguna cera encarnada” (II, 216).
Teodosia’s critique of Leocadia’s performance of an alternative identity
demonstrates her nascent sense of how to more effectively dissimulate her own
intimacies in the future. She is no longer as inexperienced and naive as she was at the
beginning of her adventure. And yet, she nearly gives her own disguise away when her
body betrays her; Leocadia’s tearful response to Teodosia’s probe proves contagious.
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Leocadia errupts in, “lagrimas...cuyo extraño sentimiento le causó en Teodoro de manera
que no pudo dejar de acompañarle en ellas (propia y natural condición de mujeres
principales enternecerse de los sentimientos y trabajos ajenos)” (II, 216). Despite her
keener sense of dissimulation Teodosia continues to struggle in her performance as a
caballero 7 since she is unable to hold back her tears of compassion for another woman
who, appearing as a mirror image of her, has been deceived in love. 8
Just as Teodosia erred in allowing a stranger into her heart, Leocadia also failed to
be sufficiently prudent. She describes how her attentive glances at Marco Antonio
signaled her desire for him—permitting him an entrance to her heart: “ni le fue menester
al traidor otra entrada para entrarse en el secreto de mi pecho y robarme las mejores
prendas de mi alma” (II, 217). Thus, although she admits her own measure of guilt in the
process, Marco Antonio’s entry into Leocadia’s heart is depicted as a transgressive act;
an invasion of her private interior space where he stole the most prized articles of her
soul. Teodora likewise recognized her own participation in Marco Antonio’s deceit in
her late-night soliloquy, overheard by her voyeuristic brother at the inn. Reflecting on
the process of Marco Antonio’s courtship of her, she admits her own active participation
in his amorous conquest: “¿Yo no soy la que quise engañarme?” (II, 204).
Las dos doncellas reaches its highest point of narrative tension when the disguised
damsels find Marco Antonio fighting gallantly in a battle at the port of Barcelona.
During the struggle between the city folk and passengers of the docked galleys Marco
Antonio suffers an injury that puts his life, and, therefore, the two damsels’ desires to
seek redress, in jeopardy. Fittingly, the details of Marco Antonio’s injury add yet another
layer to Cervantes’ crafting of the heart/chest motif. The extravagantly dressed seducer 9
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is struck by a rock thrown by the vicious mob at the precise moment when the two
women with whom he has been intimately involved appear at his side. The narrator notes
that his injury is serious “por ser en la sien izquierda” (II, 226). Oddly, the naval surgeon
decides: “no convenía curarle hasta otro día,” which, fittingly, leaves him with an open
wound during the course of the evening (II, 226). This literal and rather visceral wound
also functions as a figurative portal by way of which the damsels are able to complete
their revenge mission and penetrate Marco Antonio’s intimate, and previously
inaccessible, private realm.
Leocadia is the first to peer into Marco Antonio and witness his true intentions.
In a painfully honest confession, Marco Antonio bares his heart; he informs Leocadia that
the feelings of love that he felt for her “fueron de pasatiempo” and that he acted with
“juicio de mozo...creyendo que todas aquellas cosas eran de poca importancia, y que las
podía hacer sin escrúpulo alguno” (II, 228-229). Most importantly, his vows of love to
her could not imply any sort of lasting union since he had already been united in marriage
to Teodosia:
Confieso que la cédula que os hice fue más por cumplir con vuestro deseo
que con el mío; porque antes que la firmase, con muchos días, tenía
entragada mi voluntad y mi alma a otra doncella de mi mismo
lugar...llamada Teodosia... y si a vos os di cédula firmada de mi mano, a
ella le di la mano firmada y acreditada con tales obras y testigos, que
quedé imposibilitado de dar mi libertad a otra persona en el mundo. (II,
228)
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Remarkably, Marco Antonio demonstrates a newfound willingness to be forthright, even
blunt, about his thoughts and motivations in his amorous conquests of the two maidens.
It is as though, lying with an untreated, open wound, he is incapable of anything but full
disclosure. He even details, in rather precise, if poetic, terms, just how far his dalliance
with each doncella went: whereas in his tryst with Leocadia he merely reached “las
flores...las cuales no os ofendieron ni pueden ofender en cosa alguna” with Teodosia he
attained “el fruto que ella pudo darme y yo quise que me diese, con fe y seguro de ser su
esposo” (II, 228-229).
Readers have noted this sudden shift in Marco Antonio’s transparency; William
Clamurro, for example, observes that the seducer’s exploits are “acknowledged with
surprising openness” (223). Clamurro argues that this previously unforeseen sincerity is
due to his “state of debilitation” and “the temporary reversal of power differentials”
(223). This explanation is certainly satisfactory on a pragmatic level, but poetically I
believe that Marco Antonio’s newfound transparency demonstrates a remarkable
consistency with Cervantes’s construction of the motif of the heart as a the locus of
sincerity. With an open head-wound and exposed heart, Marco Antonio—the previously
crafty manipulator who has proven himself to be a master of the art of dissimulation—is
suddenly, and inexplicably, candid to the point of complete transparency.
Fittingly, after his sincere admission Marco Antonio is overcome by emotion and
he begins to lose consciousness: “En tanto que Marco Antonio decía estas razones tenía
la cabeza sobre el codo, y en acabándolas dejó caer el brazo, dando muestras que se
desmayaba” (II, 229). As we shall see in our analysis of La señora Cornelia, fainting is a
recurring motif in the Novelas ejemplares and, I argue, it often follows an atypical
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evelation of intimacies that had previously been prudently concealed in an individual’s
heart. Similar to other cases of fainting in the Novelas ejemplares, 10 it is as though Marco
Antonio’s consciousness is overwhelmed by the sudden externalization of secrets that
had been previously so cautiously guarded. 11
Marco Antonio awakes, in a sense purged of his sins and reborn to new social
roles. Don Rafael welcomes him back to consciousness as his brother-in-law: “Volved en
vos, señor mío, y abrazad a vuestro amigo y a vuestro hermano, pues vos queréis que lo
sea” (II, 229). The previously errant youth, of course, has also become a husband, as
Rafael introduces “esta joya, que es vuestra amada esposa” (II, 229). Similar to the other
marriage tales of the Novelas ejemplares 12 , Las dos doncellas comes to a close with a
restoration of order, sealed by a series of hasty marriages. Marco Antonio and Teodosia’s
marriage is quickly followed by that of Rafael to Leocadia and the four return home after
a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in time to impede their fathers’ impending dual.
As we have seen, the protagonists of Las dos doncellas repeatedly struggle with
conflicting desires; their psychological ambivalence consists in simultaneous motivations
of concealing and sharing/baring their most personal preoccupations. Despite their
awareness that discretion and dissimulation are strategies that would best serve them in
their respective precarious positions, they demonstrate a deep desire, at times a
psychological, corporal, or emotional need, to be transparent with others. Such
involuntary demonstrations of sincerity, such as Teodora’s empathetic tears upon hearing
Leocadia’s tale of suffering deceit in love, jeopardize her efforts to prudently guard her
secret identity and demonstrate one of the numerous ways in which the body betrays the
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dissimulated self in Las dos doncellas. Cervantes’s use of the “pecho” motif both as a
possible giveaway to the maidens’ disguise as caballeros and as the locus of sincerity
permits him to explore the dynamics of the interior and exterior experiences of
individuality that, according to John Martin, manifested with a newfound intensity in the
Renaissance.
Identity in Las dos doncellas, indeed in all of the Novelas ejemplares, is
represented as a complex relation between exterior and interior elements. Appearances
must be read—such external signs as dress, gestures, the stories one tells, the horse one
rides, etc. all must be interpreted as possible indicators of what one holds privately in his
or her interior space. In his book Myths of Renaissance Individualism John Martin makes
use of accounts from historical archives of the inquisitorial trials in late 16 th century
Venice as an indication of how people of the time thought about identity. In terms very
much in line with my analysis of Cervantes’s use of the “pecho” motif in Las dos
doncellas, Martin notes that the inquisitors recognized from the outset that their role
required that they “make every effort to uncover all the errors and heresies that were
hidden within the most secret part of the heart’” (Myths, 29). Making such determinations
was difficult due to the fact that there was “no window to the soul” or as prominent
Renaissance humanists observed “in a powerful metaphor borrowed from the ancients,
the gods had omitted to make an opening in the human chest through which men and
women might be able to see into one another’s hearts” (Myths, 29-30) 13 . It is fruitful to
read Marco Antonio’s sudden shift, from cunning seducer who purposefully obscured his
heart’s intentions and true feelings to completely transparent—to the point of being blunt
and unsympathetic—confessor, in light of this metaphor. With a wound that leaves his
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interior exposed, it is as though the deceived doncellas finally have an opportunity to
peer into his private intimate space, his heart, and understand his true intentions towards
them. Cervantes’s crafting of the chest motif—from Teodora’s unbuttoning her shirt in
the opening scene, which both nearly betrays her disguise and demonstrates the
oppressive weight she feels of having to conceal the intimacies in her heart, to the two
maidens’ heart to heart discussion about their endeavors, to this final open-hearted
treatment in the novella’s climax—serves as an effective corporeal exploration of the
interior-exterior dynamics of identity and the tensions inherent to the demands of
dissimulation.
III. Sanctuaries of Sincerity, Fainting, Blushing, and Questions of Ontology in La
señora Cornelia.
Much like Las dos doncellas, which precedes it, La señora Cornelia is centered
on questions of marriage, honor and identity. While a similar push and pull between the
poles of prudence and sincerity is evident in the experiences of the protagonists of La
señora Cornelia, several new nuances of the dynamics of dissimulation and self-
revelation manifest in this novella. For one, there is an emphasis placed on how the
characters repeatedly seek out sanctuaries for their moments of sincerity; forced by
circumstance or the simple desire for friendship, they are careful to reveal the intimacies
of their hearts only in protected safe-havens. Secondly, in place of the emphasis on the
concealing and baring of hearts, the bodily motif shifts to the head. As I will demonstrate,
the characters in this novella involuntarily reveal themselves in episodes of blushing,
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lanching and fainting: all of which demonstrate a psychosomatic experience that
threatens to give away a guarded secret.
Thirdly, the thread common to many of the Novelas ejemplares of reading signs
in order to discern an individual’s identity is especially prominent here. Perhaps more
than any other of the eleven novellas, La señora Cornelia highlights the dynamics
between internal and external components of identity or between essence and appearance.
Additionally, numerous misrecognitions and instances of identity theft raise such
epistemological and ontological questions as how we can determine the identity of others
and whether there is an inimitable, unique core to each individual. Lastly, unlike Las dos
doncellas, the characters of La señora Cornelia explicitly discuss the interplay between
the individual’s interior experience and their external manifestations. That is, they
demonstrate an awareness of how the body betrays the dissimulated self.
La señora Cornelia begins with a concise but significant introduction to four of
its central characters. Two Spaniards, Don Antonio de Isunza and Don Juan de Gamboa,
leave their studies in Salamanca in pursuit of military action in Flanders “llevados del
hervor de la sangre moza y del deseo, como decirse suele, de ver mundo” (II, 241).
Much like Avendaño and Carriazo from La ilustre fregona, these student-soldiers have
fled the lecture halls of Salamanca and, one suspects, a life trajectory heavily influenced
by their parents’ desires, in search of adventure and novel experiences. They receive
letters from their parents that express “el grande enojo que habían recibido por haber
dejado sus estudios sin avisárselo” which was unbecoming of illustrious, noble youth (II,
241). Unfortunately for these young aristocrats peace has broken out in Flanders; but
before returning to Spain they visit several cities in Italy and decide to continue their
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studies in Bologna. Back on a dutiful path, they return to the good graces of their parents
who demonstrate their approval by providing for them “magníficamente y de modo que
mostrasen en su tratamiento quién eran y qué padres tenían” (II, 242).
The boys appear adept at balancing duty and desire, not only with regards to their
parents’ plans for them, but also in amorous matters. The narrator states that they were
given to the love of their studies and the “entretenimiento de algunas honestas
mocedades” emphasizing that while leading happy lives, they were also decorous,
morally upright, and given to praying “ciertas devociones” (II, 243). Their interest in the
pretty, young ladies of Bologna serves as a segue to introductory remarks on the heroine
of the tale:
Y como eran mozos y alegres, no se desgustaban de tener noticia de las
hermosas de la ciudad; y aunque había muchas señoras doncellas y
casadas con gran fama de ser honestas y hermosas, a todas se aventajaba la
señora Cornelia Bentibolli, de la antigua familia de los Bentibolliss, que
un tiempo fueron señores de Bolonia. (II, 242)
Cornelia, who is described as “hermosísima en extremo,” is protected by the strict
vigilance of her brother, Lorenzo, an “honradísimo y valiente caballero,” who bears the
sole responsibility of guarding his sister’s honor since they are orphans (II, 242).
Having provided the reader with an exceptionally clear two-page introduction to
the central characters, the narrator shifts strategies and throws the reader into a confusing
series of actions that will become clear only later when we are given missing information.
On a walk down a street enveloped in profound darkness, an unseen stranger summons
Don Juan. A quiet, female voice asks him, “¿Sois por ventura Fabio?” to which he
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inexplicably responds in the affirmative (II, 243). 14 The stranger hands him a bundle,
tells him to protect it and to return (II, 243). The bundle, it turns out, is a crying newborn
swathed in “paños...que mostraban ser de ricos padres nacida [la criatura]” (II, 244).
Don Juan brings the infant home, asks a servant to care for it, and returns to where he was
given the child and finds a sword fight in progress. Driven by a chivalric motive to
protect the underdog, he defends the Duke of Ferrara from a group of attackers. Only at
this point we don’t know who this lone fighter is, as he refuses to give his name when
Don Juan asks, “no quiero deciros quién soy ni mi nombre, porque he de gustar mucho
que lo sepáis de otro que de mí, y yo tendré cuidado de que os hagan sabidor dello” (II,
245). In the confusion of the scuffle, however, Don Juan loses his hat and afterwards
finds a rather expensive one, which he puts on and which will serve at several points in
the story as a recognition device.
The basic plot line of La señora Cornelia, which unravels slowly in a series of
confusing actions followed by dialogue that gives order to the chaotic events, can be
summarized briefly. Cervantes relies on a tested plot device to give motion to his tale:
The duke of Ferrara has, in private, promised to marry Cornelia Bentibolli resulting in
premature sexual consummation. However, in contrast to Teodosia’s plight in Las dos
doncellas or Dorotea’s in Don Quijote, in which young maidens surrender their virginity
to a lover who immediately thereafter disappears, Cornelia’s amorous adventure brings
with it one additional complication: pregnancy. When the novella begins Cornelia has
just clandestinely given birth to their child; she fears the dishonor her bastard child would
bring to her brother and is thus in desperate need of a faithful protector. She gives thanks
to heaven upon finding Don Antonio, a Spaniard, since “la cortesía... siempre suele reinar
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en los de vuestra nación” (II, 247). The blocking agent, or obstacle to Cornelia and the
duke’s marriage, in this novella is the Duke’s mother who wants him to marry “la señora
Livia, hija del duque de Mantua” (II, 265). The duke, who proves himself valiant on the
battlefield, is something of a moral coward in asserting his will within his family; his
only plan is to wait for his mother’s death since, “ya está en lo último” (II, 265). Lorenzo
Bentibolli represents an opposing force to the duchess; his motivation is to make the duke
publicly recognize his obligation to Cornelia and their child and to take her hand in
marriage. The Spaniards Don Juan and Don Antonio are the trustworthy mediators whose
efforts will help restore order and reestablish a peaceful union between self and society.
While the protagonists of La señora Cornelia are more inclined to reveal their
intimate secrets than those of Las dos doncellas, they are not reckless in their moments of
sincerity. Repeatedly in this novella characters seek safe-havens that provide privacy and
protection for the revelation of their intimate secrets. Cornelia, for example, insists that
no one see her as she converts the Spaniards’ home into a surrogate sanctuary. She tells
Don Antonio: “por quien sois, que me dejéis aquí encerrada, y no permitáis que ninguno
me vea” (II, 247). Similarly, Lorenzo does not simply reveal his private preoccupations
in the street outside of the Spaniards’ home; instead, he takes refuge in the protective
walls of the church before sharing his intimacies with Don Juan. Lorenzo invites Don
Juan to “aquella iglesia que está allí frontero” where they seat themselves “donde no
pudiesen ser oídos” and opens his heart to the Spaniard sharing his plight which “hasta
agora por mi parte lo tengo puesto debajo de la llave del silencio” (II, 256-257).
Justifying his precaution in seeking a sanctuary for his moment of sincerity, Lorenzo
asserts, “las infamias mejor es que se presuman y sospechen que no que se sepan de
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cierto y distintamente, que entre el sí y el no de la duda cada uno puede inclinarse a la
parte que más quisiere, y cada una tendrá sus valedores” (II, 258). He is acutely aware of
the damage that public knowledge of his affairs might cause and the need for discretion
when revealing the sincere intimacies of his private concerns.
The demands of dissimulation in La señora Cornelia drive its protagonists to
psychological extremes; maintaining one’s honor (or that of one’s sister or lover), it turns
out, is an endeavor fraught with difficulty. Unlike Teodosia and Leocadia’s case in Las
dos doncellas, taking up arms and pursuing her apparently vacillating lover is not an
option for lady Cornelia. With a newborn to look after and faced with the very real
possibility that her brother will eliminate his dishonor by killing her, she is forced to seek
a new protector. Trusting a stranger to defend her honorably, however, entails obvious
risks, especially considering that her beauty was such that she is praised as “la mayor
belleza que humanos ojos han visto” (II, 247). Her struggles between the poles of
prudence and sincerity—that is, to simultaneously keep her intimate secrets from public
view and yet reveal enough of her story to recruit a protector and defender of her cause—
result in unbearable psychological tension.
Don Antonio first sees Cornelia as a “bulto negro de persona” dressed secretively
in an “hábito largo” (II, 247). In contrast to her sartorial strategy of concealment, she
willingly reveals that she is in need of protection and offers, in exchange, to explain
“quién soy, aunque sea a costa de mi crédito” (II, 247). Her forthrightness contrasts with
her apparent desire to be discreet and it results in her fainting on Don Antonio’s bed.
Like Marco Antonio’s case in Las dos doncellas, which we’ve analyzed above, lady
Cornelia’s body responds to a moment of atypical sincerity by fainting. Having
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externalized that which was so cautiously concealed in her most private interior space,
Cornelia’s body responds with a loss of consciousness.
In order to more fully understand why Cornelia should faint due to her self-
revelation it is best to consider the extreme precaution in which she has lived until this
moment. After her first case of fainting Cornelia narrates her life to both Spaniards. Like
the mansion-fortress in El celoso Extremeño created by the elderly Carrizales to maintain
his teen bride Leonora under a eunuch’s guard and where not even male cats or dogs
were allowed, Cornelia describes the extraordinary measures she and her brother Lorenzo
took to ensure her chastity:
De pequeña edad quedé huérfana de padre y madre, en poder de mi
hermano, el cual desde niña puso en mi guarda al recato mismo,..
Finalmente, entre paredes y entre soledades, acompañadas no más que de
mis criadas, fui creciendo, y juntamente conmigo crecía la fama de mi
gentileza, sacada en público de los criados y de aquellos que en secreto me
trataban y de un retrato que mi hermano mandó hacer a un famoso pintor...
(II, 252)
Like Carrizales, Lorenzo has created something of an “honor-barrier” enclosing and
protecting his sister. Her existence “entre paredes y entre soledades,” out of public sight
except for that of her servants, is one of extreme prudence. Her fainting is, in this
context, understandable: accustomed to severe privacy she has now placed her intimacies
in plain public view. She has permitted a stranger to penetrate her honor-barrier and to
peer into a private realm that few had previously accessed. 15
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Cornelia’s defenseless position, lying “desmayada” on Don Antonio’s bed, adds
an additional tension to the novella as the reader is left to wonder how the Spaniard, who
kept himself informed about the “hermosas de la ciudad,” will react (II, 247, 242). He
immediately satisfies his curiosity about this mysteriously concealed maiden: “lleguéme a
ella y descubríla el rostro, que con el manto traía cubierto” (II, 247). She regains
consciousness before any additional articles of clothing can be removed, but the tension
of whether the Spaniards are to be trusted with such a vulnerable and beautiful maiden
will linger throughout the tale.
Yet another bodily reaction that betrays an inner secret, both in La señora
Cornelia and throughout the Novelas ejemplares, are the repeated instances of blushing,
blanching and other such transformations of the face. Quite like the Inquisitors of the late
16 th century who, as John Martin describes, “believed that it was possible to deduce the
internal state of a suspect from external signs,” the characters of this novella read the
external manifestations in another’s visage in order to gauge his or her interior condition
(Myths, 29). After the central conflict of La señora Cornelia has been resolved, but
before Lorenzo and the Spaniards know that the duke and Cornelia have met and have
publicly agreed to marry, the duke decides to play a trick on them. Having finally found
Cornelia at the priest’s country house outside of Ferrara, the duke sends his page, Fabio,
for Lorenzo, Don Juan and Don Antonio. When these three defenders of Cornelia’s
honor arrive they attempt to read the duke’s face, hoping to perceive any indication of
what result, if any, his search for Cornelia has had. Attentively executing his playful
deceit, the duke controls the emotions of his countenance, dissimulating his joy at having
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found Cornelia; he receives them, “sin muestras de contento alguno” (II, 274). He then
constructs his fiction with a narration meant to provoke the men’s ire:
Bien sabéis, señor Lorenzo Bentibolli, que yo jamás engañé a vuestra
hermana, de lo que es buen testigo el cielo y mi conciencia. Sabéis
asismismo la diligencia con que la he buscado y el deseo que he tenido de
hallarla para casarme con ella, como se lo tengo prometido; ella no parece
y mi palabra no ha de ser eterna. Yo soy mozo, y no tan experto en las
cosas del mundo que me deje llevar de las que me ofrece el deleite a cada
paso. La misma afición que me hizo prometer ser esposo de Cornelia me
llevó también a dar antes que a ella palabra de matrimonio a una labradora
desta aldea... quiero que me deis licencia para cumplir mi primera palabra
y desposarme con la labradora. (II, 275)
The “labradora” or peasant girl to whom the duke refers, it turns out, is actually Cornelia.
But before he brings his fiancée out to meet them, and thus reveal the punch line of his
joke, he attends to Lorenzo and the Spaniard’s reaction to ensure that he times the
controlled recognition scene correctly. He notes that, “el rostro de Lorenzo se iba
mudando de mil colores, y no acertaba a estar sentado de una manera en la silla, señales
claras que la cólera le iba tomando posesión de todos sus sentidos” (II, 275). The three
enraged subjects of this playful deceit all agree to prevent the duke from carrying out his
stated intention. Don Juan expresses his anger in a whisper to Lorenzo, promising his
support in no uncertain terms: “Por Santiago de Galicia... y por la fe de cristiano y de
caballero que tengo, asi deje yo salir con su intención al duque como volverme moro” (II,
275). The duke carefully gauges their reaction, “Leyendo, pues, el duque en sus rostros
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sus intenciones,” and, before the joke goes too far, brings out the “labradora,” Cornelia,
before them (II, 275).
Several scholars have noted the vengeful, malignant tone of this joke and have
questioned why the Spaniards react to it in such a positive manner: “dijeron al duque que
había sido la más discreta y más sabrosa burla del mundo” (II, 276). 16 William Clamurro
remarks: “the reader is prompted to wonder wherein lie the witty and delicious elements
of this strange prank” (244). He also points out the duke’s reiteration of the term
“labradora” when he presents Cornelia to the three enraged defenders of her honor and
asserts that it is a term that “does not quite accord with the true social position or
character of the duque’s beloved,” and that it “reminds us of the essentially unequal
nature of the match between the house of Ferrara and the lower-ranked family of the
Bentibolli’s” (244). It should be remembered, however, that, like the duke, the Spaniards
have a penchant for the pleasures of honest recreation and harmless deceits implied in the
eutrapelia/tropelia motif that Cervantes announces in his prologue and that I have
analyzed in my introduction.
Don Juan and Don Antonio similarly played with another’s emotions when they
deliberately misled Cornelia by first wrapping her newborn infant in humble “paños,”
only to later bring the child before her in its original “mantillas” (II, 254-255). She
initially fails to recognize her own child, “miróle atentamente así el rostro como los
pobres aunque limpios paños en que venía emvuelto (sic)” (II, 251); but when the child is
wrapped in its original blanket her suspicions are aroused: “si la vista no me miente...Con
estas mismas [mantillas] o otras semejantes entregué yo a mi doncella la prenda querida
de mi alma” (II, 255). Just like the duke, the Spaniards are careful to release the tension
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efore the subject of their joke is overwhelemed; “no quisieron que más delante pasase...
ni permitieron que el engaño de las trocadas mantillas más la tuviese en pena” (II, 255).
As Ruth El Saffar notes, Don Juan and Don Antonio carry out the role of “author-
characters” in the work, exerting control over the other characters because of their
privileged access to all of the information (Novel to Romance, 123). It should be noted,
however, that author-like duties are not exclusive to the Spaniards. The duke in at least
two instances proves that he is adept at creating fictions and manipulating appearances.
In addition to his burla of Lorenzo and the Spaniards about his intention to marry the
“labradora” he is also carrying out a fabrication with his mother who believes that her son
intends to marry the duchess Livia. Cornelia, herself, is an adroit spinner of tales; In
order to hide her pregnancy she carries out a lengthy cover-up: “me fingí enferma y
melancólica” (II, 253). Many of the novella’s characters, then, are adept at the creation
of fictive realities and the manipulation of appearances. On the other hand, there are
characters that demonstrate the ability to read external signs in order to see through such
deceits and understand the internal and concealed intentions, feelings, and loyalties of
others. For example, Cornelia relies on the priest’s ability to interpret gestures and
expressions when the duke arrives at his country home unannounced; she implores the
priest to “descubrir y tomar algún indicio de su intención” (II, 272).
