Cervantes and the Early Modern Mind 2021013616, 9780415785471, 9781032058542, 9781315228211

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Cervantes and the Early Modern Mind

This book explores the work of Cervantes in relation to the ideas about the mind that circulated in early modern Europe and were propelled by thinkers such as Juan Luis Vives, Juan Huarte de San Juan, Oliva Sabuco, Andrés Laguna, Andrés Velásquez, Marsilio Ficino, and Gómez Pereira. The editors bring together humanists and scientists: literary scholars and doctors whose interdisciplinary research integrates diverse types of sources (philosophical and medical treatises, natural histories, rhetoric manuals, pharmacopoeias, etc.) alongside Cervantes’s works, to examine themes and areas including emotion, human development, animal vs. human consciousness, pathologies of the mind, and mind-altering substances. Their chapters trace the cognitive themes and points of inquiry that Cervantes shares with other early modern thinkers, showing how he both echoes and contributes to early modern views of the mind. Isabel Jaén is Professor of Spanish at Portland State University and holds PhDs from Purdue University and the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. She is co-editor of Cognitive Literary Studies (University of Texas Press, 2012), Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature (Oxford University Press, 2016), and Self, Other, and Context in Early Modern Spain (Juan de la Cuesta, 2017). Julien Jacques Simon is Associate Professor of Spanish at Indiana University East. He is co-editor of Cognitive Literary Studies (University of Texas Press, 2012), Cognitive Cervantes (special cluster of essays of the Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America, Spring 2012), Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature (Oxford University Press, 2016), and Self, Other, and Context in Early Modern Spain (Juan de la Cuesta, 2017).

Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture

Guido Cavalcanti Poet of the Rational Animal Gregory B. Stone Household Servants in Early Modern Domestic Tragedy Iman Sheeha The Liminality of Fairies Readings in Late Medieval English and Scottish Romance Piotr Spyra The Hawthornden Manuscript of William Fowler and the Jacobean Court 1603–1612 Allison L. Steenson Women (Re)Writing Milton Edited by Mandy Green and Sharihan Al-Akhras Literature and Intellectual Disability in Early Modern England Folly, Law and Medicine, 1500–1640 Alice Equestri Cervantes and the Early Modern Mind Edited by Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon Literature and Historiography in the Spanish Golden Age The Poetics of History Sofie Kluge

To learn more about this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Renaissance-Literature-and-Culture/book-series/ SE0537

Cervantes and the Early Modern Mind

Edited by Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon

First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Taylor & Francis The right of Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jaén, Isabel, 1970– editor. | Simon, Julien Jacques, 1974– editor. Title: Cervantes and the early modern mind / edited by Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge studies in Renaissance literature and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Subjects: LCSH: Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547–1616— Criticism and interpretation. | Psychology and literature. | Cognition in literature. | Philosophy of mind in literature. | Cognition and culture—Spain—History—16th century. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. | Essays. Classification: LCC PQ6358.P7 C47 2021 | DDC 863/.3—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021013616 ISBN: 9780415785471 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032058542 (pbk) ISBN: 9781315228211 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211 Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Foreword: Historicizing Cognitive Approaches to Cervantes

vii ix xiii

H OWA R D M A N C I N G

Introduction: A Cognitive-Historicist Approach to Cervantes’s Work

1

I S A B E L J A É N A N D J U L I E N J AC Q U E S S I M O N

SECTION I

Views of the Mind in Early Modern Spain 1

Spanish Brain Science and Philosophy of Mind in the Time of Cervantes: Three Seminal Thinkers

7 9

A N T O N I O M A RT Í N A R AG U Z

SECTION II

Feeling, Thinking, and Remembering in Humans and Brutes 25 2

Emotion and Human Development in Cervantes’s Don Quijote: The Case of Sancho Panza

27

ISA BEL JA ÉN

3

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition: El viejo zeloso and Early Modern Thought

50

ELENA CARR ER A

4

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals in the Early Modern Spanish and Spanish American World S T E V E N WAG S C H A L

78

vi

Contents

5

Wit, Imagination, and the Goat: The Untrodden Paths of Literary Creation in Cervantes’s Don Quijote and Huarte’s Examen de ingenios

98

C H R I S T I N E O RO B I T G

6

Cervantes and the Mother of the Muses: Views of Memory in Early Modern Spain

118

J U L I A DOM Í NGU E Z

SECTION III

Altered Minds: Causes, Effects, and Remedies 7

Melancholic Consciousness: Cervantes’s Contribution to Early Modern Views of Melancholy and the Emergence of the Fictional Mind

139

141

I S A B E L J A É N A N D J U L I E N J AC Q U E S S I M O N

8

Mind-Altering Agents in Cervantes’s Work: Regarding His Sources on Pharmacology

169

F R A NC ISCO LÓPE Z -M U ÑOZ A N D CEC I L IO Á L A MO

9

Don Quijote and Cervantes’s Knowledge of Neurological Disorders

197

J O S É - A L B E RT O PA L M A , F E R M Í N PA L M A , A N D J U L I E N J AC Q U E S S I M O N

Index

217

Acknowledgments

Working on this book has been a very rewarding experience. The expertise, passion, and generosity that we found in our writers, readers, and publishers not only made the process an exciting and pleasant journey but also allowed us to wander untrodden paths with rigor and creativity, as we explored Cervantes’s connection to the cognitive theories of his time. The list of scholars to whom we are indebted is long. In addition to our contributors, the bright minds that set this quest in motion, we would like to thank the many experts who agreed to read parts of the manuscript and provided their insightful comments and suggestions. It is thanks to their feedback that the project could evolve at its different stages, becoming a unified entity within its diversity of voices and approaches: Jordi Aladro, Abel A. Alves, Marsha Collins, Edward H. Friedman, Charles Ganelin, E. Michael Gerli, F. Elizabeth Hart, Andrew Hiscock, Adrienne L. Martín, Carolyn Nadeau, Suparna Roychoudhury, Stephanie Shirilan, Dale Shuger, Barbara Simerka, John Slater, and Teresa Soufas. We also thank C. D. Reyman and Beth Slattery for helping us with the translations and style of some of the essays. Our deepest gratitude to the exceptional editorial team at Routledge: our kind and enthusiastic editors, Jennifer Abbott and Michelle Salyga, for their faith and commitment to this project. Thank you also to Elizabeth Levin, Erin Little, and Andrew Weckenmann, and, especially and warmly, to Mitchell Manners for his patience and guidance throughout the process. We are grateful to our institutions, Indiana University East and Portland State University, for supporting us with sabbatical leaves to advance our work. Thank you to our friends and loved ones in the United States and abroad for listening and reacting to our many gestating ideas in connection with this book. Finally, and very importantly, we thank our families in France and Spain for their understanding as we stole precious time from them to be in the company of Cervantes.

Notes on Contributors

Cecilio Álamo is Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain. He has (co-)authored and (co-)edited two dozen books, over one hundred book chapters, and more than one hundred indexed works on neuropsychopharmacology, neurobiology, and the history of pharmacology. He co-directed with Francisco López-Muñoz the project Historia de la psicofarmacología [History of Psychopharmacology] (Editorial Médica Panamericana, 2007, three volumes). His publications on Cervantes and pharmacology have appeared in journals such as Anales Cervantinos, Farmacología y Toxicología, Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Pharmacy and History, and Revista de Neurología, among others. Elena Carrera is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies and co-director of the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary University of London. Her research foci include, among other topics and areas, the philosophy of Juan Luis Vives, Cervantes, the history of madness, and the history of emotions. Her research has appeared in many academic books and journals (such as eHumanista, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, and Hispania). She is also the author of Teresa of Avila’s Autobiography (Legenda, 2005) and the editor of Madness and Melancholy in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Spain (special issue of Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2010) and of Emotions and Health, 1250–1700 (Brill, 2013). Julia Domínguez  is Associate Professor of Spanish at Iowa State University. She has published on Cervantes, the picaresque, and film in the Bulletin of Comediantes, Hispania, Cervantes, and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, among others. She is the editor of a collection of essays titled Cervantes in Perspective (Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2013) and the co-editor of Hispanic Studies in Honor of Robert L. Fiore (Juan de la Cuesta, 2009). Her latest book, Quixotic Memories: Cervantes and Memory in Early Modern Spain (forthcoming with University of Toronto Press, 2022), explores the plurality and complexity of memory’s cultural scope through the lens of Cervantes.

x  Notes on Contributors Isabel Jaén is Professor of Spanish at Portland State University. She holds PhDs from Purdue University and the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. She is co-founder and co-director (2005–2015) of the Literary Theory, Cognition, and the Brain working group at the Whitney Humanities Center in Yale University and is former executive member of the Cognitive Approaches to Literature Division of the MLA (chair in 2011) and co-president of LALISA (Latin American, Latina/o, and Iberian Studies Association). She has co-edited Cognitive Literary Studies (University of Texas Press, 2012), Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature (Oxford University Press, 2016), and Self, Other, and Context in Early Modern Spain (Juan de la Cuesta, 2017). Francisco López-Muñoz holds PhDs in Medicine (Complutense University of Madrid, 1993) and in Spanish Language and Literature (University of Alcalá, 2015) and a degree in Holocaust Studies from the International School for Holocaust Studies of Yad Vashem (Jerusalem, Israel). He is Professor of Pharmacology, Vice Chancellor of Research and Science, and Chairman of the Research Ethics Committee at Camilo José Cela University (Madrid). He is editor/author of 28 books and over two hundred journal articles and book chapters on psychopharmacology and the history of medicine, and is associate editor of the scientific journal Frontiers in Neuropharmacology. He is also an Academician of the Royal European Academy of Doctors and of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Salzburg. Howard Mancing  is Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Purdue University. He is the author of The Chivalric World of Don Quijote (1982), The Cervantes Encyclopedia (2004; two volumes), and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote: A Reference Guide (2006). He co- edited Text, Theory, and Performance: Golden Age Comedia Studies (1994), Theory of Mind and Literature (2011), Don Quixote: The Re- accentuation of the World’s Greatest Literary Hero (2017), Bakhtin’s Heritage in Literature, Arts, and Psychology (2018), Viktor Shklovsky’s Heritage in Literature, Arts, and Philosophy (2019), and Don Quixote Around the Globe (2020). In addition, he has published over seventy articles and essays on Spanish and comparative literature, literary theory, and cognitive approaches to the study of literature. Antonio Martín Araguz  holds PhDs in Medicine and Surgery and in History of Art as well as a Master of Science in Astronomy and Astrophysics. He is a practicing neurosurgeon and a neurologist and teaches neuroscience and psychology in the Universities of Alcalá, Autónoma, and Comillas (Madrid, Spain). He is also Director of the Master in Neurology at TECHtitute. He has edited Arte y Neurología [Art and Neurology] (2005), Neuroestética [Neuroaesthetics]

Notes on Contributors  xi (2010), and, for National Geographic, El cerebro creativo [The Creative Brain] (2019), and authored more than three hundred articles and book chapters on neurology, history of medicine, and the arts. Christine Orobitg  is Professor of Spanish Literature and History at Aix-Marseille Université (France). She specializes in Spanish culture and medicine (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries), and her research interests include natural and moral philosophy, astrology, botany, zoology, and spiritual texts, among others. She is the author of three books, Garcilaso et la mélancolie (1997), L’humeur noire: Mélancolie, écriture et pensée en Espagne au XVIe et au XVIIe siècle (1997), and Le sang en Espagne (XVe-XVIIIe siècles): Trésor de vie, vecteur de l’être (2018), and about seventy-five articles on literature, history, history of mentalities, history of medicine in early modern Spain, and Cervantes. Fermín Palma is a medical doctor, historian of medicine, surgeon, and Fellow of the Real Academia de Medicina [Royal Academy of Medicine] of Granada, Spain. He is the recipient of various prizes from Spanish academies of medicine and is the author of more than fifteen books on medicine and the history of Spanish medicine as well as numerous articles in scientific journals, including a study on Cervantes and neurology, co-written with Jose-Alberto Palma. He has also been a frequent collaborator with the renown medical historian, Luis Sánchez Granjel. José-Alberto Palma is Associate Professor of Neurology at the New York University School of Medicine and Assistant Director of NYU Langone Health’s Division of Autonomic Disorders and of the Dysautonomia Research Laboratory. He is the author of two books and over a hundred scientific journal articles and book chapters on medicine, including a study on Cervantes and neurology, co-written with Fermín Palma. His research and clinical activities focus on adult and pediatric patients with autonomic neurodegenerative and genetic disorders. He received in 2012 a prize from Spain’s Real Academia Nacional de Medicina [Royal National Academy of Medicine]. Julien Jacques Simon is Associate Professor of Spanish at Indiana University East. He is co-founder of the Literary Theory, Cognition, and the Brain working group at the Whitney Humanities Center in Yale University and former member of the executive committee for the MLA Division on Cognitive Approaches to Literature (chair in 2013). His publications include Cognitive Literary Studies (University of Texas Press, 2012), Cognitive Cervantes (special cluster of essays of Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America, spring 2012), Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature (Oxford University

xii  Notes on Contributors Press, 2016), and Self, Other, and Context in Early Modern Spain (Juan de la Cuesta, 2017). Steven Wagschal is Professor of Spanish at Indiana University Bloomington, where he is Affiliate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Renaissance Studies, and Cognitive Science. His research focuses on the analysis of expressions of mental phenomena. His most recent monograph, Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds: A Cognitive Historical Analysis (University of Toronto Press, 2018), works at the intersections of literary-cultural studies, cognitive science, and animal studies. He has also co-edited, with Ryan Giles, the volume Beyond Sight: Engaging the Senses in Iberian Literatures and Cultures, 1200–1750 (University of Toronto Press, 2018) which explores taste, touch, smell, and hearing.

Foreword Historicizing Cognitive Approaches to Cervantes Howard Mancing

Most cognitive approaches to literature have either been theoretical in nature or dealt with modern literature, that is, literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 Jane Austen has been a particular favorite, especially when dealing with mindreading (or Theory of Mind). 2 Shakespeare rivals, if not surpasses, Austen as the second iconic figure of English literature to receive considerable attention from literary scholars working within a cognitive paradigm.3 In the field of Spanish literature, studies have mainly focused on the early modern period,4 with specific reference to Cervantes.5 What all of these approaches have in common is the use of contemporary concepts from cognitive science in order to study early modern writers and their works. The legitimacy of this approach is obvious: the human mind-brain has changed only minimally and almost insignificantly in the past five hundred years, in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of years preceding the sixteenth century. In the early twenty-first century, human beings are the same people we were in the time of Shakespeare and Cervantes. But there is another way to look at the matter. We can ask what early modern writers understood about themselves and each other on the basis of the science, medicine, and philosophy of their time. To what extent did they know—explicitly, inferentially, or implicitly—the latest theories of their contemporaries? To what extent might such knowledge have helped shape their writings? How can we tell? What might it mean to us to try to determine both the nature of early modern scientific and philosophical thought and the relationship these fields might have had with contemporaneous literature?6 And what of Miguel de Cervantes in relation to the cognitive ideas of his time? The chapters in this book, written by both literary scholars and scientists, form a first attempt to answer that question in some detail. It has long been acknowledged by scholars that Cervantes knew very well the medical theories of Juan Huarte de San Juan and that Huarte’s concepts clearly informed some aspects of Cervantes’s works, especially Don Quijote.7 And, as suggested in this book, it is likely that he knew,

xiv Howard Mancing or knew of, the work of other contemporary scientists and philosophers of mind. More importantly, herein it is suggested that there was something more than a one-way adaptation of ideas from medicine and philosophy at work. Some of the chapters in this volume propose that the brilliant examples of human minds at work in the writings of Cervantes also influenced his contemporaries’ understanding of what it is to be a human being—that Cervantes was, in effect, a co-constructor of early modern cognitive studies. Just as cognitive approaches to the study of literature help us understand how human minds create and experience literature and culture, it is becoming increasingly apparent that historicized, contextualized, cognitive approaches to the works of Cervantes and other writers will bring us greater, deeper, more nuanced understanding of the literature and culture of the early modern period.

Notes 1 For an overview of the field of cognitive literary studies or cognitive approaches to literature, see Richardson and Spolsky’s The Work of Fiction, Jaén and Simon’s Cognitive Literary Studies, and Zunshine’s Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies. 2 Theory of Mind or mindreading refers to our capacity to understand how we ourselves and others must be thinking, that is, to infer the beliefs, desires, and intentions of others. It is a crucial notion to understand our engagement with fiction. See, for instance, O’Connell. On Theory of Mind in relation to literature, see the pioneering work of Lisa Zunshine (e.g., “Why Jane Austen Was Different” and, particularly, Why We Read Fiction). See also Leverage, Mancing, Schweickert, and William’s Theory of Mind and Literature. On theory of mind in connection with early modern Spanish literature, see, among others, Jaén; Mancing, “The Mind”; Mancing, “Sancho”; Schmitz; Simon. 3 Seminal studies within cognitive approaches to Shakespeare include Crane’s Shakespeare’s Brain, Spolsky’s Word vs. Image: Cognitive Hunger in Shakespeare’s England, and Cook’s Shakespearean Neuroplay. 4 Pioneering books on cognition and early modern Spanish literature include Simerka’s Knowing Subjects: Cognitive Cultural Theory and Early Modern Spanish Literature and Jaén and Simon’s Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. See also Cruz Petersen; Gretter; Jaén, Nadeau, and Simon; Wagschal. 5 The special cluster of essays of the journal Cervantes titled “Cognitive Cervantes” is the first major attempt by a group of scholars to focus specifically on Cervantes through the lens of the embodied cognitive sciences. 6 Pioneering examples of research exploring questions such as these are Mary Thomas Crane’s studies of British early modern literature and science (Shakespeare’s Brain and Losing Touch with Nature), Alan Richardson’s study of British romanticism (British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind), Paula Leverage’s study of medieval concepts of memory (Reception and Memory), and Donald Beecher’s book on English Renaissance literature (Adapted Minds and Imaginary Worlds). 7 Among the first to highlight the connection between Huarte and Cervantes, see Iriarte; Salillas.

Foreword xv

Works Cited Beecher, Donald. Adapted Brains and Imaginary Worlds: Cognitive Science and the Literature of the Renaissance. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2016. Cognitive Cervantes. Ed. Julien Simon, Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012). Cook, Amy. Shakespearean Neuroplay: Reinvigorating the Study of Dramatic Texts and Performance through Cognitive Science. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. . Crane, Mary Thomas. Losing Touch with Nature: Literature and the New Science in Sixteenth-Century England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2014. Crane, Mary Thomas. Shakespeare’s Brain: Reading with Cognitive Theory. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2010. Cruz Petersen, Elizabeth Marie. Women’s Somatic Training in Early Modern Spanish Theater. New York: Routledge, 2017. . Gretter, Sarah. Disrupting Reality: Cervantes, Jealousy, and Narrative Innovation. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2018. Iriarte, Mauricio de. El Doctor Huarte de San Juan y su Examen de ingenios: Contribución a la historia de la psicología diferencial. Madrid: CSIC, 1948. Jaén, Isabel. “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas of His Time: Mind and Development in Don Quixote.” Cognitive Cervantes. Ed. Julien Simon, Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012): 71–98. . Jaén, Isabel, and Julien Jacques Simon, eds. Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. . Jaén, Isabel, and Julien Jacques Simon, eds. Cognitive Literary Studies: Current Themes and New Directions. Austin: U of Texas P, 2012. Jaén, Isabel, Carolyn A. Nadeau, and Julien Jacques Simon, eds. Self, Other, and Context in Early Modern Spain: Studies in Honor of Howard Mancing. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2017. Leverage, Paula. Reception and Memory: A Cognitive Approach to the Chansons de Geste. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. . Leverage, Paula, Howard Mancing, Richard Schweickert, and Jennifer Marston William, eds. Theory of Mind and Literature. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2011. Mancing, Howard. “The Mind of a Pícaro: Lázaro de Tormes.” Cognition, Literature, and History. Ed. Mark J. Bruhn and Donald R. Wehrs. New York: Routledge, 2014. 174–189. Mancing, Howard. “Sancho Panza’s Theory of Mind.” Theory of Mind and Literature. Ed. Paula Leverage, Howard Mancing, Richard Schweickert, and Jennifer Marston William. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2011. 123–132. O’Connell, Sanjida. Mindreading: An Investigation into How We Learn to Love and Lie. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Richardson, Alan. British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. .

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Richardson, Alan, and Ellen Spolsky, eds. The Work of Fiction: C ognition, Culture, and Complexity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. . Salillas, Rafael. Un gran inspirador de Cervantes, el doctor Juan Huarte y su Examen de ingenios. Madrid: E. Arias, 1905. Schmitz, Ryan. “Theory of Mind in Early Modern Spanish Manuals of Courtly Conduct.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien J. Simon. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. 164–180. . Simerka, Barbara. Knowing Subjects: Cognitive Cultural Theory and Early Modern Spanish Literature. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2013. Simon, Julien Jacques. “Psychologizing Literary Characters in Fernando de Rojas’s Celestina: The Emergence of Mind in Early Modern Spanish Literature.” Self, Other, and Context in Early Modern Spain: Studies in Honor of Howard Mancing. Ed. Isabel Jaén, Carolyn A. Nadeau, and Julien J. Simon. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2017. 43–56. Spolsky, Ellen. Word vs. Image: Cognitive Hunger in Shakespeare’s England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. . Wagschal, Steven. Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds: A Cognitive Historical Analysis. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2018. Zunshine, Lisa, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies. New York: Oxford UP, 2015. . Zunshine, Lisa. “Why Jane Austen Was Different and Why We May Need Cognitive Science to See It.” Style 41.3 (2007): 275–299. Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006.

Introduction A Cognitive-Historicist Approach to Cervantes’s Work Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon

Miguel de Cervantes’s familiarity with the mind science of his time has long been recognized as a source of inspiration to craft his fictional worlds. His masterpiece, Don Quijote, is indeed regarded as one of the most compelling portrayals of human psychology that world literature has produced. Yet, as we hope to demonstrate in these pages, the mind is for Cervantes more than just a source of inspiration; it is the epicenter of a literary investigation into human nature and life, carried out through a careful chiseling of characters in their contexts. With this book, we propose a journey through the cognitive universes created by Cervantes, as well as the ideas that made them possible: the notions and beliefs about the mind that circulated in early modern Europe, propelled by thinkers such as Juan Luis Vives, Juan Huarte de San Juan, Oliva Sabuco, Andrés Laguna, Andrés Velásquez, Marsilio Ficino, and Gómez Pereira, in addition to Cervantes himself. We invite readers to explore, specifically, the relationship between the work of Cervantes and the mind philosophy and medicine of his time, in order to underscore the permeability that existed in early modern culture between literary and scientific discourses. The efforts to reveal Cervantes’s interest in the mind began a long time ago.1 However, during most of the twentieth century, we lacked a systematic framework to examine how Cervantes portrays the psychology of his characters. The situation changed in the 2010s with the incorporation of cognitive literary studies into the field of early modern Spanish literature. 2 This new avenue opened a fruitful path of investigation for those scholars who wished to go beyond humoral theory and faculty psychology. These scholars sought to explore questions such as how early modern subjects engaged in Cervantes’s fictional worlds and how the cross-examination of discourses from different epistemological realms can provide us with a clearer picture of how he contributes to early modern ideas about the mind.3 A pillar of cognitive approaches to literature is, in fact, the awareness that only through a genuinely interdisciplinary endeavor can we examine and understand the artistic and scientific discourses of a given period not as separate realms, as they are often studied, but as integrated DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211

2  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon components of its cultural production. Such a perspective allows us to deepen our knowledge of how psychological notions and paradigms that we discuss today—such as human development, emotion and behavior, nature and nurture, and embodiment, to name a few—were understood and conceptualized at the time, and how writers and scientists jointly weaved together the rich tapestry of early modern cognitive views. An important realization at the root of this book is the fact that there has been insufficient dialogue between humanists and scientists concerning the view that early modern culture had of human psychology. Our intent is to contribute to filling this gap by bringing together humanists and scientists and, more specifically, researchers who have a consistent record of interdisciplinary research on the topic at hand: Cervantes scholars who have explored his work in relation to cognitive theories as well as Spanish medical doctors who have amply investigated early modern medicine and psychology in relation to Cervantes. Such diversity of voices makes this book a truly interdisciplinary collection, showcasing how scholars who put literary and scientific discourses in dialogue can help us deepen our knowledge of Cervantes’s inquiry into the mind. In this regard, our readers will find in this volume chapters that integrate diverse types of sources (philosophical and medical treatises, natural histories, rhetoric manuals, pharmacopoeias, etc.) alongside Cervantes’s works, to examine themes and areas such as emotion, human development, animal vs. human consciousness, pathologies of the mind, and mind-altering substances. In this project, we are adopting a cognitive-historicist or “contemporaneous” approach, that is, one that turns its lens to the views about the mind that coexisted with those of Cervantes.4 This approach allows us to trace the cognitive themes and points of inquiry that Cervantes shares with other early modern thinkers, to compare and examine more closely how he reflects, elaborates, and also enriches early modern thought with his fiction. Furthermore, it helps us to recover and highlight the contribution to the development of mind science of Spanish philosophers and doctors, 5 whose work has been insufficiently studied for centuries, in spite of being widely known in early modern Europe and of having constituted the inspiration and basis for ideas later expressed by Bacon, Descartes, Kant, Gall, Chomsky, and other thinkers.6 The book opens with a foreword by Cervantes scholar Howard Mancing, former president of the Cervantes Society of America and pioneer of cognitive literary studies. Mancing’s remarks give readers a sense of the scope, purpose, and benefits of studying early modern literature and, specifically, the work of Cervantes with a historized, contextualized, cognitive approach. Following our introduction and as a preamble to the ideas that will be discussed, “Section I—Views of the Mind in Early Modern Spain,” features the framing chapter “Spanish Brain Science and Philosophy of Mind in the Time of Cervantes: Three Seminal

Introduction  3 Thinkers,” by Spanish neuroscientist and historian Antonio Martín Araguz, who offers a panorama of early modern Spanish views on the mind, focusing on three fundamental thinkers (Huarte, Sabuco, and Pereira). In his chapter, Martín Araguz discusses themes such as the difference between brutes and humans (Pereira), the psychosomatic approach to the mind (Sabuco), and the materiality of understanding (Huarte), helping readers become acquainted with some of the key notions and controversies included in the book. “Section II—Feeling, Thinking, and Remembering in Humans and Brutes,” begins with the chapter “Emotion and Human Development in Cervantes’s Don Quijote: The Case of Sancho Panza,” in which Isabel Jaén recovers the topic of animality vs. humanity and elaborates on what she has called the “brute-to-human” paradigm, that is, the literary depiction of the process by which men transcended their animal nature and became fully human by controlling their passions or negative emotions. Connecting Cervantes to the ideas expressed in the medical-philosophical treatises by Vives, Huarte, and Sabuco, she focuses particularly on the emotional aspects in the developmental journey of Don Quixote’s squire Sancho, a character that she considers central to both Cervantes’s masterpiece and early modern views of human development. Emotions, when contained, can lead to virtue, though they can be highly destructive if left uncontrolled. This theme is further explored by Elena Carrera in “Aging, Emotion, and Cognition: El viejo zeloso and Early Modern Thought,” where she shows how Cervantes portrays in his theater the passion of jealousy as stemming from fear, in accordance with the ideas of humanist philosopher Vives. To this aim, she discusses Vives’s explanations in De institutione feminae christianae on the role of imagination in arousing fear and suspicion, as well as Huarte’s views on the effect of old age in cognition. She ultimately demonstrates that Cervantes’s play not only is a masterpiece of double deception but also provides a practical illustration of early modern ideas on emotional experience in relation to age and of the effect of emotions in hindering mental ability. In “Human Thinking about Thinking Animals in the Early Modern Spanish and Spanish American World,” Steven Wagschal revisits emotion, reason, and the boundaries between animality and humanity. He provides an overview of some of the notions and portrayals of animal consciousness that circulated in early modernity, including Cervantes’s own. These ideas about animal thinking and feeling, contained in sources such as haunting books, husbandry books, and natural histories, are key to understanding how Cervantes follows or challenges early modern views of animal cognition and sentience in Don Quijote, El coloquio de los perros [The colloquy of the dogs], and other works. The discussion continues with the chapter “Wit, Imagination, and the Goat: The Untrodden Paths of Literary Creation in Cervantes’s Don Quijote and Huarte’s Examen de ingenios,” which introduces us to the generative aspects of thinking as

4  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon viewed by these two authors. Focusing on the trope of the “capricious mind,” Christine Orobitg puts Huarte’s and Cervantes’s ideas in dialogue, to show how these two thinkers contribute to innovating early modern notions about wit and imagination, foregrounding the mind’s creative process. Just as Huarte advocated in his Examen for a free “goatlike” creative power, an ability for invention capable of freeing itself from tradition and norm, Cervantes praises creative freedom and literary experimentation. While approaches to the connection between Huarte and Cervantes have traditionally centered on humoral and faculty psychology views, Orobitg reveals how linking the ideas of these two thinkers on creativity helps us understand in more depth Cervantes’s writing project. Our inquiry into the human mind and its faculties in relation to Cervantes continues with the work of Julia Domínguez, who emphasizes the centrality of memory in early modern views of cognition. Her chapter, “Cervantes and the Mother of the Muses: Views of Memory in Early Modern Spain,” examines, in the context of early modern medical treatises, Cervantes’s construction of consciousness through the faculty of memoria in his collection of short prose, Novelas ejemplares [Exemplary Novels], with special attention to El casamiento engañoso [A Deceitful Marriage] and El coloquio. Focusing on some of the leading characters in these works, Domínguez shows how Cervantes creates stories that reflect memory’s hidden physical and psychological workings, which in turn reference memory’s rich presence in sixteenthand seventeenth-century culture. Our exploration of mind function as viewed in early modernity continues and becomes central in “Section III—Altered Minds: Causes, Effects, and Remedies,” which features three collaborative chapters around mental disorders from three different standpoints. “Melancholic Consciousness: Cervantes’s Contribution to Early Modern Views of Melancholy and the Emergence of the Fictional Mind,” coauthored by Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon, connects to the ideas previously discussed about thinking and feeling, to reveal Cervantes’s multifaceted and nuanced representation of the melancholic mind through the character of Don Quixote. His portrayal of a mind lost in an interior fictional world, capable of creating an alternative reality, free but also deranged, and whose emotional energy sustains yet eventually destroys his organism, not only is consistent with the medical philosophy of his time but also provides a powerful narrative tool to explore human psychology, pioneering modern representations of fictional consciousness. In the next chapter, “Mind-Altering Agents in Cervantes’s Work: Regarding His Sources on Pharmacology,” neurologists and science historians Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo examine Cervantes’s depictions of madness and altered states of consciousness, as well as how therapeutic psychiatric remedies and other agents operate within his fictional worlds. They underscore Cervantes’s reliance on the herbal-medical knowledge compiled in Laguna’s Dioscórides, one

Introduction 5 of the most influential pharmacological treatises of early modernity. In doing so, they provide the necessary context to approach the pharmacological aspects of Cervantes’s work, while also pointing to the accuracy of his descriptions, which have helped doctors and literary scholars to explore and expand their knowledge of how the mind was altered by plants according to early modern medicine. Finally, “Don Quijote and Cervantes’s Knowledge of Neurological Disorders” features a collaboration between scientists José-Alberto Palma and Fermín Palma and literary scholar Julien Jacques Simon. Their chapter contributes to the discussion on altered minds by tracing Cervantes’s fictional representations and references to seizures, tremors, and other symptomatology. They reconsider the notion of madness as traditionally discussed in relation to Cervantes’s work, connecting it to sleep deprivation, epilepsy, and mercury poisoning, and ultimately pondering to what extent Cervantes’s knowledge of the altered minds (both textual and experiential) might have enriched his literary depiction of the disturbances of the mind. By considering the scientific sources that Cervantes might have had access to and incorporated in his work, these last two chapters bring us back to the beginning of our journey, helping us to further reflect on how Cervantes blends but also cocreates through his characters and situations, the ideas that circulated in early modernity about how the mind works. In gathering the cognitive-historicist perspectives delineated above, we not only intend to advance our understanding of Cervantes’s relationship to early modern psychological ideas but also, and more importantly, aspire to offer our readers an inviting roadmap to approach Cervantes’s constellation of minds. We hope that this book will encourage them to continue to enjoy, teach, and study the unparalleled work of this author and to further explore how his fiction contributes to the making of the early modern mind.

