Cervantes y el humanismo. El somnium humanista en la Cueva de Montesinos (El coloquio de los perros y Quijote, II, 22–23)

Abstract

Abstract Miguel de Cervantes lived a time of transition between the 15th century humanism and new literary genres that we identify with the aesthetic and ideological leadership of Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). Focusing especially on El coloquio de los perros and on chapters II, 22 and II, 23 of Don Quixote, the essay examines Cervantes’ use of the genre of somnium for various purposes. Especially in chapter II, 23 of Don Quixote, Cervantes criticizes the new literary genre boomed at the end of the 16th century in the light of his own aesthetic convictions from the reflection on the Poetics of Aristotle. By doing so, Cervantes expresses aesthetic positions of great originality, and of a singular, almost individual independence from dominant poetic and rhetoric currents at the beginning of the 17th century.