On the Place of Madness, Deviance, and Eccentricity in Don Quijote

Abstract

To understand the concept of present in Don Quijote de la Mancha, one must examine the discourse, topography and institutions with which it found expression in traditional culture, since it was the impression of ill-being or in-sanity, rather than a finding of dementia or psychosis in clinical terms, that defined the madman for Cervantes and his contemporaries. Consigned to the frontier between the walls of the medieval city and the perils of the world beyond, the madman could neither flee the society that refused him, nor participate as an equal in its activities. His precarious circumstance at the margin is inherent in the duality of his image, making his condition as a pariah one with the scorn to which he is therefore subject. In this way, the study of illuminates the status of all those who could not or did not conform to the expectations of an ethos grounded in a collective concept of human relations. With a similar belief in conformity, the ancient Greeks called the incursion of sin hamartia, taking this term from the science of archery, where it means to miss the mark. Tragedy's heroes are said, therefore, to suffer hamartia, rather than peripeteia alone-a sudden or calamitous change of fortune-, when their errors displace them from the path of happiness to that of disgrace and ill repute. Were it not for this process of dislocation, which Aristotle calls the Discovery of transgression, tragedy could not instill fear and pity in the spectator, and thus oblige him to weigh the consequence of his own thoughts and actions. 1 Fortified by the ideal of unity, a similar system of value is present in the equation of difference with heterodoxy and schism in Christian theology,2 and in the institutions with which medieval society sought to combat dissidence and individualism in general. Although the terms loco and locura do not appear to derive from the Latin locus, meaning place,3 it is nevertheless evident that in medieval Spanish, as in other Western languages, the concept of is associated with physical or moral displacement, as may be seen in the literal and figurative sense of the adjectives excentrico, descaminado, extravagante, desviado, desquiciado, descarriado, aberrante, despistado and desorientado. As a result, Sebastian de Covarrubias affirmed in 1611 that, while the etymology of loco might drive a sane man to madness, its first and foremost meaning surely comes from locus, because al loco solemos lamar vacio y sin seso; y assi aquel lugar parece que queda sin llenarse (770). Similar terminology is used to describe Don Quijote's words and actions as others in the novel perceive them. The goatherd of Part i, chapter Iii responds, for example, to the barber's tale of Don Quijote's exploits with the phrase para mf tengo, o que vuestra merced se burla, o que este gentilhombre debe de tener vacios los aposentos de la cabeza (511), while Sancho exclaims, after Don Quijote's return from the Cave of Montesinos in Part u, chapter xxiii: ,Es posible que tal hay en el mundo, y que tengan en 61 tanta fuerza los encanta,dores y encantamentos, que hayan trocado el buen juicio de mi senor en una tan disparatada locura? iOh senor, senor, por quien Dios es que vuestra merced mire por si, y vuelva por su honra, y no de credito a esas vaciedades que le tienen menguado y descabalado el sentido! (712).4 Building upon the same notions of disorder and degradation, the term madness was used in the Middle Ages and Renaissance to describe practices that defy convention and were seen, therefore, to imperil the coherence of Christian society. The Siete Partidas state, for example, that ereges son vna manera de gente loca que se trabaian de escatimar las palabras de nuestro senor ihesu cristo & les dan otro entendimiento contra aquel que los santos padres les dan & que la yglesia de roma cree & manda guardar (vii, 26, preface; fol. 402r). This equation of with individualism and heterodoxy recurs in a variety of literary texts, from Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Senora in the thirteenth century to the poems of Hernando del Castillo's Cancionero General in 1511. …