Notes 1 Early studies include, for instance, Iriarte; Salillas. 2 See, for example, Cognitive Cervantes in the Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America (Spring 2012), co-edited by Simon, Simerka, and Mancing. 3 For a more detailed discussion of the questions explored, see Jaén and Simon’s introduction to Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. 4 This approach/methodology differs from the contemporaneous-contemporary one that we adopted in Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature (2016), which merged two orientations: “how early modern thinkers and writers understood the mind in early modernity and how we understand it today” (5). This previous book illustrated how today’s cognitive science can help us understand early modern cultural phenomena such as acting and spectating in the Spanish corrales de comedias [theaters]. 5 Our historicist focus on the original cognitive sources of Cervantes’s time is further enabled and facilitated by the development of the digital humanities.

6

Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon

Thanks to the increasingly greater digitalization of early modern literary works and treatises, scholars can carry out their research from their own computers at home. This provides an unfettered access to texts that otherwise would not be easily available. 6 On the relationship between Spanish early modern mind science and posterior Western mind theories, see, for instance, Martín Araguz and Bustamante Martínez.

Works Cited Iriarte, M. de. El doctor Huarte de San Juan y su Examen de ingenios: Contribución a la historia de la psicología diferencial. 3rd ed. Madrid: CSIC, 1948. Jaén, Isabel, and Julien Jacques Simon, eds. Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016. . Jaén, Isabel, and Julien Jacques Simon. “Introduction.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016. 1–10. . Martín Araguz, Antonio, and C. Bustamante Martínez. “Examen de ingenios, de Juan Huarte de San Juan, y los albores de la Neurobiología de la inteligencia en el Renacimiento español.” Revista de Neurología 38.12 (2004): 1176–1185. . Salillas, Rafael. Un gran inspirador de Cervantes: El doctor Juan Huarte y su Examen de ingenios. Madrid: Victoriano Suarez, 1905. Simon, Julien Jacques, Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing, eds. Cognitive Cervantes. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012).

Section I

Views of the Mind in Early Modern Spain

1

Spanish Brain Science and Philosophy of Mind in the Time of Cervantes Three Seminal Thinkers Antonio Martín Araguz

Anatomical advances as well as the mechanical-structural vision of the cosmos crystallized in the Renaissance in an image of the human organism as similar to a “factory,” both in its composition and functioning. The proportions of the human body became the principle and foundation of intellectual development,1 while the relationship between man (“microcosmos”) and nature (“macrocosmos”) was emphasized and the correct anatomical proportion was considered the perfect manifestation of the union of the universe.2 In Spain, a group of philosophers, doctors, and humanists belonging to the naturalist movement began to elucidate the mysteries of brain functioning from a modern scientific standpoint. In fact, the transition period between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be considered the Golden Age of the origins of the brain science and philosophy of mind in Spain, thanks to the contribution of important figures such as Juan Valverde de Amusco, Andrés Laguna, Luis de Mercado, Pedro de Oleza, Jaime Segarra, Francisco Vallés de Covarrubias, Gómez Pereira, Juan Huarte de San Juan, and Oliva Sabuco, among others. Unfortunately, during the 1500s, Spanish scientists encountered a series of obstacles, as a result of ideological and political factors.3 King Philip II (Felipe II), obsessed with safeguarding the Catholic faith against the theological error of the European Reformation, issued the infamous “Real Pragmática” [Pragmatic/Imperial decree] of September 7, 1558, which stipulated that no booksellers should bring, hold, or sell “obra impresa ó por imprimir, de las que son vedadas y prohibidas por el Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion en qualquier lengua . . . so pena de muerte y perdimiento de todos sus bienes . . .” (152–153) [printed or tobe-printed books that are banned and prohibited by the Holy Office of the Inquisition in any language . . . under penalty of death and loss of all their assets].4 Under a subsequent imperial decree (that of November 22, 1559), he prohibited students from leaving to study, teach or learn, stay or reside in universities or schools outside Spain—with the exception of Naples, Rome, and the Spanish College of the University of Bologna, territories under the Spanish crown and “free” of Calvinist influence— giving those who were then abroad a grace period of four months to DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211-1

10  Antonio Martín Araguz return, under the threat of severe sanctions such as loss of all their assets and exile.5 These circumstances constituted an impediment to the acquisition and renewal of knowledge and a hindrance to scientific education that could not be overcome until the Enlightenment,6 and, as a consequence, Spain began to decouple itself from European scientific knowledge. However, this was a slow process, and Spanish scientists continued to have a significant impact, becoming in some instances highly influential. Three thinkers in particular figure prominently in the scientific pantheon of the time: Pereira, Sabuco, and Huarte.7 Below, the significance and importance of their research in the European context will be briefly discussed.

Pereira’s Mechanistic View of the Brain Pereira’s fundamental work, Antoniana Margarita (published in Latin in 1554),8 is the first modern attempt to explain brain functioning by excluding the Galenic concepts of “soul” and “spirit.”9 Its reading helps us to understand the circumstances that contributed to the transformation of medieval thought into our modern mentality.10 History has been unfair to this scientist and his significant philosophical innovations have been largely overlooked, despite having been highlighted by the famous early modern English doctor Thomas Willis11 as well as by other thinkers. Moreover, many scholars, since the seventeenth century, have noted possible nexuses between Pereira and René Descartes.12 For instance, Pereira’s theory of the automatism of beasts (the term “beast” or “brute” referred to animals at the time) presents similarities with the posterior mechanical philosophy of Descartes.13 In Antoniana, Pereira discusses animal cognition and behavior in order to better understand the human mind and to describe the processes that make human beings unique. Based on the premise that man is the most perfect of all creatures, Pereira’s approach—crudely mechanistic— argues that animals lack sensory perception, a position that was opposed to mainstream views of the time,14 since accepting that animals have sensory perception would have involved assuming that they have knowledge, intelligence, and even a soul. If an animal senses, then it can also understand, because sensing requires judgment.15 From this capacity of judgment derives the abstract knowledge of universals and even the capacity for reasoning, both being considered to be exclusively human attributes.16 Moreover, Pereira refutes the Scholastic/Galenic doctrine as to the divisibility of animal souls. Brutes cannot have an indivisible soul because if they did, they would have to be rational and eternal.17 Regarding the “mechanistic” nature of Pereira’s views on cognition and the differences between animals and humans, let us delve into his ideas on how animals move. As opposed to humans, when animals receive an

Three Seminal Thinkers  11 external stimulus, they move without awareness, in a predetermined way, with a characteristic behavioral pattern.18 In Pereira’s own words, it is impossible that there is any power of awareness in brute beasts, but only certain qualities brought from external objects into those external parts known as “the senses,” or in other accidentals brought forward from mental images kept in the place of memory into the brute beasts’ other internal places, which force the beasts into movement. (231; 230)19 To demonstrate these ideas, Pereira distinguishes four different types of movements that can set animals in motion: (1) by things in front of them, which bring their visual appearance, or its equivalent, into the organs corresponding to the ones we use when we sense things—for example, when food is put in front of them, or when they run away from an enemy which is at hand; or (2) by the mental images of things, these having sometimes been the reason for brute beasts’ movements; or (3) by one or other of the foresaid, but after the beasts have received prior instruction from some teacher, because without this aptitude for being taught, they would not perform the movement they do, and would not be stirred to action by things in front of them, or by mental images of things which are not there, as parrots or thrushes are taught to speak, or dogs or monkeys learn to jump; and (4) lastly, brute beasts themselves are set in motion by certain movements known as “natural instinct.” Ants, bees, and similar creatures [which are set in motion] by the need to fulfil particular objectives are examples of this. (241; 240; square brackets in original) What differentiates human movement from animal movement, in this sense, is its volitional nature. This becomes clear in relation to the second type of movement, as Pereira elaborates on how mental images set brute beasts in motion. He explains that “there is a kind of bookcase or closet in the brute beasts’ occipital region, in which are preserved images of those things which, strictly speaking, have been presented to their eyes [and the other senses] . . . In this, we are very like brute beasts” (253; 252). However, Pereira continues on to explain that in humans, in addition to this preservative power of mental images, which is called “memory,” there is another faculty in the sincipital area, wherewith we recognise those things by which mental images have been generated, provided the mental image, whose original we want to get to know, is drawn from that posterior part of the brain, and is exhibited in the presence of the anterior [part] which then becomes

12  Antonio Martín Araguz acquainted with it. [This process] is “abstract cognition.” (253; 252; square brackets in original) Humans can be “mindful” of this process: “we are brought to abstract recognition of things not actually in front of us when we are roused [to do so], because we are our own master, we want to draw out the mental image of anything we want to remember” (253; 252; square brackets in original). Yet, in animals, this process is involuntary, “automatic”: In brute beasts, however, which form no mental ideas, even if that faculty does not exist, wherewith they get to have knowledge of things which are not in front of them—and nor can they distinguish between things which are in front of them, as I have said—there is something corresponding to it, which is also situated in their sincipital area. If the stored-up image of an object which is not in front of them is presented to this faculty, parts of the brute beast’s body are thereby forced into motion, (it is what was setting them in motion when the objects themselves were actually in front of them, too), because the brute beast has been affected as it was earlier when the first mental image was generated. (253, 255; 252, 254) Thus, although, the cognitive architecture and mechanisms that humans and animals share are similar, it is precisely the capacity for abstract thinking and intentional recalling in humans that sets them apart. The third type of animal movement described by Pereira refers to animals that can be taught, such as thrushes and parrots, dogs and monkeys, and can imitate humans. Pereira clarifies that animals are not taught in the same way that humans are. For instance, in parrots or thrushes “when the sound of human voices is frequently introduced into their brain, their vocal mechanisms, which had always been at rest before, are set in motion,” while for dogs and monkeys their body parts, “which were at rest before, are also activated by the sight of human movements, and these irrational creatures are, for the most part, aroused and enticed by a human being to imitate human movements by being punished with a whip or rewarded with food” (259; 258). These are the rudiments of ideas about learning and behavior that will come to fruition in the nineteenth century, crystallizing in concepts such as classical or Pavlovian conditioning. Finally and importantly, in the articulation of his mechanistic model of the brain in Antoniana, Pereira describes for the first time the reflex arc. In his view, movement is initiated in the peripheral sensory organs, excited by the perceived object, via a mechanical alteration or species. This mechanical alteration quickly reaches the brain, activating the brain areas where the motor nerves have their origin. Once the nerves are activated, it produces a muscular contraction that results in the movement of the members. 20 The innovative aspect of Pereira’s theory lies in moving

Three Seminal Thinkers  13 beyond a mechanical muscular explanation to draw a dynamic bilateral path at the center of which is the brain. He explains: that all the nerves along which every sensation takes place in us— sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell—have their origin in the brain, and that from there, too, arise those nerves with which humans’ muscles, as well as those of brute beasts, are contracted and extended in order to create forward and other movements. (243; 242) The centrality of the brain in his theory underscores Pereira’s organicist views, an aspect that connects him to the other two scientists included in this chapter, Sabuco and Huarte, while paving the way for the ideas about the electrical conduction of the nerve impulse that will emerge later in brain science and evolve in the context of modern neuropsychology. Moreover, by dispensing with the concept of “soul,” which Pereira identifies with “intelligence,” his theory of the automatism of beasts lies at the very foundation of modern physiology and is an example of the mechanistic method that discards any Aristotelian metaphysical vestiges in explaining natural processes. 21

Sabuco’s Psychosomatic Approach In 1587 the Pedro Madrigal publishing house of Madrid issued a book— signed by a woman, Doña Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera 22 —entitled Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcanzada de los grandes filósofos antiguos: la cual mejora la vida y la salud humana [New Philosophy of Human Nature: Neither Known to Nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life and Health]. The book, which was widely disseminated, is heavily influenced by Platonism and, in addition to topics of a medical and therapeutic nature, deals with cosmology, law, sociology, religion, and agriculture. Its relevance lies in the originality of its physio-pathological approaches. Indeed, while the theories of Sabuco have a Hippocratic-Galenic foundation characteristic of the time, 23 two innovative aspects of the Nueva filosofía have greatly impacted medical historiography: the psychosomatic view of health and the concept of succus nerveus. Regarding the psychosomatic views, Francisco Rodríguez Pascual states that Es ciertamente interesante e innovadora la actitud psicosomática que [Sabuco] adopta desde un principio, partiendo de la existencia de relaciones constatables entre el cuerpo y el alma. También resulta sorprendente la importancia que otorga a la base fisiológica, más en concreto al cerebro y a todo el sistema nervioso considerado como “unidad soberana.” (415; emphasis in original)

14  Antonio Martín Araguz The psychosomatic attitude that (Sabuco) adopts from the beginning, which is based on the existence of verifiable relationships between the body and the soul, is certainly interesting and innovative. Equally surprising is the importance given to the physiological basis (of these relationships), more specifically to the brain and to the entire nervous system, conceived as an “independent unit.” This deeply psychosomatic view of Sabuco establishes the following requirements for the maintenance of good health: “El plazer, contento y alegria, son la principal causa porque vive el hombre, y tiene salud” (41v) [“Joyous, happy fulfillment is the main reason mankind lives and is healthy” (65)]. 24 Faithful to the Aristotelian division of the human soul in vegetative, sensitive, and intellective, Sabuco links diseases to the sensitive soul, 25 which is common to both animals and men, and believes that it is in the brain where the essence of diseases lies: La causa y oficina de los humores de toda enfermedad es el celebro, alli estan los afectos, passiones, y movimientos del anima: alli el sentir, o sensacion: alli la rayz, y la natural que haze la vegetacion: alli la vida y anhelacion, de alli las enfermedades, y de alli la muerte . . . (206r) The brain is the cause and location where humors of any illness are produced because the affections, passions, and activities of the soul are established there. It is the seat of feeling or sensation, the root of biological function responsible for growth. From it originates vitality: respiration. From it illnesses and death originate. (182) Sabuco did not prejudge the exact locus of the soul’s seat—although we can deduce that it holistically encompasses all the brain structures—and disagreed with the medical theories of the time, which attributed to the heart and the liver a prominent role (Barona). The transcendence of the functions attached to the brain—turned into the chamber of the soul— even led Sabuco to morphological precisions: Juzgo que aquellas formas de gusanos blancos largos, uno junto a otro, son como fibras o barbas desta rayz [el cerebro] y cada forma de gusano de aquellas tiene respeto a su nervio, o parte del: y cada nervio tiene respeto a su parte del cuerpo que le corresponde: y cada filo de nervio tiene respeto a su partezita que le corresponde . . . (248v) I believe that those long, white, side-by-side worms act as yarns or whiskers of the brain and that each of those wormlike shapes is related to its nerve, or part of it. Each nerve is related to its corresponding part of the body, and every filament of the nerves’ strands is related to its corresponding tiny counterpart . . . (210)

Three Seminal Thinkers  15 As part of the discussion on the “nervous system” of human beings, Sabuco introduces the concept, not quoted as such in the text, of “succus nerveu”; using the term “chilo” [chyle], nourishing or nervous fluid. This succus nerveus or chilo is absorbed at the roots of nerves and transported to the main root (medulla) and from there to the brain 26: Pues assi esta rayz principal del celebro toma su xugo de las rayzillas, 27 o vilos que se metieron en la tierra, que es la comida en el segundo seno, y lo atrae y altera, y haze como sangre blanca lo mas liquido: y las telas lo botan para arriba, por los poros del craneo, y por los nervios de la duramater, y por las cinco comissuras principales de las tres celdas del craneo, y brota y sale a la vertice, o remolino de la cabeça, y de alli se difunde por la corteza, que es el cuero hacia abaxo, todo en rededor por la cabeça y al cuello, hombros, braços, cuerpo y piernas. Por esta corteza, o cuero, que es un nervio que cubre todo el cuerpo, va desta sangre blanca, o chilo, lo mas liquido, y si es apto para la nutricion y vegetacion, haze la sanidad y cremento, y si es vicioso haze los morbos del cuero en su decremento. (151r–151v) Likewise, in this same way, this primary “root” (of) the brain, takes its fluid from the “little roots” or villi that buried themselves in the ground, i.e., in the food in the second [or stomach] cavity. [The brain] attracts and transforms [the chyle] and transforms the most liquid [part of it into something] like white blood. The tissues carry it up through the skull’s pores, through the nerves of the dura mater, and via the five main ridges of the skull’s three cells. [It] blossoms out and goes to the apex or crown of the head. From there it gets distributed downward via the “bark,” i.e., the epidermis, all throughout the head and the neck, shoulders, arms, body, and legs. This white or more liquid blood, chilo, travels through this bark or skin that is a nerve covering the whole body. If it is suitable for nutrition and “vegetation,” it creates health and increment. If it is vicious, it causes skin diseases during decrement. (115; brackets in original; parentheses are the editors’) The concept and mechanics of chilo would become the object of an intense debate during the Enlightenment due to the use of this notion by the seventeenth century’s iatrochemists, 28 preceding by several centuries the concept of neurochemistry, 29 and the historiography on Sabuco has invariably associated this expression with Sabuco’s work. Sabuco’s hypothesis on human nature lays out groundbreaking scientific arguments about mind–brain relations, which deviate from traditional humoral medical ideas based on Galenic authority.30 While such scholarly position in the margins of the academic world and Sabuco’s criticism of Galen are innovative, the Nueva filosofía’s

16  Antonio Martín Araguz reformist psychopathological vision of disease, proposing a psychological therapy, also evidences the influence of Platonism. From a psychosomatic standpoint, Sabuco traces the relationship between emotional and physical health, explaining how emotions impair health and cause premature death and inviting doctors to perform complete examinations of their patients, attending to the mind, body, and soul in unison—an idea compatible with current holistic medical and philosophical thought. Sabuco’s work is an illustration of how trends outside of scholastic medicine had been gaining ground in Spanish science throughout the sixteenth century.

Huarte and the Materiality of Understanding In 1575, Renaissance doctor Juan Huarte de San Juan published in Baeza Examen de ingenios para las ciencias: Donde se muestra la diferencia de habilidades que hay en los hombres, y el género de letras que a cada uno responde en particular [The Examination of Men’s Wits: In Which, by Discovering the Variety of Natures, Is Shown for What Profession Each One Is Apt and How Far He Shall Profit Therein31]. Although this is his only published work, few Spanish scientists have been as widely disseminated and have been analyzed from as diverse points of view as Huarte. The influence of the Examen has been noted in medical as well as in pedagogical and psychological historiographies. In all these fields, we find multiple affirmations of the historical significance of his work. In early modern Europe, the Examen became a bestseller. Its many reprintings in the major publishing hubs of the Peninsula attest to this fact.32 Additionally, the text resonated even more outside of Spain, where by the end of the eighteenth century it had gone through forty-four editions (Granjel 35). Huarte’s work directly influenced the thought of Charron, Montesquieu, Montaigne, and Rousseau, although none of them mentioned him.33 The impact of the Examen has been such that, after Ramón y Cajal, Huarte is the most cited Spanish scientist in history. It is important to clarify the meaning of the work’s title. In the Renaissance, the term ingenio [wit]34 means intelligence and, more concretely, the practical ability to perform an activity. Huarte’s text deals with the cognitive abilities necessary to perform certain jobs under a principle of distributive justice in which each individual should only deal with the tasks for which he is better endowed by nature. The most controversial aspect of the Examen lies in its defense of the idea that the capacities of individuals emanate from the constitution of their brain. Huarte’s epistemological position derives from the then prevailing Aristotelian Galenism and, thus, for him cerebral nature responds to an individual temperament dependent on the elemental qualities (heat, cold, humidity, and dryness) that give rise to the four elements (air, fire, earth, and water), from which the four humors (blood, phlegm, choler or yellow bile, and the melancholic humor or black bile) are generated.

Three Seminal Thinkers  17 Depending on which humor prevails in each individual, we find a particular temperament, a key element in analyzing the “wits” of men. On the basis of these humoral premises, Huarte’s innovation resides in creating, for the first time, a systematic frame to identify the particular “wit” of a student—and the corresponding cognitive strengths—in order to direct him to the appropriate science and profession for the benefit and optimal functioning of the Republic. In articulating his innovative theory, Huarte presents four fundamental questions that have not been previously addressed by philosophers: Pero ninguno ha dicho con distinción ni claridad qué naturaleza es la que hace al hombre hábil para una ciencia y para otra incapaz, ni cuántas diferencias de ingenio se hallan en la especie humana, ni qué artes y ciencias responden a cada uno en particular, ni con qué señales se había de conocer, que era lo que más importaba. (154)35 But none of them has said distinctly and clearly which is the nature that makes a man able for one science and incapable for another, nor how many differences of wits can be found in the human species, nor what arts or sciences correspond to each [wit] in particular, nor by which signs it may be known, which was the most important thing. He then advances “tres conclusiones muy verdaderas, aunque por su novedad son dignas de grande admiración” (159) [three conclusions, very true, but worthy of great marvel because of their novelty]: La primera es que, de muchas diferencias de ingenio que hay en la especie humana, sola una te puede, con eminencia, caber . . . La segunda, que a cada diferencia de ingenio le responde, en eminencia, sola una ciencia y no más . . . La tercera, que después de haber entendido cuál es la ciencia que a tu ingenio más le responde, te queda otra dificultad mayor por averiguar; y es si tu habilidad es más acomodada a la práctica que a la teórica . . . (159) The first is that, of the many differences of wit that there are in the human species, only one with fall to you with preeminence . . . The second, that to every difference of wit only one science corresponds with preeminence and no more . . . The third, that once you have understood which is the science that better corresponds to your wit, you must sort out another, greater difficulty; and that is whether your ability is better suited to the practic than to the theoric . . . . In order to give intellectual coherence to his doctrine, Huarte advocated for a clear separation between theology, metaphysics, and natural philosophy.36 For him, knowledge was not a power of the soul, since the

18  Antonio Martín Araguz soul had no material substrate. If the rational soul had the same degree of perfection in all men, then the differences in wit could not originate in the soul, but in the material constitution of the brain, a variable factor in each individual.37 Regarding the thorny question of from where the rational soul received its wisdom, Huarte opposed the Platonic theory of innate ideas and the Aristotelian view that all knowledge came from the senses. Once more, he found the solution in the temperament of the brain, associating the process of human development with a gradual transformation of the temperament, whose inconvenient alteration was the cause of diseases.38 If the rational soul made use of instruments, there should be then specific organs in the brain for understanding, imagination, and memory. Huarte, therefore, found Galen’s anatomical-physiological ideas erroneous and viewed the cerebral ventricles or “cells” as the seat of each one of the soul’s faculties: Estando el anima racional en el cuerpo, es imposible poder hacer obras contrarias y diferentes si para cada una [no] tiene su instrumento particular . . . pero si es verdad que cada obra requiere particular instrumento, necesariamente allá dentro en el celebro ha de haber órgano para el entendimiento, y órgano para la imaginación, y otro diferente para la memoria. (321–322) Being the rational soul in the body, it cannot carry out different and contrary operations if it does not have for each a particular instrument . . . but if it is true that each operation requires a particular instrument, then necessarily there must be within the brain an organ for understanding, and an organ for imagination, and a different one for memory. And later on, he adds that the “dificultad está ahora en saber en cuál de estos ventrículos está el entendimiento, y en cuál la memoria, y en cuál la imaginativa” (325) [difficulty is now in knowing in which of these ventricles understanding resides, and in which memory, and in which imagination]. Regarding the problem of the location of these internal faculties or powers, Huarte believed that the three faculties were mixed and balanced in a mutual interdependence in the cerebral ventricles: “. . . todas tres potencias están juntas en cada ventrículo . . . Esta junta de potencias se suele hacer en el cuerpo humano cuando una no puede obrar sin que otra le ayude . . . [Y] en cada ventrículo están todas tres potencias, pues de sola la lesión de uno se debilitan todas tres” (325–326) [all the powers reside together in each of the ventricles . . . This union of powers takes place usually in the human body when one cannot act without the help of another . . . (And) in each ventricle all three powers reside, since the lesion of one (of the ventricles) results in the weakening of all three (powers or faculties)].

Three Seminal Thinkers 19 While the most significant aspect of Huarte’s theory was to have given to the faculty of understanding such organic basis, he nonetheless accepted the difficulties stemming from the idea of the materiality of understanding with regard to the freedom to act, as well as to the fact that this faculty could be limited by the contingencies of materiality. However, in so doing he did not call into question the taboo of immortality and of the soul’s incorruptibility, a matter that he considered beyond scientific explanation. The modernity of Huarte’s ideas lies particularly in his view of the faculty of understanding or judgment (estimativa) as a power dependent on the brain at the same level as imagination and memory, something that implies an organicism radically opposed to the medieval scholastic Galenism, which considered that capacities did not emanate from the organs but rather that the latter were at the capacities’ mercy. Huarte is a clear example of the Renaissance transition toward an organicist mentality (that considered the function of organs as a consequence of their vital functions) and culminated in the vitalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.39 From a literary standpoint, the most interesting aspect of the Examen is its connection to the psychological portrayal of Don Quijote’s protagonist.40 Although Cervantes does not explicitly mention Huarte in his writings, there is a surprising similarity of reasoning and striking parallels between the works of the two authors.41 In many respects, Don Quixote’s physical and mental descriptions are consistent with the ideas set forth in the Huartian text, and his characterization as an “ingenious man” is also quite symptomatic of this connection.42 To conclude, Huarte’s ideas, as well as the ideas of the other mind thinkers/scientists introduced in this chapter and in the present book, constitute the backdrop of the intellectual production of Spanish early modernity, permeating literary discourses. Thus, the importance of considering them vis-à-vis Cervantes’s production cannot be underestimated.

Notes 1 2 3 4

See López Piñero. See Granjel. See Martín Araguz. The entire decree can be found in the Novísima recopilación de las leyes de España, pp. 152–153. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are from the editors. 5 The entire decree can be found in Novísima, 21–22. 6 See Rojo Vega. 7 The work of these three scientists, plus that of Andrés Laguna and natural philosopher Juan Luis Vives, constitutes the scientific and philosophical substrate on which most of the chapters in this volume are based. For more details on Laguna’s significance, see López-Muñoz and Álamo’s chapter in this volume. For more details on Vives’s ideas, see Jaén’s chapter in this volume.

20

Antonio Martín Araguz

8 This unusual title refers to Pereira’s parents, Antonio and Margarita, to whom the work is dedicated. The full title is Antoniana Margarita, opus nempe physicis, medicis ac theologis, non minus utile quam necessarium. 9 See Llavona Uribelarrea and Bandrés Ponce, “Gómez.” 10 See, for example, Menéndez-Pelayo. 11 For instance, in chapter 1 of Willis’s De anima brutorum (1672) on p. 5. 12 For instance, in his biography of Descartes, La vie de Monsieur Descartes (1691), Adrien Baillet discusses the polemic surrounding the possible influence of Pereira on the French thinker (537; Bk 8, ch. 10). Several scholars, in Spain and beyond, have studied the ties between Antoniana Margarita and Descartes’s work. Some claim that Pereira was a “precursor” of Descartes (Bullón y Fernández), while others argue the opposite (see, among others, Sanhueza). For more details on the debate regarding the originality of Descartes’s work (the Pereira-Descartes controversy), see García Valverde and Maxwell-Stuart’s introduction to their English translation of Antoniana Margarita, especially pp. 57–60, as well as Llavona Uribelarrea and Bandrés Ponce, “La recepción”; especially pp. 132–134. 13 It is interesting to note that many authors consider Descartes as a mere follower of Pereira’s ideas (Sánchez Vega; Bullón y Fernández) or, at least, to have merely developed the ideas previously sketched by him (Guardia). An example is the Cartesian “Cogito ergo sum,” which resonates with Pereira’s previous “Nosco me aliquid noscere, et quicquid noscit est, ergo ego sum” (1074) [“I know that I know something: whatever knows, exists. Therefore I exist” (1075)]. For more on this, see Martín Araguz et al. 87–88; García Valverde and Maxwell-Stuart, Preface vii–viii. 14 See García Valverde and Maxwell-Stuart, “Introduction” 5. 15 See Llavona Uribelarrea and Bandrés Ponce, “Gómez.” On early modern views about the sentience and intelligence of animals, see also Wagschal’s chapter in this volume. 16 See Iriarte. 17 See Barona. 18 See Barreiro Barreiro, “Introduction.” 19 Quotes from Pereira’s Antoniana Margarita are from García Valverde and Maxwell-Stuart’s English translation. Since it is a bilingual edition, the page number of the original Latin text is also included after the semicolon. 20 See Martín Araguz et al. 86–87. 21 See Barreiro Barreiro, “A Antoniana.” 22 It is important to offer a note on the controversy surrounding Oliva de Sabuco’s authorship of Nueva filosofía, which was questioned at the beginning of the twentieth century by José Marco Hidalgo and Benjamín Marcos. Based on documents that became available at the time, they proposed that the author was bachelor Miguel Sabuco, father of Oliva, who granted authorship to his daughter for unknown motives, and later revoked his decision before a notary, since he wanted to reserve for himself the economic profits of the work (which enjoyed an unprecedented success with nine editions and numerous reprints): “. . . I reserve for myself the fruits and profits that could result from the said books by me, and I order my daughter Luisa de Oliva not to interfere in the said privilege if she wants to avoid my curse, because I am on record that I am the author and not she” (qtd. in Waithe and Vintró, “Last Will” 326; emphasis in original). While some scholars support the hypothesis of Miguel’s authorship, others have refuted it. For more details on the authorship’s controversy, see, among others, Martín Araguz, Bustamante Martínez, and Fernández Armayor 1190–1192; Rivera Garretas 142– 146; Waithe and Vintró, “Posthumously.”

