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University of Hartford
Dominick Finello83 has written a descriptive book on the pastoral in which he selects well-known authors and themes of pastoral in order to show the pastoral dimensions of Cervantes's work. His book is divided into four parts: I. Cervantes and the Pastoral Tradition; II. Pastoral and the Creative Act in Don Quijote; III. Pastoral Dialogue, Diversion, Drama, and the Works of Cervantes; and IV. Cervantes Looks at the Pastoral. Part III is interesting in its description of the kind of cultural milieux and aristocratic juegos de salón that favored the bucolic ideal in Cervantes's time. Finello focuses throughout the book on conventional patterns which he considers pastoral and pertinent to his study of Cervantes's work. The book's premise is that Cervantes has rung major changes on the themes which Finello describes as integral to the pastoral tradition.
The book fails to be convincing, however, both in its premise and
in its argument. It lacks precision in its categories of analysis and uses as a
hermeneutic grid a red herring of sixteenth and seventeenth-century literary
theory (see below) while virtually ignoring its polemical context. Finello's
study blurs the boundaries between
pastoral with its shepherds, goatherds
and rustic landscapes, and
pastoril as a literary /courtly genre.
It is not to Virgil's
Eclogues that Finello turns for his
antecedents of the pastoral genre. Instead, «the classical
configuration of bucolic verse and narrative are Virgil's didactic poems, the
Georgics...»
(17).
As a result of this confusion, the idealized Dulcinea and the peasant Sancho
become indistinguishable: «Sancho and Dulcinea of course can be
counted among the novel's most significant
rustic personages»
(83;
emphasis mine). What Finello calls «Arcadian figures» become
a mixed bag: «Grisóstomo, Marcela, Cardenio, Basilio, the
Gentleman in the Green Suit»
(102). The mad Cardenio
becomes the «shepherd-like» Cardenio. Don Quijote's chivalric
imitation of Ariosto in the Sierra Morena becomes «a uniquely pastoral
segment in the
Quijote replete with a variety of bucolic
motifs»
(114). Pastoral itself, in Cervantes's hands,
seen as regional and rustic: «Cervantes's shepherd is a more
traditional character whose folk mores and idiom move him... to a peasant style
of speech replete with its naturalness and even its linguistic errors»
(83).
Although none of this is discussed in Finello's book, it is true
that Castelvetro had allowed some pastoral characters to speak like rustics in
his theoretical
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Poetics of 1570. So would Michael Drayton in
the preface to his collection of
Pastorals (1619), for the «subject
of pastorals, as the language of it ought to be poor...»
In practice,
however, this was far from acceptable. We recall Sir Philip Sidney's reproach
of Spenser in
An Apology for Poetry for the use of rough
meter and rustic dialect in the
Shepheardes Calendar because
«neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sanazzaro in
Italian did affect it»
. Dr. Johnson echoes Sidney's reproach.
Spenser's pastoral fails precisely because it has not respected the boundaries
between
pastoral and
pastoril, «for its joining
elegance of thought with coarseness of diction»
. Even when a critic
like Norbert Elias, who has much to offer in this regard, is cited, Finello
misses one of Elias's most important arguments. That is, that the pastoral
(Honoré d' Urfé's
L'Astreé in this case)
produces the very realities the seventeenth
century courtly society wanted the classes beneath them to take for granted as
«reality». Klaus Theweleit pursues Elias's thesis in his brilliant
work on
Male Fantasies where pastoral is seen for
what it has always been, a leisurely game that constructs social realities,
readers, and mores in a literary / courtly milieu.
Since there is a basic conflation and confusion in the book as to
what constitutes pastoral, the latter becomes all-encompassing. Themes,
narrative strategies, and
topoi which can be predicated of other genres
are described as integral: masquerades, disguises, friendship, leisurely
conversations, interrelated stories, mimetic plays, Renaissance academic
colloquia all become essential to the «imaginative pastoral».
