Don Quixote in the archives
Subtitle: madness and lierature in early modern Spain
By: Dale Shuger
Series: Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture; Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 2012
Language: eng
Number of pages: 219
ISBN-13: 9780748644636
Copyright date: 2012
Subjects: Don Quixote; Spanish literature; Mental illness in literature; Characters; History and criticism
Description: From the records of the Spanish Inquisition, Dale Shuger presents a social corpus of early modern madness that differs radically from the 'literary' madness previously studied. Drawing on over 100 accounts of insanity defences, many of which contain statements from a wide social spectrum - housekeepers, nieces, doctors, and barbers - as well as the testimonies of the alleged madmen and women themselves, Shuger argues that Cervantes' exploration of madness as experience is intimately linked to the questions about ethics, reason, will and selfhood that unreason presented for early modern Spaniards. In adapting, challenging and transforming these discourses, Don Quixote investigates spaces of interiority, confronts the limitations of knowledge - of the self and the world - and reflects on the social strategies for diagnosing and dealing with those we cannot understand. Shuger discovers an intimate connection between Cervantes's integration of this discourse of madness and his part in forging the new genre of the European novel. Challenges the Foucauldian narrative of repression and the Bakhtinian narrative of liberation ; Uses a historicist approach to show how Don Quixote engages, transforms and transcends the historical ; Proposes a new reading of the development of the novel that comes from the unreasonable Baroque subject as opposed to the rational Enlightenment subject. -- Publisher's website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 204-214) and index.