Throughout La señora Cornelia the face is represented as the part of the body that
outwardly reflects what a character is experiencing within. When the duke, frustrated at
his inability to find Cornelia, discusses his sadness with the priest he summarizes the
interplay between the interior and exterior aspects of one’s identity in very precise terms:
“claro está que las tristezas del corazón salen al rostro. En los ojos se lee la relación de lo
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que está en el alma: y lo que peor es que por ahora no puedo comunicar mi tristeza con
nadie” (II, 272). This astute observation, that the relation of what is in one’s soul can be
read in one’s eyes, deftly captures the motif found throughout La señora Cornelia: the
face functions as an external reflection of one’s inner state. 17
In addition to the cases we have already analyzed, several other instances of
“face-reading” in this novella support the duke’s insightful observation and add subtle
layers and textures to the motif. Having helped to settle the differences between the duke
of Ferrara and Lorenzo Bentibolli, Don Antonio races back to their home to inform
Cornelia “por no sobresaltarla con la improvisa llegada del duque y de su hermano” (II,
268). Don Antonio’s blanched face (“con una color de muerto”), however, tells the same
story as his words: “Cornelia no parece” (II, 268). Don Antonio fears that the duke will
think they are playing a cruel deceit on him: “Fuera de sí quedó don Antonio con el no
pensado caso, temiendo que quizá el duque los tendría por mentirosos o embusteros, o
quizá imaginaría otras peores cosas que redundasen en perjuicio de su honra y del buen
crédito de Cornelia” (II, 268). The possibility that the duke would take them for
charlatans becomes even more likely when a spurious Cornelia appears.
As fortune would have it, the Spaniards’ servant had locked himself in a closet
with a prostitute named Cornelia. Her departure from the closet onto the stage, as it
were, before the anxiously awaiting audience clarifies the confusion; this is not the
Cornelia that they were looking for, but rather a woman of same name. The facial
expressions of the various actors and spectators, however, reveal feelings they would
have rather kept concealed. Cornelia, the prostitute, makes her shameful entrance with a
concealed face: “estaba enveulta en una sábana de la cama y cubierto el rostro” (II, 270).
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When Lorenzo strips the sheet off of her, revealing her face and leaving her naked body
exposed, she hides her visage from view once again: “de vergüenza, se puso las manos
delante del rostro” (II, 270). Meanwhile, the duke, enraged and thinking that the
Spaniards might be putting him on, also hides his face—though he does so not out of
shame, but rather to dissimulate his thoughts: “Quedó tan corrido el duque, que casi
estuvo por pensar si hacían los españoles burla dél; pero por no dar lugar a tan mala
sospecha, volvió las espaldas...” (II, 270). However, were he as adept at reading other’s
faces as he is at dissimulating his own he would have discerned from Don Antonio’s
previous blanching that this was no joke.
The same pattern of deliberate veiling or displaying of one’s face is also a
prominent component of lady Cornelia’s revelation of herself to the Spaniards. There is a
remarkable consistency between Cornelia’s words and deeds: Just before she recounts her
personal history and present quandary to Don Juan and Don Antonio—thus placing her
private intimacies on public display—she unveils her countenance in an impressive
display: “dejó descolgar por las espaldas un velo que en la cabeza traía, dejando el rostro
exento y descubierto” (II, 251). Repeatedly in La señora Cornelia, an exposed face
presents the opportunity for another to view the interior experiences of the individual.
It seems that the Renaissance humanists’ laments, analyzed above, that the gods
had failed to construct a window to the soul through which an individual’s heart might be
viewed, finds its answer here; the human face has the capacity to serve as a portal
permitting access to the interior of the individual. Indeed, the entire material world
appears ripe for interpretation—signs, throughout the Novelas ejemplares, are repeatedly
read as indicators of the invisible, immaterial world. The process of interpretation,
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however, is not foolproof, and signs can easily be feigned, practiced, and manipulated by
impostors or they might simply be misconstrued.
In numerous instances in La señora Cornelia, characters are taken in by false
appearances and they misinterpret what they perceive. Furthermore, the very repetition
of mistaken identifications of individuals in this novella raises questions about selfhood
relevant to Spanish society in the early 17 th century. If identities can be assumed with the
simple donning of a particular, idiosyncratic article of clothing—as they are in La señora
Cornelia—what does this suggest about the possibilities for passing as another in a
society that was hierarchically rigid and that made attempts to classify its subjects
according to ethno-religious components of one’s identity? Certainly, historical cases of
identity theft attest to the very real possibilities of passing as another in Early Modern
Europe. The case of Arnauld du Tihl, the 16 th century impostor of Martin Guerre, was a
well-known instance of identity theft. Assuming not only Martin’s name but wife and
social role as a peasant in the village of Artigat in the south of France as well, Arnaud’s
deception went undetected for three years before being discovered and executed. 18
The very first scene of La señora Cornelia involves a case of an assumed identity
when Don Juan passes as “Fabio,” perhaps in hopes that the woman inquiring from
behind the door is looking for her lover. Due to the darkness of the street and, we can
assume, Cornelia’s intense anxiety, she hands her newborn child to this impostor without
clearly verifying his identity. As we have seen above, Cornelia is initially unable to
identify her child because of the change of dress it has undergone: The “pobres aunque
limpios paños” in which Don Antonio has wrapped the child are enough to confuse its
mother (II, 251). Clothing is the source of yet another misrecognition on Cornelia’s part
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when Don Juan arrives home and meets her for the first time wearing the hat he found in
the street after his participation in the sword fight. Don Juan inserts his head into the
bedroom’s entrance and the diamonds of the hat shine brightly. Cornelia asks the Duke
to enter, and is astonished to discover that this is not her fianceé: “¿Cómo no? –replicó
ella--. El que allí se asomó ahora es el duque de Ferrara, que mal le puede encubrir la
riqueza de su sombrero” (II, 248-249). Lastly, the confusion between the two Cornelias
is yet another case of mistaken identities caused not by the misreading of a physical sign
but rather by the fact that the same name has two different referents. To be sure, as Ruth
El Saffar observes, Cervantes’s exploitation of recognition, “...suggests a critique of the
use of reason and perception as guides to true understanding” (Novel to Romance, 127).
Like his model Ariosto, who lamented, “Oh sommo dio, come i giudìci umani/ spesso
offuscati son da un nembo oscuro!” (O God on high, how often you obscure/ Men’s
vision with an obfuscating mist!) (10: 15), Cervantes highlights the inherent dangers of
interpretation and the elusive nature of truth. While the human face—and, more
generally signs that manifest in the material world—can be indicative of interior or
immaterial conditions, they can also be very misleading.
IV. Conclusion
Throughout the Novelas ejemplares there is a clear and consistent notion that
contemporary Spanish society was plagued by the widespread use of deceit. Loayasa
from El celoso extremeño sees deception as such an essential tool to survival that,
“...todos aquellos que no fueren industriosos y tracistas morirán de hambre” (I, 112-3).
Several characters critique the falsity bred by court culture like Tomás Rodaja who, in El
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licenciado Vidriera rejects an offer to participate saying, “me excuse con ese señor, que
yo no soy bueno para palacio, porque tengo vergüenza y no sé lisonjear” (II, 56). As a
response to this abundance of artifice there is also a consistent desire for sincerity which,
as we have seen, often manifested in an involuntary corporeal response. The Glass
Graduate can, in fact, be read in this light. His transformation into glass can be seen as a
metaphor for the desire to reveal society’s disguises and deceits. He is the very
embodiment of transparency both physically and psychologically, not only turning into
glass himself but also putting on clear public display the lies that he perceives at all levels
of the social hierarchy. It’s as though his own transparency is not enough—he also feels
the need to impose it on the community he observes.
The characters of Las dos doncellas and La señora Cornelia, as we have seen,
confront their life-conflicts employing disguise and dissimulation to varying degrees of
success. In both of these tales of love Cervantes explores the poetic expression of how
individuals manage the tensions between the need to prudently conceal personal
information and the simultaneous desire to share such secrets with another in a sincere
admission of the heart. While their bodies repeatedly betray their attempts to dissimulate,
the characters of these novellas strive to maintain a stable footing between discretion and
transparency, often times seeking safe havens for their private confessions. In addition to
the sanctuaries we have analyzed here, there are repeated images of gardens, orchards,
and public baths, which characters seek out for the protection they provide for revelations
of the intimacies of one’s heart. In fact, Cervantes both opens and closes his collection of
novellas with references to such places—from his mention in the prologue of “alamedas,”
“fuentes,” and “jardines” where the “afligido espíritu descanse” to the closing image of
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Peralta and Campuzano resting at the “Espolón”(I, 52, II, 359). While the body
manifests legible signs such as fainting, blushing, or, in the case of a cross-dressed
caballero, a bared chest, the interpretative process is not foolproof. Like in all of
Cervantes’s fiction, appearances deceive and only attentive readers successfully penetrate
the protective layers that conceal the individual’s heart from public view.
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Notes
1 Barbara Fuchs has noted similar arguments in favor of prudent concealment in other works by Cervantes.
She argues that “Similar to ‘La española inglesa,” the Persiles valorizes dissimulation and discreet
oversight while explicitly condemning close scrutiny” (88).
2 In his book Myths of Renaissance Individualism, Martin refers to Calvin and Luther’s fondness for the
Hebrew Psalms due to their discussion of the human heart as locus of man’s feelings.
3 See illustration 1.
4 Olimpia is the supreme example of constancy in love as the beginning of Canto X makes clear: “Of all
the constant hearts, of all the love,/ of all the trust in all recorded time,/ of all the women who as models of/
Heroic passion rose to the heights sublime,/ Olimpia the queen of all would prove” (312).
5 Perhaps even more than Don Quijote, Teodosia’s imitation of literary models recalls Marcella from Don
Quijote I who depicts her experiences of love in terms of pastoral romance.
6 All translations of Orlando Furioso are from Barbara Reynold’s Penguin Classics edition.
7 Compare, for example, the Duke of Ferrara and Lorenzo Bentiboli’s sentimental scene in La señora
Cornelia; experiencing overwhelming emotion at having reconciled their differences when the Duke
publicly proclaims his intention to marry Lorenzo’s sister, the two begin to cry. However, they fight this
emotion since it is not fit for a caballero: “se le arrasaban los ojos de lágrimas, y al duque lo mismo...pero
consideraron que parecía flaqueza dar muestras con lágrimas de tanto sentimiento, las reprimieron y
volvieron a encerrar los ojos” (II, 267).
8 Many scholars have noted the prominence of doubles in the Novelas ejemplares. Casalduero, among
others, has brought to light the close connections between such characters as Carriazo and Avendaño,
Rinconete and Cortadillo, Cipión and Berganza, and Don Juan and Don Antonio. Regarding the doubling
of Leocadia and Teodosia see El Saffar (Novel to Romance, 110-114), or for a different view, L. Britt,
“Teodosia’s Dark Shadow.”
9 It should be noted that Marco Antonio is dressed in nearly identical clothing to other hero-soldiers of the
Novelas ejemplares, all of whom are described as being dressed “bizarramente” (the description is used for
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Don Diego de Valdivia of El licenciado vidriera (II, 44), for Ricaredo from La española inglesa (I, 261),
Campuzano from El casamiento engañoso (283), and the Duke of Ferrara from La señora Cornelia (II,
264) in addition to Marco Antonio here). Furthermore, Marco Antonio’s “sombrero... adornado de un rico
trencillo, al parecer de diamantes” (II, 223-224) is reminiscent of the Duke of Ferrara’s hat which has a
“cintillo...resplandeciente de diamantes…” and serves as the key sign of (mis) recognition in the novella
(II, 248). What we are to make of this remarkable repetition is an intriguing question. I believe one
possible significance is that it shows that Cervantes was thinking of his male soldier protagonists in
archetypal terms: while each demonstrates a discrete sense of individuality, they all tend to be showy,
boastful and, at least initially, morally immature. Their dress reflects their attempts to deceive others with
flashy appearances.
10 The shear number of cases of fainting throughout the Novelas ejemplares is extraordinary. Though not
an exhaustive list, other cases of fainting include: Don Juan de Cárcamo in response to his perceived rival,
Clemente’s, love poem being read in La gitanilla (I, 96-97), both Leonisa and Ricardo of El amante liberal
faint at several points (I, 150), among many others.
11 Teresa Sears offers a different opinion on the abundant scenes of fainting: she argues that women
repeatedly faint due to the fact that they do not have a free will and that the faint "signals the irrefusable
role in its most extreme moment" (96).
12 Other novelas that end thus include: La gitanilla, El amante liberal, La española inglesa, La fuerza de la
sangre, La ilustre fregona, and La señora Cornelia. See, also, Eric J. Kartchner’s book Unhappily Ever
After: Deceptive Idealism in Cervantes’s Marriage Tales.
13 According to the Italian intellectual historian Lina Bolzoni, Renaissance discussion of such a window
had its origin in Greek and Latin texts, which were becoming well known again in this period, that
conceived of truth as residing in the heart (See Martin, Myths, 30).
14 Given the fact that the narrator highlights the Spaniards’ interest in pretty ladies and the context of a late
night prowl, it seems to me that Don Juan, despite the narrator’s assurances of his moral uprightness, is
hoping to stand in as this stranger’s lover. Scholars tend not to question why Don Juan responds in the
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affirmative to the question of whether he is “Fabio.” I believe that, like the case of Carriazo in La ilustre
fregona, Cervantes is participating in double-discourse. That is, the description of a character is
contradicted by his/her actions, and this ambiguity invites an attentive rereading of the tales.
15 Leonora, from El celoso extremeño, faints under similar circumstances: when Carrizales reveals to her
parents that he found Leonora in the arms of another man she is overcome by emotion, “se le cubrió el
corazón y en las mismas rodillas de su marido se cayó desmayada” (II, 133). The duenna’s body also
betrays her with a blanched face: “perdio la color” (II, 133).
16 In addition to Clamurro and El Saffar, mentioned here, Eric J. Kartchner reads the duke’s joke as a
“doubling of the prostitute scene” (111). While the Spaniards were trying to be honorable, serving as
mediators between Lady Cornelia and the duke, their intentions backfire when the “Cornelia” hidden in the
closet is a prostitute and not the Cornelia for whom they are searching. Kartchner makes an interesting
observation about the different reactions to each case of identity confusion—whereas the duke becomes
frustrated at what is not an intentional burla, the Spaniards “accept the Duke’s treacherous frivolity
peacefully” (111). Furthermore, “the duke...only appears vindicated once he has submitted his audience to
the same type of humiliation that he experienced when he had suffered their unintentional deception” (111).
17 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s painting “The Cardsharps” (1594) captures this notion of reading
facial gestures, the eyes in particular, well. See illustration 2.
18 On Arnaud’s case see especially Stephen Greenblatt, “Psychoanalysis and Renaissance Culture,” in his
Learning to Curse (New York, 1990). Another historical treatment of the case is Natalie Zemon Davis’s
The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass. 1983).
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Chapter Three
Transformations of Identity in the Novelas ejemplares.
Among the most predominant topics of discourse in the Renaissance is the
veneration of exceptional individuals and the belief that, through proper instruction and
imitation of these exemplary models, one could mold oneself into the shape of one’s
choosing. As evidenced in the abundant biographies of eminent individuals and counsels
on how to become the model king or the model courtier, 1 Renaissance thinkers believed
strongly in the educability of the individual and in the unique human ability to fashion
one’s identity—to transform the self along the many levels of the natural chain of being.
Similarly, Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares encompass seemingly innumerable cases of
shifts in identity and an explicit engagement with the interplay between life, literature,
and education. Typically, the novella tradition, with its focus on plot and its flat or static
characters, is not a literary form that lends itself to complex or detailed transformations of
identity. With its ideal of brevitas the novella rarely deals with nuanced character
development; when psychological transformations do occur, they tend to be sudden. As
Clements and Gibaldi point out: “the metamorphosis is completed almost
instantaneously—more a revolution than an evolution in character” (65). Unlike many of
his predecessors, however, Cervantes’s tales explore the psychological dimensions and
subtle details of moral and spiritual growth. Despite Cervantes’s stated intent, expressed
explicitly in the collection’s prologue, 2 to write stories containing edifying content based
on characters that are worthy of imitation, many of his contemporaries and a fair share of
modern readers have dismissed this sentiment as a mere ruse to appease church censors
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and to justify his entertaining tales by insisting on their moral content. More importantly
for my central concern, numerous scholars have argued that the transformations of
identity in the Novelas ejemplares are merely surface deep, affecting only appearances
and not the essence of the individual. As the author of Don Quijote, Cervantes has been
depicted as the intellectual figure that, through his mad hero’s penchant for literally
imitating fictional examples, delivers the final blow to overly optimistic humanist thinkers
who naively believed in the flexibility of the self.
In this chapter I argue that throughout the Novelas ejemplares Cervantes depicts
the individual’s ability to transform him/herself not only laterally but also vertically. In
addition to their adroit manipulation of appearances, his characters refine themselves
morally, elevating themselves to a more perfect state. They slowly break free from
brutish vices like jealousy, pride, arrogance, lust, and possessiveness. While the novellas’
protagonists demonstrate a profound resourcefulness to transform the appearance of their
identity, they also undergo important and lasting metamorphoses of their essential being.
II. Flexibility of Self in the Renaissance
Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Europe there was a particular
interest in the interiority of the human being and in the ability of the individual to fashion
him/herself in a conscious manner. One of the most important works regarding the
transformative capabilities of human beings is the Oration on the Dignity of Man by Pico
della Mirandola which relates a fable about creation explaining the proper position and
nature of each creature. Unique among all creatures, man has an indeterminate nature
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and is assigned no fixed abode, form, or function. God informs Adam of his unique
situation among all beings: "We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither
mortal nor immortal so that thou... mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt
prefer. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate to the lower forms of life, which are
brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul's judgment, to be reborn into the
higher forms, which are divine" (225).
Similar meditations on man’s unique position in the universe and capabilities to
transform himself manifest in Juan Luis Vives’s Fabula de homine, which is based
directly on Pico’s conception of the dignity of man as sharing with God the ability to be
all things. An assembly of gods celebrates Juno's birthday and after the feast they
improvise an amphitheater. The Earth was the stage; the skies were the stalls and seats
where the gods were seated. They agree that none of the actors is more praiseworthy
than man--he who could "be all things" (389). He would change --appearing under the
mask of a plant, later in the shape of a "thousand wild beasts" and then as man- "a
political and social being" (389). As his final act, man wears the mask of the most
powerful god, Jupiter, and so confuses the gods with his convincing act that they "gazed
back again at man and then at Jupiter" (390).
Thomas Greene’s fascinating study “The Flexibility of the Self in
Renaissance Literature” aims to consider "how flexible the self does in fact appear in
works of Renaissance literature, what capacities for change it allows, and what
techniques, if any, it reveals for the willed metamorphosis of the personality" (243). Or in
more felicitous wording: "Did the Renaissance believe in renascence?" (243).
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His point of departure is Pico’s "extravagant assertion of human freedom...to
select one's destiny, to mold and transform the self" which he judges to be "the
conception of a very young man, instructed less by human experience than by books and
ideas" (243). Before analyzing several works from the Renaissance, Greene establishes
the philosophical/theological history of beliefs about the flexibility of the individual.
Pico’s conception was a violation of medieval thought: "The doctrine of man's
indeterminate nature conflicted with the doctrine common to Aristotle and the Scholastics
which held human nature to be unalterably fixed" (243). Pico appears to deny the
Aristotelian-Scholastic conception of habitus, which was defined by Aquinas as "an
acquired disposition inhering in a man which enables him to act in accordance with his
nature,” and "Although it is acquired rather than innate... it is slowly built up and slowly
if ever lost" (244).
Petrarch, not so much in his writings as in his life, which was characterized by a
vast variety of roles played out on the stage of European politics and letters, stood as an
embodiment of human freedom. Greene states that, “The new flexibility embodied by
Petrarch represented an implicit challenge to medieval habits of thought" (248).
Nevertheless, whereas Pico conceived of a vertical scale "along which men might move
upward and downward--upward toward the angel, downward toward the brute,
…Petrarch's scale is lateral; he demonstrated how rich a human life could be at a single
rung of the metaphysical ladder"(248-9).
Despite Petrarch’s example the important scale throughout the fifteenth century
remained the vertical, although the Humanist writers of the Quattrocento “conceived of
that scale in terms Ciceronian rather than Christian” (249). That is, education, training
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and secular instruction were the tools with which man was able to develop upward
toward an ideal. Greene contends that Erasmus’s famous assertion—Homines non
nascuntur, sed finguntur (men are fashioned rather than born)—“might be taken as the
motto of the Humanist revolution” (249). Such a notion of fashioning likens man’s
nature to wax and education for the Humanists was the imprint that aspired to shape the
suppleness of young students’ minds.
In a series of admittedly oversimplified analyses, Greene hastily considers notions
of vertical and lateral flexibility in three major works of the time: More's Utopia,
Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, and Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel. He
concludes that "in Pico consciously, in More, Castiglione, and Rabelais more insidiously,
the vertical flexibility of man becomes virtually a structural principle" (255). However,
"As the century wore on, the belief in the capacity of the self for fashioning was
increasingly modified or challenged by alternate views" (256). The works of Machiavelli,
Ariosto and Montaigne mark a "stage of disillusionment in the rapid decline of Italian
Renaissance optimism" (259). Machiavelli, in particular, marks a shift in focus; Greene
notes, "The crucial process for Machiavelli is not metamorphosis; it is rather the endless,
inconclusive struggle between fortune and human resourcefulness” (emphasis added,
258). Ultimately, Cervantes, according to Greene, sounds the death knell to the
Humanist’s optimism:
It is unlikely that Shakespeare was conscious of rejecting an age. It is
much more likely that Cervantes was so conscious. Whatever his
awareness, Cervantes wrote the most powerful of all attacks upon the
transforming imagination, most powerful probably because most
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sympathetic…With the intuitive recognition across the continent that
Don Quixote's hope was tragically anachronistic, an age was over.
Europe was left with the resignation of the earthbound, and with the
novel which teaches through disillusionment. (264)
The merit of Greene’s study is to be found in its breadth of vision and astute observations
regarding the evolution of an idea. It serves as an initial meditation on a crucial topic in
early modern European thought. Where it is less strong, however, is in its lack of
thoroughness: it paints, to be sure, an incomplete picture. While Greene’s depiction of the
crisis within humanist thought is widely accepted as accurate, representing Cervantes as
the bookend of this process is short-sighted.
Other scholars, however, have similarly cast Cervantes as the “desengaño” of
Pico’s wishful thinking. Timothy Hampton, in his intriguing book Writing from History:
the Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature, asserts that, in his masterpiece,
“Cervantes depicts a world in which the imitation of models has run amok, but where the
concern for virtue so central to the humanist ideology has virtually vanished” (238). Such
assertions from Renaissance scholars, who, it should be noted, may be less familiar with
the entire corpus of Cervantes’s literary production, appear hasty especially when we
consider the Novelas ejemplares. For example, in his rigorously researched and detailed
study Cervantes and the Humanist Vision: A Study of Four Exemplary Novels, Alban
Forcione sees in the Novelas ejemplares a strong connection to Erasmus's ideas about
man's potential to fashion himself and—through education, and gradual, quiet discipline
leading to moral perfection— man’s ability to raise himself vertically towards the divine.
He contends that Cervantes’s novellas,
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...point quite directly to several of the central preoccupations of Erasmus’s
program for spiritual renovatio—freedom and individual fulfillment,
domestic and social organization, knowledge and education, language and
literature, sinfulness and moral action, and the need for a general
sanctification of the secular world. (20)
As I will examine more carefully below, Forcione’s analyses of particular novellas
convincingly demonstrate Cervantes’s engagement in humanist discourse on human
transformation, education, and moral perfection.
It must be noted, however, that Greene’s assertion has found its adherents even
within Cervantine circles. Thomas Hart applies Greene's observations to the Novelas
ejemplares and concludes that in them one finds only lateral movement achieved via
resourcefulness and the ability to improvise and adapt to any complication that fortune
may present. 3 Hart notes that:
A different conception of flexibility, which becomes dominant in the
second half of the sixteenth century though it is found earlier in such
writers as Machiavelli, stresses rather man's inability to transform
himself. The earlier ideal of vertical flexibility gives way to an ideal
of lateral resourcefulness, the ability to adapt oneself to changing
circumstances, in the belief ... that if one could change with time and
circumstances, fortune would never change. (Emphasis added, 102)
Hart rightly points out the abundance of “lateral resourcefulness” in the Novelas
ejemplares and does well to connect this resourcefulness to the concept of “tropelía”.
However, I will argue that in the Novelas ejemplares Cervantes depicts man’s abilities to
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transform himself not only laterally but also vertically. His characters slowly break free
from brutish vices like jealousy and pride and are led by models of morality to refine
themselves. Furthermore, the very writing of exemplary novels implies that Cervantes
believes that they can serve as a model for his readers. The vow he makes in the
prologue is not ironic and his goal is not merely to entertain. Cervantes assures the reader
in his prologue:
Una cosa me atreveré a decirte, que si por algún modo alcanzara que la
lección destas novelas pudiera inducir a quien las leyera a algún mal
deseo o pensamiento, antes me cortara la mano con que las escribí, que
sacarlas en público. Mi edad no está ya para burlarse con la otra vida.
(I, 52)
As E. C. Riley has rightly noted, "Irony is highly improbable in view of the remark about
his age. He surely meant what he said when he said it" (101). Furthermore, the pride that
Cervantes took in his battle wound to which he refers earlier in the prologue—“perdío en
la batalla naval de Lepanto la mano izquierda de un arcabuzazo, herida que, aunque
parece fea, él la tiene por hermosa, por haberla cobrado en la más memorable y alta
ocasión que vieron los pasados siglos, ni esperan ver los venideros” (I, 51)— makes his
promise to remove his remaining functioning hand—the one with which he writes—a
clear testament to the seriousness of his pledge. 4
As we shall see, Cervantes is less optimistic than the exuberant Pico regarding the
vertical flexibility of man. In the Novelas ejemplares there is a guarded optimism; an
acknowledgement that such vertical transformations are slow and require diligence and
discipline, but his characters do demonstrate an ability to refashion themselves in
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Christian terms; they show signs of aspiring towards moral perfection, the refinement of
the self and the kind of vertical mobility envisioned by Erasmus. My analysis of the
Novelas ejemplares, then, will focus on Cervantes’s characters’ movement along both
scales; I will make a detailed analysis of the myriad forms of lateral mobility without
losing sight of Cervantes’s moral vision and his characters’ ascent along the vertical
scale.
