41
Note 7, above.
42
In historical linguistics, the tendency of religious language to retard similar secular phenomena is well documented.
43
This article was prepared, in part, at an NEH summer institute on the Don Quijote in Tempe, Arizona in 1989.1 would like to thank Drs. Edward Friedman and James Parr for their suggestions, and Drs. Ruth El Saffar, Diana Armas Wilson, and Adrienne Munich for their careful reading of, and comments on, the preliminary version.
44
Critics have repeatedly pointed out ambiguities in the episode. For some the ambiguity lies in the varied voices and versions of pastoral that, are contained within, and immediately follow, Chapters 11-14 (Allen 52). Others attribute it to «la mezcla o el cruce, a veces disonante, de arquetipos de carácter opuesto... de arquetipos contradictorios» (Martínez-Bonati 46). For Joaquín Casalduero, the ambiguity lies in Cervantes' subversion of the Marcela-Grisóstomo story by juxtaposing his bucolic text with its social context: «En la propia historia se presenta la realidad social a pesar de la bucólica; su función, no obstante, consiste en hacer resaltar la fuerza del sexo...» (284).
45
El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, I, 3rd. ed. Luis Andrés Murillo (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1985), p. 155. All references to the Quijote will be from this edition and will be cited in parenthesis in the text by chapter only.
46
In this context Simone de Beauvoir's remark is very interesting: «One of the benefits that oppression confers upon the oppressors is that the most humble among them is made to feel superior, thus, a 'poor white' in the South can console himself with the thought that he is not a 'dirty nigger' and the more prosperous whites cleverly exploit this pride. Similarly the most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women» (51).
47
This is hinted at in his canzone: «ponedme un hierro en estas manos! Dame, desdén, una torcida soga» (I, 14). See also Iventosch 64-76.
48
Speaking of woman as object of exchange in Lévi-Strauss' system, Christine Brooke-Rose describes the degeneration of women from «essential values» to value objects: «in other words, tokens, signs. And since signs do 'speak,' if only through the symptom-signifier, the system was doomed from the start, or rather, had to depend for aeons on women's silence, on the repression of their signified into the unconscious» (310).
49
The issue of Don Quixote's sexuality has received substantial critical attention, and from a wide variety of perspectives. In general, these treatments tend to regard our hero's comic asexuality with far more seriousness than Cervantes must have intended. Cesáreo Bandera, for example, sees Don Quixote as a victim of what he terms «metaphysical desire» (Mimesis conflictiva 72); Ruth El Saffar posits that Don Quixote's preoccupation with books is a symptom of his fear of the body (Beyond Fiction 54); Félix Martínez-Bonati argues that the knight's impotence and fear of sex lead him to create the defense mechanism of Dulcinea, the unattainable ideal that gives him an excuse to remain virginal («El Quijote: juego y significación» 330); Daniel Eisenberg extrapolates from the novel a rejection of sexuality on the part of Cervantes (A Study of Don Quixote 125, in note); Carroll B. Johnson offers some compelling arguments for Don Quixote's impotence and fear of castration (Madness and Lust 158 & 167) and John G. Weiger, in an essay on «Sexual Sublimation» in Don Quixote, concludes that the knight's sexual timidity and general lack of interest in the topic are due to his impotence. This chapter of The Individuated Self (31-63) is perhaps the most insightful study to date on Don Quixote's sexuality, especially in its fine analysis of the sexual implications of the Cueva de Montesinos episode (49-63). Arthur Efron, in his chapter «The Benumbed Knight», studies the protagonist's denial of the body as a function of his masochism (Don Quixote and the Dulcineated World 22-64). Finally, Benito Brancaforte uses a psychoanalytical approach that yields many incisive observations on Don Quixote's impotence in «El diálogo de Cervantes con la locura» (See especially 336-39).
50
«vuestro fuerte brazo» (I.29, 364); «del valor de su invencible brazo» (I.29, 370); «ese invicto brazo» (I.30, 372); «del valor de vuestro valeroso e invenerable brazo» (I.37, 459-60); «mi incansable brazo» (I.46, 550); «la fuerza invencible dese poderoso brazo» (II.26, 246) and «el valor de su poderoso brazo» (II.54, 446).