Don Quixote In The Archives

Dale Shuger presents, from the records of the Spanish Inquisition, a social corpus of early modern madness that differs radically from the 'literary' madness hitherto studied by Cervantes critics.

A new reading of madness in Don Quixote based on archival accounts of insanityFrom the records of the Spanish Inquisition, Dale Shuger presents a social corpus of early modern madness that differs radically from the 'literary' madness previously studied. Drawing on over 100 accounts of insanity defences, many of which contain statements from a wide social spectrum - housekeepers, nieces, doctors, and barbers - as well as the testimonies of the alleged madmen and women themselves, Shuger argues that Cervantes' exploration of madness as experience is intimately linked to the questions about ethics, reason, will and selfhood that unreason presented for early modern Spaniards. In adapting, challenging and transforming these discourses, Don Quixote investigates spaces of interiority, confronts the limitations of knowledge - of the self and the world - and reflects on the social strategies for diagnosing and dealing with those we cannot understand. Shuger discovers an intimate connection between Cervantes's integration of this discourse of madness and his part in forging the new genre of the European novel.

Facing the trauma of an abortion, a young woman mentally escapes by setting out on a series of adventures as Don Quixote.

Within the context of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and his influence on Jorge Luis Borges, Manuel Puig and Gabriel Marquez, Paul Kong brings a variety of theoretical perspectives to bear as he analyzes the concepts of the archive and the manuscript. Setting the stage with an exploration of the intricate and intriguing relationship between the archive and the manuscript, Kong questions the apparently natural association between the two. In the light of Kong's historically contextualized and patient exegesis, the ideological nature of the archive, evident in its charge to serve as a totalizing habitat, stands in contrast with the manuscript that resists attempts to contain it. The playful responses of Borges, Puig and Marquez as they mine the "archive" of Cervantes' works support the anti-colonial dimension of Latin American literature and further problematize the relationship between archive and manuscript. The book concludes with a discussion of the future of archival discourse, especially in the setting of the virtual reality of the Internet and of globalization. Carefully grounded by Kong's close readings and supported by a wealth of astute references and allusions to writers as diverse as Virgil, Wordsworth, and Dickens, The Raiders and Writers of Cervantes' Archive is sure to provoke and intrigue Latin American scholars, narrative theorists, archivists, and those interested in issues related to cultural domination, ideology, and cyberspace.

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Law and History in Cervantes’ Don Quixote is a deep consideration of the intellectual environment that gave rise to Cervantes’ seminal work. Susan Byrne demonstrates how Cervantes synthesized the debates surrounding the two most authoritative discourses of his era – those of law and history – into a new aesthetic product, the modern novel. Byrne uncovers the empirical underpinnings of Don Quixote through a close philological study of Cervantes’ sly questioning of and commentary on these fields. As she skilfully demonstrates, while sixteenth-century historiographers and jurists across southern Europe sought the philosophical nexus of their fields, Cervantes created one through the adventures of a protagonist whose history is all about justice. As such, Law and History in Cervantes’ Don Quixote illustrates how Cervantes’ art highlighted the inconsistencies of juridical-historical texts and practice, as well as anticipated the ultimate resolution of their paradoxes.