III. Vertical and Lateral Transformations in the Novelas ejemplares.
From start to finish the Novelas ejemplares encompass the full spectrum of the
human condition imagined by Pico. As Alban Forcione has rightly noted, Cervantes’s
collection of novellas has an “imaginative reach extending from the opening celebration
of man’s divine potential to its concluding exploration of the darkest abysses of his
misery” (Humanist Vision, 21). Clemente and Don Juan de Cárcamo’s amoebean song at
the climax of La gitanilla elevates Preciosa to a celestial perfection, her extreme
“bondad” and “honestidad” make her refinement nearly ineffable: “que no hay humano
ingenio que le alabe,/ si no toca en divino,/ en alto, en raro, en grave y peregrino” (I,
119). Consistent with the references to her role as a shepherdess, 5 Preciosa serves as a
moral guide for Juan, encouraging him to overcome his vices of jealousy and lustful
infatuation. Additionally, Juan’s education illustrates the human potential for
transformation and refinement.
On the other hand, the portrait of humanity depicted in the final novella captures
the evil potential lurking in each individual. In the Coloquio de los perros Berganza and
Cipión, who, according to the witch Cañizares, were converted into dogs shortly after
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irth, discuss the vast manifestations of human vice running the gamut from hypocrisy to
slander. Their canine condition and the omnipresence of individuals enslaved by their
appetites, utilizing deceit and corruption to satisfy their brute instincts, lucidly depict the
capacity for humans to degenerate to the lower forms of life. Before turning my attention
to El amante liberal, which I will analyze with a close reading of Ricardo and Leonisa’s
transformations along both the vertical and lateral scales highlighted by Greene, I will
briefly consider significant episodes from various novellas that demonstrate Cervantes’s
engagement with the central tenets of humanist thought regarding education and the
human capacity for moral refinement and spiritual renovation.
Steven Boyd has recently observed that one of the themes that unite Cervantes’s
twelve novellas is that of identity, particularly in the numerous instances in which
characters undergo some kind of transformation. He observes that,
These changes may be very marked, or, more often, partial, incipient or
merely aspirational. Cervantes uses them as vehicles for exploring some
of the determinants of individual identity and some of the coordinates
between which it may move or fluctuate: nature and nurture; male and
female; higher and lower social rank; Christian and Muslim; Catholic and
Protestant; Spanish and English; vice and virtue; the human and the
demonic; the human and the animal; and the human and the divine. (22-
23)
Like Hart, Boyd stresses the superficial and transitory nature of most of the
transformations that occur in the Novelas ejemplares. He asserts that the metamorphoses
are “more often partial, incipient or merely aspirational” (22).
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Certainly, a succinct review of the most salient cases of transformation seems to
confirm Boyd’s observation. During Juan de Cárcamo’s two-year stint as a gypsy he
ingeniously deceives the aduar about his prowess as a thief in order to not compromise
his Christian sense of compassion and charity. His transformation is only skin-deep, and
he resists the degenerate practice of stealing, which, as the narrator’s opening remarks
make clear, defines gypsy identity. Likewise, Rinconete and Cortadillo’s foray into the
picaresque world of Monopodio’s Sevillian mob does not affect their essential being.
The novella’s finale clearly demonstrates Rinconete’s ironic distance; he expresses a
mixture of surprise and disdain for the respect and obedience the group shows to their
leader, “un hombre bárbaro, rústico, y desalmado,” and he vows to “aconsejar a su
compañero que no durasen mucho en aquella vida tan perdida y tan mala” (I, 240). In La
española inglesa, Ricaredo and his family of secret Catholics pass as Protestants in order
to practice their true faith in private. As Joseph Ricapito points out, their behavior could
“easily represent the peripeteia of conversos in Cervantes’s own Spain;” Ricapito further
asserts that the novella addresses, “the problems of Jews (and Moors) living as minority
cultures in Spain, and under the same kinds of duress and life-threatening situations”
(53). For all of these marginated peoples, their public appearance does not reflect their
essential being. The same can be said for many characters of other novellas: Loaysa
sheds his pose as a beggar-musician as soon as he gains access to the Celoso extremeño’s
fortress-home; The Dos doncellas’s disguise as men is similarly short-lived and
apparently of no lasting consequence on their identities. In short, the numerous cases of
disguise, passing, and alternative identities in the Novelas ejemplares are often, as Boyd
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and Hart assert, surface-level shifts or instances of lateral resourcefulness that have no
lasting importance on the characters’ being.
Nevertheless, a careful reading of the novellas reveals that in addition to
numerous momentary shifts in identity many characters also undergo more lasting
transformations. Numerous characters, such as Ricaredo in La española inglesa and Don
Juan de Cárcamo of La gitanilla, overcome vices—jealousy, excessive pride, and
lustfulness—becoming morally refined and gaining crucial self-knowledge. Many are
led to a deeper understanding of love; their child-like infatuation and excessive focus on
exterior beauty gives way to the use of the “ojos de entendimiento,” that is, a rational
consideration of inner virtues in one’s partner and an emphasis on trust, and friendship.
Furthermore, these “vertical” transformations demonstrate that Cervantes was intimately
engaged in exploring the central concepts of humanist thought.
An essential point for humanists was education via exemplary literature. Albert
Ascoli explains the connection between textual example and the reader’s life thus:
For the humanists, ‘insegnamento’ was successful when it fulfilled, as it
were, its etymological destiny as a training in the deciphering of ‘segni,’
signs ... Thus education in the reading of signs had as its goal the
production of more signs (if one became a man of letters) or of turning
one’s own life and name into a famous sign. (86)
While Don Quijote undoubtedly illustrates the possible dangers of applying literary
examples to one’s life, other Cervantine characters, many from the Novelas ejemplares,
effectively model their present comportment on a model taken from history or literature.
Furthermore, the protagonists of the novellas not only rely on textual models to determine
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how to act in their life situations, their stories, in turn, repeatedly become examples for
future generations. Thus, nine of the twelve novellas come to a close with an explicit
reference to the lesson that might be extracted from the tale, an example that ought to be
avoided (i.e. instruction via escarmiento), or a brief statement assuring the reader that the
protagonists’ children will learn from their parents’ life experiences. 6
In its consistent portrayal of deceit, hypocrisy, suspicion and betrayal, El coloquio
de los perros depicts the dark depths to which human depravity can descend. Throughout
his picaresque-like service to various masters, Berganza repeatedly witnesses lies,
corruption and abuse of power; individuals throughout these numerous communities act
out of selfishness and greed. Nevertheless, he also witnesses an ideal community whose
virtues shine all the brighter for its position among the other degenerate societies.
Berganza describes in detail how the Jesuit school with which he came into contact in
Seville devoted its energies to instructing children and brought people together in a
fraternal spirit of communion:
...recibí gusto de ver el amor, el término, la solicitud y la industria con que
aquellos benditos padres y maestros enseñaban a aquellos niños,
enderezando las tiernas varas de su juventud, por que no torciesen ni
tomasen mal siniestro en el camino de la virtud, que justamente con las
letras que les mostraban. Consideraba como los reñían con suavidad, los
castigaban con misericordia, los animaban con ejemplos, los incitaban con
premios y los sobrellevaban con cordura, y, finalmente, como les pintaban
la fealdad y horror de los vicios y les dibujaban la hermosura de las
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virtudes, para que, aborrecidos ellos y amadas ellas, consiguiesen el fin
para que fueron criados. (II, 316)
Berganza’s portrait of this ideal society highlights an educative process in line with the
fundamental theories of teaching that the humanists had developed and disseminated
throughout the sixteenth century. As Alban Forcione points out, Cervantes’s Jesuit
school, with its “emphasis on the moral development of the individual through the study
of good letters, the rejection of coercion and punishment as instruments of guidance...the
determination to make education pleasant...and the advocacy of a practical approach to
education which would exploit the child’s imitative faculty,” reflects Erasmus’s
convictions on proper education of youth (Mystery of Lawlessness, 149). The climate of
learning that the Jesuit schoolmasters have created is so conducive to development that
even a dog’s manners are raised to a more civilized condition. Berganza explains how
the boys welcomed him in their community and how his spirit was thereby polished:
“domestiquéme con ellos de tal manera que me metían la mano en la boca y los más
chiquillos subían sobre mí” (II, 316). The boys took to sharing their food with Berganza
and his manners become more refined: “por hacer prueba de mi habilidad, me trujo en un
pañuelo gran cantidad de ensalada, la cual comí como si fuera persona” (emphasis added,
II, 316). Cipión praises the Jesuit teachers, calling them “bendita gente” and attributing
them with what, for Cervantes, were the highest human virtues, “Son espejos donde se
mira la honestidad, la católica do[c]trina, la singular prudencia, y, finalmente, la
humildad profunda, basa sobre quien se levanta todo el edificio de la bienaventuranza”
(II, 316). Like the exemplary texts they teach, the Jesuit fathers are models or mirrors
that one would do well to imitate—the embodiment of the most dignified customs.
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The interplay between life and text is of paramount importance—through correct
guidance the children are able to reflect on textual examples, the repulsiveness of vice
and the beauty of virtue, and are ultimately able to fulfill their highest potential and attain
happiness. Albert Ascoli points out the etymological connection between text, children,
and freedom, explaining:
The very concept of the “liberal” art (“artes liberales”) contains, for the
Renaissance, a triple pun which embraces the Latin words for book (libri),
for children (liberi), and for freedom (libertas; adjectives: liber, -era, -
erum). Hence: education of children, through reading of books, to the
freedom (consisting in inner self-knowledge or in outward action on, or in
concert with, others) which constitutes mature self-realization. (83)
Throughout the Novelas ejemplares, and as we shall see, particularly in the Amante
liberal, the polysemic qualities of “liberal” that Ascoli highlights are abundantly evident.
Repeatedly, textual examples serve to guide the protagonists’ choices and lead him/her to
self-knowledge and freedom.
Personal growth and true, lasting vertical transformations, however, require that
the individual be faced with moral choice and the opportunity to apply the lessons one
has learned from textual examples. Many protagonists of the Novelas ejemplares are
held in captivity, just as Cervantes was in his own life, and are thus deprived of the
opportunity to put into practice the moral lessons they have learned from reading; the
experience of making moral choices is crucial for spiritual renovation. As Alban Forcione
notes, “Selfhood demands moral choice, and mature moral choice presupposes
experience, which includes, of course, the experience of evil as well as good” (Humanist
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Vision, 62). The case of Leonora in El celoso extremeño is a prime example of the
importance of free will in the growth process, and the animal imagery associated with her
and the other women held in bondage by the jealous Carrizales underlines their sub
rational, dehumanized condition. Leonora’s group of servants is likened to a flock of
doves; they are innocent and tranquil until the sound of their awakened master causes
them to scatter just as a gunshot makes a “banda de palomas” disperse in panicked
confusion and “cruza por los aires” (II, 126). Leonora accepts Carrizales’s explanation of
her complete enclosure within his house with a meager gesture of subordination,
“encogiendo los hombros, bajó la cabeza, y dijo que ella no tenía otra voluntad que la de
su esposo y señor, a quien estaba siempre obediente” (II, 105). Deprived of sensations
and life experiences, Leonora interprets the world she perceives in a distorted manner:
La plata de las canas del viejo a los ojos de Leonora parecían cabellos de
oro puro, porque el amor primero que las doncellas tienen se les imprime
en el alma como el sello en la cera. Su demasiada guarda le parecía
advertido recato; pensaba y creía que lo que ella pasaba pasaban todas las
recién casadas. (II, 106)
Although Leonora’s young age prevents her from knowing any better, her servants
complain of the lack of variety of sensorial experience due to their enclosure in the
house; they yearn for sounds that they miss, “me muero por oír una buena voz,” and
complain that they haven’t heard, “ni aun el canto de los pájaros” (II, 114). The song that
Loaysa sings accompanied by the dueña and servants emphasizes the danger that such
deprivation can cause: “Dicen que está escrito, / y con gran razón, / ser la privación/
causa de apetito;/ crece en infinito/ encerrado amor;” (II, 125).
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Leonora’s captivity ultimately maintains her in a child-like, animalistic condition.
She hovers at the low end of Pico’s scale, at a subrational level because she is unable to
fulfill her highest potential. As Forcione has rightly observed, making freely-willed
moral choices plays a crucial role in the formation of self:
Unless the individual is free to make a moral choice, he is incapable of
engaging in activity that distinguishes him from the beasts and that
endows him with his unique dignity as a human being. While the rest of
creation is controlled by the mechanisms of God’s providence, man alone
is given the responsibility to fulfill himself as a human being, and he does
so by the proper exercise of his moral will. (Humanist Vision, 61)
Carrizales maintains his child-bride and her servants in an infantile, underdeveloped state
by giving them abundant gifts of sweets and dolls, which keep them content but simple-
minded: “pareciéndole que con ello las tenía entretenidas y ocupadas, sin tener lugar
donde ponerse a pensar en su encerramiento” (II, 105). Leonora is entranced by such
inane entertainments, “dio con su simplicidad en hacer muñecas y en otras niñerías, que
mostraban la llaneza de su condición” (II, 105). Unlike the boys studying at the Jesuit
school in El coloquio de los perros, who are exposed to examples of good and evil and
are encouraged to visualize the “ugliness and horror of vice,” Leonora’s will is smothered
and her ability to grow is nullified. Juxtaposed to the Jesuit schoolmasters, Carrizales’s
vices are all the more conspicuous; the former are guided by Catholic doctrine and are
characterized by honesty, prudence, and most importantly a profound humility. Point for
point these are precisely the virtues that Carrizales lacks, but it is his lack of humility that
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ultimately causes his ruin— his pride and solipsism are such that he believes it is his right
to subjugate Leonora’s will.
Significantly, the novella reaches its climax at the precise moment when Leonora
is faced with her first, true moral choice. The manner in which her dueña, Marialonso,
leads her to Loaysa hints at her future act of defiance: “Tomó Marialonso por la mano a
su señora, y casi por fuerza, preñados de lágrimas los ojos, la llevó donde Loaysa estaba”
(emphasis added, II, 129). She determinedly resists his advances, however, and manages
to assert her will: “el valor de Leonora fue tal, que en el tiempo que más le convenía, le
mostró contra las fuerzas villanas de su astuto engañador, pues no fueron bastantes en
vencerla, y él se cansó en balde, y ella quedó vencedora, y entrambos dormidos” (II,
130). While her triumphant refusal—highlighted by the repeated variations of
“vencer”—might be seen as the emergence of her individual will and mark her entrance
into adulthood, it is best to consider other possibilities as well. 7 Steven Boyd considers
the possible inner-workings behind Leonora’s decision:
It is not difficult to think of other factors which may condition this
apparently free decision: fear of her husband; fear of public disgrace, fear
of Loaysa who is almost a total stranger to her; and, perhaps, fear of the
unfamiliar feelings of sexual desire which she may be experiencing for the
first time. We are left to guess what the real springs of Leonora’s refusal
of Loaysa are.... (32-33)
While the narrator’s brief summary of the moral lesson of the tale is somewhat trite and
possibly a parody of overly formulaic exemplary literature— “[este suceso es] ejemplo y
espejo de lo poco que hay que fiar de llaves, tornos y paredes cuando queda libre la
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voluntad libre”—the importance that Cervantes places on the power of the human will in
all of his literature prevents a complete dismissal of the sentiment (II, 135). The narrator
of El licenciado Vidriera, for example, similarly asserts the supreme power of the free
will: “como si hubiese en el mundo yerbas, encantos ni palabras suficientes a forzar el
libre albedrío” (II, 52). Despite his apparent mental clarity, repentance, and ostensible
spiritual regeneration in the closing scene of El celoso extremeño, Carrizales’s tragic
flaw, his inability to respect Leonora’s free will, continues to cloud his judgment and
actions. Not realizing that Leonora actually resisted the would-be adulterer’s efforts,
Carrizales assumes his share of the guilt:
Fui estremado en lo que hice... debiera considerar que mal podían estar ni
compadecerse en uno los quince años desta muchacha con los casi ochenta
míos. Yo fui el que, como el gusano de seda, me fabriqué la casa donde
muriese, y a ti no te culpo ¡oh niña mal aconsejada! (II, 133)
While he rightly assigns the blame to himself, Carrizales continues to be blind to the
precise nature of his error and never gives any indication of realizing his tragic mistake
was his arrogance in thinking he could control another’s will. In fact, his attempt to
convert himself into an exemplary model is ultimately just another manifestation of this
flaw. He tells Leonora, “Mas por que todo el mundo vea el valor de los quilates de la
voluntad y fe con que te quise, en este último trance de mi vida quiero mostrarlo de modo
que quede en el mundo por ejemplo, si no de bondad, al menos de simplicidad jamás oída
ni vista,” and he offers to double her dowry and requests that she marry Loaysa (II, 133-
134). Motivated by a desire to be perceived as virtuous in his final act, Carrizales’s
putative magnanimity is, in actuality, a final attempt to control her from beyond the
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grave. Self-deluded to the end, the example he offers to posterity is one to avoid rather
than imitate. Most importantly, El celoso extremeño highlights the importance of free
moral choice in the process of education and for the growth of self.
The Novelas ejemplares, then, include a vast number of transformations and
demonstrate, in line with humanist writings, the flexibility of the human being. The
characters of Cervantes’s twelve novellas delight in the experience of donning a
temporary disguise, whether that simply implies imitating an individual from another
social station in one’s speech or a more elaborate masking, with a great deal of energy
devoted to one’s costume, false name, and fabricated personal history. And while it is
true that many of these identity shifts are temporary and merely surface deep, the Novelas
ejemplares also encompass abundant vertical transformations; through their trials—many
of which include the use of a temporary disguise—many characters gain self-knowledge
and undergo a process of spiritual renovation. In harmony with Pico’s conception of the
human condition, Cervantes’s protagonists are repeatedly depicted with animal imagery
when they are held captive or are enslaved by their brutish appetites or vices and their
uniquely human capacities of speech and rational thought become suspended. As we shall
see in El amante liberal, the exemplary role of literature is alive and well—Don Quijote
has not, in fact, sounded its death-knell.
IV. Transformations in El Amante liberal: from feritas to divinitas.
The second novella of Cervantes’s collection, the Amante liberal, with its
abundant cases of superficial, temporary shifts in appearance as well as profound
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psychological and spiritual transformations of essence, illustrates my argument well. In
this novella, as in the Novelas ejemplares in general, Cervantes’s protagonists refashion
themselves along both the lateral and vertical scales outlined by Greene and summarized
above. Like the Greek/Byzantine novels that served as his model, 8 Cervantes’s high seas
adventure includes characters that undergo numerous changes of dress and name; the
most striking and memorable occasion, of course, entails the Sicilian Leonisa dressed in
Berber attire, but there are many similar instances of sartorial passing across national
boundaries. Similarly, the novella’s characters convert from Christianity to Islam and
back again. Language, too, must be transformed, as messages are translated between
Turkish, Greek, Arabic, Italian and “la lengua cristiana,” which Leonisa describes as
“aquella mezcla de lenguas que se usa, con que todos nos entendemos” (I, 174). Situated,
as it is, in the eastern Mediterranean between the islands of Sicily and Cyprus, El amante
liberal occurs in a contact zone between differing cultures and religions and its characters
maneuver between the categories of identity with remarkable fluidity.
The protagonists, however, also undergo more lasting transformations that affect
their essential being; through their trials and experiential learning they gain self-
knowledge and grow from the process of “desengaño;” They overcome selfish vices and
see themselves more clearly, eventually earning their freedom from captivity as well as
the freedom to choose their marriage partners. Ultimately, in line with Pico’s vertical
scale of human transformation ranging from the level of the beast to that of the heavens,
the protagonists of the Amante liberal manage to refashion themselves from feritas to
divinitas.
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The tale begins in medias res as an unnamed Christian captive laments his fate,
taking as his interlocutor the ruins of the capital city of Cyprus that lie before him: “¡Oh
lamntables ruinas de la desdichada Nicosia...!” (I, 137). The reader learns the
protagonist’s name, Ricardo, shortly after when a Turk, Mahamut, “mancebo de muy
buena disposición y gallardía,” speaks to him sympathetically. Nevertheless, the initial
image of Ricardo reduced to the condition of speaking with inanimate objects, in
particular with stones—an image that will resurface later in the novella when he, himself,
becomes petrified—marks his descent along Pico’s metaphysical scale; man, here, is
reduced to a subhuman level of existence. 9 Ricardo’s point of departure, then, is from the
lowest rung on Pico’s ladder; like the ruins with which he speaks, he is immobilized by
captivity. Furthermore, he is utterly devoid of hope, faith, and the will to live. He
asserts:
Y si es verdad que los conti[n]uos dolores forzosamente se han de acabar
o acabar a quien los padece, los míos no podrán dejar de hacerlo, porque
pienso darles rienda de manera que a pocos días den alcance a la miserable
vida que tan contra mi voluntad sostengo (I, 153).
Ricardo’s complete hopelessness due to his present situation recalls Auristela’s
pronouncement, in Cervantes’s Persiles, on the proper attitude to life’s misfortunes:
No sería esperanza aquella ... a que pudiesen contrastar y derribar
infortunios, pues así como la luz resplandece más en las tinieblas, así la
esperanza ha de estar más firme en los trabajos. Que el desesperarse en
ellos es acción de pechos cobardes, y no hay mayor pusilanimidad ni
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ajeza que entregarse el trabajado—por más que lo sea—a la
desesperación. (97)
Ricardo’s wretched condition, defined in vertical terms by Auristela’s remarks, “no hay
mayor...bajeza,” contrasts sharply with the end of his trajectory, which will see him
raised toward the heights celebrated by Pico (97).
Ricardo narrates the events that brought him to his woeful state, explaining to his
Sicilian compatriot—the renegade Mahamut—how his unrequited love for the beautiful
Leonisa, who favors the effeminately adorned Cornelio, led to his present captivity and
deep despondency. He describes how from an early age he not only loved Leonisa, “la
adoré y serví como si no tuviera en la tierra ni en el cielo otra deidad a quien sirviese ni
adorase” (I, 142). The manner in which Ricardo speaks of his devotion to Leonisa,
however, unveils his tragic flaw. He assumes that she owes him her love and he treats
her as an object, disregarding her free will. He is indignant that his dedication to her was
not reciprocated, and demonstrates his errant attitude in stating, “ni quiso [ella] agradecer
siquiera mis muchos y continuos servicios, pagando mi voluntad con desdeñarme y
aborrecerme” (I, 143). His exasperation reaches its climax in an outburst of uncontrolled
passion when he discovers Cornelio and Leonisa seated under a walnut tree in a coastal
garden; he challenges the delicate-faced “nuevo Ganimedes,” who lies in a bed of
flowers, to no avail. Leonisa faints, Cornelio flees and, just as Ricardo begins a skirmish
with his rivals’ servants, family, and friends, a band of Turkish corsairs disembark and
take Leonisa and Ricardo captive. Enamored with Leonisa, the Turkish captain—a Greek
renegade—intends to “volverla mora y casarse con ella,” but a storm and shipwreck
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impede his plans (I, 149). Ricardo now finds himself in Cypress, captive and forlorn,
believing Leonisa to be dead.
The remaining plot of the Amante liberal weaves together various additional
narrative threads before reaching its climax with the protagonists’ triumphant
homecoming to the shores of Sicily. Having survived the storm at sea, Leonisa arrives to
Cypress dressed exquisitely in “hábito berberisco” by her captor, a Jewish merchant who
hopes to sell her to one of the wealthy “viceroys,” Hazán or Alí Bajá (I, 157). Infatuated
with her exceptional beauty, the competing viceroys are ultimately outfoxed by their
superior, the cadí, who orchestrates the situation to his favor; The viceroys will together
pay for Leonisa and the cadí will be responsible for transporting her to Constantinople in
order to present her as a gift to the Great Sultan. A complex web of machinations
develops as each character seeks to fulfill his/her own desires. With the aid of Mahamut
and Ricardo, who have their own designs for the voyage, the cadí intends to feign
Leonisa’s sickness and death, and thus keep Leonisa for his own harem. In order to lend
verisimilitude to his story, and rid himself of an annoying partner, he plans to kill his wife
Halima, throwing her corpse overboard as a substitute for Leonisa. During the voyage to
Constantinople, however, two competing brigantines of what appear to be Christian
corsairs attack the cadí’s ship and foil his plan. The pirates, it turns out, are Turkish
soldiers passing as Christians and are led by Alí and Hazán Bajá, who had each planned
to kidnap Leonisa. After the treacherous rivals attack one another, the real Christians—
Ricardo and Leonisa— escape to Sicily along with the renegades—Halima and
Mahamut—who convert back to their original religion. The novella ends neatly, in line
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with the conventions of romance, with a double wedding, as Halima, realizing that she
cannot wed Ricardo, decides to marry Mahamut instead.
In the Amante liberal Greene’s scales of transformation are interdependent; the
protagonists achieve their vertical transformations of self by overcoming a series of
obstacles that require them to resourcefully move along the lateral scale. In other words,
it is precisely through the use of disguises, feigned intentions, and deceitful designs that
Ricardo and Leonisa shed their imperfections and come to a state of self knowledge and
“desengaño,” and ultimately transform along a vertical scale—becoming more morally
perfect and in line with the ethics of a proper Christian. In what follows I will analyze
the various stages through which the two Sicilian lovers progress in their moral and
metaphysical trajectory, highlighting the agents of their education and the nature of their
metamorphoses.
The imagery associated with Ricardo before his captivity reflects his low position
along the scale that Pico conceived; linked to an immobile and inanimate fossilized
stratum, he is beast-like in his uncontrolled passions, and he suffers from periods of
blindness—a metaphor that highlights his lack of awareness of his numerous vices. Ruth
El Saffar rightly observes that Ricardo initially demonstrates an “almost Quixotic display
of pride and lack of consideration for outside realities in the pursuit of his own fabricated
sense of proprietorship over Leonisa” (Novel to Romance, 144). What he fails, utterly, to
account for is the freedom of Leonisa’s will in deciding her marriage partner. Ricardo’s
moral imperfection is essentially the same as Carrizales’s of El celoso extremeño;
Forcione’s assessment of the latter –in whom he sees a “failure to discriminate between
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things and people in his life, a failure that is one of the most frightening forms of
egotism”—could apply equally to the former (Humanist Vision, 63).
With an appropriateness that recalls Dante’s insistence that the punishment must
suit the sin, Ricardo’s objectification of Leonisa leads to his own petrified state. When
he happens to find her seated in the garden beside Cornelio, Ricardo is altered. He
describes the experience to Mahamut thus: “me quedé como estatua sin voz ni
movimiento alguno” (I, 143). His descent is additionally marked by images of hellish
passion that seize him: “me ocupó el alma una furia, una rabia y un infierno de celos, con
tanta vehemencia y rigor, que me sacó de mis sentidos” (I, 143). Furthermore, the shock
of this sight seems to blind him, as he asserts “perdí la [visión] de mis ojos” (I, 143). It is
precisely at this moment—when Ricardo is experiencing an uncontrolled animalistic
passion and the loss of his rational faculties— that he is taken prisoner by the Turks and
converted into an immobile subject. His rage, ignited by his inability to respect Leonisa’s
free will, fittingly leads to his own captivity and loss of freedom.