Three Seminal Thinkers 21 23 See, for example, Laín Entralgo. 24 The English translations of Sabuco’s Nueva filosofía are from Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita. 25 For more details on Sabuco’s link between diseases and the sensitive soul (by way of the emotions or passions), see Jaén’s chapter in this volume. 26 For more details on Sabuco’s concept of succus nerveus, see Martín Araguz, Bustamante Martínez, and Fernández Armayor. 27 As we can see, in describing this process, Sabuco employs the allegory of the human body as an inverted tree where “todos los mas animales traen la cabeça baxa, mirando a la tierra, y el hombre solo la trae alta, siempre derecho, mirando al cielo” (145v) [“most animals carry their head down looking at the ground and humans carry it high, always up looking toward heaven” (111)]. 28 Iatrochemistry: “chemistry combined with medicine—used of a school of medicine of the period about 1525–1660 dominated by the teachings of Paracelsus and stressing the use of chemicals in the treatment of disease” (“Iatrochemistry”). 29 For more details on the origins of the succus nerveus and the relevance of Sabuco’s concept, see Martínez Vidal; especially 84ff. 30 See Barona; ch. 5. 31 The English title and subtitle come from Richard Carew’s translation (1594), recently edited by Rocío Sumillera in 2014. 32 On the international reception and impact of Huarte’s Examen, see Sumillera 23–30. 33 See Pérouse, L’Examen. For a comparative study of Montaigne’s Essais (1580) and Huarte’s Examen, see also Pérouse’s chapter “Montaigne et le Dr Huarte: Avec un mot sur Pierre Charron” in En filigrane (pp. 215–230). 34 The notion of wit is one of the many nexuses between Huarte’s Examen and Cervantes’s Don Quijote and his “ingenious” hidalgo, Don Quixote. On this notion and its connection to Cervantes’s masterpiece, see Orobitg’s chapter in this volume. 35 Quotes from the Examen come from the 1989 edition by Guillermo Serés. 36 It is important to note that although the editio princeps of the Examen (1575) was authorized without objections, soon the book would be submitted to the inquisitorial censorship. It was significantly expurgated and a new “revised” edition was published in 1594. For the inquisitors, Huarte’s repeated assertion that understanding or judgment is an “organic or material faculty” was equivalent to saying that intelligence has a material substrate or that the soul hinges upon the organs—and not the other way around—an idea explicitly rejected by Galenic tradition, Scholasticism, and Church doctrine. 37 See Barona. 38 On Galen’s approach to treating diseases and patients, see García Ballester. 39 See Martín Araguz and Bustamante Martínez. 40 See especially Salillas. 41 On the parallels between Huarte’s Examen and Cervantes’s work, see, for instance, Martín Araguz and Bustamante Martínez 1183. 42 Many other scholars have observed the parallel between Huarte’s work and Cervantes’s Don Quijote. These include, among others, Ayala; Escobar Manzano; Iriarte; Jaén, “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas”; Jaén, “Cervantes on Human Development”; López-Muñoz, Álamo, and García-García; Martín Araguz and Bustamante Martínez; Soufas; and Unamuno. Several of the chapters included in this book elaborate on the relationship between Huarte’s ideas and Cervantes’s work (see, for instance, the chapters by Jaén, Jaén and Simon, and Orobitg).

22  Antonio Martín Araguz

Works Cited Ayala, Jorge. “El ‘ingenio’ en Huarte de San Juan y otros escritores españoles.” Actas del VI Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía Española e Iberoamericana. Salamanca: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Salamanca, 1990. 211–223. Baillet, Adrien. La vie de Monsieur Descartes: Seconde partie. Paris: Daniel Horthemels, 1691. Barona, Josep Lluís. Sobre medicina y filosofía natural en el Renacimiento. Valencia: Universitat de València, 1993. Barreiro Barreiro, José Luis. “A Antoniana Margarita de Gómez Pereira: Dimensión europea e lectura verosímil.” En torno a Aristóteles: Homenaje al profesor Pierre Aubenque. Ed. Ángel Álvarez Gómez and Rafael Martínez Castro. Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 1998. 433–455. Barreiro Barreiro, José Luis. “Introduction.” Antoniana Margarita: Reproducción facsimilar de la edición de 1749. By Gómez Pereira. Santiago de Compostela: Fundación Gustavo Bueno, 2000. 7–47. Bullón y Fernández, Eloy. Los precursores españoles de Bacon y Descartes. Salamanca: Imprenta de Calatrava, 1905. Escobar Manzano, Fernando. Huarte de San Juan y Cervantes en la locura de Don Quijote de la Mancha: Breve estudio clínico psicosomático. Granada: Impr. José M. Ventura Hita, 1949. García Ballester, Luis. “Enfermo y enfermedad en la obra de Galeno.” Medicina e Historia 10 (1985): 4–26. García Valverde, José Manuel, and Peter Maxwell-Stuart. “Introduction.” Gómez Pereira’s Antoniana Margarita (2 Vols): A Work on Natural Philosophy, Medicine and Theology. Boston: Brill, 2019. 1–63. García Valverde, José Manuel, and Peter Maxwell-Stuart. Preface. Gómez Pereira’s Antoniana Margarita (2 Vols): A Work on Natural Philosophy, Medicine and Theology. Boston: Brill, 2019. vii–xii. Granjel, Luis S. La medicina española renacentista. Vol. 2 of Historia General de la Medicina Española. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1980. Guardia, J. M. “Philosophes Espagnols: Gómez Pereira.” Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger 28 (1889): 270–291, 382–407, 607–634. Huarte de San Juan, Juan. Examen de ingenios para las ciencias. Ed. Guillermo Serés. Madrid: Cátedra, 1989. Huarte de San Juan, Juan. The Examination of Men’s Wits. Trans. Richard Carew. Ed. Rocío G. Sumillera. London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2014. “Iatrochemistry.” Merriam-Webster.com. Medical Dictionary, MerriamWebster. n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2020. Iriarte, M. El Doctor Huarte de San Juan y su Examen de Ingenios: Contribución a la historia de la psicología diferencial. Madrid: CSIC, 1948. Jaén, Isabel. “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas of His Time: Mind and Development in Don Quixote.” Cognitive Cervantes. Ed. Julien Simon, Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012): 71–98. .

Three Seminal Thinkers  23 Jaén, Isabel. “Cervantes on Human Development: Don Quixote and Renaissance Cognitive Psychology.” Don Quixote: Interdisciplinary Connections. Ed. Matthew D. Warshawsky and James A. Parr. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2013. 35–57. Laín Entralgo, Pedro. “Relieves hipocráticos.” Medicina e Historia 1 (1984): 1–16. Llavona Uribelarrea, Rafael, and Javier Bandrés Ponce. “La recepción del pensamiento de Gómez Pereira en Europa: Del Barroco a la Ilustración.” Revista de Historia de la Psicología 14.3–4 (1993): 131–137. Llavona Uribelarrea, Rafael, and Javier Bandrés Ponce. “Gómez Pereira y la Antoniana Margarita.” Personajes para una historia de la psicología en España. Ed. Milagros Saiz and Dolores Saiz. Madrid: Ediciones Pirámide, 1996. 79–94. López Piñero, J. M. “Los estudios históricos sobre la actividad científica en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII.” Coloquio sobre historia de la ciencia hispanoamericana. Madrid: Real Academia de Ciencias, 1977. 133–166. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “Locos y dementes en la literatura cervantina: A propósito de las fuentes médicas de Cervantes en materia neuropsiquiátrica.” Revista de Neurología 46 (2008): 489–501. . Marco Hidalgo, José. “Doña Oliva Sabuco no fué escritora.” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos 7 (1903): 1–13. Marcos, Benjamín. Miguel Sabuco (antes Doña Oliva). Madrid: Caro Raggio, 1923. Martín Araguz, Antonio. “Historia de la neurociencia en la Antigüedad, Medioevo y Renacimiento: La contribución española.” Historia de la neurología en España. Ed. Antonio Martín Araguz. Madrid: Saned, 2002. 13–52. Martín Araguz, Antonio, and C. Bustamante Martínez. “Examen de ingenios, de Juan Huarte de San Juan, y los albores de la Neurobiología de la inteligencia en el Renacimiento español.” Revista de Neurología 38.12 (2004): 1176–1185. . Martín Araguz, Antonio, C. Bustamante Martínez, and V. Fernández Armayor. “El suco nerveo sabuceano y los orígenes de la neuroquímica en el Renacimiento español.” Revista de Neurología 36.12 (2003): 1190–1198. . Martín Araguz, Antonio, et al. “Antoniana Margarita: Gómez Pereira, Francisco Lobato y los antecedentes del mecanicismo cerebral en el Renacimiento español.” Revista de Neurología 33.1 (2001): 82–89. . Martínez Vidal, Álvaro. Neurociencias y revolución científica en España: La circulación neural. Madrid: CSIC, 1989. Menéndez-Pelayo, Marcelino. “La Antoniana Margarita de Gómez Pereira.” Revista de España 60.239 (1878): 362–375. Menéndez-Pelayo, Marcelino. “La Antoniana Margarita de Gómez Pereira.” Revista de España 60.240 (1878): 474–489. Novísima recopilación de las leyes de España: Tomos IV y V; Libros VIII hasta XII. Imprenta de Sancha, 1805. Pereira, Gómez. Antoniana Margarita. Trans. and Ed. José Manuel García Valverde and Peter Maxwell-Stuart. Gómez Pereira’s Antoniana Margarita (2 Vols): A Work on Natural Philosophy, Medicine and Theology. Boston: Brill, 2019. 71–1153.

24  Antonio Martín Araguz Pérouse, Gabriel-André. En filigrane des Essais. Ed. Jean-Claude Arnould. Paris: Éditions Champions, 2008. Pérouse, Gabriel-André. L’Examen des esprits du Docteur Juan Huarte de San Juan: Sa diffusion et son influence en France au XVI et XVII siècles. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1970. Rivera Garretas, María-Milagros. “Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera.” La literatura escrita por mujer: Desde la Edad Media hasta el siglo XVIII. Ed. María M. Carrión, et al. Vol. 4 of Breve historia feminista de la literatura española (en lengua castellana). Ed. Iris M. Zavala. Barcelona: Anthropos Editorial, 1997. 131–146. Rodríguez Pascual, Francisco. “Una antropología cosmológica y psicosomática en el siglo XVI: Nuevo intento de comprensión de la obra del bachiller M. Sabuco y Álvarez.” Cuadernos salmantinos de filosofía 5 (1978): 407–426. . Rojo Vega, Anastasio. “Ciencia y censura inquisitorial en la España del siglo XVI.” Ciencia, medicina y sociedad en el Renacimiento castellano. Ed. Juan Riera, et al. Valladolid: Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación, 1989. 39–50. Sabuco, Oliva. Nueua filosofia de la naturaleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcançada de los grandes filosofos antiguos: la qual mejora la vida y salud humana. Madrid: P. Madrigal, 1587. Sabuco, Oliva. New Philosophy of Human Nature: Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life and Health. Ed. and Trans. Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2007. Salillas, Rafael. Un gran inspirador de Cervantes, el doctor Juan Huarte y su Examen de ingenios. Madrid: E. Arias, 1905. Sánchez Vega, Miguel. “Estudio comparativo de la concepción mecánica del animal y sus fundamentos en Gómez Pereyra y Renato Descartes.” Revista de Filosofía 13 (1954): 359–463. Sanhueza, Gabriel. La pensée biologique de Descartes dans ses rapports avec la philosophie scolastique: Le cas Gomez-Péreira. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997. Soufas, Teresa S. Melancholy and the Secular Mind in Spanish Golden Age Literature. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1990. Sumillera, Rocío G. “Introduction.” The Examination of Men’s Wits. By Juan Huarte de San Juan. Trans. Richard Carew. Ed. Rocío G. Sumillera. London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2014. 1–67. Unamuno, Miguel de. Vida de don Quijote y Sancho. Madrid: Librería de Fernando Fe, 1905. Waithe, Mary Ellen, and Maria Colomer Vintró. “Last Will and Testament of Miguel Sabuco.” New Philosophy of Human Nature: Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life and Health. By Oliva Sabuco. Ed. and Trans. Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2007. 323–327. Waithe, Mary Ellen, and Maria Elena Vintró. “Posthumously Plagiarizing Oliva Sabuco: An Appeal to Cataloging Librarians.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 35.3–4 (2003): 525–540. . Willis, Thomas. De anima brutorum quae hominis vitalis ac sensitiva est, exercitationes duae. Oxford: Theatro Sheldoniano, 1672.

Section II

Feeling, Thinking, and Remembering in Humans and Brutes

2

Emotion and Human Development in Cervantes’s Don Quijote The Case of Sancho Panza Isabel Jaén

Thanks to cognitive literary studies and to cognitive historicism, we are beginning to understand in more depth Cervantes’s contributions to early modern views of the mind.1 Literary works such as Don Quijote have often been considered fictional accounts of human psychology, influenced to a certain extent by the medical philosophy and the mind science of their time, but not equal contributors to it. These fictional narratives, however, deserve to be included in the category that I call “early modern medical-philosophical discourses about the mind,” for they not only tend to offer an exploration of human cognition and emotion2 in social context but also—as I have previously proposed in relation to Don Quijote— constitute a laboratory where flesh and blood characters embody3 philosophical and medical ideas (Jaén, “Cervantes on Human Development” 55).4 In this regard, these works are an invaluable and necessary part of the early modern psychological inquiry. Don Quijote, particularly, stands out as one of the richest and most complex literary explorations of human cognition ever undertaken. More importantly, what Cervantes offers goes beyond a depiction of the human mind: he investigates the process of human development as it was understood during his time, the cognitive and emotional workings of what makes us human, how we become human.5 The notion of human development during the Renaissance is tied to the natural philosophy conception of the human soul—that is, the “entity” that animates and interacts with our bodies, what today we identify with the mind-body continuum or consciousness—as a composite of three different kinds of soul: a vegetative one, shared with plants and responsible for automatic functions; a sensitive one, shared with animals and where the lower instincts and passions reside; and, finally, a rational one, unique to humans and responsible for our higher faculties. This last component of our souls, the rational, is what allows us to transcend our animal nature and become fully human. In the literature of the early modernity (but not exclusively), we find portrayals of the interaction between our animal and rational souls, often embodied in characters who let themselves be carried away by destructive passions and, as part of a didactic authorial and cultural DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211-2

28  Isabel Jaén intention, represent the dangers of succumbing to our animal instincts, of being ruled by our animal souls. Such is the case, for instance, in the early modern bestseller by Fernando de Rojas, Celestina (originally Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea), where a young maiden and a young gentleman yield to lust, while the marginal characters (the bawd Celestina and the servants) who help them consummate their illicit love fall prey to negative passions such as envy, revenge, and cruelty. These characters are ill-fated by virtue of their inability to transcend their animal impulses and move in a crescendo that takes them to their destruction.6 Conversely, there are also characters in the early modern Spanish literary tradition who embody the inverse process of transcending our animality to fully become human beings. These stories, which I have named brute-to-human narratives, are unique instances of early modern writers’ preoccupation with the development of the human mind (the soul, as it is then named). Rather than presenting a consistent crescendo toward human destruction, something we see in Celestina,7 they offer an account of the challenges that these characters or human models encounter on the road to their development and transformation into better or “fullfledged” human beings. Examples of the fictional modeling of this psychological process include Segismundo in Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño [Life Is a Dream] (1635), where this character is initially introduced as a brute confined in a tower, and, gradually, in a back-and-forth dance in and out of a simulated dream that acts as a vehicle of reflection and self-knowledge, he becomes a human being and a prince.8 The other major example of these brute-to-human narratives is the one that occupies us here: Sancho Panza in Cervantes’s masterpiece, Don Quijote. In this chapter, I discuss Cervantes’s Don Quijote and, particularly, his character Sancho in relation to three fundamental Renaissance medical-philosophical texts: Juan Luis Vives’s treatise De anima et vita [On the Soul and on Life] (1538), Juan Huarte de San Juan’s Examen de ingenios para las ciencias [The Examination of Men’s Wits] (1575), and Oliva de Sabuco’s Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del hombre [New Philosophy of Human Nature] (1587). Before we go any further, we must keep in mind that, first, these are by no means the only influential psychological treatises of the time; second, Cervantes’s ideas, as expressed in Don Quijote, are an amalgam whose essential elements cannot be isolated nor reduced to any particular precepts contained in the abovementioned treatises; and third, as illustrated by the chapters included in the present volume, we must move away from the hierarchical conception of fiction as influenced by science to start regarding both discourses as parallel and equally influential for the culture of the time. Science contributes to fiction just as fiction contributes to science. And both fiction and science contribute to the advancement of human thought and human culture.

Emotion and Human Development  29

Human Development and Emotion in Early Modernity: Three Representative Treatises Vives’s De anima—specifically its third book, which is entirely devoted to the emotions (known then as the affects or passions)—arguably constitutes one of the most important studies of human emotion of early modernity.9 In the introduction, Vives reminds us of the importance of studying the passions of the soul to remedy evils and cure diseases. His is a practical endeavor, as his definition of affects shows: “Ergo istarum facultatum, quibus animi nostri praediti a Natura sunt ad sequendum bonum, vel vitandum malum, actus, dicuntur affectus sive affectiones, quibus ad bonum ferimur, vel contra malum, vel a malo recedimus . . .” (De anima 422) [“The acts of those faculties which nature gave to the soul to follow what is good and avoid what is evil are called ‘affects’ or ‘affections’; through them we are led to the good and move away from or against evil” (2)].10 Because we possess an animal soul and thus an instinct for self-preservation, emotions are bestowed on us to help us approach what is beneficial and avoid what is harmful to our organisms. The difference between the brutes (or animals) and human beings is that while the brutes’ passions are mainly at the service of their instinct of self-preservation, human beings are able to determine not only what is good for their own bodies but also, and more importantly, what is truly good, which in turn leads us to happiness: “nempe illud quod vere est tale, cujusque participatu nos, et boni fimus, et ea de causa beati” (Vives, De anima 421) [“whatever is truly good communicates to us its goodness and makes us happy” (2)]. Indeed, happiness is one the main goals that our creator set for us: “Condidit omnia Rex naturae, ut illis de suo impartiretur esse, quo essent, de sua vero beatitudine, ut bene essent” (De anima 421) [“The King of Nature created everything to exist and thus to share his own Being, and to exist happily and thus to share his own Beatitude . . .” (1)]. To that purpose, he endowed us with the faculty of judgment, which either pushes us to action or restrains us. As human beings, we must exercise this faculty to discern what is truly good and to control the negative and destructive emotions as well as to foster the positive and beneficial ones. According to Vives, the trained mind is able to control and direct the passions (De anima 422). Vives emphasizes the psychosomatic aspects of emotion. On the one hand, affects alter the body: sadness, for instance, makes us cold, dries the body, and shrinks the heart; joy makes us warm and wet; anger makes the blood around the heart boil; fear loosens the bowels; and so forth. On the other, as affects are linked to our animal flesh, the more our judgment becomes contaminated by contact with our body, the stronger and more numerous our emotions. By contrast, the purer and higher our judgment, the lighter and fewer our emotions (De anima 425). Moreover, the state of the body, our bodily habits (what we eat,

30  Isabel Jaén drink), our age, and any disease we may suffer cause bodily changes that in turn generate emotions (De anima 423). An example of a negative emotion and its effects is irritation: primus mali morsus offensio dicitur, tamquam quum quis impingit, est enim dolor ex incongruentis mali contactu, unde alii affectus suppullulant odii, invidentiae, irae, et est animi ille dolor dolori corporis haud absimilis, qui existit a prima vellicatione aut punctione . . . (Vives, De anima 471) the pain we feel at our first contact with something discordant and harmful, a pain that causes other emotions: hatred, envy, anger. This pain of the soul is similar to the bodily pain that we feel when we get plucked or stung . . . (60) In opposition, an example of an emotion that benefits humans is compassion: “Affectus est misericordia mansuetissimus, et hominum generi magno suo bono a Deo tributus ad opem mutuam et consolationem variorum casuum qui incurrunt in vitam, in quibus amoris defectum supplet misericordia” (De anima 461) [“Compassion is a very gentle emotion given by God to mankind as a great good and for our mutual help and consolation through the various misfortunes of life . . .” (47)]. This emotion proceeds from love, and love is reinforced by it (De anima 462). Furthermore, comparing the movements of the soul to those of the sea, Vives classifies emotions according to their intensity: they can be light, like a raising wave or the prelude to a tempest, while “aliae animum universum concutiunt, deque rationis sede, ac statu judicii, depellunt, quae vere sunt perturbationes, et impotentiae quòd quasi jam animus sui non sit compos, sed in alienam potestatem reciderit, et caecitates quòd nihil despiciat” (De anima 424; emphasis in original) [“others are powerful enough to shake up the soul and dethrone it from the seat of rational judgment by rendering it truly disturbed and impotent, deprived of self-control, subject to strange powers and totally blind, unable to see anything” (5)]. Depending on these qualities and effects, terminology varies: while the light movements are called “affectiones” [affections], the strong ones are called “commotiones” [commotions] or “concitationes” [agitations] (De anima 424). Vives also points to the duration of emotions: some are transient, such as the fear caused by a noise, and others are long-lasting. Emotions may persist by virtue of habit. This happens often in the case of negative emotions, which are then called “vitia et morbi animi” (De anima 424) [“vices and diseases of the soul” (5)]. These diseases of the soul are the result of our judgment’s failure to contain the negative passions, due to ignorance, lack of consideration, or falseness, as when we consider goods or evils to be greater than they really are (De anima 425).

Emotion and Human Development  31 To sum up, emotions are psychosomatic phenomena that link our bodies to our souls. At the same time, our souls (via our rational faculties, specifically judgment) both control and are controlled by our emotions, which are strengthened by habit. It is thus very important to develop good habits of the soul in order to control the negative harmful passions (such as anger, envy, and revenge) and to foster those that are beneficial to mankind (such as love or compassion). In doing so, we are able to transcend our animal nature and approach that Supreme Good, represented by the Creator. Vives’s moral philosophical ideas on human nature and habit bring us to the way that human development is viewed from a medical humoral standpoint by doctor Huarte de San Juan, who authored one of the most widely read and influential treatises on human cognition written in early modernity, the Examen de ingenios, originally published in 1575 and quickly translated into several languages and disseminated throughout Europe. In his book, Huarte offers a pragmatic view of the necessary balance between nature (what has been given to us, our humoral constitution or temperament, responsible for the functioning of our faculties) and nurture (the habits or measures we can adopt to make sure that we maximize those abilities bestowed on us by nature) for the benefit of the Republic. Self-knowledge, understood in this context as knowledge of our cognitive limitations, helps man occupy his rightful position in society, thus enabling the optimal functioning of our political and social structures. Men possess different cognitive abilities (related to the different faculties: imagination, judgment, and memory), which determine their suitability for important jobs and roles such as lawmaker, doctor, or king. In fact, according to Huarte, men are by default distempered and, thus, incapable wits. Our specific inability depends on our natural constitution, on the impossibility of finding in the human organism the perfect balance among the four main qualities (hot, cold, dry, and humid), which results in the four unbalanced human temperaments: sanguine (hot and humid), choleric (hot and dry), melancholic (cold and dry), and phlegmatic (cold and humid). Each of these unbalanced temperaments possesses cognitive strengths and weaknesses. For instance, in a brain with an excess of humidity, the faculty of memory is strengthened and judgment weakened, and the opposite is true in a dry brain (strong judgment and weak memory). Our lack of temperance is also due to factors such as our geographic location, age, emotional health, diet, and other habits. Far from offering a deterministic view of human cognition as unmodifiable, Huarte advocates for what I will call a psychosomatic developmental view, one that is consistent with the Galenic idea that the faculties of the soul follow the temperaments of the body. Habit may modify nature, help balance our temperament, and have an impact on our rational faculties; however,

32  Isabel Jaén any modification needs to happen first in the body. For instance, meditation alone cannot be responsible for the development of our judgment and our transformation into prudent and wiser human beings, as some moral philosophers claimed at the time.11 Huarte, whose work was censored, toned down his views on embodiment by stressing, in the 1594 expurgated version of his Examen and in accordance with the dogma of free will, that it is the soul that moves the body (and not the body that conditions the soul): “Y si las virtudes y vicios fuesen hábitos que dependieran del temperamento, seguirseía que el hombre obraría como agente natural y no libre” (252) [If virtues and vices were habits dependent on temperament, man would act as a natural agent and not a free agent]. Nonetheless, he still manages to communicate his materialist understanding of the human mind, backed by the authority of the grave philosophers and doctors (mainly Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen) while cautiously and subtly challenging the opinion of moral philosophers who, according to him, are mistaken in not paying attention to medicine: no hay virtud ni vicio en el hombre . . . que no tenga su temperatura en los miembros del cuerpo, que le ayude o desayude en sus obras, a la cual, impropriamente, llaman los filósofos morales vicio o virtud, viendo que ordinariamente los hombres no tienen otras costumbres sino aquellas que apunta su temperamento. (253; emphasis in original) There is no virtue or vice in man that does not have its temperature in the body to help him or hinder him in his deeds, which moral philosophers inappropriately call vice or virtue, seeing that generally men do not have any other habits than those signaled by their temperament.12 In this sense, meditation as a means of self-improvement—usually paired with fasting and lack of sleep, which turn men weak and yellow—does not operate directly on the soul as moral philosophers believe but through the body, as doctors acknowledge: Mas el médico, que sabe de dónde nace la flaqueza y color amarillo, y cómo se introducen las virtudes y corrompen los vicios, dirá que este hombre tiene ya hábito de castidad y temperancia porque con aquellos remedios se perdió el calor natural y en su lugar sucedió frialdad. (Huarte 258) But the doctor, who knows the origin of the weakness and the yellowness, and how virtues are introduced and vices corrupted, will say that this man already has a habit of chastity and temperance because with those remedies the natural heat was lost and replaced by coldness.

Emotion and Human Development  33 In sum, habits that alter the temperature and condition of the body, making it lose its heat, can potentially modify our minds or souls, contributing to the development of our rational faculties and thus to make us wiser human beings. Among those habits and resulting conditions, we find fasting (food is to our nature what oil is to a lamp), discipline (it makes man lose his pulse and natural heat, particularly when it is painful and draws blood), wakefulness (which cools vital organs: stomach, liver, and heart), and meditation and prayer (which make heat come up to the head, leaving the rest of the body cold and causing the loss of the sense of touch). When it comes to our emotions and associated behaviors, these body-mind habits are particularly important, as illustrated, for instance, by the following passage: Y si alguno se pone a considerar y meditar en la injuria que otro le ha hecho, luego se sube el calor natural y toda la sangre al corazón, y fortifica la facultad irascible y debilita la racional; y si pasa la consideración a que Dios manda perdonar la[s] injurias y hacer bien a nuestros enemigos, y al premio que da por ello, vase todo el calor natural y sangre a la cabeza, y fortifica la facultad racional y debilita la irascible. (273) If a man considers and meditates on the harm caused by another, natural heat and all the blood will ascend to the heart, fortifying the irascible faculty and weakening the rational one; and if a man considers that God orders to pardon offenses and do good to our enemies, and the price He gives in return, all the natural heat and the blood goes to the head, fortifying the rational faculty and debilitating the irascible one. The physiological changes caused by meditation may help us dissipate harmful passions such as anger, hatred, or revenge, thereby avoiding the destructive behavior they may cause. On this point, the excerpt above illustrates what Huarte claims throughout his treatise: adopting adequate habits that modify the body and, in turn, improve our rational faculties (helping us temper our passions) is crucial for our health and development. A psychosomatic view of body and soul is also central to the third treatise that we shall briefly discuss: Oliva de Sabuco’s Nueva filosofía. This text is constructed as a dialogue between two shepherds. It is a hybrid between the treatise genre and the pastoral narrative that weaves together philosophical and fictional discourses. At the core of her project, Sabuco places self-knowledge, that is, knowledge of our human soul and our human nature: “Nosce te ipsum. Conocete a ti mismo . . . es cosa que tanto monta conocerse el hombre, y saber en que difiere delos brutos animales” (6r) [Know yourself . . . it is important for man to know himself and to know how he differs from the

34  Isabel Jaén brute animals].13 To know our human nature is not only to know what differentiates us from the rest of the animals but also, and crucially, to understand the connection that exists between our bodies and our souls: how the workings of our sensitive soul (our emotions) can positively or negatively impact our organisms. Emotions have the power to bring us either happiness or illness and death. Sabuco reminds us that emotions also have an effect in some animals, since they are connected to our sensitive soul, the soul that we share with them. This is illustrated, for instance, by Plinius’s account of the dog and the horse whose owners died and, refusing to eat, ended up dying themselves (8v). Yet, the fundamental difference between the affective life of animals and that of humans is that humans possess a rational soul and della le resultan las potencias, reminiscencia, memoria, entendimiento, razon y voluntad . . . y por el entendimiento entiende y siente los males y daños presentes: y por la memoria se acuerda de los daños y males passados: y por la razon y prudencia teme y espera los daños y males futuros. Y por la voluntad aborrece estos tres generos de males, presentes, passados, y futuros: y ama y dessea: teme y aborrece: tiene esperança y desesperança: gozo y plazer: enojo y pesar: temor, cuydado y congoxa. (9r–9v) From it come the faculties of understanding, memory, reason, and volition . . . The understanding senses and comprehends present dangers and evils. The memory remembers past harms and evils. Prudential reason anticipates and fears future evils and harms. The will abhors these three kinds of evils, past, present, and future. In loving and desiring, fearing and abhorring them there is hope and despair, enjoyment and delight, anger and grief, fear, dread, and distress. (49) Thus, humans, by virtue of these rational faculties that allow them to constantly project themselves and evaluate past, present, and future, are subject to the intensity and complexity of an affective life that features myriad emotions, including “dolor entendido espiritual de lo presente, pesar de lo passado, temor, congoxa y cuydado de lo por venir. Por todo lo qual les vienen tantos generos de enfermedades, y tantas muertes repentinas . . .” (9v) [“intellectual pain of the present, sorrow about the past, fear, distress, and dread of the hereafter. As a result, many kinds of diseases and many sudden deaths befall them” (49)]. Among the negative emotions that damage our health, Sabuco includes “miedo y temor de lo que está por venir” [dreadful anticipation]. This affect may be caused by imminent or imagined danger, and it may kill immediately, as in the case of those condemned to death who die before reaching the gallows, or may damage one’s health and kill in the long run, by producing melancholic humor, which “pone tristezas en el celebro, y coraçon . . .” (22r) [“sets sadness in the brain and heart . . .” (55)] and

Emotion and Human Development  35 derives in desperation. To fight this harmful affect, humans must, on the one hand, be aware of this deadly condition and not let themselves be killed by it and, on the other, employ the following remedies: “alegria, buenolor, musica, el campo, el sonido de arboles y agua, buena conversacion, tomar plazeres y contentos por todas vias” (22v) [joy, pleasant scents, music, the fields, the sound of trees and water, good conversation, to take delectation and contentment by all means]. These remedies act on the body, pleasing the senses and counteracting the negative effects of melancholia. Furthermore, Sabuco tells us that seven affects that are mortal sins harm the soul but also the body (34v). These are soberbia [arrogance or excessive pride], avaricia [greed], ira [anger], luxuria [lust], pereza y ocio [laziness and idleness], gula [gluttony], celos [jealousy], and venganza [vengeance]—this last affect is added by Sabuco. She dedicates specific sections to lust, laziness and idleness, jealousy, and vengeance, in which she continues to stress the connection between body and soul when pointing to the destructive powers of these emotions. In line with the humoral medical views of her time, Sabuco emphasizes the bodily aspects of this body-mind dynamic: the venereal act consumes the radical humor (35v); the lack of exercise and excessive sleep that come with laziness and idleness make the brain soft, tender, and watery (36v); and jealousy draws from the brain a bad melancholic humor (37v). Moreover, she often accentuates the destructive behavior produced by these negative emotions as well as the resulting social consequences. For her, vengeance “Acarrea al hombre grandes perdidas y enfermedades, y muertes . . .” (39r) [“brings humans great losses, diseases, and deaths . . .” (64)]. The blend of natural and moral philosophy relates Sabuco’s project to that of Vives and Huarte, who, as we discussed, far from simply offering a systematic account of human body-mind workings, connect the human organism to the wider social context in which it is immersed, accounting for both biology and culture in their discussion of human nature. These thinkers begin with the premise that knowing our human nature leads to the betterment of our society. They emphasize the embodied mind and suggest that knowing how the bodily states influence cognition and emotion, how the soul is modulated by the body, is paramount to understanding human nature. They do this at a time when scientific attempts to discuss the material bases of the rational soul and its faculties are viewed with suspicion by religious censorship. Let us briefly discuss those affects that Sabuco classifies as supportive of human health. Two are, according to her, the pillars of health: “alegría y contento” [happiness and content] and “esperanza de bien” [hope for the good or optimism]. The latter is central to human health and to the human world: La esperança de bien, es la que sustenta (como una coluna) la salud, y vida humana, y govierna el mundo, la que haze todas las cosas de este mundo. Ninguna cosa mueve al hombre, sino la esperança de

