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Arriba Jehenson's Response125

Yvonne Jehenson



University of Hartford

Professor Finello's objection to my review appears to be three-fold. First, that I am simplistic in stating that he has made Sancho and Dulcinea indistinguishable. On page 83 of his book we read: «Sancho and Dulcinea [not Aldonza, be it noted] of course can be counted among the novel's most significant rustic personages». Second, that I am unfair in failing to note that Klaus Theweleit's view of pastoral as a «game» is the basis of Part III of Finello's book. My point is that Theweleit, following Norbert Elias (to whom Finello refers), foregrounds pastoral's «game» not as playful but as an ideological apparatus which, to quote my review, «produces the very realities the 17th-century courtly society wanted the classes beneath them to take for granted as 'reality'». Is it likely that Cervantes was unaware of this power «play» as he set up his rural charades, and finally led Don Quijote to the centers of ducal and bourgeois power and illusion making? The question has to be posed. Lastly, Professor Finello finds it unfair that when he lists Grisóstomo, Marcela, Cardenio, Basilio, and the Gentleman in Green as «Arcadian figures» (p. 102), I call them «a mixed bag». His response that Cardenio is «surely associated with the pastoral» is symptomatic of the syncretic vagueness and the analytical weakness to which my review drew attention.