MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA

• Born in Alcalá de Henares, September 29, 1547. Died in Madrid, April

22, 1616.
• Novelist, Playwright and poet.
• The most important and celebrated figure in Spanish Literature.
• His novel Don Quixote has been translated, in full or in part into more
tan 60 languages.
• Notable short-story writer.
• Soldier and Slave.
• Was in prison for his inability to pay taxes.
• Lived in his last years as a small trader.
 The Cervantine
Baroque
Darío Rincón Saad

Professor: Dr. Frédéric Conrod

SPW6938- The Baroque: A Comparative Approach

September 22, 2022

DAVID R. CASTILLO
• Professor in University at Buffalo, The State University of New
York.
• Scholary Interest: Early Modern and Baroque Studies; Spanish
Golden Year; Fantasy and Horror; Cultural criticism.
• PhD, University of Minnesota.
• MA, University of Minnesota.
• Licenciado, Universidad de Granada.
• Classes: Theory and Politics of Horror, Cultural Theory,
Cervantes, The Picaresque, Baroque Theater, Spanish Golden
Year.
CASTILLO: “EXEMPLARITY GONE AWRY IN
BAROQUE FANTASY: THE CASE OF CERVANTES”
• “Novelas ejemplares reveals the problematic of dominant values ​and beliefs.” (Castillo
105)

• Jose Antonio Maravall: La Cultura del Barroco (1975)

“He notes that the propagandistic culture of the Baroque mobilizes irrational
impulses in the service of values and beliefs that aid in the justification of the
social order and the established system of authority” (Castillo 105)
CASTILLO: “EXEMPLARITY GONE AWRY IN
BAROQUE FANTASY: THE CASE OF CERVANTES”
• Henry Ettinghausen in “sexo y violencia: noticias sensacionalistas en la prensa española
del siglo xvii." Edad de Oro 12 (1993): 95-107” states:
“sensationalist and horrifying images ultimately work to reinforce dominant social codes is
consistent with a Maravallian understanding of the manipulative and propagandistic
character of Baroque culture, and also with some recent conceptualizations of modern
horror” (105-106)
CASTILLO: “EXEMPLARITY GONE AWRY IN
BAROQUE FANTASY: THE CASE OF CERVANTES”
From Ettinghausen work:
“Al mismo tiempo que servían para apuntalar la moral oficial, las visiones horrendas que proveen estas narraciones
poseerían también el poderoso atractivo de liberar, sublimandolos, instintos sanguinarios y libidinosos, de manera
parecida a como lo hacen hoy día las películas de horror o los sucesos que salen cada día en la prensa y que llenan
publicaciones especializadas.” (107)
While serving to bolster official morale, the horrendous sights that these narratives provide would also possess the
powerful allure of liberating, sublimating idols, bloodthirsty and libidinous instincts, in a similar way as they do
today the horror movies or the events that come out every day in the press and that fill specialized publications.
(107)
Sublimate: In psychoanalysis, transform instinctive impulses into more accepted acts from the moral or social point
of view.
CASTILLO: “EXEMPLARITY GONE AWRY IN
BAROQUE FANTASY: THE CASE OF CERVANTES”
• From Ettinghausen:
“sensational images sell in the Baroque period, whether they are packaged as news,
entertainment, devotion or fiction. It is not simply that the news stories or relaciones share
in the sensationalist themes and style of Baroque fiction, but rather that they are in fact
sensationalist fictional narratives which frequently make moral points, sometimes in a direct
and explicit manner.” (Castillo 106)
CASTILLO: “EXEMPLARITY GONE AWRY IN
BAROQUE FANTASY: THE CASE OF CERVANTES”
• Anonymous, Libro de las cosas notables que han sucedido en la ciudad de Córdoba
(1618)
“Soy aquel desventurado don Julian, por quien se perdió España y estoy padeciendo
tormentos increíbles en el infierno”
“I am that unfortunate Don Julian, for whom Spain was lost and I am suffering incredible
torments in hell”
“De que me sirvió ser poderoso en este mundo sino de condenarme”
“What good was it for me to be powerful in this world but to condemn myself”
GRAPHIC SENSIONALISM