36  Isabel Jaén bien. . . . Esta da salud, como la quita su contraria. Con esta bive el hombre, y sin ella no quiere la vida. Esta da alegria, contento, fuerças, y aliento para qualquier trabajo. . . . Esta quita las fuerças al grande enemigo del genero humano, enojo, y pesar, y a todos los demas contrarios de la vida del hombre, que no hazen tanto efeto, aguandose aquel mal con el bien que espera haze lo dificultoso, facil, alivia todo trabajo. (46r–46v) Hope for the good sustains (like a column) human health and life, and governs the world, it makes things in this world possible. Nothing moves man like hope for good. It brings health, just as its opposite takes it away. With it, man lives and without it he does not want life. It brings happiness, content, strength, and encouragement for any endeavor. It weakens the power of the greatest enemy of mankind, anger and grief, and of all other enemies of man’s life, whose effect is diminished, helping us endure evil in front of the good foreseen, it makes the difficult easy, alleviates all tasks. As stated above, hope for the good not only is the antidote to unhealthy and negative emotions such as anger and grief, which bring illness and death to man, but also helps us endure hardship. Furthermore, this important emotion is the catalyzer or force behind every human ambition, endeavor, and innovation: Esta edifico las ciudades. Planto los arboles. Rompio los montes. Dio mejor camino a los rios. Hizo las batallas. Fabrico las naos. Mostro andar, y navegar sobre el agua. Rompe las entrañas a la tierra, buscando el oro, y plata . . . . Esta fundo las leyes, escribio las ciencias, y dotrinas. (46v) It built cities. Planted trees. Split mountains. Gave better course to the rivers. Fought battles. Built ships. Showed how to navigate the waters. Tears the entrails of the Earth in search of gold and silver . . . . It founded law, wrote the sciences and doctrines . . . . Ultimately, it is also the raison d’être of Sabuco’s own theory: “Esta mueve mi torpe, y humilde lengua” [it moves my clumsy tongue], as well as the cause of good deeds, “Esta haze obrar las virtudes, y buenas obras . . .” (46v) [it brings about virtues and good deeds]. Other affects and habits are also beneficial to the organism, such as love of others, friendship, and good conversation. Lack of company leads to melancholy, and that is the reason why humans must love and befriend others. Sabuco stresses the social condition of man and tells us that “el amigo es otro yo, y assi como el ser es la mayor felicidad, y dexar de ser es la mayor miseria, assi es gran felicidad ser hombre

Emotion and Human Development  37 dos vezes, teniendo amigo verdadero” (51v) [The friend is another me and just as existing is the greatest happiness and ceasing to exist the greatest misery, it is great happiness to be doubly human by having a true friend]. Friendship and love also exist among animals, belonging to the same and different species, as well as between animals and humans (49r–50r). Regarding love, Sabuco warns that, as it happens with every healthy affect, an excess of it can kill. Paradoxically, this is also true for the affect of “misericordia” (compassion), which, as we saw, Vives had regarded as beneficial to mankind. While Sabuco tells us that humans should learn compassion from some animals, such as cranes, which take care of their parents in old age, she also emphasizes the harm that this affect can cause to the brain, given its condition of “pena, y dolor de la miseria ajena” [sorrow and pain of other’s miseries]: it draws fluid from the brain and may cause tears, faintness, and great harm (33r–33v). Just as her predecessors, Vives and Huarte, had done, Sabuco places at the core of her theory the notion of “temperancia” or “templanza” [temperance] in consonance with Hippocratic, Aristotelian, and Christian views on the importance of balance for physical and spiritual health. For the benefit of the individual organism, as well as that of the community, temperance must rule every aspect of life and every habit: work and exercise, food and drink, sleep and idleness, and sex. Temperance is crucial to avoid illness, and it is particularly important for our affective life, as emotional excess can alter the brain fluid, causing “daño, tristeza, enfermedad, o muerte: y assi el hombre el mismo con sus manos se mata . . .” (48r) [harm, sadness, sickness, or death: and that is how man kills himself with his own hands]. Temperance is a uniquely human feature; it is tied to volition, to will, which is enabled by understanding. Animals are unable to exercise temperance, since their sensitive appetite (instinct) instigates them, and they cannot rectify nor deliberate (48v). In this regard, we find in Sabuco a philosophical variant of the brute-to-human paradigm: by virtue of the rational faculties, humans are able to temper habit and emotion, in order to avoid harmful excess and find balance. This ability is, precisely, what distinguishes humans from brutes, by allowing them to transcend their sensitive instinctual soul and become fully human.

Cervantes’s Ideas on Human Development and Emotion We now move to our fourth thinker: Cervantes himself. In the last section of this chapter, I shall discuss some of the ideas on human development that permeate Don Quijote, ideas that are in consonance with the psychosomatic cognitive-emotional views that we have previously discussed. I consider three themes to be the pillars of Cervantes’s portrayal or “theory,” if you will, of human development: (1) the control of our negative emotions and the cultivation of those that are beneficial; (2) the development of our rational faculties via acquisition of good

38  Isabel Jaén body-mind habits (nature-nurture balance); and (3) self-knowledge, the importance of knowing our own abilities and limitations. The character who best represents our subject in Cervantes’s novel is Sancho Panza. Although Don Quixote’s mind tends to draw more attention than Sancho’s and, thereby, has been more thoroughly examined in Cervantine studies, I have consistently argued in my work that Sancho’s mind is as central as the knight-errant’s and in fact constitutes the central mind when it comes to Cervantes’s investigation of human development, since he is indeed the character that better embodies the process of becoming fully human that Cervantes explores. Sancho is first introduced in the novel as a human brute. He seems to be ruled by the basic instincts of his animal soul and reaches out to what is “good” for his body (food, sleep), in order to avoid discomfort. In Renaissance philosophy, as we have previously discussed, brutes lack the ability to think beyond what is beneficial or harmful to their organisms. On the other hand, humans, by virtue of their rational soul, are able to elevate themselves over the material world to seek not only what is good in terms of survival but what is morally good, truly good, or “true.” To reach truth, the rational soul relies on the hierarchy of the faculties or cognitive abilities. It is important to remember that, although reason separates brutes from humans, the cognitive boundaries between the two are viewed as fuzzy in early modernity. Some animals, which have “mayor cantidad de celebro” [more brains or a bigger brain], such as “la mona” [female monkey], “la zorra” [vixen], and “el perro” [male dog], “se van llegando más a la prudencia y discreción humana” [approach more closely human prudence and intelligence] (Huarte 281). These animals are believed to possess a higher degree of cognition than others. On the contrary, some humans who let their bodies and their passions rule their souls are like brutes: “Unos hombres hay cuya ánima está tan sepultada en las calidades materiales del cuerpo y tan asida de las causas, que echan a perder la parte racional” (Huarte 214) [There are some men whose soul is so buried in the material qualities of the body and so tied to its causes that they waste their rational faculty]; these wits are incapable of engendering any wisdom or letters. As we shall see, Sancho corresponds at first to the description of such brute-like humans, but as the story unfolds, he will gradually change in contact with the physical and social environments that he encounters in his chivalric journey and, eventually, he will transcend his brutish condition. How does he manage to do so? In other words, how does Cervantes explore human development and how does he elaborate on the early modern debate between nature (what is bestowed on us) and nurture (the habits we adopt) through the character of Sancho Panza? The first Sancho we discover corresponds indeed to the Huartian description of the incapable wit, buried in the materiality of his body.

Emotion and Human Development  39 He possesses a hot and humid temperament, with a predominance of blood and phlegm (generally regarded as the constituents of simpleminded humans), and a plump body, and resembles a pig.14 As Huarte had declared following Galen, by virtue of the physiological connection between the stomach and the brain, “el vientre grueso engendra grueso entendimiento” (282) [a thick stomach or belly engenders a thick (unable) understanding]. To this unfavorable natural temperament, Sancho adds a series of unhealthy habits, known to ruin humans’ rational faculties: excess of food and sleep. As readers, we quickly find out through his conversations with Don Quixote how simple-minded Sancho is and how his ambitions to improve his social standing clash against his lack of cognitive ability, particularly his defective judgment in choosing to follow a madman as a path to prosperity. In sum, the character that Cervantes initially presents to us is a human brute, whose pretension to rule over the island that Don Quixote promises him in return for his services as squire is laughable, for he does not possess the wits to be a governor. Regarding his emotional life, Sancho, however, shows from the beginning of the novel positive attributes that will be crucial for his development: Cervantes endows him with the healthy and beneficial affect that Sabuco had named “esperanza de bien” [hope for the good or optimism], as well as with a significant dose of “alegría y contento” [happiness and contentment]. He is also good-natured and capable of friendship, love, and compassion for others, as he demonstrates in his love and friendship for his loyal donkey, “el rucio,” his intention to provide for his family, and his sympathy for Don Quixote’s mistakes and misfortunes through episodes such as the battle against the windmills in chapter 8 of Part I. Although Sancho further develops these qualities throughout the novel, it is important to stress that they are already part of his nature. Other affects naturally occurring in him are more problematic and in some cases the result of his unhealthy habits, such as the case of his irritation at any circumstance that threatens his comfort, often derived from his gluttony or laziness, two of the habits that are classified by the Catholic Church as mortal sins. When circumstances stand in the way of his bodily needs (food or rest), Sancho feels the soul pain that Vives had described as similar to the pain felt when being plucked or stung (De anima 471). We witness Sancho’s irritation, for instance, during his governorship of Barataria, as he continually suffers from hunger because of Dr. Pedro Recio’s dietetic restrictions, necessary for the good functioning of his wit and adequate performance as a governor. There are occasions when this irritation develops into anger, as when he is deprived of sleep by the unexpected appearance of the peasant of Miguel Turra, who insists on seeing the governor at siesta time to ask for money for his son’s marriage in chapter 47 of Part II. To this irritating circumstance, Sancho reacts aggressively, threatening to crack the peasant’s head open with a chair.

40  Isabel Jaén Another affect naturally occurring in Sancho is fear. He fears both real danger (e.g., as Don Quixote lets the lion escape its cage in chapter 17 of Part II) and imaginary danger (e.g., in the adventure of the fulling mills in chapter 20 of Part I, where his bowels loosen upon hearing a spooky noise in the darkness of the night). He also fears the future, the prospect of being arrested because of Don Quixote’s deeds, as well as the unknown and potentially dangerous adventures that Don Quixote seeks. Nonetheless, although fear is a very harmful affect that can make humans ill or even kill them, as Sabuco had made clear, in Sancho’s case, this affect becomes the catalyzer that eventually allows him to escape the emotionally draining situation in which the Duke and the Duchess put him at Barataria, as we shall discuss below. All in all, Sancho appears initially to us with important cognitiveemotional limitations due to his temperament but also with the emotional qualities that will help him transcend his brute-like nature. In the last section of this chapter, I discuss briefly some of the situations that help him move beyond his animality. The first and most important circumstance that contributes to modify Sancho’s temperament and habits, and in turn his cognitive ability, is his travels with Don Quixote throughout the lands of La Mancha, where he must deal with frugal meals and little rest, factors that, according to the medical philosophy of the time, may have helped balance Sancho’s humid temperament, improving his rational faculties. Moreover, his journey with his master poses some serious cognitive challenges, derived from dealing with a reality that is only in Don Quixote’s imagination and that forces Sancho to undertake endeavors such as searching for a lady who does not exist (Dulcinea). This context is beyond a situation of basic animal survival and pushes Sancho to exercise his higher human abilities (imagination, memory, and judgment) to find creative and effective solutions to the problems posed by his master’s cognitive and behavioral derangement. Cervantes offers notable transitional scenes centered on how Sancho develops these abilities in the face of Don Quixote’s demands. One example is the soliloquy in chapter 10 of Part II, where Sancho admirably exhibits a coherent discourse that traces both the cause of the situation (Don Quixote’s madness) and the most adequate course of action (i.e., the one that will suppose less effort and pain for Sancho himself). The result of these deliberations is his decision to go along with the circumstances and tell Don Quixote what he needs to hear. Hence, as Don Quixote stays in the forest, sending Sancho on a second embassy to Dulcinea—the first one had resulted in the squire skillfully inventing a dialogue that had never taken place between him and the lady in chapter 31 of Don Quijote Part I—Sancho gets off his donkey, sits by a tree, and asks himself a set of key questions: —Sepamos ahora, Sancho hermano, adónde va vuesa merced. ¿Va a buscar algún jumento que se le haya perdido? —No, por cierto. — Pues ¿qué va a buscar? —Voy a buscar, como quien no dice nada, a

Emotion and Human Development  41 una princesa . . . —¿Y habeisla visto algún día por ventura? —Ni yo ni mi amo la habemos visto jamás. (II.10.615–616)15 “Let us know now, Sancho, my brother, where your grace is going. Are you going to look for a donkey that you have lost?” “No, certainly not.” “Well, what are you going to look for?” “I am going to look, as if this was nothing, for a princess . . .” “And have you ever seen her by any chance?” “Neither I nor my master have ever seen her.” He goes on to express his fear of the choleric temperament of the Manchegan people and of being beaten up by the villagers of Toboso for disturbing them and concludes: “Este mi amo por mil señales he visto que es un loco de atar, y aun también yo no le quedo en zaga, pues soy más mentecato que él, pues le sigo y le sirvo . . .” (II.10.616) [This master of mine, as I have seen in a thousand signs, is a raving lunatic, and I am not far behind, I am more of a fool, as I follow him and serve him]. Finally, based on his memory of how Don Quixote had failed to see reality in chapter 8 (the windmills he took for giants) or chapter 18 (the flock of sheep that were enemy armies for him) of Part I, Sancho resolves at the end of his soliloquy to use his imagination to deceive Don Quixote: “no será muy difícil hacerle creer que una labradora, la primera que me topare por aquí, es la señora Dulcinea” (II.10.617) [it won’t be difficult to make him believe that a peasant girl, the first one I stumble upon around here, is the lady Dulcinea]. Needless to say, despite Don Quixote’s initial skepticism, Sancho’s farce works quite well, and the enchanters who despise the knight are blamed for having altered the form of his lady Dulcinea and deprived Don Quixote of the happiness he could have reached by seeing her in all her beauty.16 Regardless of the many hardships they face, what keeps both Don Quixote and Sancho going is their hope for the good: Don Quixote hopes for fame in helping mankind; Sancho, for wealth and a better social position for his family. Thanks to this affect, both endure their difficult journey, and Sancho, particularly, resists the attack perpetrated against his dignity and his organism during his time as governor of Barataria. The Barataria episode is a splendid example of Cervantes’s taste for metafiction. In this episode, which begins in chapter 42 and concludes in chapter 53 of Part II of the novel, a Duke and a Duchess—who happened to have read the first part of Don Quijote and were lucky enough to meet their favorite fictional characters—decide to entertain themselves by ridiculing the pair through a series of clever hoaxes, especially by granting Sancho his long-awaited governorship. In relation to the themes discussed here, this episode is also the laboratory that Cervantes employs to test, and demonstrate for his readers, his character’s cognitive and emotional maturity. Two different planes intersect in this scenario designed to humiliate the squire: at one level, as governor, Sancho needs to offer proof

42  Isabel Jaén of his ability to judge, through the trials he has to lead. The second stratum corresponds to the constant emotional challenges he faces, as his government consists of a series of irritating, annoying, and frustrating situations engineered precisely to push his buttons and lead him to the verge of a breakdown. To everyone’s surprise, including Don Quixote’s, Sancho performs quite well as governor. He skillfully exercises his duty as judge, ends up submitting himself (not without difficulty) to the healthy dietary habits dictated by his doctor, and learns to temper negative passions such as irritation, anger, and fear, and to foster and exhibit beneficial ones such as compassion. Finally, he shows his commitment to society, to his fellow Baratarians, by engaging in lawmaking and creating what will be known as “The Constitution of the Great Governor Sancho Panza.” I have written elsewhere about why Sancho is capable of exhibiting such an “unexpected” wisdom as governor, how he develops and shows his cognitive ability17; thus, I shall focus here specifically on how his emotional experience at Barataria leads him to complete his developmental journey by allowing him to acknowledge his limitations, who he really is, and what makes him truly happy. In chapter 53 of Part II, the Duke and Duchess, defeated in their ill intentions by Sancho’s wit and ability, decide to further this simulacrum with an “invasion” of Barataria. This will be the final test for Sancho’s wit and temperance. As he lies in bed one night, he hears a great noise of bells and voices. He comes out of his room and is urged to take arms in order to defend the island from imminent invasion. Fear of what is to come makes him reject their plea initially, but the new Sancho rises over the old one and, aware of his obligation as governor, accepts to be armed. As part of the joke, Sancho is walled between two large shields, unable to move. He complains: “¿Cómo tengo de caminar, desventurado yo . . . que no puedo jugar las choquezuelas de las rodillas, porque me lo impiden estas tablas que tan cosidas tengo con mis carnes?” (II.53.955) [How am I to walk, miserable me . . . since I cannot move my knee joints because of these boards that are so sewn to my body?]. He tries to move and falls to the floor, where he stays resembling a giant turtle or half a pig between two salting planks. Rather than showing compassion and helping, the malicious mockers torture him by stamping and tramping all over him, and beating their swords on their shields: “si él no se recogiera y encogiera metiendo la cabeza entre los paveses, lo pasara muy mal el pobre gobernador, el cual, en aquella estrecheza recogido, sudaba y trasudaba y de todo corazón se encomendaba a Dios que de aquel peligro le sacase” (II.53.955) [hadn’t he taken refuge and shrunk his head into the shields, the poor governor would have suffered greatly; enclosed in such narrow space, he sweated and sweated and with all his heart entrusted himself to God to take him out of that danger]. As the violence intensifies, Sancho begs in desperation to the Lord. Then, the

Emotion and Human Development  43 joke stops abruptly and the islanders scream: “¡Victoria, victoria, los enemigos van de vencida!” (II.53.956) [Victory, victory, our enemies have been defeated!]. Sancho, in pain, is taken to his chambers where he faints as a result of the intense fear that he has experienced. When he regains consciousness, the first thing he does is see his equine friend, “el rucio”: —Venid vos acá, compañero mío y amigo mío y conllevador de mis trabajos y miserias: cuando yo me avenía con vos y no tenía otros pensamientos que los que me daban los cuidados de remendar vuestros aparejos y de sustentar vuestro corpezuelo, dichosas eran mis horas, mis días y mis años; pero después que os dejé y me subí sobre las torres de la ambición y de la soberbia, se me han entrado por el alma adentro mil miserias, mil trabajos y cuatro mil desasosiegos. (II.53.956–957) Come here, my companion, my friend, fellow sufferer in my trials and miseries: when I got along with you and had no other thoughts but mending your harness and feeding your small body, my hours, my days, and my years were happy, but after I left you and climbed up the towers of ambition and pride, a thousand miseries, a thousand troubles, and four thousand anxieties have entered my soul. What Cervantes creates in this scene is a live portrayal of the impact of fear on the body and the mind. His depiction seems to be the perfect complement to those previously offered by Vives and Sabuco, who, following Aristotle, thought of this emotion as a disturbance of the soul caused by the thought of approaching danger. However, Cervantes’s fictional take on fear through the character of Sancho takes a step beyond by also illustrating the positive outcome of acknowledging the harmful effects of this emotion, as well as of taking action in order to avoid future comparable situations. We may say that Cervantes recreates for us readers the praxis of the theoretical advice that Sabuco gave in her Nueva filosofía to fight fear: be aware of it and refuse to be harmed by it, seeking joy and happiness to counteract the melancholia that it causes. Thus, Sancho not only runs to find comfort in “el rucio” but also determines to leave his governorship in favor of his previous and happy life. Saddling his donkey and addressing all those present, he delivers a profoundly lucid speech, in which he acknowledges his limitations to carry out a role that does not suit his temperament nor makes him happy as he had expected but fills him with anxiety and fear: “Abrid camino, señores míos, y dejadme volver a mi antigua libertad . . . . Yo no nací para ser gobernador ni para defender ínsulas ni ciudades de los enemigos que quisieren acometerlas” (II.53.957) [Make way, Señores, and let me go back to my old freedom . . . . I wasn’t born to be a governor nor to defend islands or cities from enemies who want to attack them]. Sancho then conveys that he would rather stuff himself

44  Isabel Jaén of gazpacho than starve to death as governor, and he would rather nap under a tree wearing a wool jacket than sleep between delicate sheets and wear sables. As we read his speech, we become aware of Sancho’s transformation. He has indeed achieved the three goals enunciated at the beginning of this section, the three pillars of human development in Cervantes: the control of his negative emotions and cultivation of beneficial ones, the development of his rational faculties via acquisition of good body-mind habits, and the acknowledgment of his own abilities and limitations (self-knowledge). Sancho’s journey, however, does not end here. He continues to develop cognitively and emotionally until and after Don Quixote leaves us. As he abandons Barataria, new adventures await the pair and, in them, we readers recognize the “new” Sancho, a Sancho who successfully underwent his brute-to-human transformation. This Sancho will do the impossible to help his master find the happiness that he has now glimpsed: a happiness based on friendship, love, and the healthy environment that tranquility brings. When Don Quixote, defeated and hopeless, falls into mortal melancholy, only joy, good conversation, and the pleasures of nature can cure him, in consonance with Sabuco’s recommendations. Thus, Sancho tries to make his master take the medicine he needs: the pastoral life they have planned together, a life of joy, good conversation, poetry, and music in the calmness of the fields, to bring him delectation and contentment.18 And so, Sancho cries: ¡Ay! . . . No se muera vuestra merced, señor mío . . . porque la mayor locura que puede hacer un hombre en esta vida es dejarse morir sin más ni más, sin que nadie le mate ni otras manos le acaben que las de la melancolía. Mire no sea perezoso, sino levántese de esa cama, y vámonos al campo vestidos de pastores, como tenemos concertado . . . (II.74.1102) Oh! . . . don’t die, señor mío, for the greatest madness a man can carry out in this life is to let himself die just like that, without anyone killing him but the hands of melancholy. Look, don’t be lazy but get out of that bed and let’s go to the countryside dressed as shepherds, as we have disposed. In his desperate attempt to animate Don Quixote, Sancho is taking somehow the role of emotional doctor. As Don Quixote’s death becomes imminent, Sancho is afraid. This fear, however, is not the survival animal fear that he had previously experienced; it is a profoundly human one, the fear of losing Don Quixote, a friend he truly loves. He also feels compassion. This time his compassion is not emerging from the sight of the particular miseries, pains, and humiliations that Don Quixote suffers but proceeds from love and love reinforces it—a connection that Vives had stated. Through Sancho’s compassion,

Emotion and Human Development

45

Cervantes is also emphasizing the link between this affect and friendship: the fact that compassion is born from the similarity and affinity between the human souls as, again, Vives had reminded us. For Sancho, Don Quixote is the “otro yo” [the other me] that makes us doubly human (Sabuco), and thus, losing him is losing part of his gained humanity. It is important to note that, even in these moments of sadness and tears, as Don Quixote’s soul is about to depart from the world, Sancho still finds consolation in his hope for good, the inheritance that his master is leaving him, since, as the narrator states: “esto del heredar, algo borra o templa en el heredero la memoria de la pena que es razón que deje el muerto” (II.74.1104) [inheriting something slightly erases or tempers in the inheritor the memory of the grief that understandably the dead person leaves behind]. We see that Sancho’s optimism and spirited nature have remained intact throughout his journey. However, the Sancho who survives Don Quixote is a very different Sancho. Cervantes’s developmental experiment has resulted in his cognitive and emotional growth. He is no longer a brute-man but a human being, in command of his own self and fully aware of his strengths and limitations. As Vives said, “incipiat jam ergo homo esse homo, id est, nosse se” (De concordia 338) [may man therefore now begin to be a human being, that is, to know himself]. We find in Don Quijote not only a powerful illustration of this idea but also, and more importantly, a nuanced portrayal of the bruteto-human process as well as a compelling study of the role of affect in human development.

Notes 1 Cognitive literary studies (also known as cognitive approaches to literature) are a knowledge interface that explores cognition and the arts from an interdisciplinary standpoint. On cognitive literary studies, see, among others, Jaén and Simon, “An Overview”; Zunshine. We may define cognitive historicism as the compared study of the different discourses (literary, philosophical, scientific, etc.) on the mind that exist in a given cultural-historical period (e.g., early modernity). On cognitive literary studies (including cognitive historicism) in relation to early modern Spanish literature and Cervantes, see Jaén and Simon, Cognitive Approaches; Simon, “Contextualizing”; Simon, “The Intersection”; Simon, “Introduction”; Simon, Simerka, and Mancing. 2 As early modern scholars have noted, the term “emotion” seems to appear in the second half of the seventeenth century. My use in this chapter of contemporary terms in relation to the mind is not intended to be anachronistic but rather to facilitate the discussion for the modern reader. On the affective terminology of early modernity and the use of contemporary vocabulary to discuss early modern affect, see Paster, Rowe, and Floyd-Wilson 2–3. 3 To clarify, when we speak about flesh and blood “embodied” literary characters, naturally we are not saying that they are real people. On literary “humanness,” the laboratory of literature, and the purpose of discussing literary characters as if they were real beings, see, for instance, Jaén, “Literary Consciousness”; Mancing. 4 See also Jaén, “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas.”

46

Isabel Jaén

5 Previous studies of Cervantes’s work in relation to the early modern medical-philosophical ideas about the mind have often focused on humoral theory (featuring themes such as madness, melancholy, and other pathological conditions). These studies include (but are not limited to) Ayala; Iriarte; López-Muñoz, Álamo, and García-García; Martín Araguz and Bustamante Martínez; Salillas; Soufas. See also the following chapters in this volume: Jaén and Simon; López-Muñoz and Álamo; Martín Araguz; Palma, Palma, and Simon. For studies on how Cervantes portrays, among other aspects of the mind, the cognitive faculties (mainly memory, imagination, and judgment), see Domínguez, “The Janus”; Domínguez, this volume; Orobitg, “La poética”; Orobitg, this volume. Studies on how Cervantes portrays the passions include Carrera, “Embodied”; Carrera, this volume. Finally, for studies on how Cervantes portrays animal vs. human cognition, see Wagschal, Minding; Wagschal, this volume. My own scholarship incorporates these themes while focusing more directly on the idea of human development, as portrayed by both Cervantes and thinkers of his time (see Jaén, “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas”; Jaén, “Cervantes on Human Development”; Jaén, “Fictions of Human Development”; Jaén, this volume). 6 For a study on the psychologization of the characters in Celestina, see Simon, “Psychologizing.” 7 Simon has explored the centrality of negative passions in Celestina, demonstrating how Rojas emphasizes the animal nature of his characters and how audiences were drawn to their destructive and tragic features (see Simon, “A Wild Fable”). 8 See Jaén, “The Making of a King.” 9 On Vives and the passions, see also Casini, Cognitive; Casini, “Emotions”; Noreña, Foreword; Noreña, Juan Luis Vives. 10 Unless otherwise indicated, English quotes of Vives’s De anima et vita are from Noreña’s translation. 11 See chapter 5 of the 1594 edition. 12 All translations of Huarte’s Examen are mine. 13 My translation. English translations of Sabuco placed between quotation marks are from Waithe, Colomer Vintró, and Zorita. 14 On the humoral constitution of Sancho, see, for instance, Jaén, “Cervantes on Human Development.” 15 All citations from Don Quijote are from the edition by Rico and refer to part, chapter, and page. Unless otherwise noted, the translations are mine. 16 On how Sancho solves the “problem” of Dulcinea by lying about the embassy and subsequently enchanting her, see also Jaén, “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas”; Jaén, “Cervantes on Human Development”; Jaén, “Literary Consciousness.” 17 For a more detailed account of Sancho’s government and his achievements in relation to his development, see Jaén, “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas”; Jaén, “Cervantes on Human Development.” 18 On the fatal effects of hopelessness and melancholy on Don Quixote, see also Jaén and Simon’s chapter in this volume.

Works Cited Ayala, Jorge. “El ‘ingenio’ en Huarte de San Juan y otros escritores españoles.” Actas del VI Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía Española e Iberoamericana. Salamanca: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Salamanca, 1990. 211–223.