Ricardo’s moral transformation and awakening, the process of becoming aware of
his faults and seeing himself and the world around him more clearly, occurs during his
captivity. Before any growth is to take place, however, he experiences yet another loss of
vision caused by emotional paroxysm when he and Leonisa are separated—Ricardo
departing on Fetala’s galley and Leonisa on Yzuf’s. Ricardo explains how he and his
beloved’s gazes met and how his eyes, “la miraron con tan tierno sentimiento y dolor,
que sin saber cómo, se me puso una nube ante ellos, que me quitó la vista, y sin ella y sin
sentido alguno di conmigo en el suelo” (I, 150). Ricardo’s fall and second case of
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lindness underlines his lack of self-control, his penchant for indulging in his emotions,
and recalls man’s fall from the Garden of Eden.
Captivity, ironically, provides Ricardo with the necessary experiences for his
moral instruction and personal growth, which are inherently connected to his ability to
overcome his solipsism and ultimately respect the freedom of Leonisa’s will. According
to Peter Dunn, Leonisa is “the agent of self-knowledge and therefore of self-
transformation” for Ricardo (94). While it is true that Leonisa does function as one of the
agents for his increased self-awareness and growth, there are other agents as well.
Mahamut, for example, plays a crucial role in leading his countryman out of the dark,
labyrinthine captivity in which he finds himself and his trajectory mirrors Ricardo’s in
that he, too, has learned from the experience of making poor choices. As William
Clamurro rightly points out, Ricardo and Mahamut develop a symbiotic relationship:
“The apostate, or renegado, offers the means by which the captive can attain liberty.
Reciprocally, the captive provides the apostate with the opportunity to return to his
homeland and religion” (Beneath the Fiction, 51). Like Ricardo, Mahamut currently
finds himself in a situation from which he would like to escape and the reason for his
captivity is, just as it was for Ricardo, youthful folly.
Mahamut’s initial appearance in the novella is emblematic of the blurriness that
exists throughout the tale between opposing categories. Despite being described as a
“turco” he refers to Ricardo in familiar terms, calling him first “amigo” and shortly
thereafter mentions that they are from “una misma patria” and even grew up together (I,
138-9). It becomes clear that Mahamut is a renegade—originally from Sicily but that he
converted to Islam at some point in his past and now realizes his error. He makes his
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distaste for his present religious and cultural identity clear, referring to his attire—a
marker identifying him as a Turk—as “este hábito, que aborrezco, ” and later makes plain
“el deseo encendido que tengo de no morir en este estado que parece que profeso,” (I,
139). Mahamut explains that his conversion was attributable to his “poca edad y menos
entendimiento” (I, 139). That is to say that he voluntarily and deliberately chose to
convert to Islam and was not forced to do so; he later refers to his foolish decision as a
“desatino” (I, 154).
Halil Inalcik describes how the Ottoman Empire’s international policy was
dedicated to training and educating Christian youths rather than native-born Muslim
Turks because, whereas the relatives of the latter would abuse the privilege—not paying
taxes and becoming rebels—the former, once they accept Islam, become “zealous in the
faith and enemies of their relatives” (78). Carefully chosen for their fitness,
temperament, and capabilities, these boys undertook a rigorous education in Turkish
language and customs as well as in the martial arts. The ultimate objective of this
extensive training was to create a warrior statesman and loyal Muslim who was
completely obedient to the Sultan. The Ottoman Empire, then, offered Christian youths
the opportunity for promotion within the power structure and the concomitant material
wealth that such a position implies. As the novella makes clear, Mahamut has become an
influential servant for the most powerful man on the island, the cadí. Mahamut boldly
asserts, “soy el que más puede en la ciudad, pues puedo con mi patrón todo lo que
quiero” (I, 154). It seems likely that he was attracted by the prospect of professional and
material progress; his young mind was seduced by what he now sees as fruitless
attractions. In his youthful folly Mahamut resembles Ricardo and thus serves as a
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suitable interlocutor and model for self-analysis. Clamurro rightly notes the parallel
between the two:
Like Mahamut’s impulsive apostasy, Ricardo’s hot-headed manner
reflects a level of immaturity in his understanding of himself and others.
He is the captive of his own mistakes of perception and bad judgment, all
of which reflects his state of incomplete self-realization. (54)
It is my contention that Ricardo’s first agent for transformation is Mahamut. As is
common in Cervantes’s fiction, 10 conversation with a sympathetic listener, especially one
who in many ways projects a mirror-like reflection of the protagonist, promotes a
mysterious restoration of health and functions as a catalyst to self analysis. Mahamut,
himself, refers to the aid he offers Ricardo in therapeutic terms, comparing his
companion to “el enfermo que pide lo que no le dan y le dan lo que le conviene” (I, 154).
Humanists such as Alessandro Piccolomini argued that human education must flourish
through civic engagement, not solitary contemplation. Utilizing images that both recall
Pico’s range of possibilities for man and Ricardo’s initial condition of speaking to the
ruins of Nicosia, Eugenio Garin summarizes Piccolomini’s assertion that,
The man who places himself outside human relationships and flees into
the forests and mountains, ‘driven by a foolish mood or by misfortune’
will have to stoop, as long as he retains the appearance of man, to
‘conversing with thorny shrubs and stones’. But even so something will
have been subtracted from his human nature; for the ‘solitary man will be
taken for a wild beast rather than for a man’. (Garin, 173)
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Thus, Ricardo’s fraternal conversation with Mahamut provides him with the opportunity
to reflect on his actions that brought him to his present state and to observe and imitate
another who was similarly given to folly in his youth. Furthermore, as I hope to
demonstrate with careful analysis later, Mahamut functions to temper Ricardo’s
excessive passions, which plays a crucial role in his union with Leonisa.
Another important step in Ricardo’s transformation occurs when he beholds
Leonisa, dressed magnificently in exotic Berber costume, as she makes an awe-inspiring
and lust-awakening promenade before the Turkish leaders. The experience of perceiving
her immaculate beauty as she removes the veil from her face sparks in Ricardo the
memory of a story that significantly inspires him to meditate on the nature of beauty and
love. Functioning as the centerpiece of desire to the novella, Leonisa makes her entrance
to the Bajas’ tent dressed in a manner that expertly complements her own natural beauty
and playfully hints at what cannot be seen:
Venía cubierto el rostro con tafetán carmesí; por las gargantas de los pies
que se descubrían, parecían dos carcajes, que así se llaman las manillas en
arábigo, al parecer de puro oro; y en los brazos, que asimismo por una
camisa de cendal delgado se descubrían o traslucían, traía otros carcajes de
oro sembrados de muchas perlas; en resolución, en cuanto el traje, ella
venía rica y gallardamente aderezada. (I, 157)
The allure created by the precise balance of exposed and concealed body parts creates a
deep desire in all of the spectators, such that they are impatient to see behind the veils:
“Admirados de esta primera vista el cadí y los demás bajaes, antes que otra cosa dijesen
ni preguntasen, mandaron al judío que hiciese que se quitase el antifaz la cristiana” (I,
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157). The beauty of Leonisa’s unveiled face is presented in sublime terms, which, as we
will see, serves as a spark for Ricardo, elevating his notion of love. Leonisa removes the
veil from her face and, “descubrió un rostro que así deslumbró los ojos y alegró los
corazones de los circunstantes, como el sol que por entre cerradas nubes, después de
mucha escuridad, se ofrece a los ojos de los que le desean” (I, 157). Just as the light that
Auristela describes in the Persiles, which “resplandece más en las tinieblas,” Leonisa has
sparked hope and lucidity in Ricardo (97).
In line with the humanists’ educational program, an important part of which was
centered on the interconnections between literary models and life experience, 11
contemplating Leonisa’s singular beauty inspires Ricardo to recall an important narration
his father once told him, which seems to teach him something about beauty and love. In
an apparently incidental digression, Ricardo tells Mahamut that seeing Leonisa enter the
Baja’s tent reminded him of a story his father told him from his days as a loyal soldier
serving “el emperador Carlos V” in his capture of Tunis and the fortress of the Goleta.
As Ricardo’s father sat in a tent, a blonde Moorish woman of singular beauty was
brought before him and the image of the sun illuminating her was of such beauty that two
Spanish gentleman—“uno era andaluz y el otro era catalán”—improvised a series of
couplets celebrating her beauty together. Ricardo stresses the cooperative nature of the
composition; he explains in detail how the first poet improvised five lines and how the
second, matching the established rhyme scheme, completed it. Shortly after, before
reciting the poem, he reminds Mahamut, “vuélvote a advertir que los cinco versos dijo el
uno, y los otros cinco el otro, todos de improviso” (I, 165). With his insistent emphasis on
the collaborative quality of the poem, Ricardo seems to realize that the appreciation of
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eauty, even the experience of love itself, is not necessarily a selfish, jealous, or
possessive endeavor as he had previously experienced it.
The contemplation of Leonisa’s remarkable beauty elevates him from his
fossilized, subhuman level, refining both his rational and poetic faculties. As Mahamut
observes, he is pleased to hear Ricardo recite verses since it is an act that requires
“ánimos desapasionados” (I, 165). Both in its celestial content and the collaborative
manner in which it is composed, 12 Ricardo’s poem recalls the amoebean song sung by
Juan, Clemente, and Preciosa at the pinnacle of the Gitanilla. 13 Forcione has argued that
in his poem, Juan expresses his ideal love in Neo-Platonic terms, awakening his
“slumbering higher faculties,” and calming the affections (Humanist Vision, 141). Juan
demonstrates that “he has in fact refined his perception of truth to such an extent that he
can see through the external beauty of his beloved to her finer spiritual beauty and
recognize in it the presence of divinity” (Humanist Vision, 139). The effects on Ricardo
seem to be quite similar in that he demonstrates a new, more spiritually attuned,
understanding of love. Ricardo seems to realize in a sudden flash of mental clarity
similar to the poem’s image of the sun peaking from behind cover—“Como cuando el sol
asoma,/ por una montaña baja”—that love must not be possessive, instead, it is based on
a spirit of liberality and respect for the loved one’s free will (I, 165). Of course, he will
stumble into his old way of thinking once more before recovering his vision during his
triumphant speech at the novella’s close. Ricardo’s enlightenment about the nature of
love, then, consists in a fusion of literary exemplarity and the application of a narrative
model heard from his father to his present life circumstances. In doing so, he acts in
harmony with humanist moral teachings; his father’s narration becomes what Baltasar
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Gracián called, “un texto animado,” a “living text” that he reactivates as a model for his
present comportment (Oráculo, 203).
Similar to the collaborative effort of the Catalán and the Andaluz, Ricardo
depends on Mahamut’s assistance in order to bring to fruition his union with Leonisa.
Having heard the important information about Ricardo’s situation, Mahamut advises him
to change his name to Mario so that Leonisa would not become aware of his presence on
the island, and takes the role of mediator. While he transports Leonisa to Halima’s room,
Mahamut makes use of the opportunity to investigate her emotional state. Like the wily
Odysseus who gauges the suitors’ loyalties and tests Penelope’s fidelity to him through
the crafty use of a fictional narration, 14 Mahamut utilizes a fabricated story to incite
Leonisa to demonstrate the intimacies of her heart. He subtly gauges her interest in
Cornelio and Ricardo, telling her that the former is now a captive and the latter is dead.
She proves indifferent to the dandy she had previously favored, but genuinely concerned
about Ricardo. Probing the extent of her affection for Ricardo, Mahamut states that
Ricardo was somewhat fond of a young lady named Leonisa, whom he planned to
ransom, “como no pasasen de tre[s]cientos o cuatrocientos escudos” (I, 162-3). Leonisa
dismisses Mahamut’s story as implausible since, “más liberal es Ricardo, y más valiente
y comedido” (163). She then reveals her fondness for Ricardo in even clearer terms:
Dios perdone a quien fue causa de su muerte, que fui yo, que soy la
sin ventura que él lloró por muerta; y sabe Dios si holgara de que
él fuera vivo para pagarle con el sentimiento que viera que tenía de
su desgracia el que él mostró de la mía. (163)
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Mahamut has successfully induced Leonisa to make her intimate feelings public in a
fashion that Ricardo, with his excessively passionate disposition, would not have been
capable. Ruth El Saffar rightly points out that, “Mahamut’s suggestion to Leonisa that
Ricardo had lost interest in her was intended to correct Ricardo’s unrestrained expression
of love” (Novel to Romance, 146). Mahamut, who has learned from his boyhood
seduction by the Ottoman Empire the importance of keeping one’s passions in check,
thus accomplishes a feat that Ricardo would not yet be ready to achieve.
The next step in Ricardo’s vertical transformation requires him to put into practice
the mental clarity he achieved regarding the non-possessive quality of love and the
respect for his loved one’s will. Ricardo and Leonisa must act as mediators for their
masters, which thus places them in a strange web of desire; while Ricardo must court
Leonisa for the cadí, Leonisa is assigned the duty of representing her master, Halima’s,
amorous desires for “Mario.” When Leonisa realizes this “Mario” is really Ricardo, the
stage is set for them to plot their escape and, in the process, to gain self-knowledge, and
to understand and appreciate one another at a deeper level. One key virtue that Ricardo is
compelled to develop is self-control; he must reign in his passion and temper his desire
for Leonisa. The situation allows for Leonisa to set the parameters of his courtship of
her. She warns him, “El hablarnos será fácil y a mí será de grandísimo gusto el hacello,
con presupuesto que jamás me has de tratar cosa que a tu declarada pretensión
pertenezca, que en la hora que tal hicieres, en la misma me despediré de verte,” (I, 173).
Leonisa has, against all odds, stubbornly resisted many men who have desired her despite
being in compromising situations and she insists that her chastity is like gold, “que
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mientras más se acrisola, queda con más pureza y más limpio” (I, 173). Thus, Ricardo
must learn to respect her, and not pressure her into compromising her honor.
This opportunity to communicate in equal roles also allows for Ricardo and
Leonisa to be frank with one another and become aware of important personal
weaknesses through the process of “desengaño.” Leonisa explains to Ricardo why she
had previously shunned him: “te hago saber, Ricardo, que siempre te tuve por desabrido y
arrogante, y que presumías de ti algo más de lo que debías” (I, 173). Although she
quickly mitigates this rather direct critique of his personality, stating that she now sees
that she may have been mistaken in her perception since experience now brought “la
verdad delante de los ojos el desengaño,” the frankness of her observation helps Ricardo
reflect on his previous behavior (I, 173). He humbly accepts her assessment of his
character, vowing to change:
Dices muy bien señora... y agradézcote infinito el desengaño que me has
dado, que le estimo en tanto como la merced que me haces en dejar verte;
y cómo tú dices, quizás la experiencia te dará a entender cuán llana es mi
condición y cuán humilde, especialmente para adorarte; y sin que tú
pusieras término ni raya a mi trato, fuera él tan honesto para contigo, que
no acertaras a desearle mejor. (I, 174)
Thus, Leonisa’s frank assessment of Ricardo’s presumptuousness and arrogance compels
him to evaluate his behavior and change the manner in which he communicates with her.
The Sicilian lovers’ sincere communication with one another helps each of them to gain
self-knowledge and shed brute-like vices; As El Saffar notes, “Just as Leonisa must
discover herself to be more than a victim, more than the passive recipient of the passions
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of others, with no criteria of her own for choice, Ricardo must see that he is limited in his
control over the wills of others” (I, 149). In communicating with Ricardo, Leonisa
begins to perceive the inner virtues that make him a worthy suitor for her love.
The open, honest, and straightforward approach that the two Sicilian lovers have
now established between one another contrasts sharply with the methods they plan to
utilize with their captors. Contemplating how they will escape from the labyrinth in
which they find themselves, Leonisa outlines their approach: “Sólo sé decir que es
menester usar en esto lo que de nuestra condición no se puede esperar, que es el
fingimiento y engaño” (I, 173). Ricardo, too, is willing to feign his true thoughts and
desires in order to escape their present predicament and live openly and honestly with
Leonisa. He assures Leonisa, “satisfaré tu deseo y el de Halima fingidamente, como
dices, si es que se ha de granjear con esto el bien de verte; y así finge tú las respuestas a
tu gusto, que desde aquí las firma y confirma mi fingida voluntad” (emphasis added, I,
170). And yet, he pauses to raise an important question about the use of deceit: “¿Es por
ventura la voluntad tan ligera que se pueda mover y llevar donde quisieren llevarla, o
estarle ha bien al varón honrado y verdadero fingir en cosas de tanto peso? (I, 170).
Ricardo’s meditation on deceit and the individual’s will is an important point, as it is
intimately related to his process of growth.
It is interesting to note that while he showed no moral qualms about using deceit
to change his name to Mario, thus concealing his presence on the island from Leonisa,
the prospect of beguiling another about his will, even though he is dealing with an enemy
and a captor instead of the person he most loves, troubles his conscience. For Ricardo, it
is a more serious fraud to deceive others about his desires and intentions—as he states,
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questions of the will are “de tanto peso” (I, 170). The issue is particularly pertinent to the
two Sicilian lovers since their amorous union requires them to trust that the other is being
honest about his/her will. If Leonisa so easily feigns desire for the cadí how can Ricardo
know whether to believe her apparently sincere feelings for him later? He is clearly
concerned about his reputation as a “varón honrado y verdadero,” and such deceits of the
heart are not to be treated lightly. Leonisa, however, who claims to have maintained her
chastity despite being a captive of various corsairs who explicitly state their lustful
intentions with her, is much more comfortable with the use of deceit. It is clear from
what she tells Ricardo—“pongo mi honor en tus manos, bien puedes creer dél que le
tengo con la entereza y verdad que podían poner en duda tantos caminos como he andado
y tantos combates como he sufrido”—that unlike Ricardo, she has been in many
compromising situations that have called for deceitful tactics since it was the only
recourse open to her (I, 173). The somewhat naive Ricardo, then, must follow the more
experienced Leonisa’s lead. By now she is accustomed to operating from the position of
a nearly powerless captive, and she knows all too well the power and value of the free
human will. Leonisa’s awareness of this important point is in line with the final moral
sententia of El celoso extremeño, in which the narrator asserts that this tale provides an
example of “lo poco que hay que fiar de llaves, tornos y paredes cuando queda la
voluntad libre” (II, 135). Ricardo, who previously was incapable of understanding
precisely this critical detail, failing to consider Leonisa’s free will and assuming that his
devotion to her made their union a foregone conclusion, is only now beginning to fully
realize the ramifications of his previous error.
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Ricardo’s generosity, to which the very title of the novella makes reference, with
regards to his devotion to Leonisa has never been in question. His willingness to liberally
give his money to ransom Leonisa from their first captor, the Greek renegade Yzuf,
stands in stark contrast to the behavior of his rival Cornelio, who, despite his wealth, 15
remains silent and fails to offer anything for her release: “ni Cornelio movió los labios en
su provecho” (I, 148). Later, Leonisa recognizes Ricardo’s extreme liberality when she
discounts Mahamut’s story because of Ricardo’s supposed limit of “cuatrocientos
escudos;” She asserts, “más liberal es Ricardo” (I, 163). His generosity, then, is a
defining feature; it permits Leonisa to identify him or to distinguish between the true
Ricardo and the simulacrum of him created by Mahamut. What Ricardo has failed to
realize with regards to generosity, however, is that he cannot give what he does not
possess and, ultimately, that he does not possess Leonisa. Remarkably, Ricardo shows
signs of overcoming his previous possessiveness of Leonisa during the novella’s climax
and appears to begin to understand the importance of the individual’s free will.
Both Ricardo and Leonisa show signs of moral development after they
successfully take control of the cadi’s brigantine; Ricardo seems to overcome his
possessiveness of Leonisa, and Leonisa demonstrates compassion and clemency.
Assisted by the fortuitous attacks of the treacherous Bajas, Ricardo and Mahamut are able
to execute their plan and acquire their freedom. As their enemies had decimated one
another, the Sicilians, with the help of Halima’s Greek renegade nephews who now
conveniently convert back to Christianity, kill the remaining Turks “con facilidad y sin
recibir herida” (I, 181). When the cadi regains consciousness, Ricardo magnanimously
offers his previous captor two options: “o que se dejase llevar a tierra de cristianos, o
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volverse en su mismo bajel a Nicosia” (I, 183). Despite the fact that he held them captive
and had nefarious designs for both, the cadi has the audacity to make a significant request
of Ricardo and Leonisa: “pidió antes que se hiciese a la vela que Leonisa le abrazase, que
aquella merced y favor sería bastante para poner en olvido toda su desventura” (I, 182).
Leonisa, who has been compelled to adopt a stance of obdurate resistance to the
innumerable masters with lustful plans for her, demonstrates a remarkable softness and
sense of humanity now, granting the cadí his wish. In a quasi-religious gesture that
underlines her Christian compassion, Leonisa places her hands over his head, “por que el
llevase esperanzas de sanar de su herida” (I, 182). Leonisa’s noble gesture underlines the
lesson that Ricardo must learn. As El Saffar notes, “She shows that love is not something
extracted from the victim by force, but given freely by a person no longer seeing herself
as a victim” (149). Ricardo, who had previously lost all semblance of self-control upon
seeing Leonisa seated next to Cornelio, now demonstrates a newfound calm with no hints
of the selfish possessiveness that plagued him earlier. The narrator reports that, “Todos
suplicaron a Leonisa diese aquel favor a quien tanto la quería” (I, 182). The two lovers
thus demonstrate true moral development, or as Stanislav Zimic puts it, an expiation,
“purificándose para la futura digna y bella unión” (80).
After their triumphant return home to Sicily, in which Ricardo plays a “graciosa
burla a sus padres,” dressing himself, Leonisa, and their crew in Turkish garb in order to
create an “espectáculo” and provoke the admiratio of their countrymen, 16 the novella
reaches its climax as Ricardo’s development reaches its pinnacle. Joaquín Casalduero
correctly notes the tight structure of the novella, which contains a significant parallel in
its opening and closing scenes: “Lamento de Ricardo cautivo y discurso de Ricardo libre”
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(78). Not only is Ricardo free from his captivity, his experiences as a captive seem to
have taught him about the supreme importance of the freedom of the human will.
Nevertheless, he commits one final act of folly as he makes his nervous speech in front of
the “más principales de la ciudad” (I, 185). His generosity reaches its summit, as he
renounces all claims on Leonisa:
Ves aquí ¡oh Cornelio¡, te entrego la prenda que tú debes estimar sobre
todas las cosas que son dignas de estimarse; y ves aquí tú, ¡hermosa
Leonisa!, te doy al que tú siempre has tenido en la memoria. Esta sí
quiero que se tenga por liberalidad, en cuya comparación dar la hacienda,
la vida y la honra no es nada. (I, 186)
For a moment it seems that Ricardo’s development has suffered a severe setback; his
mental clarity about the altruistic and non-possessive quality of love, sparked by the
memory of his father’s story and reinforced in the compassion and forgiveness he shows
the cadí in urging Leonisa to embrace him, seem to be merely a lesson he learned in
theory, one that he is incapable of putting into practice. He recovers, however, and
realizes his error:
¡Válame Dios, y cómo los apretados trabajos turban los entendimientos!
Yo, señores, con el deseo que tengo de hacer bien, no he mirado lo que he
dicho, porque no es posible que nadie pueda demostrarse liberal de lo
ajeno: ¿qué jurisdic[c]ión tengo yo en Leonisa para darla a otro? O ¿cómo
puedo ofrecer lo que está tan lejos de ser mío? Leonisa es suya, y tan
suya, que, a faltarle sus padres, que felices años vivan, ningún opósito
tuviera su voluntad. (I, 186)
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Ricardo attributes his clouded judgment and relapse into his previous brute-like manner
of thinking to the difficult trials that they have had to overcome. Ultimately, however, it
was precisely those trials that compelled him to meditate on the nature of the free human
will and love, and to realize that he must quell his arrogance, jealousy, and excessive
temper with a rational control of himself. He finally concretizes his education, applying
the lessons he learned in captivity, and, in line with Pico’s vertical scale, he transforms
from feritas towards divinitas.
Leonisa’s spiritual development is also evident in the novella’s finale. She first
asserts what he has only recently come to understand, “Ricardo... siempre fui mía, sin
estar sujeta a otro que a mis padres” (I, 187). Then, having attained her parents’
permission, “porque fiaban de su discreción,” she makes a rational choice based on
careful analysis of her suitors’ behavior, “¡oh valiente Ricardo!, mi voluntad, hasta aquí
recatada, perpleja y dudosa, se declara en favor tuyo” (I, 187). In place of the youthful
Leonisa, who seemed to favor Cornelio for his delicate looks and wealth instead of his
inner virtues, she now appears to have learned from her experiences in captivity—
especially from her close communication with and observation of Ricardo—and she
understands the value of an honest, courageous, and generous partner. The novella ends
with the double marriage of Ricardo to Leonisa and Mahamut to Halima, who convert
back to Christianity, and the narrator’s observation that Ricardo and Leonisa’s story
became a lesson for future generations:
Todos, en fin, quedaron contentos, libres y satisfechos, y la fama de
Ricardo, saliendo de los términos de Sicilia, se extendió por todos los de
Italia y de otras muchas partes, debajo del nombre del amante liberal, y
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aun hasta hoy dura en los muchos hijos que tuvo en Leonisa, que fue
ejemplo raro de discreción, honestidad, recato y hermosura. (I, 188)
The mention of Leonisa as an exemplary figure worthy of imitation, and the reference to
their children, both recalls Ricardo’s own process of fusing his life experiences with a
lesson he had previously learned through his father’s narration and underlines
Cervantes’s active participation in the humanist tradition of instruction through literary
models. The perpetuation of instruction from one generation to the next is thus
emphasized in the very last line of the novella, encouraging the reader to reflect on
his/her own participation in the educative process; just as Ricardo and Leonisa’s children
will attempt to extract moral lessons from the narrations that their parents will tell them,
the reader is invited to do the same. In an important passage from the The Book of the
Courtier, Castiglione notes the importance of training in an individual’s development;
the good tiller must cultivate the seed of moral virtue found in all humans:
... nature has implanted in everything that hidden seed which gives a
certain force and quality of its own essence to all things that are derived
from it, and makes them like itself: as we see not only in the breeds of
horses and of other animals, but also in trees, the shoots of which nearly
always resemble the trunk; and if they sometimes degenerate, it arises
from poor cultivation. And so it is with men, who if rightly trained are
nearly always like those from whom they sprang, and often better: but if
there is no one to give them proper care, they become like savages and
never reach perfection. (22)
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Having initially acted precisely like a savage, Ricardo’s spiritual growth was cultivated
by models such as Mahamut and his father and by the instruction and frank honesty of
Leonisa. Although he stumbles along the way, struggling to overcome his deeply
ingrained habits of solipsism, jealousy and arrogance, Ricardo ultimately overcomes his
brutish vices and morally refines his being.