• “The graphic sensationalism of this macabre theatre is justified by the moralistic frame
which guides the curious reader towards the correct viewpoint.” (Castillo 108)
• “The narrator describes the scene as a horrifying spectacle.” (Castillo 108)
SENSASIONALIST EXEMPLARY

Cristobal Lozano (1609-1667). “Castigo de los dos adulteros” from De el Rey penitente David arrepentido” (1656)
It tells the story of Julio who commits adultery with a woman who cruelly kills her husband in cold blood. They are
punished by a specter who introduces himself to a servant and a count.
“Repase, pues, el curioso a la pena cruel a que estan sentenciados aquellos que para lograr sus adulterios y maldades
cometen semejantes homicidios, tan necios y tan ciegos a la razon, que añaden yerros a yerros” (Lozano 2:87)
"Review, then, the curious to the cruel punishment to which those who, to achieve their adulteries and wickedness,
commit such homicides, so foolish and so blind to reason, that they add mistakes to mistakes, are sentenced“ (Lozano
2:87)
Yerro: mistake that is committed through ignorance or carelessness.
SENSASIONALIST EXEMPLARY
• Lozano 's sensationalist exemplary tale pulls on the emotional wires of the reader and
mobilizes irrational drives in the direction of dominant social codes and values. As I hope
to show below this type of instrumentalization of the preternatural has little to do with
Cervantes' take on fantasy in his Novelas ejemplares.
Preternatural: What is beyond the natural state of a thing.
FANTASTIC AND MORALISTIC LITERATURE.

• “In his compelling essay E.C. Riley notes that the Cervantine frame-tale has more in
common with the literature of the modern fantastic (as theorized by Rosemary Jackson)
than with the tradition of fables and satires within which "fantasy serves the ends of
moral and satirical commentary on human behavior. (Riley 4)” (Castillo 109)
• “Cervantes' twist on exemplarity reveals the endemic weaknesses in the fortresses of
reason and morality, the skandalons (scandals, obstacles) of sense-making” (Castillo 109)
CERVANTES’S EXEMPLARITY

• A textual labyrinth with no way out.

• There is no valid solution.
• the contaminating or constructive presence will always affect the interpretive perspective of any (re)solution that is
attempted to be supported.
• Unmasked by the self-reflexive language of the narrative as well as by the reader's own arbitrary choice.
“According to Spadaccini and Talens, this is, in fact, the paradoxical basis of Cervantine ex emplarity: "The text
contains gaps and silences, conflicts and contradictions, which shift to the reader-critic the obligation of investing it
with meaning.” (Castillo 110)
“his playful sense of puzzlement and indeterminacy leads to a further questioning of the boundaries between reason
and imagination and between fantasy and reality.” (Castillo 110)
CERVANTINE BAROQUE IN NOVELAS
EJEMPLARES.
• “the Cervantine use of fantasy opens up oblique views that reveal the arbitrariness of
moralistic discourse and the nonsensical nature of the system of beliefs on which it is
grounded. In other words, Cervantes' Novelas ejemplares is a paradigmatic case of
exemplarity gone awry in Baroque fantasy” (Castillo 116-117)
“El coloquio de los perros” in Novelas
Ejemplares.
• the contaminating or constructive presence will
always affect the interpretive perspective of any
(re)solution that is attempted to be supported.
(Castillo 110)
"CIPIÓN. What I have heard praised and made
more expensive is our great memory, our
gratitude and great fidelity; so much so that we
are usually painted as a symbol of friendship; and
so you will have seen, if you have looked at it, that
in the alabaster graves, where the figures of those
who are buried there are usually, when they are
husband and wife, they put between the two, at
the feet, a dog figure, in a sign that friendship and
inviolable fidelity were kept in life“ (542)
 “El coloquio de los perros” in Novelas
Ejemplares.
• “Cervantes' twist on exemplarity reveals the endemic weaknesses in the fortresses of reason and
morality, the skandalons (scandals, obstacles) of sense-making” (Castillo 109)
• “the Cervantine use of fantasy opens up oblique views that reveal the arbitrariness of moralistic
discourse and the nonsensical nature of the system of beliefs on which it is grounded. In other
words, Cervantes' Novelas ejemplares is a paradigmatic case of exemplarity gone awry in Baroque
fantasy” (Castillo 116-117)