Emotion and Human Development  47 Carrera, Elena. “Embodied Cognition and Empathy in Cervantes’s El celoso extremeño.” Hispania 97.1 (2014): 113–124. . Casini, Lorenzo. Cognitive and Moral Psychology in Renaissance Philosophy: A Study of Juan Luis Vives’ De anima et vita. Uppsala: Universitetstryckeriet, 2006. Casini, Lorenzo. “Emotions in Renaissance Humanism: Juan Luis Vives’ De anima et vita.” Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes. Ed. Henrik Lagerlund and Mikko Yrjönsuuri. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002. 205–228. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Ed. Francisco Rico. Madrid: Punto de lectura, 2011. Domínguez, Julia. “The Janus Hypothesis in Don Quixote: Memory and Imagination in Cervantes.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. 74–90. . Huarte de San Juan, Juan. Examen de ingenios para las ciencias. Ed. Guillermo Serés. Madrid: Cátedra, 1989. Iriarte, Mauricio de. El doctor Huarte de San Juan y su Examen de ingenios: Contribución a la historia de la psicología diferencial. Madrid: CSIC, 1948. Jaén (Jaén-Portillo), Isabel. “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas of His Time: Mind and Development in Don Quixote.” Cognitive Cervantes. Ed. Julien Jacques Simon, Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012): 71–98. . Jaén (Jaén-Portillo), Isabel. “Cervantes on Human Development: Don Quixote and Renaissance Cognitive Psychology.” Don Quixote: Interdisciplinary Connections. Ed. Matthew D. Warshawsky and James A. Parr. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2013. 35–57. Jaén (Jaén-Portillo), Isabel. “Fictions of Human Development: Renaissance Cognitive Philosophy and the Romance.” The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Ed. Barry Stocker and Michael Mack. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 315–339. . Jaén (Jaén-Portillo), Isabel. “Literary Consciousness: Fictional Minds, Real Implications.” Selected Papers from the 22nd International Literature and Psychology Conference, June 29–July 4, 2005. Ed. Norman Holland. IPSA. Web. 10 Feb. 2021. . Jaén (Jaén-Portillo), Isabel. “The Making of a King: Sensing and Understanding in Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño.” Making Sense of the Senses: Current Approaches in Spanish Comedia Criticism. Ed. Yolanda Gamboa and Bonnie Gasior. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2017. 129–142. Jaén (Jaén-Portillo), Isabel, and Julien Jacques Simon, eds. Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016. . Jaén (Jaén-Portillo), Isabel, and Julien Jacques Simon. “An Overview of Recent Developments in Cognitive Literary Studies.” Cognitive Literary Studies: Current Themes and New Directions. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. Austin: U of Texas P, 2012. 13–32. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “Locos y dementes en la literatura cervantina: A propósito de las fuentes médicas de

48  Isabel Jaén Cervantes en materia neuropsiquiátrica.” Revista de Neurología 46.8 (2008): 489–501. . Mancing, Howard. “Embodied Cognition and Autopoiesis in Don Quixote.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. 37–52. . Martín Araguz, Antonio, and C. Bustamante Martínez. “Examen de ingenios, de Juan Huarte de San Juan, y los albores de la Neurobiología de la inteligencia en el Renacimiento español.” Revista de Neurología 38.12 (2004): 1176–1185. . Noreña, Carlos G. “Foreword.” The Passions of the Soul: The Third Book of De anima et vita. By Juan Luis Vives. Trans. and Ed. Carlos G. Noreña. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen P, 1990. i–xv. Noreña, Carlos G. Juan Luis Vives and the Emotions: Philosophical Explorations. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1989. Orobitg, Christine. “La poética de la errancia en el Don Quijote.” Criticón 124 (2015): 87–100. . Paster, Gail Kern, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson. Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2004. Sabuco, Oliva. New Philosophy of Human Nature: Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life and Health. Ed. and Trans. Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2007. Sabuco, Oliva. Nueua filosofia de la naturaleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcançada de los grandes filosofos antiguos, la qual mejora la vida y salud humana. Madrid: Madrigal, 1588. Salillas, Rafael. Un gran inspirador de Cervantes, el doctor Juan Huarte y su Examen de ingenios. Madrid: E. Arias, 1905. Simon, Julien Jacques. “Contextualizing Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. 13–33. Simon, Julien Jacques. “The Intersection of Mind and Don Quixote: Overview and Prospects.” Don Quixote: Interdisciplinary Connections. Ed. Matthew D. Warshawsky and James A. Parr. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2013. 19–34. Simon, Julien Jacques. “Introduction to ‘Cognitive Cervantes’: Integrating Mind and Cervantes’s Texts.” Cognitive Cervantes. Ed. Julien Simon, Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012): 11–23. . Simon, Julien Jacques. “Psychologizing Literary Characters in Fernando de Rojas’s Celestina: The Emergence of Mind in Early Modern Spanish Literature.” Self, Other, and Context in Early Modern Spain: Studies in Honor of Howard Mancing. Ed. Isabel Jaén, Carolyn A. Nadeau, and Julien Jacques Simon. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2017. 43–56. Simon, Julien Jacques. “A Wild Fable: Affect and Reception of Fernando de Rojas’ Celestina (1499).” The Palgrave Handbook of Affect Studies and Textual Criticism. Ed. Donald R. Wehrs and Thomas Blake. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. 609–625. .

Emotion and Human Development  49 Simon, Julien Jacques, Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing, eds. Cognitive Cervantes. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012). Soufas, Teresa Scott. Melancholy and the Secular Mind in Spanish Golden Age Literature. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1990. Vives, Juan Luis (Vivis Valentini, Joannis Ludovici). De anima et vita. Vol. 3 of Opera omnia. Ed. Gregorio Mayans. Officina Benedicti Monfort, 1782. 300–520. Vives, Juan Luis (Vivis Valentini, Joannis Ludovici). De concordia et discordia. Vol. 5 of Opera omnia. Ed. Gregorio Mayans. Officina Benedicti Monfort, 1784. 193–403. Vives, Juan Luis. The Passions of the Soul: The Third Book of De anima et vita. Trans. and Ed. Carlos G. Noreña. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen P, 1990. Wagschal, Steven. Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds: A Cognitive Historical Analysis. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2018. Zunshine, Lisa, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies. New York: Oxford UP, 2015. .

3

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition El viejo zeloso and Early Modern Thought Elena Carrera

The entremés [interlude] of El viejo zeloso [The Jealous Old Man] (1615) is one of the best of Cervantes’s short plays, which have been described as “witty, funny, energetic and subversive” (Mujica 51) and praised for their “sparkling realism” (McKendrick 138) and their unresolved endings (Honig xiii). First published in 1615, in a collection of plays and interludes which were never performed in Cervantes’s lifetime, it draws on the traditional folktale themes of the May-December marriage and the locked-up wife: as we hear in the first scene, the fifteen-year-old Lorenza complains that she has spent her days alone, locked at home and unable to talk to anyone, while her old husband, Cañizares, goes out.1 Much of the existing scholarship on this short play has tended to focus on its morality, its scandalous impact, Cervantes’s audacity, or the subversiveness of its main female character, who brings a young man into her bedroom without her husband noticing.2 Yet insufficient critical attention has been paid to the character from whom the entremés derives its title: the old husband who is destined to be a victim of jealousy. Critics have referred in passing to the “unnatural nature of Cañizares’ obsession” (Kenworthy 105) and to “lo extremo de los impulsos antinaturales de Cañizares” (Clamurro 319) [Cañizares’s excessive, antinatural impulses]. But in making such assumptions, they have not taken into consideration early modern views about physiological changes related to aging which made it seem “natural” for old people to be jealous and fearful. In this chapter, I will show how, in inviting readers and spectators to consider jealousy as experienced by the aged in mind and body, El viejo zeloso is not only a light-hearted masterpiece of double deception but also provides a highly suggestive, if condensed, practical illustration of early modern ideas on the mind, on the impact of age on emotional experience, and on the effect of emotions such as fear in hindering mental ability. In analyzing the play’s portrayal of the old man’s expectations, fears and inability to see what is around him, I will draw on the explanations about the faculties of the mind, the role of the imagination in arousing fear and suspicion, and the effects of age on emotion and DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211-3

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cognition provided by Juan Luis Vives in De anima et vita (1538), the third part of which is undoubtedly the most significant treatise on the passions written in the sixteenth century.3 It has been noted that the work of Cervantes is permeated by the ideas of the Spanish thinkers Vives and Juan Huarte de San Juan (Jaén, “Teaching Cervantes” 112).4 There is no evidence that Cervantes read Vives’s or Huarte’s work directly, but, as I will show in this chapter, his understanding of the mind, like theirs, was based on the A ristotelian-Galenic model of the human “soul,” which prevailed well into the seventeenth century. Leaving aside Huarte’s Exa men de ingenios (1575), since it focuses less on emotion than on cognition, I will consider the notion of jealousy as a form of fear discussed by Vives in De institutione feminae christianae, which was first published in Latin in 1524, in Spanish in 1528, and in English in 1529, and became a best seller in these and other European languages in the following seven decades. 5 In examining views promoted by Vives in work accessible to modern readers in English, alongside Aristotelian, Hippocratic, and Galenic ideas about the soul/mind expounded in parts of his work not yet available in English (the first two parts of De anima), I aim to help to restore Vives to the place he deserves in the front rank of early modern thinkers.6 In demonstrating the significance of his work on the mind and the passions, and illustrating it through practical examples offered by Cervantes’s El viejo zeloso, I seek to overcome the existing boundaries between two fast-developing interdisciplinary fields: cognitive literary studies and the history of the emotions. In discussing premodern concepts and explanations of jealousy and its relationship to fear, suspicion, sadness, and perception expounded by Vives, I will show how Cervantes, moving on from the Aristotelian and Stoic approaches of the humanists, not only sheds further light on the impact of emotion on perception but also offers a fresh perspective on the question of desengaño, with which so many seventeenth-century Spanish intellectuals were obsessed. I will also provide an alternative perspective to that offered in the main existing study of jealousy in early modern Spain, by Steven Wagschal, who has claimed that jealousy “frequently motivates the protagonists’ change of mental state between the polar opposites of Spanish Baroque epistemology, that is, from engaño [deceit] to desengaño [disillusionment (roughly translated)].”7 The seventy-year-old protagonist of El viejo zeloso seems to be desengañado when he first appears on the stage, admitting that he made a mistake in marrying a much younger woman. In that sense, there is no change of mental state: he knows he is jealous, and that his jealousy makes him suffer. His desengaño does not give him access to the truth of what happens in his household. It is rather the effect of worry and anxiety, and

52  Elena Carrera of knowing that just as he was deceived when he assumed that marriage would provide companionship, he cannot prevent being deceived again: Señor compadre, señor compadre: el setenton que se casa con quinze, o carece de entendimiento, o tiene gana de visitar el otro mundo lo más presto que le sea posible. Apenas me casé con doña Lorencica, pensando tener en ella compañía y regalo, y persona que se hallasse en mi cabeçera, y me cerrasse los ojos al tiempo de mi muerte, cuando me enuistieron vna turba multa de trabajos y dessasossiegos; tenía casa y busqué casar; estaba p[o]sado y despóseme. (254v) My friend, when a man of seventy marries a girl of fifteen, he either is a fool or cannot wait to set out for the next world. The moment I married little Doña Lorenza, expecting to find in her company and pleasure, and someone to be at my bedside and close my eyes when I die, I was overwhelmed by worry and anxiety. I owned a house and sought to become a husband; I gave up my tranquil life to get myself a wife. The desengaño that transpires from such confessions has to do with a bigger scale form of realization. As Jeremy Robbins points out, “the English term ‘disillusion’ barely even suggests the nuances of the Spanish term which conveys the notion of the profound, almost existential, realization of the absolute vanity of human values and possessions” (17). If Carrizales realizes at the beginning of the play that his expectations about married life were deceptive, the play will also show the futility of measures aimed to prevent nature from following its course. Like Anne J. Cruz, I do not distinguish between the potential impact of Cervantes’s entremeses [interludes] on theater audiences and individual readers: we are all invited to laugh at the deceptions implicit in “official culture” (122). But unlike Cruz, I do not think it useful to maintain the concept of “official culture” since the very principles which would have constituted what might have been considered the “official” line in the premodern period, namely, the institution of marriage as a sacrament and as a legal and financial contract which made wives’ extramarital affairs illicit, were rooted in a culture dominated by appearances, and thus vulnerable to deception, as we shall now see.

Themes, Motifs, and Perspectives The theme of the jealous husband was a popular one in the early modern period, and, like that of the locked-up wife, had a long literary and folk lineage.8 The theme of the locked-up wife appears in the Disciplina clericalis [The Scholar’s Guide], a collection of tales which the Aragonese converso known as Pedro Alfonso (or Petrus Alfonsi) translated from Arabic in the early twelfth century. The collection was translated into

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  53 French three times, and parts of it were translated and reworked in French, Spanish, English, Italian, Hebrew, and Icelandic (Tolan 132 –133; Ortuño Arregui 46). Many of its fables and tales were incorporated into the Gesta Romanorum (Cirot, “Gloses” 4) and into the Alphabetum narrationum and Clemente Sánchez de Vercial’s Spanish version, Libro de los exemplos por a.b.c. (Cirot, “Gloses” 4; Chevalier, “El Libro” 89). The five tales in the Disciplina dealing with women’s guile (IX, X, XI, XIII, and XIV) were categorized as fabliaux in the earliest translations of this work into French (Lacarra, Disciplina 102n17), and were reproduced and retold endlessly, well into the early modern period. In recreating the theme of the locked-up wife, Cervantes combines it with the equally popular folk motif of the old man who marries a young girl.9 Male jealousy and female confinement in a May-December marriage are also the main themes of El celoso extremeño [The Jealous Extremaduran],10 one of the Novelas ejemplares [Exemplary Novels] first published in 1613 and translated into English in 1640. Both the novella and the short play show old husbands whose excessive jealousy can be best understood as a form of fear: the fear of losing control over their young wives. While the novella has been seen as serving a didactic purpose in illustrating “how unbridled jealousy brings about that which it most fears” (Detwiler Ilgenfritz 213), the entremés would not seem a didactic piece by modern standards (Savj-López 210) since it purportedly presents a wife committing adultery, talking to her husband about it from behind the stage, and being unpunished. It has been argued that the entremeses, as all of Cervantes’s works, are exemplary in that they show how “la razón” (reason), “el sentido común” [common sense], “la virtud” [virtue], and “la moralidad” [ethical behavior] serve as essential guidelines in human life (Zimic 444). The problem with such claims, however, is that they take “reason,” “common sense,” “virtue,” and “morality” as universal categories. One of the main differences between Cervantes’s narrative and dramatic versions of the May-December folktale theme is that in the entremés both the young wife and the old man are acutely aware from the start that their situation is untenable. While the novella shows Leonora as an innocent girl who is slowly persuaded and eventually pushed to compromise her husband’s honor, in the entremés, the young Lorenza makes it clear from the first scene that hers is an unhappy marriage, arranged for her by her parents, much to her regret: her rich old husband has been buying her many dresses and jewels but has kept her “con hambre” (254r) [hungry for sex]. Intended to be performed within fifteen minutes, between the acts of a major play, the entremeses were expected to appeal to the “más bajo común denominador de la sensibilidad de los espectadores” (Asensio, “Introducción” 7) [the spectators’ lowest form of sensibility].11 Yet Cervantes’s El viejo zeloso, like his Retablo de las maravillas [The Wondrous Show] is an exceptional entremés in that it also works at a much more sophisticated level. An example of the subtlety of El viejo zeloso is the

54  Elena Carrera promise made by the neighbor Hortigosa, in the first scene, that she will bring a young man in and out of Lorenza’s bedroom without Cañizares noticing, “si bien tuuiesse el viejo más ojos que Argos” (253v) [even if he has more eyes than Argus]. “Argos,” as we see from Covarrubias Horozco’s dictionary (206), had come to have the double meaning of “vigilant” (strenuus) and “deceived/made useless” (frustratus). But Hortigosa’s reference can also be taken as Cervantes’s invitation for more discerning audiences and readers to reflect on the futility of male control when it comes to women’s trickery and deceit. Educated audiences and readers might well be familiar with Ovid’s reference in the Amores to Argus of the “centum fronte oculos, centum cervice”12 [hundred eyes in front and a hundred behind] often being deceived by Love, as his way of mocking the foolishness of the man who becomes tyrannical in defending a woman’s sexual fidelity. Moreover, in the medieval translations and adaptations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Argus had also become the embodiment of deception and a “warning against the figurative blindness that comes from relying solely on sensory perceptions” (Yager 15). Just as Argus was deceived and lulled to sleep, spectators and readers of the interlude of El viejo zeloso can expect, when hearing Hortigosa’s remark in the first scene of the play, that its old protagonist will be deceived. The deception, as we shall see, will be a double one, involving not only his outer sensory perception but also his inner senses, such as imagination. In the first scene of the entremés, we also hear about the old man from the perspective of Cristina, a girl who is employed by the old man as a maid: she complains that he is a “viejo podrido” (253r) [rotten old man], a “viejo y reviejo, y más que viejo” (254r) [aged, very aged, more than aged], who expects her to serve him all night, carrying his chamber pot around and preparing remedies for his age-related ailments. The pejorative terms in which Cristina refers to the old protagonist contrast with the point of view he offers a few minutes later, as he comes onto the stage, in the second scene, admitting to his old male friend that he is despairing. As Jean Canavaggio has noted: “Cañizares, en vez de delegar sus poderes al narrador, como hacía Carrizales, expresa de viva voz sus inquietudes y su angustia” (593; emphasis added) [Rather than delegating his powers to the narrator, as Carrizales did, Cañizares expresses his worries and anguish in his own voice]. As I will show, the play not only gives expression to the old protagonist’s feelings but also shows how his emotions hinder his “cognitive” ability. But let us first have a look at how early moderns understood “cognition” and its relation to what we now call “emotion.”

“Cognition”: An Old Term with New Meanings Recent cognitive approaches to literature, and particularly to Cervantes, have often merged modern and early modern theories of the mind.13 The term “cognitive” began to be broadly used by psychologists in the 1950s to refer to operations of the mind such as perception, attention, and

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  55 memory, which were studied at the time as isolated functions. In more recent years, it has been recognized that “emotion” is not always separable from “cognition,” but that, even if there is an overlap, these two categories still refer to distinct processes taking place in the “mind.” In early modern culture, phrases like passiones animae or affectūs animi referred to alterations of the mind and body (as opposed to the unqualified passio and passiones, which denoted physical suffering and diseases). The fact that, in the early modern period, these phrases were translated as “passiones del ánima” and “affectos” in Spanish and as “passions of the soul,” “passions of the minde,” “affections of the soul,” and “affections of the mynde” in English also tells us that the non-theological notion of “soul” was widespread and that the concept of “mind” was broader then than in the post-Cartesian period in that it encompassed both cognition and emotion. Looking further back, we find a notion of “soul” (Greek psyche; Latin anima), understood as the principle of life rather than in theological terms, based on Aristotle’s distinction between three main capacities or “powers” (virtutes): vegetative power (related to nutrition and reproduction, also found in plants), sensitive power (sensation and perception, also found in animals), and the intellect (mens, the immaterial and immortal soul which knows incorporeal things and is only found in humans). In the early modern period, both the English terms “mind” and “soul” were used (as translations of the Greek psychê and the Latin animus and anima) to refer to the latter two powers: the intellect and the sensitive power. In the Aristotelian model which prevailed well into the seventeenth century, it was this latter power that enabled the “affections of the mind” and “passions of the mind.”14 After all, as Aristotle had pointed out, the pathê (a blanket term referring to experiences such as fear or anger, usually translated as “emotions”) involved impressions in the phantasia, but did not always involve fully fledged rational judgments (Frede; Cooper).15 Accordingly, for the early moderns, the impressions produced in and elaborated upon by the imagination or phantasia were an essential part of emotional experience.16 While “emotion” is a rather modern term that might seem anachronistic when used in relation to the early modern period, the term “cognition” has a much older lineage.17 It came to Middle English (from the Latin cognitio) and was used in early modern English, as today, to refer to mental actions or processes “of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses” (“Cognition,” def. 1).18 In early modern Spanish, the term cognición tended to be used in a narrower sense, to refer to the Aristotelian notion of embodied (or inductive, bottom-up) knowledge, derived from the senses and/or reliant on images (as opposed to intellectual, abstract thought).19 In what follows, I use the term “cognition” to refer to cognitive function in its broadest sense, in relation to sensation, perception, the imagination, judgment, and the intellect, showing how, for the early moderns, such

56  Elena Carrera operations of the mind were inextricably linked to what we now call “emotion” and “emotional capacity,” two broad categories encompassed by the Latin term affectus.20

The Early Modern Aged Mind: Vives and Cervantes Vives, like Aristotle, and like non-Christian medieval commentators, such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d. 1037), distinguished between three types of cognition in humans. The first type relates to the five external senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) and can only focus on objects that are present (Vives, De anima 14, 25–39), the second to the inner senses and can know things that are absent (14, 32), and the third, the intellect, to incorporeal things (14, 35). In line with medieval and early modern Aristotelian faculty psychology, Vives referred to five inner senses: the “imaginative power” (imaginativa) receives information taken in by the senses as isolated images; the “memory” retains them; the “imagination” (phantasia) evokes absent objects, gives meaning to the information received from the senses by separating and reuniting its single impressions, and creates new images; the “common sense” judges absent sensible objects and discerns the impressions coming from the different senses; the “estimative power” (extimatrix) assesses the “attractiveness or averseness” (assensum aut dissensum) of the images (32).21 The phantasia, according to the Aristotelian model adopted by Vives, was involved in all forms of concrete thought, based on images. For Vives, as for Aristotle, the intellect has its starting point in the knowledge acquired through the imaginative power and the imagination, though it can elevate itself in order to know nonmaterial things (Vives, De anima 35). What distinguishes the intellect from the inner senses is that it is not concerned with what is beneficial or harmful in the present moment, but draws on memories of the past and speculates about the future (36). Vives used the term extimatrix to refer to the capacity to distinguish between beneficial and harmful things, and to make quick and instinctual assessments leading to fast action, like that of a sheep fleeing from a wolf it has never seen, or a person running away from a dragon or from monsters (De anima 33–34). Some medieval authors, like Avicenna and Aquinas, had differentiated the instinctive “estimative power” found in animals from the “cogitative power” which enabled humans to make practical judgments (Harvey 51–53, 56–61). Vives did not dwell on this distinction, but pointed out that people whose judgment was not sufficiently detached from their temperamental tendencies were particularly prone to becoming agitated and experiencing frequent strong emotions, which would, in turn, interfere with the “inner senses” and with sensory experience (De anima 150; Passions 6). An example of the interference of strong emotions with basic forms of cognition such as sensory perception and practical judgment of situations in El viejo zeloso is the episode

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  57 in which Cañizares fails to notice the young man who enters his house because he is too busy responding to an imagined threat. His distractedness can be better understood if we consider early modern views about the impact of images, received through the senses, and elaborated upon by the phantasia, in altering the mind and body. In De officio mariti [On the Duties of the Husband] (1529), Vives had stressed not only that the passions are responses to mental representations, but also that they might manifest with greater or lesser intensity, and thus be excessive or controllable, depending on a number of factors, such as bodily temperament, habits, and lifestyle: “Affectus ex opinionibus nascuntur; opiniones vero aliae in aliis plus aut minus valent, pro constitutione ac ratione corporis pro moribus atque assuefactione” (De officio 38) [the emotions arise from mental representations, but these have greater or lesser power over different people, depending on their bodily constitution, their temperament, and their personal habits and customs]. Temperament, as we shall see, was thought to change with age. But besides old age, bad experiences could also lead to the habitual suspiciousness typically found in envious, avaricious, ambitious, and malevolent people (De anima 221; cf. Passions 76). In the De anima, Vives continued to endorse the Aristotelian approach to the pathê in explaining that emotions such as fear, joy, or sadness are sometimes the result of deliberate evaluations, but are most often aroused simply by flitting images or by the false impression (created by the phantasia, when excited) that a given object has been judged to be good or bad (De anima 147; Passions 3). The process of a flitting image eliciting fear is exemplified by Cañizares’s reaction to hearing the word “vezina”: “el nombre de vezina me turba, y sobresalta” (255v) [The word neighbor disturbs me, and startles me]. In his phantasia, the word is inextricably linked to the belief, which he has shared earlier with his compadre, that women are more likely to lose their moral integrity in the private homes of friends and neighbors than in public celebrations: “donde ellas se estropean, y adonde ellas se dañan, es en casa de las vezinas, y de las amigas” (254v) [where women are spoiled or damaged is in neighbors’ and friends’ homes]. Even if the old man does not know that the neighbor who has knocked on the door is about to bring a young man into his house, he is too disturbed by the images evoked by the word “vezina” in his excited phantasia, too preoccupied with the fear of what might happen, to be able to pay attention to what is actually happening. His reaction of sudden alarm when hearing the word “vezina” might seem exaggerated and grotesque (Wardropper 22), but, as we shall now see, it can also be understood as an illustration of traditional Hippocratic and Aristotelian-Galenic views on the impact of age on the physical instruments of cognitive function. Cognition, according to the medieval and early modern Galenic model of the mind-body relationship, was enabled by the rarefied warm and

58  Elena Carrera vaporous substance, known as pneuma or spirit, thought to be present in the blood, the brain, and the nerves. 22 Vives explained that the “bodily instruments” (organa) of human cognition were precisely the “very refined and luminous spirits” (spiritus quidam tenuissimi et lucidssimi), distilled from the heart’s blood and residing in the brain, both enabling and limiting the capacity of the “intellect” (mens) to deal with sophisticated concepts (De anima 77–78). A typical example of diminished intellectual capacity was that of “dull and stupid people” (hebetes ac torpentes), whose condition was usually associated with cold pericardial blood, which was thought to make the brain’s spirits too cold and thick, and thus to slow down and weaken cognitive function (78). In the early modern period, it was believed that since intellectual performance relied on the state or condition of people’s spirits, age would have a marked impact on intellectual ability. Vives thus pointed out that children are unable to use their reason because their humors and spirits (liquores atque spiritus) are so mixed, confused, and agitated that the images produced by objects cannot make proper impressions on their phantasia, and that when people reach decrepit old age (in decrepita senecta), their bodily instruments of reason are worn out and thus cease to function (80). He also explained that old people lack natural heat and have a higher degree of moisture on the external parts of their body (as can be seen, for instance, from their abundant expectoration), but less moisture than they need in their nerves, which explains why their mental operations are slower (119). Age was generally seen by early moderns as one of the physiological factors which would alter people’s bodily temperament, and thus affect not only their cognitive capacity but also their predisposition to feel particular emotions. We can see this, for instance, from Vives’s use of the medieval Aristotelian-Galenic model of the four temperaments, understood as blends of the four primary qualities (hot, cold, moist, and dry), and his endorsement of the traditional understanding of the emotions in terms of such qualities: We will actually attribute bodily qualities to emotions and call them warm, cold, dry, or a mixture of those. These are the same qualities that determine the temper of the body. Consequently, the affections that fit an individual’s nature and temperament arise and are reinforced easily, while those that differ are not. (Passions 3; cf. De anima 147) It followed from this that temperament would have an impact on the quality and intensity of people’s desires (cupiditaes): hot temperaments have sharp and vehement desires which they seek to satisfy quickly, but these desires are as peculiar as they are

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  59 fickle [. . .]. Cold temperaments, on the other hand, have fewer and sluggish desires, but they are stubbornly directed toward the object of their choice or their excitement. (Passions 20; cf. De anima 164–165) A decrepit old man like Cañizares would be expected to have a cold temperament, which would explain why his jealousy (a cold passion) becomes so obsessive. His jealousy, in turn, would be expected to make his temperament colder, since, as Vives notes, “emotions both reflect and contribute to the temperament of the body” (Passions 3; cf. De anima 147). 23 Cañizares becomes agitated when he hears the word “vezina” not only because it evokes images of potential moral corruption (namely, neighbors acting as bawds) but also because he is anticipating in his phantasia that, by talking to her, his young wife might find out what she is missing. Readers can imagine that Cañizares’s agitation at this point will be vigorous, both physically and mentally, because in the premodern period shaking was explained as the effect of fear drawing the heat inward toward the chest, making the heart weaker, and it was assumed that those with little heat in their body would shake the most (Vives, De anima 244; Passions 103). Indeed, according to the ancient model of the relationship between mind and body which prevailed well into the seventeenth century, sudden fear (or fright) could block the ability to reason and even produce death because it would draw the body’s spirits inward toward the heart. 24 We can also expect Cañizares to be particularly anxious, in light of early modern views about anxiety as the indirect effect of physiological weakness. As Vives observed, the young, whose pericardial blood was typically hot and abundant, would not normally be anxious about acquiring or preserving what they might need because they were confident that they could do so easily; by contrast, old people, like “the handicapped, the sick, women” and “in general those whose pericardial blood is scarce and lukewarm,” would be naturally “anxious to seek and protect what they need” (Passions 20; cf. De anima 165). Cañizares’s fear, however, cannot be simply seen as a result of his old age, his previous experiences, or his need to preserve what he has. In Cervantes’s cultural context, as in Vives’s, old men who married young women would also be expected to be anxious to protect their wives’ chastity because their honor depended on it. That concern with preserving one’s good name was part of the experience of male jealousy in the early modern period is mentioned in passing in Vives’s chapter on jealousy (De anima 228; Passions 85). In this wider context, the jealousy of an old husband like Cañizares could be explained as arising from the fear of losing his reputation as the result of his wife’s infidelity. As we shall now see, some early moderns understood that it is possible to fear and be jealous in anticipation.

60  Elena Carrera

Jealousy as a Form of Fear in Vives and Cervantes In the chapter on jealousy in De anima, Vives defines this passion as “envy of beauty, the fear that somebody could derive enjoyment from it against our wishes” (Passions 84; cf. De anima 228). This simplified account contrasts with his earlier discussion in the De institutione of two types of jealousy, according to Cicero’s account of Stoic definitions. The first type is based on the thought that someone else is enjoying that to which one desires to have exclusive access: “Aegritudinem ex hoc quod alter quoque potiatur eo quod quis concupivit” (De institutione 223) [the distress caused by the thought that someone else is enjoying that which one desires for oneself]. 25 The revised edition of Justiniano’s translation, published in 1529, adds a cognitive certainty, not found in Cicero or Vives, by rendering “hoc quod” as “saber”: “vna passion o tristeza que procede de la causa de saber que otros gozan de lo que hombre dessea para el solo” (Instruction de la muger 109v) [suffering or sadness felt when one knows that other people are enjoying that which one desires for oneself]. Hyrde, by contrast, translates the idea as a possibility: “a care of a mannes mynde, leste a nother shulde have as well as he, that thynge, whiche hym selfe wolde optayne” (Vives, The Instruction of a Christen 121). The second type of jealousy, according to Vives’s account of Stoic definitions he finds in Cicero, is based not on the knowledge or suspicion that another person enjoys what one desires but on the fear that this might happen: “Metum esse quis tecum habeat commune, quod tuum unius velis esse” (De institutione 223) [the fear that someone else might share that which one would like to keep for oneself]. As the corrected version of Justiniano’s translation renders it: “vn cierto temor o recelo que otro no goze de lo que alguno querria ser solo posseedor” (Instruction de la muger 109v) [a certain fear or apprehension lest no one else should enjoy that which someone wishes to possess exclusively]. Here Justiniano uses two terms, “temor” [fear] and “recelo” [apprehension or suspicion], to render the broad meaning of metum, which Hyrde simply translates as “fear”: “a feare, leste another man shulde have that commen with hym that thyng, whiche he wolde have to be severallye his owne” (The Instruction of a Christen 121). Looking at Vives’s double definition, we can see that the first type, marked by distress (Justiniano’s “tristeza”; Hyrde’s “care”), refers to a present situation, while the second type, marked by fear, points to the future. As the Stoics and Cicero had noted, in line with Aristotle, distress is caused by the belief that a current situation is bad for one, whereas fear is caused by the belief that an intolerable situation is impending. 26 In De anima, Vives also offered an Aristotelian positive view of fear as fulfilling a function related to survival. As he put it, fear “was given to man to enable him to avoid, before it happens, whatever could hurt

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  61 him” (Passions 107; cf. De anima 249). The problem, as he pointed out, is that fear is often based on “possible” rather than real dangers, because the phantasia makes things present, as if they were real (Passions 107; cf. De anima 249). Thus, if one constantly thinks about things that might go wrong, fear might become obsessive. This is the untenable situation in which Cañizares finds himself, as he admits to his friend. He is aware that he lacks the necessary heat to fulfill his marital duty (“con la menor llamarada quedara hecho ceniza!” [the smallest flame would turn me to ashes]), but suspects that his fifteenyear-old wife does not. His friend, hearing this confession, confirms that his fear is justified: “con razon se puede tener esse temer, porque las mugeres querrian gozar enteros los frutos del matrimonio” (254v) [You are right to fear, since women would like to enjoy the fruits of marriage to the full]. He seeks to prevent his wife from finding out what she is missing by keeping her alone at home behind locked doors and barred windows, but he cannot help anticipating that she will eventually find out. The thought becomes so obsessive as to make him despair: “que no passara mucho tiempo en que no caya Lorencica en lo que le falta, que sera vn mal caso, y tan malo, que en sólo pensallo le temo, y de temerle me desespero, y de desesperarme, vivo con disgusto” (254v) [It will not be long before Lorencica realizes what she is missing, and this will be terrible, so terrible that the mere thought makes me fear, and my fear drives me to despair, and I despair so much that I get no pleasure out of life]. Convinced that his wife has not been unfaithful (because she has not had the opportunity), Cañizares is nonetheless jealous because he anticipates the possibility that she might be one day. His is clearly the second type of jealousy described by Cicero and Vives. In premodern faculty psychology, the ability to anticipate or speculate about the future was attributed to the intellect, working in conjunction with the phantasia in drawing on images stored in the memory. It is the phantasia that, as Vives noted, has a key role in shaping emotional experience: There is no danger in reality as big as what they imagine. It is therefore comforting to those who have fears about something dear to them to get involved or at least to have a clear knowledge of the danger at hand. (Passions 105; cf. De anima 246) The problem is that clear knowledge of actual dangers is not always possible because, as Vives also pointed out, the passions interfere with cognition: “Fear, like almost every emotion, makes us suspicious. Fearful people distrust and exaggerate everything.” (Passions 105; cf. De anima 246). Vives’s warning that fearfulness can lead to suspicion and exaggeration is exemplified by Cañizares’s suspicious attitude. As Lorenza complains to her neighbor Hortigosa in the first scene, he has gone to the

62  Elena Carrera extreme of locking her up behind seven locked doors, banning male cats and dogs from the house, and even choosing to buy an expensive low-quality tapestry with a floral design instead of a better and cheaper one showing human figures (253v–254r). He is clearly seeking to prevent images of animals mating or of human male beauty from reaching his wife’s phantasia. One day, however, as Lorenza tells the neighbor at the beginning of the play, he forgets to lock all seven doors. This allows her to be persuaded by the neighbor that what she needs is to have a young “galan” (253v) [beau] brought into and out of her bedroom. By the time Cañizares comes back home, Lorenza is back inside, alone with the maid. He hears her talk and starts suspecting that her talking, even to herself, will bring him harm: “no querria que tuviessedes algun soliloquio con vos misma, que redundase en mi perjuyzio” (255r) [I would not want you to engage in a soliloquy with yourself that might be detrimental to me]. He is so busy imagining dangers to come that he cannot use his judgment or his outer senses to see what is coming.