V. Conclusion
In the Novelas ejemplares, Cervantes participates in humanist discourse on the
flexibility of the self. The novellas’ characters illustrate many of the central concerns
that manifested in humanist debates about the educability of the individual. In their use of
literary models as examples of how to act in their lives; their sub-rational descents to
beast-like conditions, accompanied by blindness, immobility, and lack of control over
their passions; their ascents towards a more refined state, sparked by the contemplation of
beauty and love; and, ultimately, their appreciation of the freedom of the human will to
weigh moral choices, the protagonists of the Novelas ejemplares embody the fundamental
humanist concepts about the human potential for growth and transformation. While there
certainly is an abundance of temporary, superficial shifts of identity in Cervantes’s
collection of tales, there are also numerous cases of vertical transformations in which
characters overcome brutish vices and become morally refined. Similar to the school of
Siena, 17 which emphasized the importance of earthly experience and the individual’s
civic engagement, in the Novelas ejemplares Cervantes stresses the social role of humans
and the value of the moral side of philosophy. This is perhaps no clearer than in
Berganza’s glimpse of the four invalids in the hospital in the Coloquio de los perros: the
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poet, the alchemist, the mathematician, and the arbitrista are all devoted to
contemplation; they all search for the impossible and unattainable. The mathematician’s
efforts to square the circle and find the fixed point, leave him like Tantalus and
Sisyphus—his attainment of total clarity is always just out of reach. Throughout his
twelve novellas, Cervantes repeatedly stresses the importance of focusing on the
individual’s role within the community, questions of morality, and the spiritual
regeneration of the self. In line with Pico della Mirandola’s concept of man, Cervantes
demonstrates the human ability to transform and ascend towards a divine state. This
ascent, however, is to be lived and experienced, not simply contemplated in solitude. Far
from sounding the death-knell to the importance of exemplary literature, Cervantes’s
novellas are fully engaged in the dialectical process between literature and life.
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Notes
1 Two of the most well known examples of this “how to” literature include Erasmus’s counsel to Henry
VIII, the Instituto Principis Christiani and Castiglione’s Cortegiano.
2 Cervantes insists on his collection’s instructional value in the prologue: “Heles dado nombre de
ejemplares, y si bien lo miras, no hay ninguna de quien no se pueda sacar algún ejemplo provechoso; y si
no fuera por no alargar este sujeto, quizá te mostrara el sabroso y honesto fruto que se podría sacar, así de
todas juntas, como de cada una de por sí” (52).
3 While Hart does recognize that, “Some of the Novelas ejemplares offer a more hopeful view of the
flexibility of the self than does Don Quixote,” he stresses the instances of temporary transformations that
Cervantes’s characters undergo in a pastoral-like escape, “an opportunity to let his characters experiment
with unfamiliar roles and demonstrate their ability to play them skillfully while remaining true to a code of
values quite different from that of a person born to the social role they have chosen” (72). In so doing, he
fails to appreciate the very real and lasting spiritual growth and moral regeneration that the novella’s
characters undergo.
4 Anthony Lappin, on the other hand, irreverently questions Cervantes’s vow to cut off his hand: “Were
Cervantes really to decide to cut his hand off—considering he had lost the other in battle for the Faith
against the Turk—how would he do it? Holding the knife between his teeth, or with spectacularly
prehensile toes? Indeed, he says he does not intend to take chances with his salvation, but that is what he
would be doing: self-mutilation in cannon law was akin to murder, a gross and serious mortal sin” (166).
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5 See above (my chapter, “An Exemplary Model Among the Savage Other”) for my analysis of the images
associated with Preciosa, depicting her as a moral example and shepherdess.
6 Only the last three novellas, La señora cornelia, El casamiento engañoso, and El coloquio de los perros,
lack a closing reference to either how the protagonists’ story became material for poets, served as a lesson
to children, or explicitly state a moral sententiae that can be extracted from the story.
7 It is worth noting that in the earlier version of this story, often referred to among Cervantes scholars as the
Porras manuscript, Leonora commits adultery with Loaysa. This fundamental change in the novella’s plot
has generated a great deal of academic debate; see especially Forcione’s discussion in Cervantes and the
Humanist Vision (72-84).
8 While Stanislav Zimic argues that Cervantes’s novella is modeled on Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and
Clitophon (47-8), Peter Dunn gives preference to Heliodorus’s Ethiopian Story (93).
9 Northrop Frye notes that romance literature often begins with such a descent and that, “In the descent
there is a growing isolation and immobility: charms and spells hold one motionless; human beings are
turned into subhuman creatures, and ... hero or heroine are trapped in labyrinths or prisons” (Secular
Scripture, my emphasis, 129). In addition to Ricardo’s immobility and subhuman transformation, he refers
to the “confuso laberinto de mis males” (140) and Leonisa will later lament their fortune at being trapped in
a labyrinth (173).
10 As many scholars have noted, repeatedly in the Novelas ejemplares Cervantes utilizes “doubling
techniques,” often to the point that two protagonists seem to be a combination of one single psyche. A
memorable example from Don Quijote is the episode in the Sierra Morena in which the mad knight
embraces the stranger Cardenio “como si de luengos tiempos le hubiera conocido” and seems to perceive
something profoundly familiar in another (180).
11 On the division in the uses of the classical past in the Renaissance and debates between the more
contemplatively inclined Neoplatonists and the proponents of the vita activa, the individual’s civic duties,
see Mazzeo’s Renaissance and Revolution (especially pp. 44-58).
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12 In both poems the beauty of a woman’s face is represented in celestial terms, marking their elevated and
divine quality; in La gitanilla Preciosa’s face is likened to “el estrellado velo” and in El amante liberal the
blonde Moor’s face is compared, in a lengthy analogy, to a sun that suddenly rises from beneath a low
mountain (119, 165).
13 See pages 119-121 for Juan and Clemente’s song, as well as Preciosa’s response.
14 Odysseus, it has been argued, is the “fountainhead” of romance; his wily manipulations of disguise and
control of recognition scenes was certainly the source of inspiration for many classical and Renaissance
poets (Reardon, 6). For an interesting reading Odysseus’s use of disguise see Shelia Murnaghan’s Disguise
and Recognition in the Odyssey.
15 According to Ricardo, one of the reasons Leonisa’s parents favored Cornelio as a match for their
daughter was his wealth: “Disimulaban los padres de Leonisa los favores que a Cornelia hacía, creyendo
como estaba en razón que creyesen, que atraído el mozo de su incomparable y bellísima hermosura, la
escogería por esposa, y en ello granjearían yerno más rico que conmigo” (143).
16 Cervantes utilizes a similar ending, with a “graciosa burla,” for La señora Cornelia. The Duke of
Ferrara, having found Cornelia without Lorenzo, Don Juan, and Don Antonio’s knowledge, decides to play
a joke on them—leading them to believe that he has decided to marry a “labradora.” The peasant girl, of
course, is Cornelia.
17 See Garin’s chapter on “Civic Life,” which delineates the thinkers involved in the Siena school (Bruni,
Bracciolini, Valla, Manetti, Alberti and others), unified in their stance against ascetic solitude and devotion
to contemplation of the divine and in favor of civic engagement and focus on the moral side of philosophy
(37-77).
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Chapter Four
Cervantes’s Meditation on Artifice:
The Demystification of Life and Literature
in El casamiento engañoso and El coloquio de los perros.
As the culmination of the Novelas ejemplares, the interconnected tales El
casamiento engañoso and El coloquio de los perros conclude Cervantes’s collection with
a final meditation on one of the most important themes of the novellas; the two-tiered
work encompasses a final exploration of deceit, disguise, and artifice and their
connection to questions of identity. Unlike many of the preceding novellas, however, the
final tales’ treatment of this thematic thread is more serious in tone, more thorough in its
examination, and more thought provoking in its implications. In Berganza’s narration of
his experiences with a picaresque-like succession of masters, he creates a portrait of a
society that is plagued at all levels by hypocrisy; individuals at various social stations and
in a diverse range of professions practice the art of creating false appearances and
deceiving others about who they are. Beyond the type of social satire that was present in
El licenciado Vidriera, however, El coloquio de los perros also contains a sustained
exploration of the complex layers of artifice including intimate glimpses of the
psychological processes of a hypocrite, moral debates about when deceit is acceptable
and when it is to be condemned, and its connection to the process of narration and the
creation of literature.
In this chapter I analyze the way in which Cervantes crafts nuanced patterns of
images in an exploration of human artifice. The most prominent collection of images
revolves around clothing and how its legibility and manipulability make the public sphere
a kind of theater. Over the course of the two novellas “vestir” and its variants acquire an
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impressive polyvalence; they can refer to one’s social status, one’s economic state, or
one’s vacant interior. Narrations can be dressed as easily as bodies are, just as both
bodies and texts can be read. Interconnected, as it is, with other groups of images,
Cervantes’s elaborate construction of the clothing motif forms a complexly layered
exploration of disguise and deceit. My approach in this chapter is comparative in nature.
While I analyze Cervantes’s use of various patterns of images, I also examine his
engagement with the historical context in which these novellas were created. In line with
the portrait of passers that Cervantes’s tales depict, sociological and historical scholarship
demonstrates that early modern Spanish subjects actively engaged themselves in disguise
and dissimulation.
My reading of these two novellas takes as its point of departure a basic, but
exceedingly important fact that readers have all too often overlooked 1 : El coloquio de los
perros is, for its putative author/transcriber Campuzano, a blessing and a gift. The ensign
has suffered immensely—he is physically exhausted from the syphilis he contracted from
his deceitful wife and the treatment of “cuarenta sudores” that he received in the
significantly named “Hospital de la Resurrección;” he is spiritually devastated since for
the pains of his soul he cannot find, “remedio para aliviarlos;” and he is mentally ruined
by the persistent, haunting thoughts of the woman that duped him (II, 282). Nevertheless,
he views his seemingly innumerable torments as worthwhile since they brought him the
opportunity to hear the colloquy of Berganza and Cipión; “doy por bien empleadas todas
mis desgracias, por haber sido parte de haberme puesto en el hospital donde vi lo que
ahora diré” (II, 292). Whether the Coloquio is a nightmare dreamt by this master of
artifice, a hallucination caused by the mind-altering effects of insomnia and an intense
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sweating treatment, or an actual dialogue that he overheard and whose content was of
such personal interest to him that he decided to write it down almost verbatim, the actual
origin of the narration is less important than its content and the fact that the ensign
believes that it contains something significant. It is worth noting that Campuzano’s acute
suffering is the result of betrayal and deceit and that, similarly, the Coloquio is firmly
centered on the problems of artifice and hypocrisy. Whether it is a transcription or a
fictional creation, El coloquio de los perros is a narration that has apparently brought the
ensign clarity; connected, as it is, to his physical and spiritual regeneration, Campuzano
seems to view it as something of a revelation, a narration that may be capable of
provoking awareness and understanding in others as it apparently has for him.
By taking this as our point of departure, what comes clearly into focus is that this
double-tiered tale is ultimately a meditation on artifice—its omnipresence in Spanish
society, its connection to questions of identity, especially with regards to socio-economic
and ethno-religious concerns, its central role in human affairs compared to its
nullification at the divine level, and its connection to the creation of literature. The
objectives of the tales’ dizzying assemblage of authors—Berganza, Campuzano, and
Cervantes—seem to align when the former states that he would like to have more time to
relate other stories, “todas para hacer memoria dellas y para desengaño de muchos que
idolatran en figuras fingidas y en bellezas de artificio y de transformación” (II, emphasis
added, 354). Berganza’s aim is to demystify, to undress underlying truths of their
deceitful appearances, to lead the blind, the “muchos que idolatran figuras fingidas,”
towards clear vision and understanding. The irony, of course, is that Berganza too
participates in the “artificio de transformación” by transforming his life experiences into
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a narration. As Ruth El Saffar has noted, Berganza and Campuzano share some
important parallels: they both narrate events that hold the promise of freeing them from
their past and they are both confronted with a skeptical listener. She writes,
In both cases the illogicality of an intensely experienced reality, when
externalized for the benefit of a listener, must give over to the rationality
that is necessary for shared experiences. The fantastic, when converted
into words, is no longer credible and must find its justification not in its
ability to reflect the natural world, but in the pleasure it offers its
beholder... The narrator [Berganza/Campuzano] finds himself caught
between the reality which the past had been to him and the fiction into
which he has transformed it for the benefit of his listener. (Novel to
Romance, 74)
El coloquio de los perros and El casamiento engañoso, then, are together a prolonged
meditation on the multi-layered complexity of artifice. Cervantes thus confronts his own
participation in the practice of deceit, disguise and artifice; and yet, in an apparent
paradox, his “engaños” aim to “desengañar,” his lies attempt to lead the reader to truth.
II. Dress and Artifice in the Casamiento engañoso.
There are several patterns of images and repeated key concepts whose consistent
manifestation in both of the final novellas underlines their importance in Cervantes’s
meditation on artifice. The centrality of dress in the creation of artifice, both in human
disguise and in literary creation, emerges as an important motif of El casamiento
engañoso and will accrue additional layers of meaning in El coloquio de los perros.
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Campuzano begins the narration of his deceitful marriage by explaining how both he and
doña Estefanía carefully chose their garments and accoutrements with the clear objective
of creating the image of being wealthy and therefore a desirable marriage partner. She
successfully provoked Campuzano’s curiosity and his desire to behold her countenance
by covering her face in a veil. The ensign states, “aunque le supliqué que por cortesía me
hiciese merced de descubrirse, no fue posible acabarlo con ella, cosa que me encendió
más el deseo de verla” (II, 283). Adding to the flames of desire, whether it was by
chance or clever calculation, she displayed an exquisite white hand decorated with high-
quality jewelry. The ensign himself was similarly displaying signs of wealth, “Estaba yo
entonces bizarrísimo, con aquella gran cadena que vuesa merced debió de conocerme, el
sombrero con plumas y cintillo, el vestido de colores, a fuer de soldado, y tan gallardo a
los ojos de mi locura, que me daba a entender que las podía matar en el aire” (II, 283-4).
Like a hunter who uses a decoy to attract game, with his impressive clothing and
ostentatious accessories, Campuzano aims to trap a wealthy wife. 2
When the ensign first visits doña Estefanía’s house he recognizes her by her
remarkable, brilliant hands, but it is her voice and her ability to use it in well-crafted
rhetoric that ultimately lure him into her snare. As I will demonstrate with detailed
analysis below, throughout the Novelas ejemplares and especially in these two tales,
hands and mouths are the primary instruments of deceit. Campuzano highlights the
uncanny and penetrating attraction that Estefanía’s voice caused in him, stating, “No era
hermosa en extremo; pero éralo de suerte que podía enamorar comunicada, porque tenía
un tono de habla tan suave que se entraba por los oídos en el alma” (II, emphasis added,
284). Accompanying the sweet tone of her voice is her impressive ability to craft an
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argument that demonstrates a keen awareness of her victim’s desires. In cold, rational,
and unromantic terms she makes her sales pitch to the ensign, highlighting her merits as a
marriage partner. She openly states, “Con esta hacienda busco marido a quien
entregarme y a quien tener obediencia” (II, 285). Estefanía lists her virtues in plain
language: “Sé ser mayordomo en casa, moza en la cocina y señora en la sala” (II, 285).
Most importantly, she stresses the economic advantages of marrying her; as the ensign
puts it, she depicted for him, “tan a la vista la cantidad de hacienda, que ya la
contemplaba en dineros convertida” (II, 285). Having baited his two weakest points—his
greed and what manifests post-marriage as his other glaring vice, his gluttony—Estefanía
has made her catch.
In his elaborate weaving of the novella’s plot and dénouement, Cervantes further
develops the collection of images built around attire. When Doña Estefanía offers herself
to the ensign in marriage her word choice is of particular interest; “Si vuesa merced
gustare de aceptar la prenda que le ofrece, aquí estoy...” (II, 285). In referring to herself
as a garment, or “prenda,” Estefanía hints at what it is that the ensign is actually
marrying: an empty sign, a false appearance that has no firm substance behind it.
Entirely concerned, as he is, with the glittery surface of things to the detriment of the
interior, essential qualities of his marriage partner, it is appropriate wording for this
matrimony. Campuzano, in a sense, does not marry Estefanía but rather the mask of
Estefanía that she has carefully crafted and displayed before him. It is also fitting that
when she is revealed to be an imposture, Estefanía’s true, impoverished economic
condition is spoken of with reference to clothing: “ni ella tiene casa, ni hacienda, ni otro
vestido del que trae puesto” (II, emphasis added, 289). If the concept of “garment” or
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“dress” in Estefanía’s marriage proposal acquires connotations in line with “empty
appearance as opposed to tangible essence,” it seems to regain substantiality and value in
this instance as it accurately signifies her true worth. What had been synonymous with
“flimsy mask” is now utilized as a concrete measurement of Estefanía’s economic
condition.
The facade begins to crumble with the arrival of Estefanía’s authentically
aristocratic friend Doña Clementa Bueso. As Darcy Donahue observes, the latter’s
exquisite and legitimate attire contrasts with the falsity of Estefanía’s dress:
Details of luxurious texture and decoration provide the evidence of true
wealth. She is wearing green pressed silk (a fabric imported from
Florence), embroidered with gold, and matching cape and hat with green,
white, and red feathers and a gold band, and a very fine veil which covers
only half her face. All of this is in direct contrast with the scheming
Estefanía. (110)
Although Estefanía flees with the chest filled with Campuzano’s gold chains and trinkets,
unlike Doña Clementa’s gold, her stolen jewelry turns out to be a cheap imitation made
from alchemy that, as the ensign later boasts, can only be detected by “el toque o el
fuego” (II, 291). Campuzano captures a central thematic point of the tale when he
remarks to his friend Peralta, “no es todo oro lo que reluce;” unfortunately for him, this is
not only true of his counterfeit gold, but also of the woman that hoodwinked him (II,
291).
Given that a central theme in this pair of novellas is how human senses are
deceived, it is worth pausing to consider Campuzano’s statement—that his counterfeit
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gold can only be detected by “el toque o el fuego”—in greater depth (II, 291). By
epistemologically privileging touch, the ensign recalls Don Quijote’s assertion that, “es
menester tocar las apariencias con la mano para dar lugar al desengaño” (520). While the
hand and its tactile function symbolically represent an empirical manner of discovering
truth, especially in contrast to the fallibility of sight which is easily taken in by false
appearances, it can also be associated with deceit. Estefanía’s memorable white hand,
carefully adorned with expensive rings, is a prime example of this possibility, as is the
manual dexterity and histrionics of such charlatans as card sharks and other scammers
that Cervantes mentions throughout the Novelas ejemplares. Beginning in the prologue to
the Novelas ejemplares, in which Cervantes pledges to cut off his only functioning hand
if his novellas should lead his readers to wander morally, to this final pair of novellas, the
hand is one of Cervantes’s favorite images. 3 Whereas the connotations associated with
that hand in Casamiento are centered on knowing and deceiving via its tactile functions,
in the Coloquio this will shift to the hand as a symbol of charity and tyranny.
As historical documentation demonstrates, the ostentatious quality of Doña
Clementa and her partner Don Lope’s clothing for travel is historically accurate. In her
rigorously researched El traje y los tipos sociales en El Quijote, Carmen Bernís asserts
that it was possible to deduce from the colorfulness of one’s clothing that he/she was
traveling. Consistent with Clementa and Lope, who were “ricamente vestido[s] de
camino,” Bernís asserts that: "Vistosidad, riqueza de las guarniciones y especial
predilección por el verde eran cosas comunes al traje de camino tanto de mujer como de
hombre" (II, 288; Bernís, 47). The excessively flashy traveler was not simply an
exaggeration of poets; paintings, historical accounts, and even official legislation
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demonstrate that showy attire was the norm for subjects in transit. For example, in 1553
Antonio de Torquemada critiqued the illogical practice of using such high-quality clothes
for travel since, "el aire y el polvo y la agua y los lodos" ruin them anyways (qtd. in
Bernís, 19). The language of a pragmatic of 1625 demonstrates just how deeply
ingrained the use of ostentatious clothing for travel was; it prohibited the use of gold and
silver in the fabric of all clothing, "aunque sean de camino" (qtd. in Bernís 19). As this
historical documentation makes clear, Spanish subjects of this period were deeply
concerned with presenting an impressive image as they moved through public space.
Likewise, Don Lope and Doña Clementa are fully aware of their participation in a type of
performance; exposed to the public gaze, they have attentively chosen their attire to make
an impression, enhance their reputation, and create the perception of extreme wealth.
In contrast to the public sphere, one was not on display in the private realm and
therefore did not feel the need to dazzle others with a demonstration of rich attire. When
Lope and Clementa arrive to the home that Campuzano erroneously believes is his, they
find the deceived lover in clothing that accurately reflects both his lack of awareness and
his complete vulnerability. The ensign describes a short period of wedded bliss in which
he imagined that his marriage scam had succeeded: “Seis días gocé del pan de la boda,
espaciándome en casa como el yerno ruin en la del suegro rico” (II, 286). He lists in
detail the luxuries that he enjoyed, including such pleasures and comforts as sheets from
Holland, wealthy rugs, and fine silver. He would sleep late, breakfast in bed, and delight
in his wife’s culinary talents for lunch and dinner. In line with the importance that
Cervantes places on imagery associated with dress in these two novellas, Campuzano
expresses his contented state in sartorial terms: “Mis camisas, cuellos y pañuelos era un
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nuevo Aranjuez de flores, según olían bañados en la agua de ángeles y de azahar que
sobre ellos se derramaba” (II, 287). Not suspecting that is was the devil who was
washing his clothes, Campuzano is caught entirely off guard and unprotected when the
true owners of the house intrude on what he had assumed was his private realm.
In stark contrast to the richly attired travelers, when Lope and Clementa knock at
the door Campuzano is at ease; he specifies that, “aún estaba con doña Estefanía en la
cama” (II, 287). His nudity, or near nudity, reflects his defenseless condition. This
master of artifice, who thought he had convincingly deceived Estefanía by packing his
putatively expensive chains and trinkets in a chest “delante della,” has removed his mask,
exposing himself in the process (II, 286). He quickly attempts to cover himself before
investigating this mysterious turn of events, “En esto ya me había puesto yo en calzas y
en jubón” (II, 288). However, as an expression of the period indicates, Campuzano is
still stripped of his protective layers; Bernís notes that, "Desde el siglo XV, de un hombre
en calzas y en jubón se decía que estaba desnudo" (141). Stripped of clothing and a clear
notion of reality and fiction, the ensign receives assurances from Estefanía, “todo lo que
aquí pasare es fingido,” which, of course, turns out to be true—only what’s feigned is her
wealth, not that of Doña Clementa (II, 287).
Just as in the weaving of his novella’s plot, Cervantes crafts the unraveling of
Campuzano’s complication utilizing images associated with dress. The ensign discovers
that he has been the victim of a scam when Estefanía’s friend with whom they are
temporarily staying informs him that “Clementa Bueso es la verdadera señora de la casa”
(II, 289). When Estefanía flees, she empties the ensign’s trunk of all its items of worth.
Significantly, she leaves him one article: “se había llevado cuanto en el baúl tenía, sin
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dejarme en él sino un solo vestido de camino” (II, 290). Clearly, as Bernís’s study
demonstrates, a traveling suit was worth a lot of money and it is safe to assume that
Estefanía could have easily sold it to maximize her profits. Her decision to leave
Campuzano this one concession might be read as a charitable act that attenuates her
otherwise vicious behavior. Perhaps, instead, she simply wants to encourage his
departure, in which case leaving the traveling suit is no act of altruism, but rather one last
cold calculation and clever design. Whatever Estefanía’s real motive is, this “vestido de
camino” is a fitting remnant for a marriage that was, from the start, focused on
appearances and apparel. Of course, the other residual reminder of his deceitful wife will
be the syphilis he contracted from her, which will be the source of his physical suffering,
his motive for receiving treatment at the “Hospital de la resurección”. However, as the
hospital’s name underlines, Campuzano undergoes a process of spiritual regeneration,
which is intimately and mysteriously linked to his experience of either hearing or
imagining the dog’s colloquy.
Revisiting Estefanía’s earlier reference to herself as a garment, Cervantes brings El
casamiento engañoso to a close with a final treatment of the dress-artifice conceptual
thread. The ensign complains to his friend Peralta that, “el daño está... en que ella se
podrá deshacer de mis cadenas y yo no de la falsía de su término; y, en efeto, mal que me
pese, es prenda mía,” to which the Licenciate wittily replies: “Dad gracias a Dios, señor
Campuzano...que fue prenda con pies, y se os ha ido” (II, emphasis added, 291). Thus,
Estefanía is converted into a garment with feet, a mobile facade whose masterful use of
artifice out-tricked Campuzano the trickster. Showing little sympathy for this deceived
deceiver, Peralta responds to the ensign’s tale by citing Petrarch: “Che chi prendere
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diletto di far frode;/ non si de’ lamentar s’ altri l’inganna” (II, 291). Significantly,
Campuzano recognizes that he is to blame: “Bien veo que quise engañar y fui engañado,
porque me hirieron por mis propios filos; pero no puedo tener tan a raya el sentimiento
que no me queje de mí mismo” (II, 292). Thus, he demonstrates a certain measure of
emotional distance from the events he narrates, so much so that he is able to wittily joke
about his present state—“Halléme verdaderamente hecho pelón,” that is, both bald from
the disease he suffers and in poverty (II, 292). As Ruth El Saffar astutely observes:
The lightness of tone that the Ensign achieves in the narration of his
marriage to Estefanía, indeed, his very ability to confess so fully his
participation in evil, suggests that he has overcome the weaknesses of the
character who bears his name in the story he narrates. It is because he no
longer identifies with him that he is able to characterize him so honestly
and with such artistic mastery. (Novel to Romance, 70)
El Saffar’s observation also highlights what will become a central theme of the Coloquio:
narrating one’s life is a creative act, it is the “making of art,” just as the etymological
roots of “artifice” consist in “ars, art-” and “facere,” or to make. 4 Dressing one’s body, it
turns out, is not entirely different from addressing one’s past; careful arrangement and
well-chosen articles can guide the reader/viewer’s eye and purposefully create a
particular impression. As our reading of El coloquio de los perros will aim to make
clear, attentive observation and critical scrutiny are the necessary tools for stripping
artifice and seeing underlying truths.
