Cervantes and Courtly Love: The Grisóstomo-Marcela Episode of Don Quixote

Abstract

In his celebrated quasi-bucolic episode of the first part of Don Quixote, Cervantes mocks and parodies the old school of the Frauendienst, even as he levels his irony against a chivalric ideal that had come under increasing scorn since at least the end of the fifteenth century. Various elements are blended to achieve his story. Grisóstomo's suicide turns out to be incontrovertible as well as illustrative of the essentially Petrarchan though parodical character of the famous poem “La cancion desesperada,” while the generally bucolic although mixed and burlesque quality of the entire episode issues straight from a central theme of the Renaissance pastoral, the whole matter of man's freedom. The very term “canción desesperada,” and probably other features of the long poem in Ch. xiv, derive directly from a sixteenth-century bucolic poet and fervent Petrarchist, Gutierre de Cetina.