Blinding Passions Given that an entremés was usually performed within fifteen minutes, during one of the intervals of a full-length play, Cervantes needed to choose a fast and simple trick for the women to sneak the young beau into the jealous old man’s house, rather than elaborating drawn-out strategies such as that used in the novella El celoso. He resorted to a highly visual trick, from the folk tradition: Hortigosa and Lorenza hold up a guadamecí [leather tapestry] in front of him, as he walks in. It is possible that Cervantes had seen a visual representation of this trick in the theater, and that he had even seen it in the woodcut illustration of the tale “De la muger del mercader e de su suegra vieja” [Of the Merchant’s Wife and His Old Mother-in-Law] published together with the fables of Aesop, in a collection of fables and tales which underwent at least twenty-five editions in Spanish between 1482 and 1607. 27 At the beginning of the last century, Armando Cotarelo y Valledor (517) referred to the version of this tale included in the Disciplina as the introduction to Spanish culture of the motif of a piece of cloth being used to facilitate a wife’s infidelity. Nonetheless, it is not unlikely that this motif, which was present in ancient Greek culture, judging from the allusions made in the Thesmophoriazusae of Aristophanes, l.499–501 (Aristophanes 120), was part of the oral tradition of Al-Andalus and Aragon before Alfonso included it in the Disciplina as a warning about women’s guile and about the need to be cautious in avoiding being deceived by them (Alfonso, “The Parable” 58). 28 A number of critics have pointed out the similarities between the trick of the guadamecí in El viejo zeloso and the use of the sheet in the tale included in Alfonso’s compilation (Baras Escolá 542–545; Navarro

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  63

Figure 3.1 Woodcut from Alfonso. “De la muger del mercader e su suegra vieja,” 122v (Courtesy of Queen Mary University of London Library).

Durán 71), but no attention has yet been paid to the fact that the folktale tricks usually have no negative emotional consequences on the husband who is tricked. For instance, in the version published together with Aesop’s fables, the husband remains unsuspicious: “desta manera illuso fue el mercader a folgar a la cama” (122v–123r) [thus, unaware of it all, the merchant went to bed to rest]. Nothing is said about him being jealous before or after he comes back home. By contrast, the old man in Cervantes’s El viejo zeloso suffers a great deal, both because of his jealousy, which precedes the development of the events, and because of the rage he feels when he sees the guadamecí. As Bruce Wardropper has noted, the trick of the tapestry had been “tested and tried” on the stage in the commedia dell’arte plays, but Cervantes enhances it by having the old man completely distracted by his blind rage at the female neighbor (22). 29 John Thomas Lister has also suggested that Cañizares does not see the lover who slips into his wife’s room because he is “incensed” at Hortigosa (137). But how does he come to be so angry? Is the anger that distracts him directed at Hortigosa? And if so, how does he move on from the shock he claims to have felt on simply hearing the word “vezina”? If the trick used to allow the wife’s lover to go past her husband in Alfonso’s “De la muger del Mercader e su suegra vieja” [Of the Merchant’s Wife and Her (sic) Old Mother-in-Law] was to show him a sheet supposedly embroidered by the wife, as a sample of her fine needlework, Cervantes complicates the plot by having the four corners of the tapestry

64  Elena Carrera decorated with the painted figures of four famous warrior-lovers: Rodamonte, Mandricardo, Ruggiero, and Gradasso, whose stories were recounted in two very popular Italian works, Boiardo’s Orlando inamorato and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso.30 Ariosto’s Orlando was the most influential literary representation of extreme rage associated with jealousy in the Renaissance. Boiardo’s Orlando would have also been a particularly poignant reference here, since it includes the tale of an old man, his wife, and her lover (Book I, cantos 21–22). The four male warrior-lovers were the subject of Lope de Vega’s play, Los celos de Rodamonte [Rodamonte’s Jealousy], written before 1604, which shows Rodamonte becoming jealous when he fears that something might have happened to his fiancée Doralice, and his jealousy turning into fury against all women when he discovers that she has rejected him in favor of Mandricardo. Cañizares’s anger when seeing the figures painted on the tapestry is understandable because the neighbor has not only succeeded in entering his house, despite his firm conviction that this would never happen (255r), but also introduced male figures, which he had banned from the house. Now, as Hortigosa shows him the leather tapestry, pretending that she is trying to sell it, she emphasizes the realism of the male figures painted on it: “parece que estan vivas” (255v) [they look alive]. Cañizares’s jealousy is so intense, that on seeing the figures painted on the tapestry, his phantasia becomes uncontrollable. He begins to act as if they were not only alive but also endowed with human agency: “o, que lindo Rodamonte, y que quiere el señor rebozadito en mi casa? Aun si supiesse que tan amigo soy yo destas cosas y destos rebozitos, espantarse ìa” (255v-256r) [What a handsome Rodamonte! And what is this young man, covered in his cloak, doing in my house? If he knew how I detest disguises and things of the kind, he would be scared]. Cañizares’s reaction here serves to illustrate the early modern notion (promoted by Vives) that a flitting impression in the phantasia that something is harmful is sufficient to arouse passions. Already excited by the fear that his young wife might one day discover young male beauty, Cañizares’s phantasia turns a visual representation of a fictional young male lover into a potential rival with whom he cannot compete. As he anticipates what a young man like Rodamonte might seek in his house, his fear turns into anger. Vives had further explained that the operations of the mind are sometimes hindered by altered mental states, like “mania,” which prevent people from seeing or hearing, and by alterations of the mind and body, such as apoplexy, drunkenness, anger, and fear, which impair the ability to reason (De anima 46). He pointed out that shame, fear, and anger can darken the understanding and diminish its vigor; that intense passions act like a fog on the intellect (81); that states such as fear, anger, or shame also affect people’s judgment, leading them to make mistakes; and that fear, like desire, naivety, kindness, and benevolence, makes

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  65 people more credulous (76). Looking at Cañizares’s interaction with Hortigosa, it does seem as if his fear makes his mind foggy, and his suspicion turns into credulity when she suggests that the painted figures on the guadamecí look like they are alive. Drawing on Virgil’s phrase “lovers create their own dreams”31 (Passions 5; cf. De anima 150), Vives observed that “those who love, are angry or scared, think that they see or hear what does not have any real existence anywhere” (Passions 5; cf. De anima 150). Does Cañizares’s anger and fear make him see Rodamonte as a real threat? Is he attempting to get the upper hand by seeking to scare the fictional Italian lover, as if he existed? Or is he trying to ban from his phantasia the images of young rivals that have been haunting him? Cañizares is so busy attributing human cognition (“si supiese”) and human passions (“espantarse ía”) to the painted figure of Rodamonte, and directing his anger toward it, that he does not see the young man brought into the house by Hortigosa. This development in the plot, as unlikely as it might seem, offers a very effective practical illustration of Vives’s observations that jealousy often turns into hatred and rage against everything that the jealous person perceives to be the cause of his anxiety (De anima 230; cf. Passions 86), or that fear and anger can hinder the understanding (De anima 46, 81). Cañizares’s inability to hear accurately what the neighbor tells him is a perfect example of fear hindering his already diminished intellectual capacity. The effect of fear on the capacity to hear and to understand had been acknowledged since antiquity. The impact of intense fear (pavor) in both the mind and the body was stressed, for instance, in an often-cited short passage from Ennius: “Tum pavor sapientiam omnem mi exanimato expectorat” [and dread disheartens me wholly out of my wits, even to death].32 Vives used a similar phrase to accentuate the impact of sudden fear on cognitive function: “Pauor mihi sapientiam omnem ex animo expectorat” (De anima 245) [panic drives all wisdom from my mind].33 He reinforced this idea by adding a well-known phrase from Sallust’s Catiline’s War (58.1): “fear blocks the ears of the spirit” (Passions 104; cf. De anima 245). Besides noting that fear makes people suspicious and prone to exaggeration, Vives also pointed out that those who are jealous become suspicious and are therefore likely to interpret things wrongly, and that, conversely, jealousy is a “disease” (morbus) to which those who are “suspicious and inclined to interpret everything the wrong way” are particularly vulnerable (De anima 229–230; cf. Passions 85–86). One blatant example of Cañizares’s inability to interpret things correctly is his response to the misleading claim made by Hortigosa as she begins to unfold the tapestry, that she is doing this “porque no vea el señor Cañizares que ay engaño en mis palabras” (255v) [so that Señor Cañizares will not see that I am deceiving him], rather than “porque vea que no

66  Elena Carrera hay engaño en mis palabras” [so that he will see that I am not deceiving him].34 Her words are a little joke to the audience and a way of showing that he is too old and stupid, and too preoccupied with his fears, to understand what she is saying. What happens after Cañizares’s verbal exchange with the guadamecí has been the subject of much discussion. Melveena McKendrick refers to Lorenza “fornicating noisily off stage” (138). Stanislav Zimic suggests that Lorenza might be faking her sexual satisfaction (445). Cruz points out that the young woman’s transgression is only “apparent” (130) and that the “barred door that screens the scene from the audience” prevents “any visual confirmation of the sexual act either by the old man or the audience” (132).35 Like the husband in the tale of the merchant, Cañizares remains ignorant and deluded (“illuso”), and, like the readers and listeners of the Disciplina and the Ysopete historiado, Cervantes’s readers and spectators can maintain the illusion that desire has been fulfilled. In the end, we know ironically little more than Cañizares, which suggests that we, like the early moderns, rely heavily on our imagination in making sense of situations and assessing their potential outcomes.

Conclusion We can now return to the question about the didactic value of Cervantes’s El viejo zeloso. This short play can be seen to belong to a long tradition of exposing women’s guile represented in the five short tales included in the Disciplina and the versions contained in the Spanish Ysopete. Like many other similar medieval exempla, the tale in which the trick of the stretched-out linen sheet is used to keep the husband unaware of his wife’s deception was allegedly intended to alert readers and listeners to the need to mistrust women. Even if, for modern critics who can “hardly accept seriously any didactic value in revealing the evil machinations of women” (Keller xii), such tales had primarily an entertaining function, we can well imagine how, in the premodern period, they might have elicited and drawn on the fear of being deceived and mocked. Cervantes’s entremés does seem to appeal to the spectators’ lowest form of sensibility by building on the medieval tradition of teaching through entertaining, but it also activates a wide range of literary references, such as Ovid’s retelling of the myth of Argus, and Boiardo’s and Ariosto’s reworkings of the story of Rodamonte’s jealousy. Lexicalized similes such as “más ojos que Argos” [more eyes that Argus] were probably a common occurrence in everyday speech in early modern Spain, while the character Rodamonte had been popularized as the embodiment of jealousy by plays performed in Madrid’s corrales, such as Lope’s Los celos. But Cervantes uses the phrase to foreshadow the old man’s fate and incorporates the fictional embodiment of jealousy into the tapestry of his text to show the power of images and of fiction on the mind.

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  67 One of the ways in which Cervantes departs from the medieval tradition is the emphasis he places on the inner world of his characters. While Ovid’s account of Argos’s story in the Metamorphoses had been used in the Middle Ages to warn against deception and, more particularly, against the futility of relying on the senses, Cervantes’s El viejo zeloso can be seen as a warning that it is the inner senses, and particularly the imagination, that are most unreliable. While the folktales that began to be collected in Latin in the twelfth century and to be disseminated throughout Western Europe in the thirteenth century focused on providing factual accounts of simple tricks, such as hiding a lover from the husband’s sight, in the age of Cervantes there was scope for more sophisticated accounts of the effect of images in arousing emotions. After all, in the centuries between Alfonso compiling the tales of the Disciplina and Cervantes writing his entremeses, Aristotle had been rediscovered in the West, and moral writers like Vives had turned to his and other Classical conceptualizations of the passions and their relation to mental representations. Looking back to the Stoics, via Cicero, Vives was able to explain in the De institutione that jealousy could consist primarily of fear, and that fear was based on anticipations rather than on faits accomplis. Two decades later, in the De anima, he further explained that the mental representations that produced fear would often be exaggerated or distorting. In both these works, Vives seems confident that his moral philosophical approach can help his readers to learn to control their passions, as when he suggests that, since no danger is really as great as imagined, those who are afraid should make an effort to use their judgment to assess the real danger. The rather optimistic outlook of the Renaissance humanist philosopher contrasts with Cervantes’s emphasis, almost eight decades later, on the pervasiveness of deception. Cervantes might have well been exposed to the optimism of humanists, particularly in his youth. But when he comes to write the entremeses, he is no longer a man of the Renaissance. He lives in the Spain of Philip III, in “a culture that was anxious” about “losing its hegemony in Europe” (Wagschal 190), and he is at least 60. He is one of the oldest members of a generation of soldiers, workers, and writers for whom desengaño [disillusion] was becoming a dominant theme. If the tales collected by Alfonso were used as tools to help people avoid the kind of deception (engaño) that was based on tricking the outer senses, the novellas and plays of Cervantes’s day could be expected to spread the news that desengaño was the best way to avoid deception and delusion on a bigger scale. Perhaps the biggest-scale deception that the entremés of El viejo zeloso warned its spectators and readers about was the early modern view that the institution of marriage, as a contractual arrangement between a man and the parents of his prospective wife, entitled a man

68  Elena Carrera to control a woman’s desires. Linked to this deceptive idea was the expectation that the wife could be forced to maintain her fidelity to her husband through physical restraint, such as confinement to the home. In showing the unsustainable marital situation of an old man trying to control his young wife’s desires by banning from her sight any visual representation of a male figure other than himself, the entremés emphasizes the futility of measures aimed to prevent nature from following its course. In his despair and confusion, Cañizares, who is incapable of satisfying his wife’s “hunger,” ends up giving in to his young wife’s wishes by allowing the neighbor to enter the house, and this offers spectators the illusion that she will be able to satisfy her hunger behind her husband’s back. As generic conventions dictate, the entremés will end with an apparent reconciliation, and as we, readers and spectators, will expect, based on other entremeses by Cervantes, “basic conflicts” will remain “unresolved” (Spadaccini 166). As in the traditional, seemingly universal settings of the tales of women’s guile, the husband’s delusion can only allow the wife short-term satisfaction, or simply the illusion of satisfaction. In addressing the traditional theme of the old jealous husband, Cervantes goes beyond the caricature-like style of folk tales, and that expected in an entremés, to weave together a number of ideas, held by his contemporaries, about the potential dangers of youth, the shortcomings of old age, and the impact of intense passions in hindering cognitive ability. Even though the old protagonist of El viejo zeloso might be seen by some readers and spectators as a grotesque comic figure, Cervantes’s depiction of his suffering can be seen to showcase early modern views about the effects of age on mental ability and emotional experience. In giving the husband of folktales his own voice, Cervantes has him acknowledge that he is so overwhelmed by jealousy and fear, that he cannot enjoy his married life. He then zooms out, moving from his perspective to that of readers and spectators, and invites us to witness how, in being so anxious to suppress his young wife’s physical and moral development by limiting her sensory experience, the old man fails to see what is actually happening around him. His own limited attention is so focused on what he thinks are the causes of his anxiety—i.e., female neighbors and ornamental depictions of male figures—that he is unable to see the real dangers. What Cañizares does, what he claims to feel, and what he fails to notice serve to illustrate, in a practical and rather effective way, the warning, made by Vives in the De anima, that fear is caused by the thought of what is dangerous, rather than by actual danger. Hearing the old man voice his fears, his despair, and his inability to get pleasure out of life, we might look beyond the stupidity which Cervantes’s contemporaries associated with old age, and perhaps feel invited to confront our own obsessive fears.

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Notes 1 I cite from the first edition of the entremés. All translations in this chapter are my own, except when I quote from the third part of Vives’s De anima, translated by Noreña (Passions). I thank the editors of this volume, the blind peer-reviewers, and my colleague Adrian Armstrong for their encouragement and their very helpful suggestions. 2 For early discussions of the play’s scandalous morality, see Asensio, “Introduction” 24–25; Castro 135; Cirot, “Gloses” 29–30; Cotarelo y Valledor 528. On Cervantes’s audacity, see Fernández de Cano y Martín. The subversiveness of the entremés, questioned by Cruz, has been emphasized, among others, by Martínez López, who sees Cañizares’s young wife, Lorenza, as the main agent in the action: “la píldora subversiva de la mujer destartaladora de unos muros de contención levantados por el hombre sólo para ella” (379) [the subversive pill offered by the woman who brings down the retaining walls built for her by the man]. 3 Vives’s De anima was not translated into vernacular languages in the early modern period, but circulated widely in Europe and beyond. First published in Basel in 1538, it was republished as part of his complete works in 1555 and eight more times together with other works on the soul (with Philip Melanchthon’s in Basel in 1543; with Veit Amerbach’s in Lyons in 1555, 1596, and 1621; with Melanchthon’s and Amerbach’s in Basel in 1560; and with Melanchthon’s, Amerbach’s, and Conrad Gesner’s in Zurich, in three slightly different editions, in 1563). His Opera omnia were shipped from Spain to Mexico in 1561, as part of the library of Juan de la Fuente (the first Professor of Medicine at the University of Mexico), and to Goa by the Jesuits. For an overview of Vives’s early readership, see González González, “Fame”; González González, “La recepción.” 4 On the suggestion that Cervantes was familiar with Huarte’s Examen de ingenios, see Iriarte; Green; Wagschal 101. 5 During that period, it went through at least six more editions in Latin, eight more in English, seven more in Spanish, and over twenty in other languages (French, German, Dutch, and Italian). 6 Vives’s international career and the widespread impact of his work are evident from the fact that, according to the Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC), there were no fewer than 421 editions of his work between 1514 and 1600 (not nearly as many as for works by Luther, Melanchthon, or Erasmus, but many more than for Ficino, More, or Pico della Mirandola). Some of his shorter treatises, such as Introductio ad sapientiam, were even translated into Czech in the sixteenth century. 7 Wagschal 23, cf. 49. Wagschal devotes two chapters of his study of jealousy in early modern Spain to Cervantes, one focused on the novella El celoso extremeño [The Jealous Old Man from Extremadura] and the other on the play La casa de los celos [The House of Jealousy] (98–135) and provides some useful contextual clues by referring to the chapter on jealousy in Vives’s De anima and citing a brief passage on women’s jealousy from Vives’s De institutione (Wagschal 7, 57, and 126). Nonetheless, while he proposes his own categories of analysis, such as “suspicious jealousy,” “evidential jealousy,” “possessive jealousy,” and “jealous sadness” (19), I offer deeper insights into the premodern views promoted by Vives. 8 On folk motifs in Cervantes, see Cirot, “El celoso”; Cirot, “Encore”; Cirot, “Gloses”; Cirot, “Quelques mots”; Molho. 9 On the latter theme in the Spanish literary tradition, see Castro 133–136; Casalduero 212. Urbina notes that in the tales of adulterous wives included

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10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18

19

20 21

Elena Carrera in the Disciplina and the related Libro de los exemplos por a.b.c, the husband is young (733). Nonetheless, in other adaptations of the Disciplina, and in the Latin Historia septem sapientium and its vernacular versions, like the anonymous Libro de los siete sabios de Roma (ca. 1510), the husband is old like Cañizares. On the novela, see Canavaggio; Carrera, “Embodied Cognition”; Detwiler Ilgenfritz; Wagschal 98–120. On the entremés as a subgenre, see Bergman 146–153; González Maestro 205–212. See p. 81 in bk. III, sec. IV, verse 19 of P. Ovidi Nasonis: Amores; Medicamina faciei femineae; Ars amatoria; Remedia amoris. See Zunshine. On the development of this field in the 1990s and 2000s, see Jaén and Simon, “Overview”; Simon, “Contextualizing.” For recent studies of human cognition in early modern Spanish literature, see Jaén and Simon, Cognitive Approaches. The most important landmark in cognitive approaches to Cervantes is still Simon, Simerka, and Mancing’s Cognitive Cervantes. One trend, within this broader cognitive approach, known as “cognitive historicism,” has been to focus solely on approaches to the mind developed before and during Cervantes’s time (see, for instance, Jaén, “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas”; Jaén, “Cervantes on Human Development”; Jaén, “Teaching Cervantes”). While the phrase “affections of the mynde” was more common in the sixteenth century (see, for instance, Eliot), “passions of the minde” was more broadly used in the seventeenth (see Wright). The notion of “Impression” is based on the Aristotelian metaphor of images (phantasmata) being impressed on the soul like a mark or imprint on wax. The early modern warnings that images conjuring up danger, for instance, might be based on misperceptions contrast with the much more positive view of the emotions as judgments that something of consequence has taken place put forward by Nussbaum (43, 71, 78, 181). On the use of the term “emotions” to refer to the premodern period, see Dixon, “‘Emotion’”; Dixon, From Passion; Essary. On Aristotle’s accounts of single emotions, see Konstan. This broad meaning also transpires from early modern English definitions, such as “sapience is the cognition and iudgement of diuine and high causes” (Edgeworth XVIIv), or from the English translation of Pedro Mexía’s explanation that “fiue principall thynges are there, that distourne manne from the ripe, and mature cognition of thynges in this life” (Mexía 181v). See, for instance, the explanation provided by the scientist José Micón, writing in 1578: “Aristoteles, que toda la cognicion que tuvo de las cosas, la quizo [sic] començar primero por los sentidos que causan la experiencia que con su sciencia tanto vale, quanto el mismo la encarece” (D4v) [Aristotle, who wished to base all his cognition of things on the senses, producing the very valuable experiential knowledge, which he highly recommended]. In his treatise for midwives of 1541, the physician Damián Carbón had referred to the “cognición” [cognition] of bodily signs that would help the medical prognosis (68v). We also find the term “cognición” in the titles of scientific books such as Pedro Ruiz’s treatise of 1575 on sun dials. On Vives’s use of the term affectus and its range of meanings, see Carrera, “Augustinian.” The terms imaginativa and phantasia were sometimes interchanged, and some authors conflated their functions into one, though Vives insisted that they were distinct. Later, authors, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, would acknowledge Vives’s distinction between imagination, as the passive function

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22

23

24

25

26

27

28

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of the mind which receives sensory impressions, and phantasy as the active power which combines them (Coleridge 101). I keep the term “imaginative power” as a translation of imaginativa, in line with Beecher and Ciavolella (78), and translate phantasia as “imagination” because this is the modern English term which conveys its meaning most closely, but use the Greek term when emphasizing the broader range of functions attributed to it in the Aristotelian model. Medieval and Renaissance medical writers tended to adopt Galen’s terminological distinction to refer to the two main functions of this subtle substance: the term “spirit” (or pneuma) usually referred to its function of conveying instructions, while “natural heat” was used to stress its role in supplying warmth to the bodily organs and limbs. On the medieval and early modern understanding of the role of spirit in connecting mind and body, see Carrera, “Anger” 112–115; Harvey 5–7. This explains why Vives, in line with the Hippocratic and Galenic views popularized in medieval and early modern regimens of health, mentions the passions among the factors thought to contribute to premature aging: namely, illnesses such as quartan fevers, environmental factors like dark surroundings, and lifestyle habits like excessive study and being habitually overwhelmed by certain passions: “qui anguntur metu, odio, invidia, et potissimum aegritudine” (De anima 120) [those who are anguished with fear, hatred, envy, and especially sadness]. This idea, found in Galen’s De symptomatum causis, De locis affectis, and De methodo medendi, was also promoted in medieval medical handbooks. See, for instance, Maimonides’s Aphorisms, (7.12) in Maimonides (26–27) and Chirino (fol. 34v). Vives’s definition is a close paraphrasis of Cicero’s: “aegritudo ex eo, quod alter quoque potiatur eo, quod ipse concupiverit” in bk. 4, ch. 8 of Tusculanae disputationes (Cicero, Tusculan 109), which Graver translates as: “distress that another has likewise obtained what one desired for oneself” (Cicero, Cicero 45). “Est ergo aegritudo opinio recens mali praesentis . . . metus opinio impendentis mali, quod intolerabile esse videatur” in bk. 4, ch. 7 of Tusculanae (Cicero, Tusculan 108). In Graver’s translation: “Distress, then, is ‘a fresh opinion that an evil is present . . . .’ . . . Fear is ‘an opinion that an evil is impending which one thinks intolerable’” (Cicero, Cicero 44–45). For Aristotle, lupê includes physical pain and mental distress; for his definition of fear as the distress (lupê) caused by the impression of an imminent evil, see Rhetoric 2.5, 1382a2–24. The woodcut illustration I reproduce here, also found in Asensio’s edition of the Entremeses (207), accompanied Pedro Alfonso’s tale “De la muger del Mercader e de su suegra vieja” (122v–123r) in the Zaragoza edition of 1489 of the Ysopete historiado, which Cotarelo y Mori took as the first edition. We now know of an earlier edition (of which there is an incomplete extant copy) published by the same printer in 1482 and another printed in Toulouse in 1488 (Lacarra, “La fortuna”). Canavaggio (588) only mentions five reeditions, but the much larger number of editions between those dates is evident from the bibliographical information provided by Cotarelo y Mori (xx–xxvi). For a modern English translation, see Alfonso, “Of the Merchant’s Wife.” It has been suggested that the Disciplina was compiled by Alfonso in Norman England (d’Alverny), but he might have taken his completed manuscript with him to England when he left the service of Alfonso I of Aragon in 1110 to become Henry I’s physician. For a longue durée approach to the transmission of popular story types from antiquity, see Doody.

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29 Cervantes was well acquainted with the commedia dell’arte not only because he had spent time in Italy as a soldier, but also because there were a number of Italian actors in Spain (see Sito Alba). Nonetheless, rather than arguing for a direct influence, it is worth noting that some of the similarities between the commedia and the entremeses can be explained in relation to the older, pan-European tradition of carnivalesque theater (see Algaba Granero; González Maestro 201–204; Huerta Calvo). 30 First published in Italian in 1516, the Orlando furioso was frequently printed in Spanish during Cervantes’s lifetime: for instance, in 1550, 1553, 1556, 1558, 1564, 1578, 1579, 1583, and 1585. On its influence on Cervantes, see Chevalier, L’Ariosto; Hart. For an interpretation of Cervantes’s use of the four warrior-figures in El viejo zeloso, see Cruz 130–132. 31 See Eclogue 8, verse 108. 32 Ennius. Alcmaeon, fr. 26, in Warmington’s translation (230–231). Cicero cites this phrase in bk. 3, ch. 38 of De oratore (Cicero, De oratore 522) and in bk. 4, ch. 8 of Tusculanae disputationes (Cicero, Tusculan 110). In her study of Tusculans 3 and 4, Graver translates this phrase as: “then panic drove all wisdom from my breast, and I was petrified” (Cicero, Cicero 46). 33 Vives uses animus where Ennius had used the participle exanimato (literally “out of breath”), which could mean “deprived of life,” but also had a broader figurative meaning, which included the notions of “terrified,” “agitated,” and “disheartened.” Noreña translates this passage as “fear drives away any wisdom from my soul” (Vives, Passions 103), though I prefer to make it clear that Vives used the term animus to refer to the rational part of the soul (the mind). 34 See Wardropper 22. Smith’s translation misses the irony here and translated this passage as “so that Master Cañizares can see that I’m not deceiving him” (139). 35 I deal with this in my ongoing study of female desire in premodern European culture.

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Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  73 Baras Escolá, Alfredo, ed. Entremeses. By Miguel de Cervantes. Madrid: Real Academia Española, 2012. Beecher, Donald A., and Massimo Ciavolella. “Introduction.” A Treatise on Lovesickness. By Jacques Ferrand. Trans. and Ed. Donald A. Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1990. 3–213. Bergman, Ted L. “Entremeses and other Forms of Teatro Breve.” A Companion to Early Modern Hispanic Theater. Ed. Hilaire Kallendorf. Leiden: Brill, 2014. 145–161. . Canavaggio, Jean. “Del Celoso extremeño al Viejo celoso: Aproximación a una reescritura.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 82.5 (2005): 587–598. . Carbón, Damián. Libro del arte de las comadres o madrinas y del regimiento de las preñadas y paridas y de los niños. Mallorca: Hernando de Cansoles, 1541. Carrera, Elena. “Anger and the Mind-Body Connection in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine.” Emotions and Health, 1200–1700. Ed. Elena Carrera. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 95–146. . Carrera, Elena. “Augustinian, Aristotelian, and Humanist Shaping of Medieval and Early Modern Emotion: Affectus, affectio, and ‘affection’ as Travelling Concepts.” Before Emotion: The Language of Feeling, 400–1800. Ed. Juanita Feros Ruys, Michael W. Champion, and Kirk Essary. New York: Routledge, 2019. 170–184. . Carrera, Elena. “Embodied Cognition and Empathy in Cervantes’s El celoso extremeño.” Hispania 97.1 (2014): 113–124. . Casalduero, Joaquín. Sentido y forma del teatro de Cervantes. 2nd ed. Madrid: Gredos, 1974. Castro, Américo. El pensamiento de Cervantes. Madrid: Hernando, 1925. Cervantes, Miguel de. “Entremés del viejo zeloso.” Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos nunca representados. Madrid: Viuda de Alonso Martín, 1615. Fols 253r–257v. Cervantes, Miguel de. “The Jealous Old Man.” Eight Interludes. Trans. Dawn L. Smith. London: J. M. Dent, 1996. 133–144. Chevalier, Maxime. L’Ariosto en Espagne (1530–1650): Recherches sur l’influence du “Roland furieux.” Bordeaux: Feret et fils, 1966. Chevalier, Maxime. “El Libro de los exenplos y la tradición oral.” Dicenda: Cuadernos de Filología Hispánica 6 (1987): 83–92. Chirino, Alfonso. Text and Concordance of Biblioteca Nacional MS 3384: Replicación al espejo de medicina. Ed. Enrica J. Ardemagni and Cynthia M. Wasick. Madison: Hispanic Seminar of Medieval Studies, 1988. Cicero. Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4. Trans. and with commentary by Margaret Graver. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002. Cicero. De oratore. Ed. Otto Maurit Müller. New York: Darnmannia, 1819. Cicero. Tusculan Disputations with English Notes. Ed. Charles Anthon. New York: Harper, 1852. Cirot, Georges. “El celoso extremeño et l’Histoire de Floire et Blanceflor.” Bulletin Hispanique 31.2 (1929): 138–143. Cirot, Georges. “Encore les ‘Maris jaloux’ de Cervantes.” Bulletin Hispanique 31.4 (1929): 339–346.