II. Attentive Reading and Stripping Human Deceit in El coloquio de los perros
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In preparing his friend Peralta for the reading of his text, Campuzano explains
how on the penultimate night of his sweating treatment in the hospital he witnessed an
implausible event:
oí y casi vi con mis ojos a estos dos perros, que el uno se llama Cipión y el
otro Berganza... echados detrás de mi cama en unas esteras viejas, y a la
mitad de aquella noche, estando a escuras y desvelado, pensando en mis
pasados sucesos y presentes desgracias, oí hablar allí junto, y estuve con
atento oído escuchando, por ver si podía venir en conocimiento de los que
hablaban y de lo que hablaban, y a poco rato vine a conocer, por lo que
hablaban, los que hablaban, y eran los dos perros Cipión y Berganza. (II, 293)
The darkness of his surroundings and the incompleteness of his perception (“casi vi con
mis ojos”) require him to deduce the identity of the speakers by the content of their
discourse (“por lo que hablaban”) (II, 293). It is also significant to note that the ensign
states that he had been ruminating on his past events and present disgraces; that is, he was
meditating on his deceitful marriage. The nature of deceit will be a central theme of the
text that he claims to have transcribed from the dogs’ colloquy, “sin faltar palabra” and,
later, his confidence faltering slightly, “casi por las mismas palabras” (II, 294). He
willingly admits that his claim to have heard a pair of canines’ dialog seems absurd:
“después que lo oí, yo mismo no he querido dar crédito a mí mismo, y he querido, tener
por cosa soñada lo que realmente estando despierto, con todos mis cinco sentidos, tales
cuales nuestro Señor de dármelos, oí, escuché, noté, y finalmente, escribí” (II, 294). He
argues, however, that he could not possibly have made it up since his mind is incapable
of the depth and range of the topics they discussed: “Las cosas que trataron fueron
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grandes y diferentes, y más para ser tratadas por varones sabios que para ser dichas por
bocas de perros: así que, pues yo no las pude inventar de mío” (II, 294). And although
he believes that it was not a dream and that the dogs did, indeed, speak, he reacts to
Peralta’s incredulousness not by insisting on the literal veracity of his claims but by
focusing on the value of the discourse. He gently pushes his friend to overlook questions
of verisimilitude and to take a look at his text: “Pero puesto caso que me haya engañado,
y que mi verdad sea sueño, y el porfiarla disparate, ¿no se holgará vuesa merced, señor
Peralta, de ver escritas en un coloquio las cosas que estos perros, o sean quien fueren,
hablaron? (II, 294). Thus, Peralta’s skepticism establishes the tone for the final novella of
Cervantes’s collection. His disbelief and cautious mistrust of his friend’s improbable
claims underline a central theme of El coloquio de los perros. Knowing that the author
openly professed and thoroughly demonstrated a proclivity for deceit earlier in his life,
and that he had recently undergone a possibly mind-altering intensive treatment, Peralta
refuses to be taken in by Campuzano’s fool’s gold. And although he agrees to read the
Coloquio, he will read with reservations and will be attentive to its artifice.
The dogs’ discussion appropriately begins with their contemplation upon the
natural condition of dogs and, more generally, animals and how they differ from humans.
In sharp contrast to Campuzano, Estefanía, and many of the characters that will emerge in
Berganza’s narration, dogs are known for their loyalty and faithfulness. Cipión observes
that they are often depicted as a “símbolo de la amistad,” such that alabaster figures of
dogs are often placed at their masters’ gravesites, “en señal que se guardaron en la vida
amistad y fidelidad inviolable” (II, 300). And, although the dogs note that the difference
between humans and animals, “es ser el hombre animal racional, y el bruto, irracional,” it
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will become clear through Berganza’s narration that these capacities for reason are often
used merely to dupe one’s neighbor in order to elevate oneself. The faithfulness and
dedication to true friendship typified by dogs will rarely be seen in human communities
in El coloquio de los perros.
Delighted with the spectacular gift of speech, the two dogs quickly draft a plan to
take advantage of this miracle; Berganza will tell his life story during the course of the
first night and, if they are bestowed the gift for a second night, Cipión will then narrate
his experiences. Berganza recounts his life in chronological form, passing through a
series of episodes in which he works for various masters who are involved in distinct
spheres of contemporary Spanish society. As Ruth El Saffar notes, “Although criticism
of society is also a factor in the novela, Cipión’s constant intervention and the presence of
certain mysterious elements make it impossible to conclude that the coloquio de los
perros is a picaresque work” (Cervantes, 15). 5 In complete contradiction to the
unconditional loyalty that Berganza and Cipión have agreed is an idiosyncratic character
trait of dogs, Berganza repeatedly flees from his masters because of their corruption,
abuse, or because he is frustrated by his inability to correct a situation that he believes is
ethically skewed. 6 Although the professions that he undertakes and masters for whom he
works appear unrelated, representing, as they do, such a wide spectrum of the social
hierarchy, what unites them is that they are all plagued by the practice of deceit and
hypocrisy.
While there is some disagreement among scholars about how one counts
Berganza’s masters, 7 in my opinion the narration can be divided most conveniently into
eleven episodes that fall into a structural pattern of 5-1-5. More specifically, Berganza
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initially has five masters whose professions, with the exception of the fifth, are
conventional professions in Spanish society of the time—1) the butcher, 2) the shepherds,
3) the wealthy merchant, 4) the police officer, and 5) the drummer. He then has the
encounter with the witch, Cañizares, which is followed by five masters that inhabit the
margins of Spanish society: 1) the gypsies, 2) the morisco, 3) the poet, 4) the manager of
the theatrical troupe, and 5) the charitable Mahudes in the Hospital. El Saffar observes
of the latter five, “The increasing alienation is expressed not only by a movement from
the heart of society to its fringes and ultimately beyond its borders, but by a movement
from physical work to intellectual activity that finally becomes so rarefied as to have no
practical application whatever” (Novel to Romance, 65). As El Saffar points out
elsewhere, 8 the first cluster of masters are socially powerful, they are devoted to material
pleasures and are shown to be vain and selfish. The masters of the second cluster are
spiritually oriented and are positioned outside of the center of society. While the first
masters are hypocrites, whose respectable appearances by day are stripped of their luster
by night, revealing their underlying deceit, the second cluster of masters make their living
through illusion. Berganza’s final master, the alms-collector Mahudes contrasts sharply
with his previous masters in that he is humble and altruistic.
In order to better appreciate significant patterns of images and questions of
historical significance that emerge in the Coloquio, it will be beneficial to first make a
brief summary of the episodes that Berganza narrates about his life and point out the
major themes around which the novella is structured. Reserving for a separate section
my analysis of how Cervantes crafts the clothing motif in El coloquio de los perros, I will
focus here on an examination of several minor collections of images that bring subtle
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layers of signification to Cervantes meditation on human artifice. When it is pertinent I
will point out image clusters that Cervantes utilized in previous novellas in his collection
and how he reformulates them, giving them additional meanings in his closing pair of
tales.
Berganza believes he was born in a slaughterhouse just outside of the puerta de la
carne in Seville. His first master, Nicolás el Romo is a ruthless butcher, as skilled in
knifing those who cross him as he is in carving the animals in the slaughterhouse.
Berganza observes that this was a despiritualized and violent community: “gente ancha
de conciencia, desalmada, sin temer al Rey ni a su justicia; los más, amancebados; son
aves de rapiña carniceras; mantiénense ellos y sus amigas de lo que hurtan” (302).
Before dawn the butchers take the best cuts for themselves, the owners can merely
attempt to rein in the theft, never squelching it completely, since, “estos jiferos con la
misma facilidad matan a un hombre que a una vaca” (II, 303). This violence is what
ultimately provokes Berganza to flee; after a beautiful woman dupes him, stealing the
meat he was supposed to deliver to his master’s girlfriend, Berganza evades Nicolás el
Romo’s attempts to stab him and decides to leave the slaughterhouse behind.
Berganza’s second job entails several significant inversions from his first, but
ultimately he discovers a similarly corrupted community. In place of the urban environs
of the slaughterhouse his new duties as a sheepherder place him in the countryside;
instead of leading animals to their death, he now devotes his energies to protecting them.
Brimming with optimism, he underlines the magnanimity of his new profession:
Creí que había hallado en él el centro de mi reposo, pareciéndome ser
propio y natural oficio de los perros guardar ganado, que es obra donde se
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encierra une [sic] virtud grande, como es amparar y defender de los
poderosos y soberbios los humildes y los que poco pueden. (II, 305)
After a physical examination that, as we shall consider in more detail below, recalls the
invasive scrutiny to which Spanish subjects suspected of being conversos were exposed,
the three shepherds conclude that Berganza “tenía todas las señales de ser perro de casta”
(II, 305). Given a spiked collar and a new name (“Barcino”), Berganza is delighted by
his new occupation. He quickly discovers, however, that the idealized pastoral romances
that Nicolás’s mistress had read aloud, with their noble characters in harmony with nature
and espousing Neo-Platonic notions of love and beauty, were entirely divorced from
reality. He concludes that, “todos aquellos libros son cosas soñadas y bien escritas para
entretenimiento de los ociosos, y no verdad alguna” (II, 309). Spurred by his masters’
cries, “¡Al lobo, Barcino!” Berganza diligently hunts for the wolves that are reportedly
devastating their flock. But after receiving punishment for the repeated massacres of
their sheep Berganza decides to investigate these supposed wolf hunts. One evening,
instead of hurling himself into pursuit with the other dogs he hides behind a bush and
unveils the true wolves: the shepherds are killing their own sheep. Driven by the desire
to know the truth, Berganza’s discovery leads to his disillusion as he comes to realize that
these shepherds were simply butchers in disguise. As Alban Forcione rightly points out,
the shepherd was an archetypal figure in the literary, political, and religious traditions of
Cervantes’s age. Berganza’s false shepherds are a violent travesty of Christian doctrine,
which stresses Christ’s role as the good shepherd wholly devoted to uniting, nourishing,
and protecting his flock (Mystery, 114-116). 9 Furthermore, as we have seen in our
analysis of La gitanilla, Cervantes utilized these images in his collection’s first novella
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where Preciosa embodies the proper “pastora,” providing for all and acting as a model for
others’ behavior. By revisiting the image here, Cervantes underlines the “profanation of
the sacred,” a technique that, as Forcione has convincingly demonstrated, pervades the
work as a whole, and which we will revisit with an analysis of the repeated feasts that
occur in the Colloquy (II, 117).
Berganaza’s third master is a Sevillian merchant who chooses to display his wealth
in his children. Cipión observes that this was common practice: “es costumbre y
condición de los mercaderes de Sevilla, y aun de las otras ciudades, mostrar su autoridad
y riqueza, no en sus personas, sino en las de sus hijos; porque los mercaderes son
mayores en su sombra que en sí mismos” (II, 314). Sevillian merchants, he claims, are
too concerned with their business dealings to worry themselves with their physical
appearance, but since ambition and wealth yearn for display, they burst forth in their
children. Cipión notes that, at times, the new rich are so concerned with their children’s
status that they acquire titles of nobility for them and place them visibly on their chest as
a “marca que tanto distingue la gente principal de la plebeya” (II, 314). Unlike his first
two masters, the Sevillian merchant does not explicitly engage in activities that harm
third parties. While he shares with Berganza’s previous masters a penchant for
manipulating appearances, his pose is relatively benign in comparison. Berganza states
that the merchant’s ambition is “generosa” since his desire to improve his children’s
status is carried out, “sin perjuicio de tercero” (II, 314). Cipión quickly retorts, however,
“pocas o ninguna vez se cumple con la ambición que no sea daño de tercero” (II, 314).
Thus, his dishonorable deeds are alluded to, but not clearly stated. Instead, this episode
focuses on the merchant’s sons’ Jesuit schooling and the nocturnal trysts of his slaves,
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which deconstruct the carefully constructed image of order and nobility in this man’s
house. With regards to the latter, Berganza rejects the gifts the slave-girl gives him,
hoping to buy his silence, and does his best to impede her amorous affairs. After tiring of
her tenacity, however, he decides to flee.
Berganza’s fourth master is a police officer, a friend of the butcher Nicolás el
Romo. He recognizes Berganza as “Gavilán,” the name he went by when living in the
slaughterhouse, and adopts him as his own. Similar to Berganza’s previous masters, the
nameless police officer consciously projects a false public image, which Berganza reveals
as a glossy veneer with nothing of substance behind it. Employed to maintain the social
order, he abuses his position and conspires with criminals for selfish gain. His first
exploit consists in luring foreigners with his mistress, the prostitute Colindres. He then
apprehends them while accompanied by a notary, and finally solicits bribes from his
victims while threatening incarceration. In an episode that I will analyze in more detail
below, when they seize a “bretón” in a raid their attempts to rob him fail since Berganza
has dragged his pants, containing his money and ham, into the street.
In another case the police officer heroically arrests six of the city’s toughest thugs,
parades them around the city and gains praise from the public as the brave officer who
single-handedly took down the roughest criminals in Andalucía. Berganza observes that,
“el quedó en mi opinión y en la de todos cuantos la pendencia miraron y supieron por un
nuevo Rodamonte” (II, 328). While during the day and in public view he poses as a hero,
when night falls and under the cover of darkness the sordid truth emerges; the heroic
arrest was staged. Berganza’s master toasts Monipodio, the leader of this underworld of
criminals, and pays for the food and drink as the entire gang celebrates their mutually
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eneficial arrangement. Berganza summarizes the affair thus: “Creció la fama de mi
cobarde, que lo era mi amo que una liebre, y a fuerza de meriendas y tragos sustentaba la
fama de ser valiente” (II, 330). This feast, celebrating the sinister pact among a group of
hypocrites, is one of many profanations of the Lord’s Supper that occur throughout El
coloquio de los perros. Similar to the shepherds in episode two, who feast on the sheep
they deceitfully kill while blaming wolves, this nocturnal bond between the police officer
and the criminals he putatively puts away by day is what Alban Forcione calls a
“demonic feast,” the celebration of a false pact among the members of a corrupted
community (Mystery, 117). Forcione convincingly demonstrates how this repeated ritual
functions throughout the tale:
Looking at the total design of the Colloquy, we observe in these
repeated meals the rituals of the damned, as the numerous evil societies
which the work depicts seal and celebrate the pacts that unite them and
which in fact desecrate all the communal bonds that we revere. All are
violent perversions of the banquet of charity, friendship, conviviality,
and health which celebrates the reintegration of the cured, redeemed
Ensign into society. (Mystery, 117)
The social cohesion that the members of this feast attain is highlighted by the enthusiastic
embraces and toasts that the criminals extend to the police officer. Berganza recalls that
the pack of ruffians was completely at ease, “sin capas ni espadas, y todos
desabrochados,” and he describes in astonished detail the union between the criminals
and his master: “Apenas hubieran visto a mi amo, cuando todos se fueron a él con los
brazos abiertos, y todos le brindaron, y él hizo la razón a todos” (II, 329). As we shall
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see below, the Coloquio contains repeated instances of such gestures of friendship
between deceivers.
Berganza’s first four masters, then, form a part of the dominant society and
demonstrate a consistent pattern of projecting a socially acceptable or even desirable and
heroic image while in the public sphere, but in private they are not what they claim to be.
As El Saffar has observed, hypocrisy is at the heart of all of Berganza’s accounts: “what
has shown to break down is the relationship between reality and the signs which are used
to represent it” (Novel to Romance, 66). Between episodes three and four Berganza,
himself, struggles with hypocrisy. Unable to fulfill his vows to avoid slander in his
narration, he waffles on his promise to bite his tongue should he fall into the vice again.
With an untroubled conscience he states, “del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho,” and
refuses to keep his word (II, 321). Cipión gives a formal definition to his friend’s vice: “si
tu fueras persona, fueras hipócrita, y todas las obras que hicieras fueran aparentes,
fingidas y falsas, cubiertas con la capa de la virtud, sólo por que te alabaran, como todos
los hipócritas hacen” (II, 321). Cipión’s definition serves as an ordering principle for
Berganza’s narration since it unites the variety of deceivers that appear in his story.
Additionally, it anticipates the most sustained glimpse of hypocrisy in the novella, that
which is centered upon the witch Cañizares who consciously cultivates the gulf between
essence and appearance.
Berganza’s fifth master, a drummer and sham entertainer, essentially serves as a
device to introduce Cañizares. Berganza’s brief experiences with him, however, are
consistent with the theme of hypocrisy that has been evident in his previous masters.
Promoting Berganza as a “perro sabio,” the two put on a show of supposed marvels in the
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town of Montilla; he tells Berganza to jump for a succession of random, everyday
deceivers and liars: for the fellow who dyes his beard, for “la pompa y el aparato de doña
Pimpinela de Plafagonia,” and for the “baciller Pasillas, que se firma licenciado sin tener
grado alguno” (II, 334). When the drummer invokes the legendary witch from Montilla,
however, an “hospitalera” from the crowd berates him, “¡Bellaco, charlatán...! Si lo decís
por la Camacha, ya ella pagó su pecado...” (II, 335). While this disruption essentially
ends the show, the drummer remains cheerful and confident in their ability to swindle a
new group the following day. That evening the hospital worker who defended the witch,
la Camacha, approaches Berganza as he is alone in the patio of the hospital and asks him
a question that will be crucial to his entire narration: “¿Eres tú, hijo Montiel?” (II, 336).
His cautious gesture, raising his head slowly to look at her, seems to confirm a suspicion
she had held. Recalling the false embrace between the police officer and the criminals,
the mysterious woman moves towards Berganza, “me echó los brazos al cuello, y si la
dejara me besara en la boca; pero tuve asco y no lo consentí” (II, 336). Suspicious of this
defender of witches and repulsed by her physical appearance, Berganza rejects her
gesture of affection. He is intrigued, however, by her mysterious claims to know
important information about him, so he agrees to meet her that evening.
The importance of the episode with this hospital worker, who reveals herself as the
witch Cañizares, is signaled by its central position in the structure of Berganza’s
narration, the repeated anticipatory references Berganza makes to it, 10 and the way in
which it incorporates the major themes of both the Casamiento engañoso and the
Coloquio de los perros. Furthermore, as Berganza hints that their ability to speak may be
explained by a secret he will reveal, “when the time is right,” 11 this episode presumably
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holds the promise of drawing together all of the episodes of his story into a meaningful
design. It also differs from other episodes in its method of narration. Whereas in previous
episodes Berganza told his masters’ stories, Cañizares tells her own tale. El Saffar
observes: “Like the framing stories, the witch’s tale is a first-person narration that is
autobiographical and confessional in nature. And like Berganza’s and Campuzano’s
stories, the witch’s reveals a conflict between her appearance and her true identity”
(Cervantes, 62). Like a series of Chinese boxes, the Coloquio contains narrations within
narrations; in this light, Cañizares’s story is the innermost chamber of the sequence.
Appropriately then, Cañizares begins to relate her life story to Berganza in a tomb-
like room described as “escuro, estrecho y bajo,” lit by a single candle. She imbues her
narration with great importance: “Bien esperaba yo en el cielo que antes que estos mis
ojos se cerrasen con el último sueño te había de ver, hijo mío, y ya que te he visto, venga
la muerte y lléveme desta cansada vida” (II, 336). She explains that she and Berganza’s
mother were disciples of the most famous sorceress in the world, la Camacha, a woman
capable of inverting the cycles of the seasons—making fresh roses bloom in December—
and converting men into animals. Although she is uncertain whether these men who, like
the sacristan that she converted into a donkey and servant for six years, were actually
transformed into beasts or only appeared to take on that form, she is confident that
Berganza is actually a man: “sé que eres persona racional y te veo en semejanza de
perro, si ya no es que esto se hace con aquella ciencia que llaman tropelía, que hace
parecer una cosa por otra” (II, 337). Like nearly all of the characters of these two final
novellas, Cañizares demonstrates an inability to distinguish between appearance and
reality.
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Cañizares explains that, out of envy, la Camacha, acting as midwife for Berganza’s
mother Montiela, converted her children into dogs. La Camacha confessed her deed just
before her death, but reassured Montiela that they would return to their original form
after seeing the following: “Volverán en su forma verdadera/ cuando vieren con presta
diligencia/ derribar los soberbios levantados, / y alzar a los humildes abatidos/ por
poderosa mano hacello” (II, 338). Cañizares laments that she will not be able to see this
return to form since she suspects that her life is about to end. Her desire to know about
Berganza’s fate has compelled her to ask her “amo y señor,” the devil in the form of a
goat, to tell her, but he answers with “razones torcidas” (II, 339). She admits to the
befuddled state that he keeps her in, and yet she cannot escape his allure: “nos trae tan
engañadas a las que somos brujas, que, con hacernos mil burlas, no le podemos dejar” (II,
339). She notes that some think they only go to these events with the goat “con la
fantasía en la cual nos representa el demonio las imágenes de todas aquellas cosas que
después contamos que nos han sucedido” (II, 340). Other say they physically go and she
thinks that both are true—since their mental experience of the event is so intense that it’s
impossible to distinguish reality from imagination.
Standing at the center of Berganza’s narration, Cañizares embodies the depravities
from which Berganza’s masters suffer and from which the two canines attempt to flee;
she is an admitted hypocrite, she indulges in slander, and although she recognizes her
vices, she lacks the will power to change her habits. She lists her sins in a sincere
admission of the heart:
rezo poco, y en público; murmuro mucho, y en secreto; vame mejor con ser
hipócrita que con ser pecadora declarada; las apariencias de mis buenas obras
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presentes van borrando en la memoria de los que me conocen las malas obras
pasadas. En efeto: la santidad fingida no hace daño a ningún tercero, sino al
que la usa. (II, 340)
The division between public and private comportment that has been prominent in so
many characters in Berganza’s tale is reformulated here, with the only difference being
Cañizares’s self awareness and/or willingness to confess to her hypocrisy. Compare, for
example, the complete ignorance that Monipodio and his criminals demonstrate regarding
their hypocrisy. While Berganza observes them celebrate with his master the police
officer, it is Rinconete who has the most intimate glimpse of their delusional tendencies:
“sobre todo, le admiraba la seguridad que tenían y la confianza de irse al cielo con no
faltar a sus devociones, estando tan llenos de hurtos, y de homicidios, y de ofensas de
Dios” (I, 240). Cañizares’s final comment, that feigned piety causes no harm to others
and that it only harms the individual that practices it, expresses a sentiment that is
prevalent in Cervantes’s fiction. 12 Repeatedly throughout the Novelas ejemplares and
Don Quijote Cervantes presents a consistent justification for the use of deceit as long as it
does not harm a third party.
Cañizares’s deathbed confession provides an intimate glimpse of how an individual
can descend to a wretched condition. She explains how “la costumbre del vicio se vuelve
en naturaleza” and the sinner’s soul becomes useless and weak, unable to rise to the
consideration of a single good thought,
y así dejándose estar sumida en la profunda sima de su miseria, no quiere
alzar la mano a la de Dios, que se la está dando, por sola su misericordia, para
que se levante. Yo tengo una destas almas que te he pintado: todo lo veo y
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todo lo entiendo, y como el deleite me tiene echado grillos a la voluntad,
siempre he sido y seré mala. (II, 342)
Enslaved by her appetite for the body’s pleasures, Cañizares is fully aware of her
sinfulness. God’s merciful hand fully extended as an offer to raise the devastated soul
from its misery, contrasts with the repeated images of deceptive, harmful hands that have
appeared throughout the final two novellas. We recall Estefanía’s striking, white hand,
carefully adorned with a magnificent ring that lured the ensign into a costly trap. God’s
charitable hand also contrasts with the rapacious hand of the beautiful woman who stole
the meat from Berganza’s delivery basket, provoking him to observe that, “Bien pudiera
yo volver a quitar lo que me quitó; pero no quise, por no poner mi boca jifera y sucia en
aquellas manos limpias y blancas” (II, 305). While Cipión applauds his friend’s
judgment since, “[es] prerrogativa de la hermosura que siempre se la tenga respecto,” her
selfish acquisitiveness and the way in which she exploits her beauty to steal what is not
hers underlines how human hands are generally utilized in Cervantes’s closing pair of
novellas (II, 305). Instead of imitating God’s out-stretched, compassionate hand of
assistance, human hands are the instruments with which butchers savagely carve animals
and steal the best cuts for themselves; shepherds’ hands transform into a wolf’s teeth in
order to mutilate their own flock; or they may serve to seal a pact between colluding
criminals as a gesture of false brotherhood. By rejecting God’s proffered hand of mercy,
Cañizares demonstrates an inability to release the conniving, hurtful hand that confines
her to the terrestrial sphere.
Despite the decrepit condition of her body and the extreme atrophy of her will,
Cañizares trusts in God’s mercy. With a litany of justifications for not performing
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charitable acts, her only hope rests in His mercy:
Hospitalera soy; buenas muestras doy de mi proceder; buenos ratos me dan
mis unturas; ... y ya que no puedo ayunar, por la edad; ni rezar, por los
vaguidos; ni andar romerías, por la flaqueza de mis piernas; ni dar limosna,
porque soy pobre; ni pensar en bien, porque soy amiga de murmurrar, y para
haberlo de hacer es forzoso pensarlo primero, así que siempre mis
pensamientos han de ser malos; con todo esto sé que Dios es bueno y
misericordioso y que Él sabe lo que ha de ser de mí, y basta. Y quédese aquí
esta plática, que verdaderamente me entristece. (II, 343)
She proceeds to spread the ointment over her naked body and enters into a trance.
Berganza describes Cañizares’s repulsive body in detail: a seven-foot long mass of bones
covered with shriveled skin, she was, “toda era flaca y endemoniada” (II, 344).
