The Crucible Concept: Thematic and Narrative Patterns in Cervantes's "Novelas ejemplares"

Abstract

The Crucible Concept: Thematic and Narrative Patterns in Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares. By E. T. Aylward. Madison: Farleigh Dickinson UP, 1999. 327 pages. E. T. Aylward is one of the more innovative and fearless Cervantes scholars active today. He has few peers when it comes to advancing original-and provocative-interpretations. One expects him to do that, and in the present study he does not disappoint. Challenges to idles revues and idees fixes are salutary, of course. Criticism would stagnate without them. Aylward had previously advanced the view that Rinconete y Cortadillo and El celoso extremeno were of suspicious origin. Here he adds El licenciado Vidriera (LV) to that short list, linking all three to the Porras manuscript. Of all the points made here, the inclusion of LV among the texts of doubtful authenticity is probably the one that will provoke most discussion. The evidence adduced in support of this claim centers around commonalities he perceives among the three texts, specifically their experimental nature, which, in turn, has to do with their bipartite generic structure, the absence of flashbacks in all three, and their ironic tone. The author's procedure throughout is to focus on both form and content, in an effort to arrive ultimately at the work's sense or meaning. The study might thus be as an updated, post-structuralist sentido y forma. Indeed, the debt to Casalduero is acknowledged and is frequently evident. I sense an uneasy alliance between form and content, however-much more so than in Casalduero-and it is on that basis that I would classify the study as post-structuralist, or perhaps postmodern. The dis-ease of postmodernism is most evident in the contrast between the title itself, which relates to thematic content, and the stated intention of seeking the unity of the collection, its artistic wholeness, through its narrative structure (31). At the same time, the approach is reminiscent of the British School's thematic-structural approach to Comedia criticism. The concept of the crucible was suggested by Ruth El Saffar's notion of alchemical purgation, as she applied it to the Persiles. As Aylward says, viewed from this angle, Cervantes's Novelas can be seen to represent life as a sentimental crucible in which the protagonists' inflated egos undergo a process of psychological dissolution and coagulation in a series of harrowing and sometimes near-miraculous occurrences ... I have designated this `crucible concept' as the overriding thematic element that manages to hold together an otherwise curious and incongruous collection (11). Another kind of unity, or at least consistency, is seen in the fact that all of the novelas ejemplares can be considered literary experiments (195). In terms of structure, the stories are grouped according to narrative procedure and organization, with chapter one devoted to La Gitanilla and La ilustre fregona; chapter two to the symmetrical design of El amante liberal, La fuerza de la sangre, and La espanola inglesa; chapter three to the Porn-as manuscript, from which Rinconete y Cortadillo, El celoso extremeno, and El licenciado Vidriera are said to derive; chapter four to Los dos doncellas and La senora Cornelia; and chapter five to El casamiento enganoso and El coloquio de los perros. …