74  Elena Carrera Cirot, Georges. “Gloses sur les ‘maris jaloux’ de Cervantes.” Bulletin Hispanique 31.1 (1929): 1–74. Cirot, Georges. “Quelques mots sur les ‘Maris jaloux’ de Cervantes.” Bulletin Hispanique 42.4 (1940): 303–306. Clamurro, William H. “El viejo celoso y el principio festivo del entremés cervantino.” Actas del VII Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas. Ed. Giuseppe Bellini. Roma: Bulzoni, 1982. 317–324. “Cognition.” LEXICO. Oxford University Press, 2019. Web. 27 Oct. 2019. . Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. Vol. 1. London: Rest Penner, 1817. Cooper, John M. “An Aristotelian Theory of the Emotions”. Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996. 238–257. Cotarelo y Mori, Emilio. “Prologue.” Fábulas de Esopo. Reproducción en facsímile de la primera edición de 1489. Madrid: RAE, 1929. v-lii. Cotarelo y Valledor, Armando. El teatro de Cervantes: Estudio crítico. Madrid: Tipografía de la Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, 1915. Covarrubias Horozco, Sebastián de. Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española. Ed. Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra. Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2006. Cruz, Anne J. “Deceit, Desire, and the Limits of Subversion in Cervantes’s Interludes.” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 14.2 (1994): 119–136. d’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse. “Translations and Translators.” Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century. Ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable with Carole D. Lanham. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982. 421–462. Detwiler Ilgenfritz, Louise A. “The Ins and Outs of Cervantes’s El celoso extremeño and El viejo celoso: A Study Of Narrative Sequence.” Confluencia 8.2–9.1 (1993): 213–218. Dixon, Thomas. “‘Emotion:’ The History of a Keyword in Crisis.” Emotion Review 4.4 (2012): 338–344. . Dixon, Thomas. From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Doody, Margaret Anne. The True Story of the Novel. London: Harper Collins, 1996. Edgeworth, Roger. Sermons Very Fruitfull, Godly, and Learned Preached and Sette Foorth. London: Robert Caly, 1557. Eliot, Thomas. The Dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knyght. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1538. Essary, Kirk. “Passions, Affections, or Emotions? On the Ambiguity of 16th-Century Terminology.” Emotion Review 9.4 (2017): 367–374. . Fernández de Cano y Martín, José Ramón. “El vocabulario erótico cervantino: Algunas ‘calas al aire’ en el entremés de El viejo celoso.” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 12.2 (1992): 105–115. Frede, Dorothea. “The Cognitive Role of Phantasia in Aristotle.” Essays on Aristotle’s De anima. Ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1995. 279–295. .

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  75 González González, Enrique. “Fame and Oblivion.” A Companion to Juan Luis Vives. Ed. Charles Fantazzi. Leiden: Brill, 2008. 359–413. . González González, Enrique. “La recepción de la obra de Vives durante el antiguo régimen.” Rinascimento 38 (1998): 455–514. González Maestro, Jesús. La escena imaginaria: Poética del teatro de Miguel de Cervantes. Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2000. Green, Otis. “El ‘ingenioso’ hidalgo.” Hispanic Review 25.3 (1957): 175–193. . Hart, Thomas R. Cervantes and Ariosto: Renewing Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. Harvey, Ruth. The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London: Warburg Institute, 1975. Honig, Edwin. “Foreword.” Interludes. By Miguel de Cervantes. Trans. Edwin Honig. New York: New American Library, 1964. ix–xxi. Huerta Calvo, Javier. “Arlequín español (entremés y ‘commedia dell’arte’).” El nuevo mundo de la risa: Estudios sobre el teatro breve y la comicidad en los Siglos de Oro. Barcelona: Oro Viejo, 1995. 125–134. Iriarte, Mauricio de. El doctor Huarte de San Juan y su Examen de ingenios: Contribución a la historia de la psicología diferencial. 3rd Rev. ed. Madrid: CSIC, 1948. Jaén, Isabel. “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas of His Time: Mind and Development in Don Quixote.” Cognitive Cervantes. Ed. Julien Jacques Simon, Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012): 71–98. . Jaén, Isabel. “Cervantes on Human Development: Don Quixote and Renaissance Cognitive Psychology.” Don Quixote: Interdisciplinary Connections. Ed. Matthew D. Warshawsky and James A. Parr. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2013. 35–57. Jaén, Isabel. “Teaching Cervantes’ Don Quixote from a Cognitive Historicist Perspective.” Cognition in the Classroom. Ed. Nancy Easterlin. Spec. issue of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 16.1 (2014): 110–126. Jaén, Isabel, and Julien Jacques Simon, eds. Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016. . Jaén, Isabel, and Julien Jacques Simon. “An Overview of Recent Developments in Cognitive Literary Studies.” Cognitive Literary Studies. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. Austin: U of Texas P, 2012. 13–32. Keller, John Esten. “Introduction.” El libro de los engaños. Ed. John Esten Keller. Rev. ed. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1959. xi–xix. Kenworthy, Patricia. “The Character of Lorenza and the Moral of Cervantes’ El viejo celoso.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 31.2 (1979): 103–107. Konstan, David. The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2006. Lacarra, María Jesús, ed. Disciplina clericalis. By Pedro Alfonso. Trans. Esperanza Ducay. Zaragoza: Guara Editorial, 1980. Lacarra, María Jesús. “La fortuna del Isopete en España.” Actas del XIII Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval. Ed. José Manuel Fradejas Rueda, Déborah D. Smithbauer, Demetrio Martín Sanz

76  Elena Carrera and Mª Jesús Díez Garretas. Valladolid: Ayuntamiento de Valladolid and Universidad de Valladolid, 2010. 105–134. Libro de los siete sabios de Roma nuevamente emendado y capítulos dividido. Seville: Jacobo Cromberger, ca. 1510. Lister, John Thomas. “A Comparison of Two Works of Cervantes with a Play by Massinger.” Hispania 5.3 (1922): 133–140. . Maimonides. Medical Aphorisms Treatises 6–9: A Parallel Arabic-English Edition of Kitāb al-fuṣūl fī al-ṭibb. Ed. and Trans. Gerrit Bos. Provo: Brigham Young UP, 2007. Martínez López, Enrique. “Erotismo y ejemplaridad en El viejo celoso de Cervantes.” Erotismo en las letras hispánicas: Aspectos, modos y fronteras. Ed. Luce López-Baralt and Francisco Márquez Villanueva. México: El Colegio de México, 1995. 335–385. McKendrick, Melveena. Theatre in Spain: 1490–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. Mexía, Pedro. The foreste, or Collection of histories, no lesse profitable, then pleasant and necessarie. Trans. from French into English by Thomas Fortescue. London: H. Wykes and Ihon Kyngston, for Willyam Iones, 1571. Micón, José, Diario y ivyzio del grande cometa que nuevamente nos ha aparecido hazia Occidente a las cinco y media hora de la tarde a los 8. dias de nouiembre año de 1577. Barcelona: Jaime Sendrat, 1578. Molho, Maurice. Cervantes: Raíces folklóricas. Madrid: Gredos, 1976. Mujica, Bárbara. A New Anthology of Early Modern Spanish Theatre: Play and Playtext. New Haven: Yale UP, 2015. Navarro Durán, Rosa. “Desenlaces con riesgo y secuencias probadas en el teatro de Cervantes.” El teatro de Cervantes y el nacimiento de la comedia española. Ed. Rafael González Cañal and Almudena García González. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2017. 65–80. Nussbaum, Martha C. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Ortuño Arregui, Manuel. “La Disciplina clericalis de Pedro Alfonso.” ArtyHum: Revista de Artes y Humanidades 24 (2016): 42–54. Ovid. P. Ovidi Nasonis: Amores; Medicamina faciei femineae; Ars amatoria; Remedia amoris. Ed. Edward J. Kenney. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Robbins, Jeremy. The Challenges of Uncertainty: An Introduction to Seventeenth-Century Spanish Literature. London: Duckworth, 1998. Ruiz, Pedro. Tratado de reloges solares, el qual contiene mucha variedad (porque para entenderlo de raýz es menester Aritmética, Geometría, cognición de la esphera y de otras cosas), para que más se aficione Vuestra Señoría a esta sciencia. Valencia: Pedro de Huete, 1575. Savj-López, Paolo. Cervantes. Trans. Antonio G. Solalinde. Madrid: Biblioteca Calleja, 1917. Simon, Julien Jacques. “Contextualizing Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016. 13–33. . Simon, Julien Jacques, Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing, eds. Cognitive Cervantes. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012).

Aging, Emotion, and Cognition  77 Sito Alba, Manuel. “La Commedia dell’Arte, clave esencial de la gestación del Quijote.” Arbor 116 (1983): 7–30. Spadaccini, Nicholas. “Writing for Reading: Cervantes’ Aesthetics of Reception in the Entremeses.” Critical Essays on Cervantes. Ed. Ruth El Saffar. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. 162–175. Tolan, John Victor. Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1993. Urbina, Eduardo. “Hacia El viejo celoso de Cervantes.” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 38.2 (1990): 733–742. . Vives, Juan Luis. De anima et vita. 1538. Ed. Mario Sancipriano. Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1963. Vives, Juan Luis. De institutione feminae christianae. Vol. 4 of Opera omnia. 8 vols. London: Gregg P, 1964. 65–301. Rept. of Opera omnia. Ed. Gregorio Mayans y Siscar. Valencia: Montfort, 1782–1790. Vives, Juan Luis. De officio mariti. Trans. and Ed. Charles Fantazzi. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Vives, Juan Luis. Instruction de la muger christiana, agora nuevamente corregido y emendado y reduzido en buen estilo Castellano. Trans. Juan Justiniano. Alcalá: Miguel de Eguía, 1529. Vives, Juan Luis. The Instruction of a Christen Woman. 1529. Trans. Richard Hyrde. Ed. Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Margaret Mikesell. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2002. Vives, Juan Luis. The Passions of the Soul: The Third Book of De anima et vita. Trans. Carlos G. Noreña. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen P, 1990. Wagschal, Steven. The Literature of Jealousy in the Age of Cervantes. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2006. Wardropper, Bruce W. “Ambiguity in El viejo celoso.” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 1.1–2 (1981): 19–27. Warmington, Eric H., ed. and trans. Remains of Old in Three Volumes: I Ennius and Caeciclius. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1935. Wright, Thomas. The Passions of the Minde in Generall, a reprint based on the 1604 edition. Ed. Thomas O. Sloan. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1971. Yager, Susan. “The End of Knowledge: The Argus Legend and Chaucer.” Essays in Medieval Studies 10 (1993): 15–26. Zimic, Stanislav. “La ejemplaridad de los entremeses de Cervantes.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 61.3 (1984): 444–543. . Zunshine, Lisa. Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010.

4

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals in the Early Modern Spanish and Spanish American World Steven Wagschal

The early modern period presented a plurality of views on whether nonhuman animals held feelings, emotions and thoughts. In writings on this topic of a philosophical nature, thinkers generally formulated their views within the contours of the line of reasoning established by Classical authors and especially Aristotle in the Historia animalium, in what came to be known as the scala naturae (“Great Chain of Being”). As historian Abel Alves has pointed out, in this teleological view, each of the world’s parts had a purpose, and the purpose of “brute animals” was to eat the plants that were beneath them on the scale and to work for and be consumed by the more “perfect” human beings who were above them (The Animals of Spain 13). On this view, animals shared a sensitive soul with humans, but they lacked what makes humans unique among the Earth’s creatures, that is, the rational soul that humans possessed and utilized for their higher cognitive abilities. Such a view is reiterated, for instance, in Juan Luis Vives’s chapter on reason in his 1538 Tratado del alma [Treatise of the Soul], in which he compares animals and humans explicitly: los animales no empiezan en A para parar á B á fin de conocer C, ni tampoco proceden de A á B para volver de ésta á aquélla, como conexas y dependientes entre sí . . . . El animal sigue lo que conoce simplemente por el sentido . . . . El hombre compone y clasifica, pasa de unas á otras cosas . . . (II.4.91–92) animals do not begin with A to move to B in order to get to C, nor do they go from A to B in order to move from B to A, as connected and mutually dependent . . . animals follow what they know simply from their senses . . . man classifies and builds upon, moving from some things to other things.1 In Vives’s terms, humans employ syllogistic reasoning to achieve higher knowledge, while animals merely know the world in an unsophisticated way through their senses. On the fringes of this view, while still considering humans above animals, the sixteenth-century philosophically inclined medical DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211-4

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals  79 doctor Gómez Pereira took aim at the idea that animals were complex, describing them as machinelike “automata” driven exclusively by instinct. These were beings without feelings, emotions, intentions, or knowledge. In his Antoniana Margarita (1554), Pereira claimed that animals could not suffer, an idea that would be developed by René Descartes and his disciple Nicolas Malebranche to justify the practice of vivisection. 2 Within Spain, Pereira’s views received both acceptance and outright rejection. More than one response satirized his view, including Francisco de Sosa’s Endecálogo contra la “Antoniana Margarita” [Endecalogue against the Antoniana Margarita] (1556), in which Sosa ridicules Pereira by having a variety of these very animals speak up against his work in defense of their many mental faculties and of the obvious rationales humans have for believing that animals have feelings as well as memories. 3 The notion that humans can learn from animals had a long (if not always serious) history. As Alves explains, philosopher Olivia Sabuco de Nantes Barrera’s Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del hombre [New Philosophy of Human Nature] (1587) suggested through examples of animals behaving lovingly—mostly taken in a humanist fashion from ancient sources including Aristotle and Pliny—that humans could learn about appropriate emotional responses, and especially compassion, from animals (Alves 35–36). In the context of this tradition of treatises and tracts weighing in on questions of animal sentience, Sabuco makes the point that humans can learn from animals in a philosophical treatise, a point that, since the time of Aesop, literary authors had been suggesting implicitly. Yet depictions in fables often seem to be almost entirely about people rather than about animals. Indeed, typically a creature in nonhuman animal form speaks in human language and raises anthropocentric concerns that would not be of interest to any creature other than a human member of the society in which the text is composed. For instance, in the “Fable of the dog, the wolf and the sheep” published in the 1488 Castilian vernacular version of Aesop’s Fables known as the Esopete ystoriado, the animals enact a courtroom scene in which they discuss larceny and dispute truthful versus perjured testimony (I.4.35). Animals in fables found in various types of collections are generally meant to be allegorical—that is, really about human interactions with one another— and for this reason tend to represent animals behaving in ways that almost never obtain in the actual world. Thus, instead of belonging to a herd, a flock, or a pack, in which an animal would interact primarily with other conspecifics as in nature, in fables, single animals of a species are typically represented interacting with other single members of very different species (such as in the previous example of the trial, or in many others, including the wolf and the crane, or the mouse and the lion). Fables, for this reason, do not provide a great deal of knowledge about what humans actually thought about animals (except in very

80  Steven Wagschal specific cases).4 The medieval scholar and church father Isidore of Seville expressed this point clearly, that one was not to take fables literally, as [t]hese are presented with the intention that the conversation of imaginary dumb animals among themselves may be recognized as a certain image of the life of humans . . . . Poets have made up some fables for the sake of entertainment, and expounded others as having to do with the nature of things, and still others as about human morals. (66) In this context of medical and philosophical tracts that dealt with issues of animal sentience explicitly and usually abstractly in order to flesh out what was particularly special about human beings, and of literary genres that treated animals implicitly as mere mirrors of human foibles, there emerged three genres of writing that better illuminate the early modern human understanding of animal cognition in the era because writers in these genres grappled with how to advance various practical human interests for the purpose of hunting, domestication, or simply wondering about other uses of certain species of animals: hunting books, husbandry treatises, and natural histories dealing with the American encounter.5 These accounts often provide a more realistic or at least plausible view of certain animals’ sentience that was indebted to the practical necessity of understanding how the animals’ minds actually worked for the success of the endeavor at hand. In the following section, I will focus on representative examples of each of these genres. Following this survey, I will examine briefly how Cervantes negotiated this landscape of ideas on animals’ minds in Don Quijote, thereby creating various memorable and enigmatic animal characters.

Hunting Books (Libros de caza, de ballestería o de montería) Hunting books illustrate well how royal hunts were organized and orchestrated, how many men were engaged in caring for hunting dogs and taking part in the hunt, how the value of the hunt was understood, and how its massive expense in manpower and other costs were rationalized. The manuals also shed light on how humans conceived of the minds of both the animals employed as helpers (mostly dogs and horses) and the animals that the hunters hoped to outsmart, including deer, bear, and boar. Regarding dogs, for instance, in the Arte de ballestería y montería [Art of Archery and Hunting] (1644), Alonso Martínez de Espinar does not gratuitously anthropomorphize these helper animals, but thinks carefully about their sensory perception, and clearly had observed them closely, leading him to draw the conclusion that philosophers had been wrong about their generalizations on animals. Indeed, he relies on his

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals  81 own observations and experience rather than on prior philosophizing: “me ha obligado a escudriñar la filosofía natural y juntarla con la experiencia, por no poderme ajustar con lo que he oído y visto escrito” (XIX) [I found myself obliged to scrutinize natural philosophy and conjoin it with my experience, because what I had seen and read did not conform to my experience]. In particular, it is dogs’ superior sense of smell that he focuses on and how dogs use this superior sense to perform tasks that for humans would be impossible: “Entre los animales, el de mayor olfato es el perro; esto, junto con su conocimiento, le hace hacer cosas que nos parecen imposibles y que no caben en un bruto” (113) [Among animals, the one with the best sense of smell is the dog; this, along with his knowledge, allows him to do things that seem impossible and that do not fit in a beast]. While he employs the common philosophical parlance of the day in the appellation “bruto,” the term is at odds with what he has witnessed with his own reason. On the one hand, tradition has taught him that dogs lack reason, but, on the other hand, he sees them performing tasks that appear to require reasoning: “Vemos cómo aprenden lo que les enseñan, que pronto son en obedecer, particularmente los de caza; las diligencias que hacen para buscarla, venteando y rastreando; el gran conocimiento que tienen en el olfato, donde jamás se engañan” (113) [We see how they learn what we teach them, how quick they are to obey, particularly those of the hunt; the measures they take to search for the prey, sniffing and tracking].6 Dogs also have will or “voluntad,” and through training, that is, learning, they can overcome it. For Martínez de Espinar, individual dogs admit to different levels of excellence in their skills—like humans who have varying talents and abilities—and the best canines communicate clearly to their masters about where to find the quarry: “Otros hay que rodean y se paran con el viento, señalándola; estós son los mejores, que fijamente dicen al cazador dónde la tienen” (442; emphasis is mine) [There are others who circle and stop against the wind, pointing it out: these are the best, that clearly tell the hunter where it is]. That is, these dogs literally “speak,” an ability that dogs lack in the medico-philosophical tradition. Furthermore, their ability to learn enables them to overcome their own status as irrational beings moved only by instinct: “Tanto puede la buena enseñanza, que vence el natural aun en los irracionales” (68) [Good instruction can do so much that it overcomes nature even in those without reason]. Another element in tension in Martínez de Espinar’s analysis of dog cognition is that his emphasis on canines’ superior olfaction yet lesser visual ability (as compared to humans) leads him to stipulate that humans are unique, something he has learned in the Aristotelian tradition, because reason is related to sight. Yet, at the same time, he has observed that dogs are able to differentiate one animal from another in the hunt through olfaction alone, in precisely the way that a human would use sight analytically: “. . . el sabueso no halla dificultad en conocer y apartar una res de otra por

82  Steven Wagschal el olfato, como con la vista conociera, y apartara un hombre una cosa blanca entre otras negras” (68) [the hound has no difficulty in knowing and distinguishing one animal from another by smell, just as, by sight, a man would know and distinguish a white thing from among other black things]. Although sight was supposed to be the most noble sense, it doesn’t seem as if it matters, in a practical way, if a being uses sight or olfaction to make distinctions among similar objects. Appreciating the abilities of canines, and thus implicitly and explicitly appreciating their higher cognitive faculties, helps Martínez de Espinar exploit them for their value as hunting companions, despite the fact that what he is observing is at odds with the inherited medico-philosophical tradition. The wordy subtitle of his book (escrita con método para excusar la fatiga que ocasiona la ignorancia [written as method to avoid the annoyance that ignorance provokes]) points to the discrepancy between the practical truth of what he is writing and what others have claimed to be the truth ignorantly. Regarding prey animals, these also need to be understood and not assumed to be ignorant, in order for the hunter to capture or kill them effectively. Indeed, Martínez de Espinar treats various wild animals, and although “bestias,” they are treated with a respect which is warranted by their affect and advanced cognitive powers that rely on their senses. For instance, deer feel “anxiety” under particular conditions in which they are “aware” that they are in danger, such as when the weather is such that they cannot see well or distinguish faint sounds adequately: conocen el daño que les viene de no poderse valer de la vista y los oídos como cuando está el tiempo sosegado; porque el ruido que hace el viento en el monte es tan grande, que no le da lugar que vea ni oiga, y por esta causa, en tales días está con gran inquietud y de cualquier cosa se alborota. (112; emphasis is mine) [They know the harm that will befall them by not being able to use their vision and their hearing as they do when the weather is calm; because the noise that the wind in the countryside makes is so great that it leaves no opportunity for him to hear or to see, and because of this, on such days he is very anxious and gets upset about anything]. With such worthy adversaries, the hunter must use stealthy methods from which the reader may glean implicitly in which ways he considers these creatures to be sentient. In this vein, Martínez de Espinar recommends various tricks. Among these is the “buey de cabestrillo” trick, whereby the hunter confounds the senses of deer or other animals by bringing an ox along on the hunt and hiding behind it, using the ox as a living blind. Furthermore, he warns against the hunter revealing himself from behind the blind after killing his quarry lest other conspecifics bear witness and

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals  83 learn the lesson that the hunter is hiding behind the ox: “Jamás se ha de descubrir a la caza ni desamparar el buey, aunque sea después de haberla tirado, porque la que no mató, quedará escarmentada con haber visto al hombre junto al buey, y este recelo no se les olvida tan presto” (233) [One should never uncover oneself to the hunted animal nor abandon the ox, even after shooting at the animal, because the one that was not killed will learn the lesson having seen the man alongside the ox, and they will not forget this apprehension so quickly]. The advantage of not revealing himself to the surviving prey is that the hunter will deprive these animals of the sensory information that would allow them to put cause together with effect and avoid that the animals make the inference that the man brings the ox with him when he is hunting lest the animal use that knowledge in the future to avoid the trick. As such, the implicit rationale is Martínez de Espinar’s unstated belief that deer possess the capacity to reason in this manner.

Husbandry Books (Libros de albeytería o de agricultura) An analysis of husbandry books helps us to understand the usually implicit but sometimes explicit views of authors concerned with raising animals for productivity on a farm. This type of human-to-farm animal relationship was by far much more common than the hunter-to-hunted animal relationship, since it was a constant, rather than sporadic activity. Since many European animals associated with the farm are easily domesticated by humans, without much need for the human to outsmart the animal on an ongoing basis, these tomes are less adept than hunting books at explaining plausibly the functioning of animals’ minds. Indeed, since the success of domestication and related animal productivity is not frequently tied to the accurate assessment of animal cognition, oftentimes the views espoused are spurious. In contrast, there are notable examples among the use of helper animals on the farm, particularly dogs and horses, demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of animal sentience in these species. For the most part, farm animals were simply considered dumb, conceived of as a food source and/or as a by-product such as wool or leather, and/or as labor power.7 Unlike the animals of hunting books, these nonfoe animals are not considered intelligent at all. They are practically automata, in which they rarely are considered to have emotions. For instance, in Gabriel Alonso de Herrera’s proto-capitalistic Agricultura general (1513), the author suggests ways to maximize profit on the farm while minimizing expenses: “Lo que brevemente dellas quiero decir, ser una manera de hacienda que hace rico á su dueño sin costa, mas no sin trabajo y esciencia” (265) [What I will say about them, in brief, it is a kind of possession that makes the owner rich without costs, but not without labor or science]. Given this approach, it is not surprising

84  Steven Wagschal perhaps that little if any reflection is given to the animals’ thoughts and emotions. Herrera draws spurious connections between characteristics like “tail thickness” of a bull to what we might call psychological characteristics: “la cola gorda es señal de poca fuerza, y asimismo de poco corazón, flacos ó lerdos” (530) [the thick tail is a sign of little strength, and also of little heart, lazy and stupid]. Implicit in this example is the notion that animals lack individuality, given that owing to a physical attribute, the animal’s behavior and attitude toward the world will be determined; indeed, the animal will be just like those other conspecifics who share the same physical characteristic. Another way in which the authors accomplish the automatization of the animals’ minds rhetorically is through the massification of the animals. Rather than treating them as individuals, they are treated as a group. Pigs are treated as mass in this way, as creatures that do nothing else but eat; Herrera suggests that the farmer beware of pigs when feeding them lest they lose their very hands or even their lives: “aun por tomarle el pan de la mano comerle la mano, y tras ella todo el cuerpo” (499) [in trying to take the bread from the hand, eating the hand, and after it, the whole body]. Indeed, for Herrera, it is also best to keep the pigs well fed lest they eat their own young: “aun muchas veces las mismas madres de hambre comen sus propios hijos, por ende conviene que á las paridas les den muy bien de comer, porque con la hambre no coman sus hijos” (503) [often the very same mothers will eat their own young out of hunger, thus it is good practice to feed young mothers very well, so that they do not eat their young out of hunger]. The farmer’s task is increased because the animals are, apparently, so stupid, and he must take great care to avoid the parents harming the offspring. Pigs stay together as a group, but this also causes problems: “ahogan á los chicos, y muchas veces aun se ahogan los grandes” (503) [they suffocate the little ones, and many times they even suffocate the big ones]. Somewhat contradictorily, and in one of the few exceptions of farm animals as automata, Herrera states that the sow “loves” her offspring. In the passage where he relates this, Herrera is considering a potential real problem of moving the sow from the pen in order to fatten her up elsewhere; she resists being moved away out of this “love” for her offspring, and thus, his instrumental explanation of what to do is most likely responding to an actual emotion-based behavior that conflicts with his other accounts of pigs as mere machines. Worried again about profits, Herrera additionally believes that the farmer must take great care to ensure that the milk of goats is properly utilized (i.e., toward the nourishment of goat kids). Indeed, relying on a spurious legend told by Pliny in his History, Herrera warns not to let the goats nurse the capri mulgo bird that will squander the milk: “ellos vienen sobretarde á las cabras al tiempo que han de mamar los cabritos, que la cabra pensando que es cabrito le consiente” (361) [they come to the nannies at dusk at the time when they are going to breastfeed the kids,

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals  85 such that the nanny, thinking it a kid, consents to this]. Indeed, the goats must be very stupid not to realize that a bird is not their very own kid. While not intelligent, some of Herrera’s animals do, however, feel pain (which, as explained above, is something that Pereira, Descartes, and Malebranche all argued against in claiming that animals were like automata). While still writing under the general topic of improving the farmer’s earnings, Herrera seems sensitive to the animals’ suffering as he condemns the practice of “pig blinding” which is not only cruel (i.e., implicitly acknowledging that animals feel pain), but apparently the blinding has the opposite effect from the desired one regarding the pig’s fattening: “mucho yerran algunos que ciegan los puercos quebrándoles los ojos, pensando que engordan mas: esto hacen á los que ceban en casa, que allende de ser crueldad, los mas de los puercos mueren perdiendo un ojo, pues mucho mas si los pierden entrambos” (507) [those who blind their pigs by destroying their eyes are very much in error, thinking that they will fatten up more: they do this to those that they raise at home, and in addition to being cruel, most pigs who lose one eye will die, and many more if they lose both]. Herrera is also explicit about other farm animals feeling pain in his section on bull castration, where he recommends using a particular technique featuring an implement that is both very hot and very sharp, thereby minimizing the overall pain the bull will experience by effecting both the removal of the testicles and the cauterization of the wound most swiftly: “es muy bien que la herramienta con que los cortan sea aguda como cuchillo, y vaya ardiendo, porque de un trance corte y queme como cauterio, y con un dolor breve obrará dos beneficios” (547) [it is very good that the tool with which they are cut be sharp like a knife and that it be burning, such that in one occurrence it cuts and burns in cautery, and with one brief pain two benefits will take effect]. Unlike his argument against pig blinding, no reason for diminishing the pain of the bull is articulated here. In other passages, he discusses flesh being tasty or tough, and he may be writing here under the assumption that a bull who feels more pain will produce flesh that is less desirable for humans to eat, and thus less likely to produce further wealth for the farmer8; alternatively, Herrera may simply care about diminishing suffering for its own sake, or perhaps because of a Catholic proscription regarding taking pleasure in another’s suffering. In contrast to these farm animals, dogs and horses were considered highly intelligent. Since canines were described above regarding the hunting manuals, in this section I will focus on equines. In Miquel Agustí’s Libro de los secretos de agricultura [Book of the Secrets of Agriculture] (1617, 1621),9 the author prescribes how the servant in charge of taking care of the farm’s horses must nurture the animal carefully, indeed, with “love”: que tenga amor à los animales que tiene encomendados, y que no les maltrate, antes les deve enseñar, y adestrarlos con amor en el

86  Steven Wagschal ademàn de la mano, meneo de la varilla, voz, ò grito, y que no se les haga trabajar mas de lo que pueden, y que los almoaze alegramente cada mañana. (V., 327) he should feel love for the animals in his charge and not abuse them, rather he should teach them and instruct them with love in hand gestures, the movement of the rod, voice or call, and he should not make them work more than they are able, and he should groom them cheerfully every morning. This is clearly, according to Agustí, because horses have an immense emotional depth, caring not only about their own offspring but about other conspecifics as well. Thus, the person who takes care of horses must know this and take certain precautions, including stabling the horses close to each other: “aveis de estar muy advertidos del amor que un cavallo lleva al otro, y segun aquello ponerlos en el establo cercano” (328) [you must be very aware of the love that one horse has for another, and according to that, place them in a nearby stable]. The love-showing trainer must also pamper the horse as he teaches him, caressing the animal not only with his hands but with his voice: (“acariciar con la voz” [caress with the voice] 334). But it is the section on horse developmental learning and memory that demonstrates just how intelligent Agustí believes these animals to be: se deve conducir à ver coches, carros, carretas, y grande numero de puercos, bacas, ganados, y cabras, y hazerle passar donde estàn los corderitos muertos, y otros animales de comer,10 observando cada dia, todo que se ha dicho, hasta que esté diestro en el caminar, y andar, bien assegurado en el ver, y oir todas las dichas cosas. (335) one should lead him to see coaches, carriages, carts, and a large number of pigs, cows, cattle and goats, and make him pass by the dead lambs and other comestible animals, observing every day, all that has been said, until he becomes skilled in walking and riding, well assured at having seen and heard all of the aforementioned things. The notion that the horse should be shown all of these important elements of human material culture, and emphatically, over time (“observing every day . . . until he becomes skilled”), demonstrates the depth of the horse learning capacity for Agustí. Finally, in an analogy to spurious early modern beliefs about how the human female mind works, Agustí applies this to horses. As Marie-Hélène Huet documents in Monstrous Imagination, there was a widespread belief that fetuses were impacted strongly by imprinting on the mother’s mind during conception (which is why women were counseled to look at religious imagery). In this vein,

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals  87 Agustí explains: “los colores que mirarà el cavallo al concebir tendrà el pollino: esso mismo podreis experimentar con los perros, y otros animales” (330) [the colors that the horse looks at while conceiving will be those of the colt: you can experience the same with dogs and other animals]. While these beliefs are spurious whether applied to humans or nonhuman animals, they show that Agustí and other thinkers who share them believed in some form of continuity among species regarding mental phenomena.