Compelled by the fear of being enclosed in this private, confined space, Berganza drags
her body to the courtyard where patients and other hospital workers can see her. The
public’s reaction to Cañizares’s supine body indicates that while her veneer of piety
convinced some, others saw through her deception. Berganza reports that, “unos decían:
‘Ya la bendita Cañizares es muerta; mirad cuán disfigurada y flaca la tenía la
penitencia’,” and that others rightly concluded that, “sin duda debe de ser bruja” (II, 344).
When she awakes and finds that she is not protected in her private space and that some
curious on-lookers have pushed pins into her flesh, she attacks Berganza, admonishing
him for repaying the “buenas obras” she performed for his mother and planned to do for
him with such ungrateful behavior. He flees from the hospital and begins an itinerant
route through Eastern Andalucía.
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Before Berganza continues with his narration, however, Cipión insists that they
consider the witch’s claims about their human origins and their transformation into a
canine condition. Like Peralta, who demonstrated suspicion, if not skepticism, for
Campuzano’s text, Cipión expresses doubts about Cañizares’s professed knowledge
about their identity. He states,
Grandísimo disparate sería creer que la Camacha mudase los hombres
en bestias y que el sacristán en forma de jumento la sirviese los años
que dicen que la sirvió. Todas estas cosas y las semejantes son
embelecos, mentiras o apariencias del demonio; y si a nosotros nos
parece ahora que tenemos algún entendimiento y razón, pues hablamos
siendo verdaderamente perros, o estando en su figura, ya hemos dicho
que éste es caso portentoso y jamás visto, y que aunque le tocamos con
las manos, no le habemos de dar crédito hasta tanto que el suceso dél
nos muestre lo que conviene que creamos. (emphasis added, II, 346)
Cipión withholds judgment and refuses to believe the witch’s claims, even though they
seem to be able to confirm her assertions through empirical means (“aunque le tocamos
con las manos”) (II, 346). He is weary lest there be a deception involved that can fool
even one’s tactile means of knowing. He further scrutinizes Cañizares’s contention:
“¿Quieres verlo más claro? Considera en cuán vanas cosas y en cuán tontos puntos dijo la
Camacha que consistía nuestra restauración” (II, 346). He likens her putative “profecías”
to old wives’ tales, unless one takes her words allegorically. But he dismisses this
possibility as well since they have seen the humble raised and the proud lowered by
fortune’s wheel numerous times and to no result. He concludes decisively that, “la
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Camacha fue burladora falsa, y la Cañizares embustera, y la Montiela tonta, maliciosa y
bellaca, con perdón sea dicho, si acaso es nuestra madre, de entramobos o tuya, que yo no
la quiero tener por madre” (II, 347). Berganza agrees with Cipión, stating, “eres más
discreto de lo que pensaba,” and concludes that everything they’ve experienced is a
dream and that they are, in fact, dogs. Nevertheless, the pleasure of narrating his life story
enthralls him, so with Cipión’s permission, he finishes his tale.
Berganza’s final five episodes are much briefer than those that preceded his
encounter with Cañizares, and his masters are characterized by their position at the
margins of Spanish society. He first lives among a group of gypsies, where he observes,
“malicias, sus embaimientos, y embustes, los hurtos en que se ejercitan así gitanas como
gitanos, desde el punto casi que salen de las mantillas y saben andar” (II, 347). He
describes a parallel case to Juan de Cárcamo’s from La gitanilla, in this instance a
gentleman’s page “se enamoró de una gitana, la cual no le quiso conceder su amor si no
se hacía gitano y la tomaba por mujer” (II, 348). Like the narrator of that novella,
Berganza reduces the gypsies to a pack of thieves: “Son sus pensamientos imaginar cómo
han de engañar y dónde han de hurtar” (II, 348). After twenty days he decides to leave
their company and takes residence with a morisco to work as a guard dog for his orchard.
He spends a month with this frugal gardener simply out of a desire to observe morisco
customs. He makes a scathing attack on their community, depicting them as false
converts to Christianity who miserly hoard resources (“todo su intento es acuñar y
guardar dinero acuñado”) and refuse to spend money, thus robbing other Spaniards of the
country’s goods. Tired of his stinginess, Berganza fares slightly better with a playwright
who, although poor, generously shares what little he has. From this struggling writer,
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whose devotion to verisimilitude with his actors’ costumes we will analyze in more detail
below, Berganza moves swiftly to a theater manager who employs him in his simple
farces; Berganza’s role is to run into the middle of the scene and knock the actors over
which invariably elicits a positive response from the simple-minded audience and
enriches his master.
As the sunrise nears Berganza is forced to finish his narration, fearing that their
temporary gift of speech will cease. He quickly relates his final episode in which he
finally encounters a master devoted to noble ends: “viéndote una noche llevar la linterna
con el buen crisitano Mahudes, te consideré contento y justa y sanamente ocupado; y
lleno de buena envidia, quise seguir tus pasos, y con esta loable inteción me puse delante
de Mahudes, que luego me eligió para tu compañero y me trujo a este hospital” (II, 355).
Unlike the proud, deceiving masters he has had to this point, his duties working under the
good Mahudes permit Berganza to be at peace with his canine nature. The loyalty and
friendship that he and Cipión previously discussed as an innate disposition in dogs finally
finds expression with the magnanimous alms collector who cares for the poor and weak;
as the brothers seek charity the dogs hold the lanterns under those windows where alms
have been given in the past. Berganza, who has demonstrated his natural proclivity for
bringing light to his deceitful masters’ cloaked deeds, has found an occupation well-
suited to his nature; he walks through the dark streets with his master the alms-collector
and illuminates the proceeds of charity with the lantern he carries in his mouth. The
ensign observes Cipión and Berganza’s natural inclination for their work: “y con ir allí
con tanta mansedumbre, que más parecen corderos que perros, en el hospital son unos
leones, guardando la casa con grande cuidado y vigilancia” (II, 293). As both lion and
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lamb, for the first time Berganza is in balance with his true nature.
IV. Dissimulation in Contemporary Spanish Society: Cervantes’s Portrait of a
Community of Passers.
Spain in Cervantes’s time was a society versed in the art of dissimulation. Historical
documentation demonstrates that the abundant use of disguise and the skillful
employment of artifice that permeates the Novelas ejemplares, particularly El casamiento
engañoso and El coloquio de los perros, is a faithful reflection of the community that
Cervantes observed in his lifetime. Perhaps the most prominent impetus for
dissimulation was one’s ethno-religious ancestry. Caro Baroja, who has written the most
comprehensive historical study of modern Spanish Jewry, contends that conversos, in
particular, felt the need to disguise their family lineage: “A diferencia de los moriscos,
que hacían gala de su linaje, los judíos conversos no se preciaban de serlo de una manera
pública. Su disimulación llegaba a veces a tales extremos que durante años engañaban al
más fiero agente del poder inquisitorial” (I, 415-416). In addition to the Inquisition, the
obstacles presented by blood purity statutes motivated many individuals to creatively
refashion their identities. Perez Zagorin summarizes the opportunities obstructed by
limpieza statutes and notes the methods employed to counteract their influence:
limpieza became a requirement for admission to the great military
orders of the kingdom, to cathedral chapters, religious orders and
confraternaties, the colegios mayores of the universities, and many
other institutions and offices. In this way, blood purity became an
obsession among Spaniards, giving rise to its own brand of
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dissimulation as aspirants to honors and positions sought to prove their
eligibility by fictitious genealogies concealing any stain of Jewish
ancestry. (42)
Thus, whether the motive was to gain entry into a certain profession or opportunity for
career advancement or to avoid the persistent inquiries of the inquisition, conversos
engaged themselves in the art of dissimulation and disguise.
Anxieties about ancestral lineage repeatedly manifest in the Coloquio de los
perros. On numerous occasions, Berganza and Cipión complain about the invasive
scrutiny associated with blood purity statutes and inquisitorial inspections; they condemn
the obsession with family origins as a demonstration of human folly, a showcase of our
tendency to focus on ludicrous points at the expense of what is truly important. Perhaps
Cipión’s observations about the differences between the human and divine realms
underline this point best:
Muy diferentes son los señores de la tierra del Señor del cielo; aquéllos
para recibir un criado, primero le espulgan el linaje, examinan la
habilidad, le marcan la apostura, y aun quieren saber los vestidos que
tiene: pero para entrar a servir a Dios, el más pobre es más rico; el más
humilde, de mejor linaje; y con sólo que se disponga con limpieza de
corazón a querer servirle, luego le manda poner en el libro de sus gajes,
señalándoselos tan aventajados, que, de muchos y grandes, apenas pueden
caber en su deseo. (II, 311)
In direct contrast to God, the masters of the Earth are obsessed with appearances. Like
Campuzano, they fail to look beyond the surface and are taken in by an individual’s attire
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(“aun quieren saber los vestidos que tiene”); their infatuation with insignificant attributes
causes them to lose sight of matters of substance. The image of nit picking (“espulgan)
over one’s lineage emphasizes the invasiveness of the process; one’s private defects are
placed on public display. To enter into God’s service, on the other hand, things are
inverted: the poorest is the richest; the most humble is the one with the best lineage.
What matters are one’s pure intentions; instead of an obsession with purity of blood, God
is focused on one’s “purity of heart”. Recalling our analysis in chapter two of Cesare
Ripa’s emblem “Sincerità,” in which a woman dressed in white proffers her heart openly
and transparently, Cipión’s notion of a pure heart (“limpieza de corazón”) displaces the
erroneous human (Spanish) infatuation with a pure bloodline (“limpieza de sangre”). His
firm but friendly reminders to Berganza to avoid slander, urging him, “[que] sea tu
intención limpia, aunque la lengua no lo parezca,” throughout the latter’s narration show
his consistent efforts to imitate the Lord’s focus on purity of heart (II, 308).
Numerous additional references to the obsession with ancestral lineage that
plagued Spanish society at the time manifest throughout the novella, adding to Cipión’s
observations about the invasiveness and folly of this human preoccupation. Before being
hired by the sheepherders, Berganza is examined in a rather intrusive manner: “Trújome
la mano por el lomo, abrióme la boca, escupióme en ella, miróme las presas, conoció mi
edad, y dijo a otros pastores que yo tenía todas las señales de ser perro de casta”
(emphasis added, II, 305). Like any Spaniard applying for admission to the colegios
mayores, the military orders, or various other professions, Berganza is carefully inspected
and measured for signs that he is a pure breed, and not of mixed bloodlines. The act of
spitting into his mouth underlines the invasive quality of the process. Of course, Spanish
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subjects aspiring to posts for which proofs of blood purity were compulsory had to
undergo a more extensive inspection than Berganza does here. As Henry Kamen
delineates, the process for proving one’s purity was considerable:
The applicant had to submit his genealogy and, if married, that of his wife,
to the officials of the Inquisition. The names and residences of parents and
grandparents had to be included in the genealogy and if any signs of
impure blood were found that was enough to disqualify the applicant. If no
such evidence were found, the officials appointed commissioners who
were to visit the localities concerned and take sworn statements from the
witnesses about the antecedents of the applicant. (129)
Kamen notes that the crucial role of the witnesses left open abundant opportunities for
abuse; “A witness could be bribed to deny an applicant’s converso origins or he could
blackmail the applicant for the same purpose” (129). As a result of the importance placed
on such testimonies, and the profound impact that they could have on one’s life course,
the public-sphere was converted into a space that provided Spanish subjects with the
opportunity to convince their peers of their purity. Stepping out of one’s private realm
and into the public gaze, then, was in a very real sense like stepping onto a stage.
Thus, Berganza and Cipión’s efforts to overcome “la murmuración” in their
colloquy are linked to an awareness of the severe and lasting damage it could cause.
Berganza asserts that, “Acaba un maldiciente murmurador de echar a perder diez linajes y
de calu[m]niar veinte buenos,” (II, 314). As J.H. Elliot observes, the natural result of
these inspections of lineage based on sworn testimonies was a climate of fear, suspicion,
and mistrust all of which, ultimately, created the need for disguise and dissimulation:
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Since the testimony of even one malevolent witness could ruin a
family’s reputation, the effect of the statues of limpieza was in many
ways comparable to that of the activities of the Inquisition. They
fostered the general sense of insecurity, encouraged the blackmailer
and the informer, and prompted desperate attempts at deception.
Names were changed, ancestries falsified, in the hope of misleading
the linajudo, the professional who travelled (sic) around collecting oral
evidence and scrutinizing pedigree. (Imperial Spain, 223-224)
Cervantes humorously addresses the attempts at deception and disguise to which Elliot
refers in the episode with the “bretón” who carries “un pedazo de jamón famoso” in an
effort to assert his old Christian lineage (II, 325). This foreigner, who is duped by the
prostitute Colindres and Berganza’s master the police officer, apparently thought that he
had done due diligence in protecting himself while traveling in Spain. His preventative
measures included two important items, his ham and his “escuti d’oro in oro” (II, 325).
Américo Castro observes that in this episode Cervantes is having a laugh at his country’s
obsession with lineage by emphasizing the, “tácita ironía de que el mejor salvoconducto
para un extranjero en España era poder exhibir un trozo de jamón, magro u ósea para
demostrar su condición no morisca, no judía” (Castecismos, 53-4). Thus, ham is
converted into an “escudo defensivo contra la ‘opinión’” and the outsider’s view of
Spanish customs highlights the absurdity of the obsession with blood purity: “Con dinero
y cristianidad vieja, el negociante extranjero se creía seguro” (56). 13 Berganza, who upon
smelling the ham cannot resist his hunger, drags the foreigner’s private protections
against possible accusations into the public arena: “saqué los follados a la calle, y allí me
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entregué en el jamón a toda mi voluntad” (emphasis added, II, 325). Stripped of his
pants and other protections, the traveler is brought to prison.
In addition to ethno-religious motives, Spanish subjects of the sixteenth and early
seventeenth century were also engaged in the use of disguise and dissimulation due to
socio-economic reasons. Several instances in the Casamiento engañoso and the Coloquio
de los perros reflect this practice, demonstrating, once again, how behavior and dress in
the public sphere entailed a clear sense of the performative nature of identity. In his
seminal study, Las clases privilegiadas en la España del Antiguo Régimen, Antonio
Domínguez Ortiz observes that petitions for certificates of noble social status swelled in
this period since being recognized as nobility brought with it certain juridical and fiscal
privileges, and even more importantly, honor 14 . Domínguez Ortiz explains that those
subjects whose lineage was unquestioned were called “notoria nobleza,” while those who
had to litigate to prove their status were called “nobleza de ejecutoria” after the
document, thus named, that served as the official certification of hidalguía. While the
responsibility to maintain an official register of each individual’s status fell upon the
municipality, in many cases these registers, called “padrones,” were not kept. In such
cases the nobles “de ejecutoria” employed other methods to demonstrate their hidalgo
status including the ostentatious display of “escudos,” keeping company exclusively with
other hidalgos, having old and prominent houses with a large number of servants and a
grandiose living room with all the obvious signs of an hidalgo—“lanzas, adargas,
alabardas, partesanas y escudos, que podían armarse a veinte hombres” (32).
Dominguez-Ortiz summarizes the concious manipulation of signs thus: “La mayoría de
estos indicios o señales externas se reducían, como puede verse, a ‘vivir noblemente’, es
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decir, en ocio, fasto y riqueza” (33). Throughout the late sixteenth and early seventeenth-
centuries the crown passed a series of “Real cédulas” attempting to inhibit the large
number of petitions for noble status. As Domínguez Ortiz affirms, a central part of the
Bourbon reforms “fue hacer más difícil el ingreso en la hidalguía” (39).
Immediately following Colindres and the police officer’s succesful trapping of the
ham-toting “bretón,” the inn-keeper’s wife becomes involved in the fracas; her
introduction into the episode highlights the issue of identity and social status historically
documented by Dominguez Ortiz. Frustrated at his inability to squeeze a bribe out of the
pantless foreigner, the deputy “pensó sacar de la huéspeda de casa lo que el bretón no
tenía” (II, 325). Continuing the clothing motif so prominent to these two novellas, the
huéspeda claims that she understands their designs, stating, “entrevo toda costura,” and
threatens to publicly announce their scam: “no hagan que me aclare más, sino vuélvase el
dinero a este señor, y quedemos todos por buenos; [y] porque yo soy mujer honrada y
tengo un marido con su carta de ejecutoria” (emphasis added, II, 325). Despite her
claims of innocence and the putative transparency with which she does business (“hago
este oficio muy limpiamente y sin daño de barras. El arrancel tengo clavado donde todo
el mundo le vea”) her awareness of Colindres and the deputy’s corrupt endeavors attests
to her complicity (II, 326). With the instance of the huéspeda, Cervantes has a laugh at
those who equated noble status with an inherent moral superiority, a guarantee even, that
a certificate of nobility implied that one was incapable of commiting a crime or of acting
in anything but an upright manner. She desperately clings to the document that,
according to her, demonstrates her innocence:
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Dio voces a una moza que fuese corriendo y trujese de un cofre la carta de
ejecutoria de su marido, para que la viese el señor Teniente, diciéndole
que por ella echaría de ver que mujer de tan honrado marido no podía
hacer cosa mala, y si tenía aquel oficio de casa de camas era a no poder
más. (II, 327)
Unimpressed by her repeated declarations of possessing a patent of nobility, which, it is
worth noting, is never produced, the lieutenant humorously undercuts her assertion,
responding, “Hermana camera, yo quiero creer que vuestro marido tiene carta de
hidalguía con que vos me confeséis que es hidalgo mesonero” (II, 327). Stripped of her
aristocratic pretense, the lieutenant closes the episode by highlighting her exposed
condition: “Lo que yo os digo, hermana, es que os cubráis, que habéis de venir a la
cárcel” (II, 327).
Like the invasive scrutiny that proving the purity of one’s blood entailed, the
process of attaining a patent of nobility was cause for deep anxiety and a sense that one’s
private and intimate life had been encroached upon and placed on public display. The
simple fact that one needed to submit to the process of attaining nobility “de ejecutoria”
caused a good deal of shame, as Domínguez Ortiz notes: "Para una familia que se
considerase noble, tener que litigar por su hidalguía era penoso, caro y desagradable,
sobre todo porque el hacerlo implicaba que no era de nobleza notoria; se había puesto en
duda, se había contradicho..." (33-34). The huéspeda’s ability to see through the seams
of the police officer and his mistress Colindres’s scam takes them by surprise. Berganza
notes, “Pasmados quedaron mis amos de haber oído la arenga de la huéspeda y de ver
cómo les leía la historia de sus vidas” (emphasis added, II, 326). Nevertheless, her ability
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to read their lives, to expose them even while she exposes herself, should not surprise the
reader. If, indeed, she and her husband have been through the process of attaining a
patent of nobility, it would have sharpened her awareness of how to both project a public
image and, inversely, to see through the artifice projected by others. On the other hand,
her inability to produce the patent likely indicates that she is spinning her own tale. Her
mention of the trunk (“cofre”), where she claims to keep it, recalls Campuzano’s baúl,
which he ostentatiously packs with imitation gold in front of Estefanía and which is
ultimately converted into a symbol of his tomb. 15 Yet another trunk appears when the
central figure of deceit in these two novellas, Cañizares, narrates her life story to
Berganza while seated on “una arquilla” (II, 336). Like actors pulling costumes from
their trunks, it seems that the characters of these two novellas store their tools to create
deceitful appearances in their cofres, arquillas and baules.
The huéspeda, then, is simultaneously a creator and revealer of fictions. She is
one of numerous characters that demystify the world of deceit that surrounds them.
Cipión, for example, strips Cañizares’s prophecy of its mystery by analyzing it rationally
and dismissing it as nonsense. Berganza himself repeatedly struggles to unveil fraudulent
schemes; in some cases, like that of the shepherds, his inability to speak impedes his
desire to reveal their scam. His stated intention in telling his tales, however, centers on
the desire to bring clarity to his listener: “[las cuento] para desengaño de muchos que
idolatran en figuras fingidas y en bellezas de artificio y de transformación” (emphasis
added, II, 354). Finally, we recall Peralta’s cautious reserve before reading Campuzano’s
text. Attentive reading is privileged throughout the Coloquio as a necessary tool to see
through the abundance of deceit. If human beings are converted into “garments with
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feet,” as Estefanía is in Casamiento engañoso, in the Coloquio de los perros lives are
converted into texts. The huéspeda reads the stories of the lives of Colindres and the
police officer (“les leía la historia de sus vidas”) as if it were a text (II, 326). Like
Peralta’s cautious approach to Campuzano’s Coloquio or Cipión’s with Cañizares’s
prophecy, she pauses to analyze with studious attention the fictitious reality that these
two schemers present. She sees the seams (“entrevo las costuras”) of the ruse that they
have sewn together (II, 325).
Although the Coloquio suggests that lives can be read as if they were texts,
subjects of Spanish society often strove to manipulate the signs that they projected
publicly. As Barbara Fuchs observes in her study Passing for Spain,
Limpieza could not be so easily determined, because in pillorying or
clearing individual subjects there were often larger interests at stake—
economic considerations, tensions between regional structures and the
monarchy’s centralizing drive—as well as personal animosities.
Furthermore, subjects in question were often quite deliberately
unreadable, and the categories in which they supposedly belonged were
themselves problematized by their ambiguity. (Emphasis added, 2)
While Fuchs refers to questions of ethno-religious passing here, a similar principle holds
true for socio-economic disguise. The difference, however, is that subjects attempting to
hide their converso identity were engaged in dissimulation, whereas those who aspired to
ascend the social ladder were participating in simulation. 16 With regards to the latter,
Carmen Bernís notes that reading a subject’s social status from his/her clothing was an
endeavor fraught with difficulty:
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Cuando los contemporáneos de Cervantes opinaban sobre las
diferencias que se debían guardar en el vestir según la condición social
de cada cual, distinguían dos categorías: las personas principales por
una parte y las gentes comunes y ordinarias por otra,…el traje no
siempre reflejaba claramente las diferencias sociales pues las gentes
comunes trataban de imitar en el modo de vestir a las principales.
(359)
The Spanish monarchy, however, made serious efforts to regulate social order and to
avoid the ambiguity to which Bernís refers through sumptuary laws. This cycle of
legislation, which began to appear in the mid-thirteenth century, had the double objective
of restricting conspicuous consumption by all groups and, more importantly for our
concerns, to contain social mobility. Teofilo Ruiz observes that:
... the first sumptuary laws sought to construct categories of dressing,
colours and styles that would ease the job of distinguishing between noble
and bourgeois, between Christian and non-Christian. Sumptuary laws did
not deter bourgeois from engaging in fatuous displays; nor did it
discourage Jews or, to a lesser extent, Moors from dressing as Christians.
Nonetheless, these laws, which codified a system of social segregation,
purposefully attempted to keep all social orders, especially the middling
sorts, in their proper places. (223)
Despite the crown’s efforts to rigidly define the social order, however, subjects from the
mid-fourteenth century onwards were often granted exemptions to the strict codes of
dressing (Ruiz, 224).
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Berganza’s third master, the merchant of Seville, illustrates this proclivity for
ostentatiously displaying signs related to identity. Although he does not demonstrate his
authority and wealth in his own person, his repressed desire to claim social status bursts
forth in the way in which he decorates his children with conspicuous signs that indicate
their prominent place in the social hierarchy. This repressed desire in merchants and
exaggerated accessorizing in their children is, according to Cipión, typical, as is the
custom of purchasing titles for their offspring: “y algunos hay que les procuran títulos y
ponerles en el pecho la marca que tanto distingue la gente principal de la plebeya” (II,
314). Accessorizing one’s body with a title of nobility visibly placed on one’s chest is,
like the careful choosing of one’s attire, a conscious manipulation of signs shown in the
public sphere.
The Spanish society that Cervantes observed during his lifetime, then, was one
that was actively engaged in disguise and dissimulation. There seems to have been a
keen awareness that bodies, similar to written texts, were legible and that one played the
part of author in choosing how to present oneself in the public arena. While the dogs
lament the Earthly vice of being obsessed with appearances, they find solace in knowing
that the Heavenly Lord sees through one’s dress and is unconcerned with one’s purity of
blood; for Him, what matters is one’s pure heart, one’s good intentions, and one’s
essence. While the Coloquio privileges attentive reading and showcases several
characters that successfully demystify illusions and strip the deceitful images that
schemers project, it also demonstrates that this is a difficult undertaking. In a society with
such an abundance of falsifiers it becomes inadvisable to trust any apparent reality.
Cipión notes the paradox regarding trust—that it is best to be cautious and it is dangerous
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to trust, and yet “es imposible que puedan pasar bien las gentes en el mundo si no se fía y
confía” (II, 311). While they have found a small community, led by the good Mahudes,
where this seems to be a possibility, the dogs’ ultimate destination will provide them with
what they are seeking.
V. Dressing Bodies and Narrations in El coloquio de los perros.
The prominent collection of images centered upon dress, appearances, and artifice
that we analyzed in El casamiento engañoso takes on additional layers of meaning and
subtlety in El coloquio de los perros. As the tale’s canines discover the immense gulf
between the images that individuals project and the underlying realities of their lives,
Cervantes expands his exploration of the possible connotations of the motif of attire. Just
as bodies are carefully adorned in order to manipulate others’ perceptions in
Campuzano’s tale of his failed marriage, narrations themselves are dressed and disguised
in the Coloquio. Cipión repeatedly interrupts Berganza’s narrative in order to guide his
friend in narrating his life story in proper form. In the first intervention, Cipión makes an
important observation:
Los cuentos unos encierran y tienen la gracia en ellos mismos; otros, en el
modo de contarlos; quiero decir que algunos hay que aunque se cuenten
sin preámbulos y ornamentos de palabras, dan contento; otros hay que es
menester vestirlos de palabras, y con demostraciones de rostro y de las
manos y con mudar la voz se hacen algo de nonada, y de flojos y
desmayados se vuelven agudos y gustosos. (Emphasis added, II, 304)
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The body of a literary text, just like a physical body, can be embellished with well-chosen
ornaments and dress. A weak and feeble narration can be adorned with story-telling
techniques, facial gestures, and intonation. Like the displeasing face that Estefanía veiled,
a story of poor quality can be disguised. Cipión’s observation demonstrates a keen
awareness of the inherently deceptive nature of literature and how it is engaged, both
intentionally and unintentionally, in artifice. Throughout the Coloquio Cervantes
repeatedly hints at the parallels between texts and lives.
