Cervantes' "Rinconete y Cortadillo" and the Imposition of Form: Part of the Story

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In Don Quijote and the Novelas ejemplares, Cervantes accentuates the distinction between art and nature, causing the reader to make himself aware of literary conventions. So-called reality becomes a backdrop and a basis for comparison. In the Quijote, prologues and chapter divisions, the competence of the narrator (and behind him the author), fictional time (real and psychological), ordering of events, and other aspects of the art of writing a novel-seen as playing off of each other complexly and infinitely-unite the process of artistic creation with the creation itself. The Novelas ejemplares may be seen as variations on the theme of tension between internal and external points of reference. Rinconete y Cortadillo, for example, explores a historical milieu and the intratextual realm of the picaresque novel, but its essence lies in neither extreme. Rinconete y Cortadillo is not Cervantes' attempt to create picaresque fiction, but rather a work which presents and then nullifies picaresque and idealistic conventions in order to define a new form of fiction. The critic may impose a form on the work, but there is always a part of the structure which resists form, which seems to defy classification. The literary text serves a multiperspectivist cause, and the diversity of viewpoints offers an equilibrium of sorts. Ultimately, however, the critical response must reflect not only the rules of order which the author imposes upon himself, but the inventive violation of these rules. Literature is an imaginative representation of man, the universe, and man's relationship with man and the universe. The creator of literature may represent the universe as unified or chaotic, and formal and linguistic elements of the literary work may correspond to this unity or chaos. Literature is a paradoxical art by virtue of an implicit indirectness, detachment and dissimilarity from that which it describes. Literature provides a model for viewing existence, a model which is at least one step removed from reality and yet which endeavors to make a statement about reality through conventions particular to verbal communication. Whether one describes a literary work in terms of an open or closed structure, whether his view is that of literature as containing the key to existence, as part of a process, as self-perpetuating, or as selfdestructive, the individual work forms some type of analogue which is both imitative and original. The analogue may be an