Pastoral, for Finello, ultimately becomes «a cultural attitude»,
«an expression of a way of living that accommodates... topics»
which are those Finello has constructed for it. The vagueness of these
contrived categories should be apparent from the following examples,
inter alia: «Within the
Quijote's profound awareness of Spain's
geography, pastoral culture lurks and then becomes part of the principal
action»
(70). Because in Pt. I, 43-44 Don Luis's and
Doña Clara's «story possesses the substance of an idyll, Luis
is pursued against his will, and pastoral freedom looms in his words»
(112). In the Sierra Morena, Don Quijote is said «to
perform pastoral exercises»
(25), Sancho's declaration
that he'd rather be a farmer than a governor is an «escape», which
«brings another pastoral theme (the
beatus ille) into the
novel»
(96), and, as Sancho leaves the Insula Barataria
and «temporarily sheds the squires garments, his status rises and his
pastoral origins fulfill their literary potential»
(96).
The supposed contrast between previous literary Arcadias and
Cervantes's work is also contrived to accommodate Finello's premise that
Cervantes has rung major changes on the pastoral convention. In his analysis of
Theocritus, Virgil and Longus, Finello finds the classical characters to be
innocent in contrast to the Renaissance pastoral for «[u]nlike his
ancient counterpart, the Renaissance shepherd is not... innocent»
(23). They are also divorced from the outside world, whereas in
Cervantes's world, «characters must ultimately face the world at hand:
they must interact with people along the way. Such is not the rule for those
who inhabit previous literary Arcadias..., where all beings live in
fraternity»
(78). Characters in previous literary
Arcadias, however, do face the world at hand and in ways harsher than anything
depicted in Cervantes's
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Galatea or
Don Quijote. Theorists of Arcadia have
consistently pointed out that the idyllic worlds of Theocritus and Virgil are
stylized, but not divorced from the
vicissitudes of everyday life. Michael Squires in
The Pastoral Novel (24) and Erwin Panofsky in
Meaning in the Visual Arts (300), to name but
two critics, show how Theocritus's
Idylls portray real human personalities, in
an actual locality, Sicily, and enduring suffering in a real world. Virgil goes
further in the
Eclogues than Theocritus. He pinpoints the
illusive distance between the Arcadian milieu and the political realities of
the Rome which shapes them. In the very first eclogue the poignant address of
the herdsman Meliboeus to Tityrus (fortunate senex) says
it all. Unlike the politically-savvy Tityrus who can keep his own lands because
of his friendship with the powerful in Rome, Meliboeus has to leave Arcadia.
The premonition implicit in Meliboeus's bitter-sweet farewell, «these
lands are
still your own»
(I, 46;
emphasis mine), becomes explicit in
Eclogue IX when another once-happy old man
laments the loss of his Arcadian lands (1-5). Even the Messianic fourth
Eclogue reminds the reader that Arcadia is
not a care-free pleasance. Iniquity always lurks in Arcadian bowers:
«pauca tamen suberunt priscae vestigia
fraudis» / «nevertheless some taint of old iniquity
shall stay»
(35).
Perhaps it is because a fundamental conflation and confusion
exists between
pastoral and
pastoril in the book that Finello's
analysis either tends to take on a tone of
apologia whereby words like
«certain»
(142), «prove»
(15, 74, 104, 164), «demonstrate»
(17,
240), «confirm»
(55), «bear
evidence»
(107, 129) belabor the study, or an
old-fashioned tone that promises satisfaction. Finello will «sort out
some of the questions about Cervantes's intention»
(191). He explains doubtful passages by attributing them to
«the author's anxiety»
(49 and 50). He posits
rhetorical dilemmas which will «certainly be
satisfied by a careful reading of the pastoral episodes of the
Quijote»
(46; emphasis
mine). Ultimately, the reader is not convinced because the book's basic
premise has not been examined critically enough by its author.