“BERGANZA. To Him I entrust myself in every event; and although I find it difficult to stop
murmuring, I plan to use of a remedy I heard said used by a grand jury, which, regretted his bad
habit, every time after his he swore repentance, pinched his arm, or kissed the land, in penalty of
his guilt; but, with all this, he swore. So I, every time it goes against the precept that you have given
me not to I murmured, and against my intention not to murmur, I I will bite the tip of my tongue so
that it hurts and remember my fault so as not to return to it.” (550)

“CIPIÓN. When murmuring you call philosophizing? So it goes! Canonize, canonize, Berganza, the
cursed plague of gossip!, and give her the name you want, which she will give to we are the cynics,
which means murmuring dogs; And for your life, shut up now and follow your story.” (563)

“CIPIÓN. Now yes, Berganza, you can bite your tongue, and destroy it myself, because everything
we say is murmuring.” (565)
“El coloquio de los perros” in Novelas
Ejemplares.
“sensationalist and horrifying images ultimately work to reinforce
dominant social codes is consistent with a Maravallian
understanding of the manipulative and propagandistic character of
Baroque culture, and also with some recent conceptualizations of
modern horror” (Castillo 105-106)

“I want to confess a truth to you, Cipión friend: that I had great fear
to see myself shut up in that narrow room with that figure in front,
which I will paint for you as best you know. She was long more than
seven feet, all was nototomy of bones covered with a black, hairy
and leathery skin; with the belly, which was bandana, covered the
dishonest parts, and even hung up to the middle of the thighs; the
tits resembled two cow bladders dry and wrinkled; the lips
blackened, the teeth shattered, the nose curved and boarded up,
the eyes unhinged, the head disheveled, cheeks flushed, narrow
throat and breasts plunged; finally, everything was skinny and
possessed.” (591)
 “Rinconete y Cortadillo” in Novelas
Ejemplares.
“Cervantes' twist on exemplarity reveals the endemic weaknesses in the fortresses of
reason and morality, the skandalons (scandals, obstacles) of sense-making” (Castillo 109)

“Cortado ask:
– Is your mercy, by chance, a thief?
– Yes, – he replied, – to serve God and the good people,
although not of the very studied, that I am still in the year of the
novitiate.
To which Cortado replied:
– It is a new thing for me that there are thieves in the world to
serve God and good people.
To which the boy replied:
– Lord, I don't get into tologys; what I know is that every
one in his office can praise God, and more with the command he has.
given Monipodio to all his godchildren.
– Without a doubt, – said Rincon, – she must be good and holy, because she does
may thieves serve God.” (188)
 “Rinconete y Cortadillo” in Novelas
Ejemplares.
“In his compelling essay E.C. Riley notes that the Cervantine frame-tale has more in
common with the literature of the modern fantastic (as theorized by Rosemary
Jackson) than with the tradition of fables and satires within which "fantasy serves the
ends of moral and satirical commentary on human behavior. (Riley 4)” (Castillo 109)

"Because I want you to know, Sister Cariharta, if you don't know, that you don't want
well but what you punish, and that when these bellacones give us, then they adore
us. If not, tell me the truth, for your life, after he had given you and punished you,
didn't he caress you a thousand times?" (659)
“Cariharta did not want to pass in silence what caused her the new friendships with
her gallant el Repulido, and having another chapín, got into the circle and
accompanied those of the music, saying in loud voice:
Detente, enojado, no me azotes más, que, si bien lo miras, a tus carnes das.
(Stop, angry, don't whip me anymore,
that, although you look at it, to your flesh you give.)” (665)
 Bibliography
- Castillo, David. “Exemplarity gone awry in baroque fantasy: the case of
Cervantes”. Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos , Otoño 2008,
Vol. 33, No. 1, LA CONSTITUCIÓN DEL BARROCO HISPÁNICO
PROBLEMAS Y ACERCAMIENTOS. pp. 105-120

- Cervantes, Miguel. Novelas Ejemplares. Real Academia Española.

Jorge García Edition. Madrid, España.
Antonio de Sancha. Grabado, 1783.