Cervantes in Perspective by Domínguez Julia;

Author:Domínguez, Julia;
Language: spa
Format: epub
Publisher: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert
Published: 2018-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

1 Classen and Howes are especially helpful as introductions to this inquiry, while Jütte offers a worthwhile history of the senses. The fundamental resource remains Vinge.

2 Smith offers a brief perspective on the historical understanding of the role of the senses in his Introduction, “Making Sense of History.”

3 On other occasions I have spoken about Don Quixote’s (mis)use of his hands and the relationship between poor tactility, language and narrative. This previous work, along with the current essay, is part of a book in progress on the senses and Early Modern Spanish literature. For an analysis of hand use and its relation to language in Calderón, see Ganelin.

4 In an article currently in preparation I argue that, in I.43, Don Quixote’s being tied into the donkey halter at the hands of Maritornes, Luscinda and the innkeeper’s daughter is directly related to his inability to weave as well as to live the impossible narratives derived from his reading. For an anatomical reading of this chapter, see Fernández. Equally important for laying the groundwork of a hands/narrative intersection is Don Quixote’s attempt in I.2 to fashion a helmet appropriate for a knight-errant; his first attempt at testing its mettle by hitting it with his sword is met with disaster as the construction is broken to pieces, yet Don Quixote refuses to retry the experiment once he has rebuilt the object. Ironically all that he learns from the experiment is to place the same sort of misguided “faith” in its quality as in his desire to resurrect the novelistic world of knights.

5 The bibliography on collecting is lengthy. An excellent and detailed starting point is found in Daston and Park; for an emphasis on science, see Campbell. For other fundamental studies see Castillo; Pomian; Checa; Morán and Checa; and Pearce (especially Part II, “The Poetics of Collecting,” 1995: 159-279). This brief list is intended as a general guide to the topic; Castillo represents one of the few fully developed studies for Early Modern Spain and offers a good bibliography. The reasons that collecting became popular are many, and arise in the early Renaissance, as Daston and Park indicate and as Findlen argues in detail. Barkan, for his part, illuminates the late fifteenth-and sixteenth-century literal uncoverings of classical ruins in Italy, events which traded on the already-growing sense of curiosity of the period. The bibliography on this study is likewise long. Fundamental studies are Avalle-Arce, Joly, Lee, Murillo, and Redondo.

6 All references are to the Cátedra edition prepared by John J. Allen, and are indicated by Part.Chapter.Page.

7 García Santo-Tomás’s book (see Works Cited) is organized around the five senses and the city of Madrid. For a fuller rendering of a poetics of touch than I can provide here, see his chapter 6.

8 Also see Los cinco sentidos y el arte, published by the Museo del Prado for its 1995 exhibit of the same title.

9 Whether objects can actually communicate knowledge or impart their essence through the senses, especially through touch, is both part of a Renaissance belief and an aspect of Locke’s investigations into knowledge and the soul.

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