In the ninth episode that he narrates, Berganza receives scraps of moldy bread
crusts mixed with pocket lint from a starving playwright. While picking at this meager
feast he listens to the playwright as he describes a new play that he has written to an
actor. The playwright places great emphasis on dress and its importance in creating
verisimilitude, especially for a work situated in Rome and at a particular historical
moment. He insists that the cardinals must be dressed in purple, not red, saying “éste es
un punto que hace mucho al caso para la comedia...no he podido errar en esto, porque he
leído todo el ceremonial romano, por sólo acertar en estos vestidos” (II, 351). His
unrelenting determination to use costumes that are historically accurate illustrates the
crucial role that dress plays in the creation of a literary illusion. By insisting that his play
be faithful to the reality that it represents, the playwright strives to bridge the gap that
Berganza so disappointingly observed between the shepherds of pastoral literature and
those who actually guard their flocks in real life. By successfully exploiting the
verisimilitude of dress, the playwright, much like the trickster, can effectively create an
illusion and cause his/her audience to confuse illusion and reality.
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In addition to exploring the parallels between dressing bodies and dressing
literary texts, another new thread related to clothing that Cervantes introduces in the
Coloquio is centered on the difference between the divine and mundane realms with
regards to deceit and dress. The clearest case, which we have analyzed above, involves
Cipión’s meditation on the lords of the Earth and the heavenly Lord. In his description of
how the former lose sight of what is truly important, he concludes his list of complaints
by stating, “y aun quieren saber los vestidos que [uno] tiene” (II, 311). Cipión’s contrast
underscores the imperfection of human understanding, and our proclivity for giving
priority to the surface instead of underlying content and essence.
Fittingly, one of Cipión’s final observations in the novella has to do with clothing.
Like his meditation on the distinction between the two lords, his observation
demonstrates a firm belief in a divine level: “La virtud y el buen entendimiento simpre es
una y siempre es uno: desnudo o vestido, solo o acompañado. Bien es verdad que puede
padecer acerca de la estimación de las gentes, mas no en la realidad verdadera de lo que
merece y vale” (II, 359). Thus, virtue and clear understanding are of such great worth
that they are beyond the need for dress and artifice. Although they may or may not be
valued in people’s opinions, the objective truth always gives them their due and always
values their worth. Forcione observes:
the Colloquy ends with an affirmation of the fundamental Stoic doctrines
concerning the value of virtue as its own reward, man’s responsibility to
pursue virtue and truth and to cultivate intelligence and good sense, and
the crucial distinction between the essential realm of reality and virtue and
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the insubstatial world of opinion and appearance, with all its enslaving
allurements. (Mystery, 165)
As the novella comes to a close, several key questions linger: Is it a mere coincidence
that Campuzano overhears a dialog that contains an abundance of deceivers, having spent
a great deal of time in the hospital meditating on his own deceptive marriage? Is it
simply chance that in each tale there is a clear development of images constructed around
the theme of clothing as an illustration of deceitful appearances? Are we to believe that
this evolving pattern of images is serendipitous? Or in doing so are we being duped by
Campuzano’s latest fool’s gold? Upon finishing his reading of Campuzano’s text, Peralta
no longer seems to be concerned with questions of plausability. Whether or not the dogs
actually engaged in a dialog is of little importance; what matters is its content. Peralta
states, “Aunque este coloquio sea fingido y nunca haya pasado, paréceme que está bien
compuesto... yo alcanzo el artificio del Coloquio y la invención, y basta” (II, 359). That
is to say that Peralta, like the heavenly Lord, is concerned with the virtues contained
within Campuzano’s Coloquio; he looks beyond its artifice and sees something of lasting
value.
VI. Conclusion.
Cervantes’s closing two-tiered novella encompasses a final meditation on a
collection of themes that are prominent throughout the Novelas ejemplares: deceit,
diguise, and identity. In El casamiento engañoso and El coloquio de los perros
Cervantes assimilates numerous patterns of images and motifs that appear in his
preceding tales and reformulates them into an extensive and carefully crafted exploration
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of the topic of artifice. As we have seen, clothing plays an important role in these final
two novellas, associated, as it is, with one’s appareance, it reflects one’s identity. The
performativity of identity is underlined as numerous characters demonstrate a masterful
manipulation of attire when moving through public space. The body, like a text, is
legible and the way in which it is dressed carries with it specific meanings. Just as
historical documentation demonstrates that Spanish subjects of the early modern period
were adept at controlling the signs that they projected through their dress and other
external signs, Cervantes’s characters effectively fashion specific identities. Bodies and
texts must be read attentively, appearances should be stripped and considered with care.
While this final meditation on artifice highlights the human tendency to get lost in
illusion, it also refelcts hope for clear vision and regeneration. As Peralta accepts
Campuzano’s Coloquio for the virtue it contains, he demonstrates that paradoxically, an
illusion can lead one to understanding.
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Notes
1 William Clamurro, for example, dismisses the sincerity of Campuzano’s claim that his suffering was
worth it since he received the colloquy. Clamurro states that this “stretches credulity” and ultimately
aims to “spark in Peralta an acute desire to know what he saw” (260). According to this line of
thought, the ensign continues as an incorrigible devotee of artifice—his energies are now directed to
creating fictional narrations instead of deceiving women. Such a skeptical interpretation fails to
account for the repeated motif of spiritual regeneration found throughout the Novelas ejemplares.
2 Carmen Bernís points out several reasons for the ostentatious quality of soldiers’ attire. For one, it was
thought to give them courage. Additionally, she notes that"la vistosidad del traje del soldado era también
un cebo para atraer hombres a la milicia" (89). Lastly, as is the case both for the ensign here and Vicente de
la Rosa from the Quijote, Bernís recognizes that military outfits, "eran también eficaces para enamorar y
para seducir" (89).
3 As we examined in chapter one above, Cervantes also made use of images related to hands in La
gitanilla, where the rapacious, acquisitive hand of the gypsies contrasts with the open, generous hand of
Juan de Cárcamo’s father. In Coloqio de los perros the kind and evil acts centered around images related
to hands is also a prominent motif.
4 It is worth noting that the ensign makes a curious aside about the proper term for his narration; he calls it
“mi historia” and then explains, “(que este nombre se le puede dar al cuento de mis sucesos)” (292).
5 In his article, “Cervantes y la picaresca,” Carlos Blanco-Aguinaga makes an interesting comparison
between Mateo Alemán and Cervantes and convincingly argues against the classification of El coloquio de
los perros as picaresque literature.
6 This fact might corroborate Cañizares’s claim that Berganza (Montiel) and Cipión are, in fact, humans
and that the witch Camacha transformed them into their present canine form at birth due to a grudge she
held against their mother Montiela.
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7 El Saffar counts the witch Cañizares as a master and thus puts the number at eleven (Cervantes, 38-9).
See also Alan Soons’s article regarding the questions of structure of the episodes.
8 See El Saffar’s excellent companion to the final two novellas, Cervantes El casamiento engañoso and El
coloquio de los perros. For questions of the structure of Berganza’s narration’s episodes see especially 38-
41.
9 Forcione notes this episode’s climactic feast, “is one of a series of demonic feasts,” which he calls,
“rituals of the damned, as the numerous evil societies which the work depicts seal and celebrate the pacts
that unite them and which in fact desecrate all the communal bonds that we revere” (Mystery, 117).
10 Ruth El Saffar observes that Berganza makes four references to this influential episode before actually
narrating it (Cervantes, 60).
11 While narrating his second episode, Berganza recalls an important point, “lo que había de haber dicho al
principio de nuesta plática,” a certain story about a witch, but he refuses to tell it out of order, claiming that
his story will give more pleasure if it is told in proper succession (310).
12 Perhaps the most memorable case is that of Basilio who utilizes an ingenious deceit to prevent Camacho
from marrying Quiteria. Don Quijote affirms: “el amor y la guerra son una misma cosa, y así como en la
guerra es cosa lícita y acostumbrada usar de ardides y estrategmas para vencer al enemigo, así en la
contiendas y competencias amorosas se tienen por buenos los embustes y marañas que se hacen para
conseguir el fin que se desea, como no sean en menoscabo y deshonra de la cosa amada” (588). The
narrator similarly states later in the novel, “Porque no son burlas las que duelen, ni hay pasatiempos que
valgan si son con daño de tercero” (842). In La gitanilla one of the gypsy girls affirms, “No es mentira de
tanta consideración la que se dice sin perjuicio de nadie” (94-95).
13 Castro interprets the morisco Ricote’s encounter with foreigners in the second part of the Quijote in a
similar light. While these travelers make a great show of sucking on ham bones, Ricote is equally
ostentatious in his consumption of wine. Each visibly demonstrates that they are not limited by Jewish and
Muslim prohibitions on food and drink (53-64).
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14 The privileges included exemption from paying tributes, specific juridical rights including freedom from
torture and physical punishments such as being sent to the galleys or being whipped, they could not be
imprisoned for debt, if imprisoned they had a right to have separate quarters from pecheros or, in the case
of prominent nobles they were simply condemned to house arrest. There was no question, however, as to
what the most important privilege was: "Sin embargo, el principal motor de la aspiración a la hidalguía era
el honor... el deseo de consideración social" (Domínguez Ortiz, 41).
15 After discovering that his wife has fled him, he states, “Fui a ver mi baúl, y halléle abierto y como
sepultura que esperaba cuerpo difunto” (290).
16 Recall the distinction made by Perez Zagorin, cited in our introduction, regarding the distinction between
these two terms: “In the Latin from which they derive, both have virtually identical meanings.
Dissimulatio signified dissembling, feigning, concealing or keeping secret. Simulatio also meant feigning
or a falsely assumed appearance, deceit, hypocrisy, pretense or insincerity. The two words might therefore
be used interchangeably, each denoting deception with the further possible connotation of lying. For
precision's sake, however, we can also say that in a strict sense dissimulation is pretending not to be what
one actually is, whereas simulation is pretending to be what one actually is not” (3).
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Conclusion
Upon finishing his reading of Campuzano’s Coloquio, Peralta proposes,
“vámonos al Espolón a recrear los ojos del cuerpo, pues ya he recreado los del
entendimiento” (359). The ensign consents, and the Novelas ejemplares conclude with a
simple, “Y con esto, se fueron” (II, 359). As Amezúa explains, the “Espolón” was a
square plaza, “a un lado del Campo Grande y no lejos de San Lorenzo, con un muro
sobre el río, que llegaba a los pechos, y desde cuyos bancos o asientos de piedra se
descubría una vista bella, de alamedas, huertas, fuentes y monasterios...” (I, 42). Thus,
Cervantes closes his collection of tales with a return to the conceptual thread of
eutrapelia with which he began it. The town square—a place that through its repeated
association with the public gaze, the donning of ostentatious apparel, and prudent speech
has been converted into a symbol of the theatrum mundi—reappears one final time,
recalling the prologue’s “plaza del mundo,” in which Cervantes imagines his portrait
being placed, “a los ojos de las gentes;” as well as the “plaza de nuestra república,” in
which he metaphorically places his novellas as a billiards table (I, 51-52). Likewise, the
thread of recreation is revisited in Peralta’s desire to “recrear los ojos del cuerpo,”
evoking Cervantes’s observation in the prologue, “Horas hay de recreación, donde el
afligido espíritu descanse” (I, 52). Similar to his introductory statements about his
billiards table that permits entertainment, “sin daño del alma ni del cuerpo,” Peralta
underlines his desire to “recrear los ojos del cuerpo, pues ya he recreado los del
entendimiento” (emphasis added, II, 359). Suddenly, one detects a faint echo of
Preciosa’s voice encouraging Andrés to consider their relationship with his “ojos del
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entendimiento,” moving beyond his infatuation with her physical beauty; one recalls
Ricardo’s bouts with temporary blindness in his struggles to see himself and his relation
to Leonisa more clearly; the ensign’s own visual impairment reemerges as well, as it is
precisely the scrutinizing eyes of understanding that he lacked in his marriage (I, 85).
Cervantes, then, achieves an impressive reprise of the central themes, concepts, and
images of his novellas with what appears to be a simple proposal of the licentiate Peralta.
With its references to such principle characters from previous novellas as
Monipodio, the leader of the Sevillian hampa in Rinconete y Cortadillo and, indirectly, to
Andrés Caballero and the gypsies of La gitanilla as well as to the mercader sevillano of
La española inglesa, 1 the circular effects of the Coloquio de los perros are not limited to
Peralta’s final words. The reappearance of prominent protagonists, themes, and images
serve to encourage the reader to reflect back upon the collection as a whole. Important
passages that appeared early in the collection accrue new significations when considered
in relation to later tales. In Preciosa’s lessons to Andrés on proper vision and
understanding, for example, her comments that, “Ojos hay engañados que a la primera
vista tan bien les parece el oropel como el oro; pero a poco rato bien conocen la
diferencia que hay de lo fino a lo falso,” resonate with greater force than they did initially
(I, 104). The recapitulating reader cannot help but see how well Preciosa’s instruction—
which initially was limited in scope, merely encouraging Andrés to be more careful in his
consideration of a marriage partner—accumulates additional levels of meaning, applying,
for example, to the ensign’s entanglement. Preciosa’s guidance also parallels
Campuzano’s comments to Peralta that, “no es todo oro lo que reluce,” and is, in essence,
the lesson that nearly all of the novellas’ characters must learn (II, 291). Preciosa’s
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lecture would benefit the multitude of hoodwinked characters we find throughout the
Novelas ejemplares who are taken in by a glossy veneer and are blind to underlying
truths.
Similarly, the polysemic qualities of “vestido,” and the significance that dress
takes on in the course of the closing two-tiered tale influence our rereading of preceding
novellas. Isabela of La española inglesa is dressed in various ensembles that are linked
to national identity—a process that underlines the performativity of any group identity,
be it national, religious, class, or caste. Her body is converted into an object on which
her competing masters hang code-imbued garments thus controlling the signs that she
displays and the group to which she belongs. Before her crucial meeting with the English
queen Isabela, Clotaldo and his family, “visitieron a Isabela a la española,” with all of the
pomp decoded by Carmen Bernís in her excellent study; she wore a,
saya entera de raso verde acuchillada y forrada en rica tela de oro,
tomadas las cuchilladas con unas eses de perlas, y toda ella bordada de
riquísimas perlas; collar y cintura de diamantes, y con abanico a modo de
las señoras damas españolas; sus mismos cabellos, que eran muchos,
rubios y largos, entretejidos y sembrados de diamantes y perlas, le servían
de tocado. (I, 248)
After spending a short while with the Queen, Isabella reappears now, “vestida a la
inglesa” (I, 259). Like the numerous Spanish subjects of Cervantes’s age who passed as
old Christians or as nobles, as well as the characters that demonstrate a keen
manipulation of semiotics that we had occasion to analyze in chapter four, including the
“bretón” who carries ham while traveling through Spain, thus shielding himself from
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possible accusations of being a coverso, or the Sevillian merchant’s desire to display
patches of nobility prominently on his sons’ chests, Isabela fashions and refashions
various identities with a simple change of dress. 2
The threads of ethno-religious and socio-economic simulation and dissimulation
evident in the Coloquio—the breton’s attempts to elude persecution while traveling in
Spain and the inn-keeper’s wife’s insistence that her patent of nobility proves her
innocence, among others 3 —invite the reader to reconsider the characters’ struggles with
prudence and sincerity in Las dos doncellas, La señora Cornelia, and, indeed, in nearly
every tale. La española inglesa, based as it is on a family of “católicos secretos” who
must prudently conceal their beliefs from the intolerant monarch, takes on a heightened
significance when reconsidered in relation to later novellas’ dissimulators. Their
nicodemism requires them to take the utmost care in keeping vigil over their public
appearance. Similar to Cornelia or either of the dos doncellas, they live with the threat of
an inadvertent bodily reaction revealing their hidden intimacies and convictions. When
the queen sends him on a mission to earn Isabela, Ricaredo must balance his Catholic
ethics with the duties of being a soldier all while keeping his secret Catholicism masked.
His quandary is summarized thus,
[Estaba combatido con] dos pensamientos que le tenían fuera de sí: era el
uno el considerar que le convenía hacer hazañas que le hiciesen merecedor
de Isabela, y el otro, que no podía hacer ninguna, si había de responder a
su católico intento, que le impedía no desenvainar la espada contra
católicos; y si no la desvainaba, había de ser notado de cristiano o
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cobarde, y todo esto redundaba en perjuicio de su vida y en obstáculo de
su pretensión. (Emphasis added, I, 252)
Of course, he will need to be more prudent than Leocadia was in Las dos doncellas; by
neglecting to fill her pierced ears with wax her mask failed to effectively conceal her
gender. Additionally, his rhetorical abilities will need to be more refined than those that
she displayed in a poorly crafted fiction about her familial origins.
Just as Teodosia and Leocadia struggled to conceal the intimacies of their hearts,
involuntarily revealing their “pechos” to the public gaze, Ricaredo finds it difficult to
conceal his sincerity. When the queen does not immediately grant his petition to marry
Isabela, sending him instead to captain a ship and prove his worthiness “por sí mismo,”
Ricaredo is overcome by emotion; “la lágrimas acudieron a los ojos, y él acudió a
disimularlas lo más que le fue posible. Pero con todo eso no se pudieron encubrir a los
ojos de la reina” (I, 251). Although his slip-up is perceived by the queen, she assures
him: “No os tengáis en menos por haber dado en este trance tan tiernas muestras de
vuestro corazón” (emphasis added, I, 251). His vain attempts to dissimulate the public
display of his heart recall the numerous sincerely proffered hearts that have appeared
throughout the novellas: the two damsels, the Duke of Ferrara and his lady Cornelia, and
Cipión’s servant of the Lord, whose only worry is the “limpieza de [su] corazón,” among
many others (II, 311). When Ricaredo and his father take leave of the queen they do so,
“llenos de compasión, de despecho y de lágrimas” (emphasis added, 252). In line with
the connotations we explored in chapter two, Ricaredo’s intimate revelation leaves him
here with his chest literally unmade and laid bare.
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The notion that emerges in the Coloquio that a writer or narrator’s own
involvement in the creation of illusions— evidenced in the dogs’ discussion of how an
effective narration can be dressed just like a body, in their persistent analysis of
Cañizares’s implausible story of their lives’ origins, and in Peralta’s weary skepticism
with Campuzaño’s text—encourages readers to reappraise Cervantes’s own awareness of
the artifice of literature as well as his exploitation of genre codes as we have done in our
analysis of La gitanilla in chapter one. Such a reappraisal permits one to appreciate
Cervantes’s masterful dressing of novellas that, on first glance, appear to be simple tales
of naive romance, but with closer inspection one detects the satirical elements woven into
the garment. As Eric Kartchner has effectively demonstrated, those novellas that are
traditionally considered “idealistic” often contain a certain self-awareness of themselves
as literary texts and a subversion of the generic conventions of romance. 4 His
deconstruction of the metafictional traits of these novellas highlights the complexity that
these tales hide beneath their veneer: "Metafiction can serve as an instrument to make
some kind of social statement, or at least to expose some problematic aspect concerning
the configuration of society, the same way that it often exposes the artifice involved in
the construction of a text" (78). Similarly, as we have had occasion to note in chapter
one, various scholars including Edwin Williamson, Carroll Johnson, and Barbara Fuchs
have convincingly demonstrated how Cervantes’s own texts invite their readers to attend
to their undermining gaps and unreliable narrators, that is, to see through their illusions
and observe their artifice. The technique we have analyzed in La gitanilla in chapter one,
with its apparent construction of ideal and abhorrent worlds, which, in actuality, reflect
one another, is one that Cervantes deftly utilizes in many of his “idealistic” novellas;
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lurking beneath the putative critiques of a community depicted as a deviant “other” is a
subtle commentary on the dominant home community.
Towards the end of his narration Berganza comments on his desire to narrate
other events from his life, “...con otras infinitas cosas... todas para hacer memoria dellas y
para desengaño de muchos que idolatran en figuras fingidas y en bellezas de artificio y
de transformación” (emphasis added, 354). Berganza’s observation, as Alban Forcione
points out, is a “comment on the work itself and by implication ... a comment on
language and literature” (Mystery, 234). More specifically, Berganza’s statement, when
one considers the inherently fictitious quality of any narration, 5 unveils Cervantes’s own
objectives: to lead his reader to understanding and “desengaño” through the use of
illusions (“engaños”). As Forcione explains,
The mission of the artist is to master and use the illusions of language in
order to undeceive, to bring such lucidity and freedom to his readers, and
he enhances the power of his demasking criticism by reminding them of
the insubstantial quality of the very medium in which he works, of the
fraudulence of his very own mask. (234)
Just as so many elements in the final tale encourage us to reflect back upon the preceding
novellas in the collection, Berganza’s clearly stated objectives in narrating his story invite
us to reconsider the way in which previous tales attempt to lead the reader to desengaño
through their artifice.
Finally, the ensign’s incipient recovery from his deceitful marriage and his own
willful participation in fraud prompts the reader to consider the exemplarity of
Cervantes’s tales and his genuine belief in the capacity for humans to transform
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themselves morally and spiritually. Campuzano’s Coloquio, and the importance with
which he imbues it, viewing it as a sort of revelation, contains clear evidence that his
ruminations on the nature of deceit—its grip on the terrestrial sphere and human
endeavors and its nullification in the life hereafter—have brought him clarity. From his
initial condition as he departs the “Hospital de la Resurrección,” using his sword as a
cane because his weak, emaciated legs can hardly support him, and with a gaunt, yellow
colored face, all of which made him wholly unrecognizable to his friend Peralta, the
ensign, having shared a feast with his listener and rested in his home while the latter read
his Coloquio, is both physically and spiritually revived. Like the many sinners of the
preceding novellas who similarly lowered themselves to a degenerate, beast-like level,
Campuzano’s story is a final illustration of Cervantes’s faith both in the human capacity
for regeneration and the potential for literature to provide examples worthy of imitation;
after all, whether history or literature, his narrations, both of his marriage and the
Coloquio, are inextricably linked to his convalescence. Peralta’s sympathetic response to
his friend’s text and encouragement to continue with the second part, “paréceme que está
tan bien compuesto que puede el señor Alférez pasar adelante con el segundo,” point to a
new role for the ensign. Instead of devoting his energies to marriage scams, he will
follow Berganza’s objectives and lead his listeners/readers to see through illusions with
his texts (II, 359).
The final two-tiered tale, then, invites the reader to reconsider earlier novellas
with its reformulation of important patterns of images, the reappearance of key
characters, and the reactivation of the collection’s major themes. Cervantes’s break with
tradition in choosing to not construct his novellas around a framing device does not mean
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that his collection lacks unity. 6 In fact, as I hope to have demonstrated here, his closing
pair of tales encompasses a circular quality that encourages the reader to reflect on the
earlier novellas once again, and this return is rewarded with an appreciation of new,
heightened significations. To use one of Cervantes’s most powerful group of images in
the collection, the author knits a garment that at first sight may appear disparate and
disjointed, resembling perhaps the octopus’s disorderly tentacles to which Cipión
compares Berganza’s narration. 7 Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that
Cervantes masterfully assembles the divergent parts into an organic whole. One
important thread that pulls the various tales together is Cervantes’s elaboration of the
eutrapelia-tropelía motif, which permits him to explore the interconnections between
deceit, disguise and identity. By inviting his reader to play at his billiards table,
Cervantes is confident that the reader can be actively engaged, “sin daño de barras,” so
that when faced with weighty moral decisions in life, the reader will have reflected on
similar instances and will be prepared (I, 52). Thus, the never-ending cycle of
exemplarity evolves.
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Notes
1 Clamurro notes that, “The family of the mercader sevillano, for instance, is not the same as that of
Isabel in La española inglesa, but it is in reality not very different” and again, “Likewise, the gitanos
whom Berganza encounters toward the end of his tale are perhaps a different group from those who
made up the temporary world of the lost and found Preciosa in La gitanilla. But the harsh judgment
rendered by Berganza would not be incomprehensible as a comment upon Preciosa’s gypsy teachers
and companions. Again, the difference is one of perspective and emphasis” (271).
2 La española inglesa contains a detailed elaboration of the dress motif that is so prominent in the
Casamiento and the Coloquio and would benefit from a historical reading of the sort I have carried out on
this final pair of tales.
3 Cañizares complains of being persecuted for her beliefs and religious practices by “un juez colérico” who,
since he was not given a bribe, “usó de toda su plena potestad y rigor con nuestras espaldas” (II, 343).
4 For Kartchner, the “idealistic” novellas include: Las dos doncellas, La ilustre fregona, La señora
Cornelia, La fuerza de la sangre, and La española inglesa
5 As Haydn White notes, “Pensadores de la Europa continental—de Valéry y Heidegger a Sartre, Lévi-
Strauss y Michel Foucault—han planteado serias dudas sobre el valor de una conciencia específicamente
“histórica”, han insistido en el carácter ficticio de las reconstrucciones históricas y han discutido el reclamo
de un lugar entre las ciencias” (13). Of course, many of these thinkers may have been pushed to think
about these matters by Cervantes who playfully points out the fictitious quality of history and any chronicle
or narration throughout Don Quijote and elsewhere.
6 As Clements and Gibaldi note, “The use of a cornice or frame-tale—a narrative situation that plausibly
motivates the relation of and lends structural unity to a series of otherwise diverse and unrelated stories—is
probably the artistic characteristic that at first glance most blatantly distinguishes the novella collection
from its modern counterpart, the book of short stories” (36). See chapter 2 of their Anatomy of the Novella,
devoted to the structure of the novella.
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7 Cipión critiques the tangential, non-linear form of Berganza’s narration, stating, “que la sigas de golpe,
sin que la hagas que parezca pulpo, según la vas añadiendo colas” (319).
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Illustration 1: Sincerità, Cesare Ripa
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Illustration 2: The Cardsharps, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
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Works Cited
Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso Trans. Barbara Reynolds. New York: Penguin
Classics, 1975.
---. Orlando Furioso. Ed. Marcello Turchi. Italy: Garzanti
Editore, 1974.
Aristotle. Aristotle: The Nichomachean Ethics. Trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle. Vol. 13.
Boston: D Reidel Publishing company, 1975.
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Vita
Ryan Thomas Schmitz was born in Coon Rapids, Minnesota on April 18, 1975,
the son of James and Jo Ann Schmitz. He received his high school diploma from Elk
River Area High School in 1993. In 1998 he received his Bachelor of Arts in Spanish
and the Humanities from Minnesota State University at Moorhead. In 2005 he was
awarded the Master of Arts in Hispanic Literature from The University of Texas at
Austin.
Address: 3354 Lake Austin Blvd. Apt A, Austin, TX, 78703
This dissertation was typed by the author.