Natural Histories (Historia natural) In early modern natural histories, animals that were already well known in Europe (i.e., imported European cattle animals) or had homologous closely related species on both continents (i.e., deer) were generally of little interest. What do capture the authors’ interest are the animals considered “new.” Beginning in 1514, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés embarked on several voyages for the Crown to document the natural history of the Indies. His initial findings were published in the brief Sumario de la historia natural de las Indias [Summary of the Natural History of the Indies] (1526), and more extensive parts of his full-length work were published as the Historia general y natural de las Indias in 1535 and 1552. Fernández de Oviedo frequently described these “new” animals with curiosity and exuberance, in which his fascination about the animal reveals that, before and through writing, he had thought long and hard about their sentience. Following typical divisions of how animals were conceptualized in the European tradition he inherited, Fernández de Oviedo divides animals into groupings of land animals, sea animals, and birds. The most interesting of these, from a cognitive point of view, are the land animals, and it seems that the more Fernández de Oviedo interacts with the animal, the more aware of the animal’s sentience he becomes. Most of the animals he describes have, for him, limited cognitive abilities, and there is strong correlation to the habitat writ largely (land, sea, or sky). He groups together land animals that are “fierce,” an emotion that seems to correspond to the expression of anger. The jaguar, for instance, is very emotional. First of all, it is “fierce,” but at the same time it has a terrible weakness: a strong “fear” of dogs, which makes it easy prey for the Spaniards. The wild boar is also fierce, and the correlation with anger comes through when he describes the ferocity of the female boar when her piglets are taken from her. The cognition of these animals seems limited to experiencing these strong emotions. Other land animals that he describes and which go beyond these mere emotional reactions are newly encountered species for which there does not seem to be an homologous European animal. In trying to understand the animal, he posits different kinds of cognitive abilities, especially because

88  Steven Wagschal he has no other use for the animal. For instance, he informs the reader that the anteater (oso hormiguero) has “disgusting” flesh; given the lack of utility, Fernández de Oviedo seeks out a better understanding of this strange animal. Without having a notion about this animal’s utility for humans (in contrast with his remark that wild boar flesh is “very tasty”), Fernández de Oviedo endeavors to study the anteater in its natural habitat: [T]iene esta forma de usar su oficio en las escondidas hormigas, ejecutando su muerte, que se va al hormiguero que es dicho, y por una hendedura o resquebrajo tan sutil como un filo de espada, comienza a poner la lengua, y lamiendo, humedece aquella hendedura por delgada que sea. (Sumario 101) It plies its trade upon the hidden ants, executing their death, in this way: it goes to the aforesaid anthill and, through a crack or fissure as fine as the blade-edge of a sword, it begins to use its tongue and, licking, it moistens that crack however small it is. He is so utterly fascinated by its ability to break very sturdy anthills, that he has his men use pickaxes to test the strength of these insect structures. After the experiment, he is even more impressed by the anteater’s success in gorging on ants: “lo cual yo he experimentado y los he hecho romper; y no pudiera creer sin verlo la dureza que tienen, porque con picos y barretas de hierro son muy dificultosos de deshacer, y por entender mejor este secreto, en mi presencia lo he hecho derribar” (Sumario 101) [I have tested (the hardness of the mortar) and I have had (the anthills) broken open. I would not be able to believe how hard they are without having seen this myself, for even with pickaxes and iron bars they are very difficult to destroy, and in order to better understand this secret, I have had (the anthills) demolished in my presence]. While the evidence for the animal’s reasoning is only implicit, the respect with which he treats and almost venerates this animal implies greater cognitive abilities. Fernández de Oviedo also describes some peaceful land animals and remarks on their emotions, suggesting that they have some beyond the most basic “fear” and “ferocity” of the jaguar or boar. Indeed, the cozumatle, a kind of wild cat, is one of these animals, described as “muy alegre animal e retoza mucho con quien conosce” (Historia 55) [a very cheerful animal that frolics about with those whom it knows]. Note that the word he uses for “frolic,” retozar, according to Covarrubias’s 1611 dictionary means “[m]overse descompuestamente con alegría y contento, por hacer fiesta y lisonjear a otra persona, como lo hace el perrico cuando viene de fuera su señora o su dueño” (1408) [to move oneself immodestly with joy and happiness, to make merry and to fawn over someone, as does a small dog when its mistress or master returns]. This type of movement, then, would indicate that the animal is happy,

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals  89 excited, and playful as it engages with human beings. And indeed, this is one species of animal that Fernández de Oviedo then brings back to the Old World, as he gives them as gifts to friends, family, and royalty: “Yo truje uno dellos hasta la villa de Madrid, año de mill e quinientos e cuarenta y siete años, e le di a un caballero asturiano, mi pariente” (55) [I brought one of them to the city of Madrid in the year fifteen forty-seven and I gave it to an Asturian gentleman, a relative of mine]. Thus, in some cases, Fernández de Oviedo finds a use (here as a kind of pet) for “new” animals that seemed to have none. Fernández de Oviedo is also fascinated and bemused by small monkeys that he calls “little monkey cats,” gatos monillos, that he and his men encounter. He tells multiple anecdotes about these that tend to serve almost as comical interludes in his natural history. Like the other animals about which he expands significantly, they are considered “not tasty.” He calls them “astute” describing their imitative capacities and use of tools. The monkeys team up against the Spanish troops at times but, unlike the boar or the jaguar, never pose a serious threat: “En aquella tierra hay gatos de tantas maneras y diferencias, que no se podría decir en poca escritura, narrando sus diferentes formas y sus innumerables travesuras, y porque cada día se traen a España, no me ocuparé en decir de ellos sino pocas cosas” (Sumario 105) [In that land there are monkeys of so many kinds and so much diversity, that one could not write in a short space an account of their different forms and their innumerable pranks, and since every day they are brought to Spain, I will not occupy myself in speaking of them except for a few things]. For Fernández de Oviedo, the monkeys demonstrate highly advanced thinking, in that they understand, for instance, to retaliate by throwing rocks or by picking up arrows that have missed their mark and either breaking them in half or placing them higher in the tree canopy. Thus, the monkeys seem to understand, for Fernández de Oviedo, explicitly, that they can prevent humans from ever using these arrows again: “de manera que no puedan caer abajo para que los tornen a herir con ellas” (Sumario 106) [in such a way that they [the arrows] cannot fall down and be used again to injure them]. Alternatively, the monkeys throw them back forcefully at the men, like rocks (demonstrating an understanding of tool use and weaponry). In one such instance of rock throwing, they hit Fernando de Villacastur, the governor’s secretary, and broke several of his teeth. In his consideration of the monkeys as interesting and highly cognitive, it is important that they are not viewed as life-threatening, but rather they cause a scene that, in the era, was more like slapstick.

Cervantes’s Don Quijote In his magnum opus, Miguel de Cervantes picks up on many of the implicit notions about animal sentience that have been highlighted above. In the remainder of this chapter, I touch on a few illustrative instances.

90  Steven Wagschal While the most obvious instance of a fable-like treatment by Cervantes is his novella El coloquio de los perros [The Colloquy of the Dogs], in Don Quijote the case of Master Pedro’s talking monkey is another. While the situation eventually revealed to the reader is more complex than the mere depiction of a talking monkey (given that the animal’s owner is a master of deception), the public who witnesses the show believe that the monkey is capable of communicating verbally, understanding questions posed to him by humans and then explaining complex ideas through whispered speech.11 The animal earns money for his master, apparently, by answering questions and amazing the audience. Since it turns out that Maese Pedro is actually the released criminal Ginés de Pasamonte, now in disguise, it should come as no surprise that this is an elaborate con. As the reader learns, the monkey understands certain basic commands but has been taught to act as if he understands speech and can himself speak. An accurate analysis of the monkey’s abilities does not include advanced language abilities, but rather the ability to respond to a tapping signal that he has been taught to react to by jumping on Maese Pedro’s shoulder and placing his mouth in proximity to his master’s ear, while making his teeth chatter. In this way, he appears to be engaged in intentional discursive whispering. Bringing to mind one of Aristotle’s most important distinctions between humans and nonhuman animals, the monkey makes a sound but in fact lacks the ability to speak. This view of this monkey’s actual abilities is in line with claims made by Konrad Gessner in his Historia animalium, where he writes that apes are “much given to imitation” (192). Yet Gessner’s account includes activities that are beyond this monkey’s capabilities, mentioning that some apes can “sing” and even “drive wagons” (192). While the novel’s monkey’s alleged abilities are well beyond Gessner’s account, Master Pedro does put limits on the animal’s abilities, most likely to avoid the problem of incredulity and also perhaps avoid scrutiny from the Inquisition. Indeed, the monkey knows things and can speak, but he can do no foretelling of matters in the future; instead, he is limited to being able merely to answer questions about things that have already happened in the past or are happening in the present. The opposite of something like an inverisimilar speech-capable monkey is an animal devoid of all thoughts and emotions. Similar to Herrera’s pigs, the many animals that have been skinned, cooked, and later eaten at Camacho’s wedding are portrayed, in a positive light, as important elements of a great feast for humans. In these moments, the animals’ lives, emotions, thoughts, and suffering are never thematized: así embebían y encerraban en sí carneros enteros, sin echarse de ver, como si fueran palominos; las liebres ya sin pellejo y las gallinas sin pluma que estaban colgadas por los árboles para sepultarlas en las ollas no tenían número; los pájaros y caza de diversos géneros eran infinitos, colgados de los árboles para que el aire los enfriase. (II.20.187)

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals  91 they contained and enclosed entire sheep, which sank out of view as if they were doves; the hares without their skins and the chickens without their feathers that were hanging from the trees, waiting to be buried in the cauldrons, were without number; the various kinds of fowl and game hanging from the trees to cool in the breeze were infinite. (584)12 As Adrienne Martin puts it writing from the perspective of Animal Studies, Camacho’s is a Rabelaisian feast, and the animals are “food animals” (452). It is precisely because meat figures so prominently (and specifically that plants figure less so) that the feast is considered a great one, as Sancho predicts after catching a whiff of the odors coming from the pots before witnessing the preparations with his eyes: “si no me engaño, sale un tufo y olor harto más de torreznos asados que de juncos y tomillos: bodas que por tales olores comienzan, para mi santiguada que deben de ser abundantes y generosas” (II.20.186) [“if I’m not mistaken, there’s an aroma that smells much more like a roasted side of bacon than reeds and thyme: by my faith, weddings that begin with smells like this must be plentiful and generous” (583)]. Similarly, when the “armies of sheep” are attacked by Don Quixote, no emphasis is placed on the pain or suffering of these animals or on the emotions of their conspecifics who have survived the attack. Instead, the animals are treated as an undifferentiated mass, like typical domesticated farm animals in husbandry discourse, as mere private property. Concomitantly, it is not the animals’ perspective that is portrayed in this case, but that of the shepherds, of having lost value; in the end, the humans recoup what they can of their losses by carrying off the animal carcasses: Los pastores y ganaderos que con la manada venían dábanle voces que no hiciese aquello; pero viendo que no aprovechaban, disciñéronse las hondas y comenzaron a saludalle los oídos con piedras como el puño . . . recogieron su ganado y cargaron de las reses muertas, que pasaban de siete, y sin averiguar otra cosa se fueron. (I.18.223) The shepherds and herdsmen guarding the flock came running, shouting for him to stop, but seeing that this had no effect, they unhooked their slings and began to greet his ears with stones as big as fists . . . they hurriedly gathered their flocks together, picked up the dead animals, which numbered more than seven, and left without further inquiry. (130) These are but a couple of the numerous instances of animals treated as foodstuff in Don Quijote. Like Fernández de Oviedo who in his Historia was curious about several animals (such as the sloth and the anteater mentioned above), Cervantes’s narrator also evinces wonder at the minds of some. Yet, ultimately, these minds seem inscrutable, in a way that corresponds

92  Steven Wagschal quite factually to how humans interact with many animals. For instance, when Don Quixote interacts with the lions of the royal cart, he is warned by the cart driver to stay away from them because they will surely attack him, as they are starving and have not eaten all day. The cart driver believes that he can predict the felines’ behavior based on what he knows of their bodily state, hence, effectively and implicitly, limiting the amount of (free) will the animals have. Don Quixote acts accordingly, also with an implicit belief—revealed verbally in his use of the word “bestias”—that the lion is a reasonless brute animal, one that will necessarily attack him, as if by law of nature. However, when the cage is opened and the male lion is allowed to leave, and potentially eat Don Quixote, the animal responds enigmatically: Lo primero que hizo fue revolverse en la jaula, donde venía echado, y tender la garra, y desperezarse todo; abrió luego la boca y bostezó muy despacio, y con casi dos palmos de lengua que sacó fuera se despolvoreó los ojos y se lavó el rostro; hecho esto, sacó la cabeza fuera de la jaula y miró a todas partes con los ojos hechos brasas, vista y ademán para poner espanto a la misma temeridad . . . . Pero el generoso león, más comedido que arrogante, no haciendo caso de niñerías ni de bravatas, después de haber mirado a una y otra parte, como se ha dicho, volvió las espaldas y enseñó sus traseras partes a don Quijote, y con gran flema y remanso se volvió a echar en la jaula. (II.17.164; emphasis is mine) The first thing the lion did was to turn around in the cage where he had been lying and unsheathe his claws and stretch his entire body; then he opened his mouth, and yawned very slowly, and extended a tongue almost two spans long, and cleaned the dust from his eyes and washed his face; when this was finished, he put his head out of the cage and looked all around with eyes like coals, a sight and a vision that could frighten temerity itself . . . . But the magnanimous lion, more courteous than arrogant, took no notice of either the childishness or bravado, and after looking in both directions, as has been said, he turned his back, and showed his hindquarters to Don Quixote, and with great placidity and calm went back inside the cage. (563–564) The narrator suggests that there is indeed something going on in the lion’s mind, as he turns his head “in both directions” before turning around. What is the lion thinking and why does he look around and then turn around? The reader is never told. The other characters had expectations similar to those of the cart driver and of Don Quixote, believing that the lion would rush out and cause great harm: Don Diego thinks the knight is crazy (“ablandado los sesos,” (II.17.162) [“softened

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals  93 his head and ripened his brains” (560)]), and so certain is he that the lion will act as predicted, Sancho is brought to tears out of fear: “Lloraba Sancho la muerte de su señor, que aquella vez sin duda creía que llegaba en las garras de los leones” (II.17.162) [“Sancho wept for the death of his master: this time he believed there was no doubt he would fall into the clutches of the lions” (562)]. That the animal was specifically hungry on this day is an important factor which places the story in dialogue with Pliny’s anecdote about the hungry lion who showed clemency by not eating a woman and Pereira’s explicit rejection of Pliny’s lion’s capacity for higher thinking. Pereira—who, as I mentioned above, considered animals to be automata—insists that if a lion does not kill and eat a human, the only possible explanation is that the animal is already “stuffed” (ahíto): La clemencia del león en Getulia—Plinio, libro octavo, capítulo 16—no se debe atribuir a que el animal escuchó las súplicas de la cautiva. Pues, de ser así, lo normal sería que siempre se mostrasen clementes ante los ruegos—lo que no sucede. Lo que ocurrió es que, aparte otras circunstancias, el león estaba ahíto. (42; emphasis is mine) The clemency of the lion from Getulia—Pliny, Book Eight, Chapter 16—should not be attributed to the animal’s heeding the captive’s pleas. For, if that were the case, then it would be the normal state of affairs that lions always show clemency before such pleas, but that is not what occurs. What happened is that, barring other circumstances, the lion was stuffed. Cervantes’s setup of the lion cart episode—with the insistence that the animal is in fact starving—suggests that there are other possibilities for what is going on in the mind of the animal, and yet he does not resolve the question, instead leaving the reader to ponder the issue.13 Whatever they may be, the lion seems to demonstrate emotions, pondering, and ultimately decision-making. Finally, certain animals in Don Quijote are portrayed as highly sentient, endowed with the highest cognitive faculties that the authors of tomes on hunting and husbandry reserve for helper and some prey animals. The greatest example is that of Rocinante, who I argue, is a fleshed out character who is appropriately embodied as a horse. Cervantes focuses on the particular embodiment of Rocinante, noting foremost that his strong sense of olfaction is extremely important to his mode of being, and making sure that his sense of smell is tied to his cognition and behavior. For instance, in the “señoras facas” episode, everything begins with a smell from afar, which leads to Rocinante’s “desire” and then to an action: “a Rocinante le vino en deseo de refocilarse con las señoras facas, y saliendo, así como las olió, de su natural paso y costumbre, sin pedir licencia a su

94  Steven Wagschal dueño, tomó un trotico algo picadillo y se fue a comunicar su necesidad con ellas” (I.15.191) [“Rocinante felt the desire to pleasure himself with the ladies, and as soon as he picked up their scent he abandoned his natural ways and customs, did not ask permission of his owner, broke into a brisk little trot, and went off to communicate his need to them” (103)]. Here and in other passages, Cervantes focuses on this horse’s perspective, just as he does with many of the human characters. In other episodes, Rocinante demonstrates that he has a keen memory, for instance, he seems to know the way home at the end of the very first sally and trots more quickly: “soltó la rienda a Rocinante, dejando a la voluntad del rocín la suya, el cual siguió su primer intento, que fue el irse camino de su caballeriza” (I.4.99) [“he loosened the reins and subjected his will to Rocinante’s, and the horse pursued his initial intent, which was to head back to his own stall” (39)]. Rocinante also feels physical pain after accidents or beatings (for instance, when flung from the windmill in Part I, chapter 8) and even, perhaps, emotional pain from the separation from his favorite humans, as Sancho intuits in the episode of the enchanted boat. Rocinante also communicates, like Martínez de Espinar’s dogs, and not like an Aesopian animal. When this horse neighs, and when the donkey snorts, it is to express something like their sadness or distaste for being left alone (II.8.92). These representations are verisimilar and worthy of the reader’s inferences about the animals’ higher cognition, precisely because the animals do not speak, as would be impossible, in human language. Finally, Rocinante and also el rucio (Sancho’s donkey) are capable of the highest emotion, of being loved, and of feeling love. Don Quixote clearly cares for Rocinante and Sancho has strong emotions for the donkey on many occasions. Furthermore, both equids are a model of human friendship, not in an Aesopian fantasy of animals behaving as standins that represent human ideals and foibles, but rather because they are fleshed out characters.14 The donkey and the horse routinely caress each other and choose to be together because they are happier that way (as Agustí noted in his tome on husbandry, mentioned above): así como las dos bestias se juntaban, acudían a rascarse el uno al otro, y que, después de cansados y satisfechos, cruzaba Rocinante el pescuezo sobre el cuello del rucio—que le sobraba de la otra parte más de media vara—, y mirando los dos atentamente al suelo, se solían estar de aquella manera tres días. (II.12.122) as soon as the two animals were together they would begin to scratch each other, and then, when they were tired and satisfied, Rocinante would lay his neck across the donkey’s—it would extend almost half a meter on the other side—and, staring intently at the ground, the two of them could stand this way for three days. (528)

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals 95 Commenting on this famous passage, Adrienne Martin concludes that it is “one of the warmest and friendliest descriptions of the novel’s equine protagonists” (459), while Alves calls the animals’ shared emotion “love” (58). Cervantes portrays these emotions not through explicit labels, which might seem inverisimilar and overly anthropomorphic, but by describing the animals’ actions and allowing the reader to make appropriate inferences.

Conclusion While period medical and philosophical tracts on animal sentience abstractly and explicitly laid out what was special in humans and different from humans in nonhuman animals, the three early modern genres of nonfictional writing surveyed above also staked out claims on animal emotions and intelligence, but did so in an implicit manner. For the most part, in hunting and husbandry books, the authors grappled with animal emotion and intelligence only insofar as it served their practical human interests, instrumentally helping to better their success in that particular endeavor, and as such, the texts are generally inflected by these underlying intentions. In a third type of writing, natural histories about the American encounter, the authors tended to treat most animals in the same way, noting their emotions or intelligence only insofar as there was a practical necessity. Thus, the new species of wild boar that Fernández de Oviedo encounters is interesting primarily for its tastiness, rather than for any intellectual ability. However, the most interesting animals in the natural histories are those that were dissimilar to other European animals and apparently inedible or at least disgust-provoking, and given the novelty, the author paused to reflect and imagine what the animal was thinking and feeling. Cervantes is engaged with both the medico-philosophical tradition and these other genres of animal writing. While avoiding representing animals that are anthropomorphized tout court and speak in human languages (in the one case in Don Quijote in which an animal literally speaks, it is, importantly, a trick), Cervantes is able to portray select animals as emotional, intentional, and, at times, inscrutable. It is through these portrayals of select animals that Cervantes creates a verisimilar model of the fictional embodied animal and a lasting representation of human–animal interactions.

Notes 1 Unless otherwise noted, translations are mine. 2 Descartes denied that he had engaged in plagiarism of Pereira in a letter to Father Marin Mersenne (see Alves 7). 3 The lengthy subtitle of Sosa’s tract contains the phrase “con que se prueba que los brutos sienten y por si mueven” [in which it is shown that animals feel and move by intrinsic impulse]. For more on these responses to Pereira, see Barreiro Barreiro 18.

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4 For more on what can be gleaned about human beliefs regarding animals in fables, see Wagschal 49–62. 5 Alves briefly mentions hunting books in The Animals of Spain, and specifically the manual of Juan Mateos (63ff). 6 Fudge makes a similar point about early modern views on the rationality of dogs highlighting the case of James I of England. See Fudge 102–103. 7 Serpell eloquently and thoroughly makes the point that humans have long distinguished between their beloved animals and the ones they eat, such as pigs, in the first chapter of his classic Animal Studies book In the Company of Animals (1996). See Serpell 3–21. 8 Guidelines on animal slaughter in the twenty-first century explain that pain can lead to the release of cortisol which breaks down glycogen in the muscles, thus toughening up the meat; in fact, as Daisy Freund explains, it “lightens the color of the meat and turns it acidic and tasteless . . .” (no pag.). 9 First published in Catalan (1617) and later translated into Castilian by the author (1626). References are to the Castilian edition. 10 Note, in this context of horse learning and experience, the implicit understanding of animals being “de comer” (comestible) or not. 11 While not as common as other fables in the Renaissance or today, Isidore of Seville classifies as “Lybistican” those fables in which animals speak to humans (Isidore of Seville 66). 12 All citations from Don Quijote are from the edition by Murillo and refer to part, chapter, and page. The translations are from Grossman, citing page only. 13 Another aspect of this complexity, beyond the scope of this chapter, is how Cervantes at times incorporates his human protoganists into the question on what distinguishes an animal from a beast from a human, for instance, at the end of the Enchanted Boat episode, where the narrator writes, “volvieron a sus bestias, y a ser bestias, don Quijote y Sancho” (II.29.267) [“Don Quixote and Sancho went back to their animals, and to being as foolish as jackasses” (652)]. On this passage in particular, see Berndt-Kelley. 14 It was Montserrat Ordóñez Vila who first made the argument that these animals are full-fledged “characters” (Ordóñez Vila 57).

Works Cited Agustí, Miquel. Libro de los secretos de agricultura, casa de campo, y pastoril. Zaragoza: Pascual Bueno, [1617] 1626. Alves, Abel A. The Animals of Spain: An Introduction to Imperial Perceptions and Human Interaction with Other Animals, 1492–1826. Boston: Brill, 2011. . Barreiro Barreiro, José Luis, ed. “Estudio preliminar.” Antoniana Margarita by Gómez Pereira. Trans. José Luis Barreiro Barreiro, Concepción Souto García, and Juan Luis Camacho Lliteras. Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2000. 7–47. Berndt-Kelley, Erna. “En torno a sus bestias y a ser bestias.” Actas del X Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas: Barcelona 21–26 de agosto de 1989. Ed. Antonio Vilanova. Vol. 1. Barcelona: PPU, 1992. 589–596. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Trans. Edith Grossman. Intro. Harold Bloom. New York: Ecco [Harper Collins], 2005. Cervantes, Miguel de. El ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Ed. Luis Murillo. 2 vols. Madrid: Castalia, 1978.

Human Thinking about Thinking Animals  97 Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de. Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española. Madrid: Luís Sánchez, 1611. Esopete ystoriado (Toulouse, 1488). Ed. Victoria Burrus and Harriet Goldberg. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1990. Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo. Historia general y natural de las Indias. Vol. 2. Ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela y Bueso. Madrid: Atlas, 1959. Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo. Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias. Ed. Manuel Ballesteros. Madrid: Historia 16, 1986. Freund, Daisy. “How Animal Welfare Leads to Better Meat: A Lesson From Spain.” The Atlantic, 25 Aug. 2011. Web. 17 Sept. 2016. . Fudge, Erica. Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2006. Herrera, Gabriel Alonso de. Agricultura general de Gabriel Alonso de Herrera: Corregida según el testo [sic] original de la primera edición publicada en 1513 por el mismo autor. 4 vols. Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1818. Huet, Marie-Hélène. Monstrous Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. Isidore of Seville, Saint. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Trans. Stephen A. Barney, et al. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge UP, 2006. . Martin, Adrienne L. “Zoopoética quijotesca: Cervantes y los estudios de animales.” eHumanista/Cervantes 1 (2012): 448–464. Web. 28 Aug. 2016. Martínez de Espinar, Alonso. Arte de ballestería y montería, escrita con método, para excusar la fatiga que ocasiona la ignorancia. Madrid: Ediciones y publicaciones españolas S.A., [1644] 1946. Ordóñez Vila, Montserrat. “Rocinante y el asno, personajes cervantinos.” Razón y fábula 8 (1968): 57–75. Pereira, Gómez. Antoniana Margarita. Ed. and Trans. J. L. Barreiro Barreiro, Concepción Souto García, and Juan Luis Camacho Lliteras. Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2000. Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, Oliva. New Philosophy of Human Nature: Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life and Health. Trans. and Ed. Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita. Urbana: U of Illinois P, [1587] 2007. Serpell, James. In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Sosa, Francisco de. Endecálogo contra la Antoniana Margarita. Ed. Pedro M. Cátedra. Barcelona: Edicions Delstre’s, [1556] 1994. Vives, Juan Luis. “La razón.” Tratado del alma. Trans. José Ontañón. Madrid: Ediciones de la Lectura, [1538] 1916. Wagschal, Steven. Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds: A Cognitive Historical Analysis. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2018.

5

Wit, Imagination, and the Goat The Untrodden Paths of Literary Creation in Cervantes’s Don Quijote and Huarte’s Examen de ingenios Christine Orobitg

The early modern treatise Examen de ingenios para las ciencias [Examination of Men’s Wits],1 written in 1575 by Juan Huarte de San Juan—a physician and philosopher of Navarrese origin—establishes a fecund dialogue with Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quijote. Both works manifest a new understanding of imagination as a generative faculty and portray ingenio [wit], the natural force of understanding or mental capacity, as “capricious” or goatlike. Indeed, in the Examen, Huarte emphasizes the value of those ingenios that, like wandering goats, leave the trodden path to explore and discover new horizons. Empowered and free from inherited beliefs and preestablished conventions, these ingenios become a creative force, capable of invention. Huarte’s praise of the capricious wit sheds new light on Cervantes’s novel regarding its content and organization (defined by the notion of errancy2 —spatial, mental, literary), as well as on Cervantes’s writing project, which is based on the notions of inventiveness, creative freedom, experimentation, and play with (and distance from) existing literary forms. While most studies on the relationship between the two authors have adopted a humoral and faculty psychology perspective,3 I focus here on the notion of creativity in connection with the image of the goat as a symbol of originality and free, independent thinking. To this purpose, I discuss how the concepts of ingenio, imagination, and capriciousness weave a thread that not only connects Cervantes’s Don Quijote to Huarte’s Examen but also, and more importantly, underscores Cervantes’s interest in the mind as free and autonomous and in the mind’s creative process as dynamic and unrestrained.

Ingenio as Creative Force The notion of ingenio is key to understanding how early modern thinkers viewed the mind and its processes. In Cervantes’s time, according to DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211-5



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Sebastián de Covarrubias’s dictionary (1611), ingenio is commonly defined as follows: Vulgarmente llamamos ingenio una fuerça natural de entendimiento investigadora de lo que por razon y discurso se puede alcançar en todo genero de ciencias, diciplinas, artes liberales, y mecanicas, sutilezas, invenciones, y engaños: y assi llamamos ingeniero al que fabrica maquinas para defenderse del enemigo, y ofenderle: ingenioso, el que tiene sutil y delgado ingenio. (504v) Commonly, we call wit a natural force of understanding that investigates what can be achieved through reason and discourse in all kinds of sciences, disciplines, liberal arts, and mechanics, subtleties, inventions, and deceptions: and so we call an engineer he who builds machines to defend himself and attack the enemy: ingenious he who has subtle and delicate wit.4 In another acceptation, ingenio is also “qualquiera cosa que se fabrica con entendimiento” (504v) [anything built with understanding]. As we see, the early modern notion of ingenio is tied to the ability to create in the sense of “to build,” not only physically (a machine, for instance) but also cognitively. Ingenioso, as Covarrubias attests, denotes someone whose ingenio is subtle and delicate, someone who is ingenious, witty, and clever. Notably, the concept of ingenioso frames Cervantes’s novel, appearing in the title of its two parts, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha [The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha] (1605) and Segunda parte del ingenioso caballero don Quijote de la Mancha [Second Part of the Ingenious Knight Don Quixote of La Mancha] (1615). In these titles, ingenioso adopts the position of an epithet, before the noun, thus pointing to an essential, defining characteristic of Don Quixote: he is ingenious, he possesses a subtle and delicate quality of the natural force of understanding or ingenio, and he is capable of creating with his mind. In this manner, Cervantes’s title prepares us from the beginning, before we open his novel, to undertake a journey of creation. Moreover, ingenioso is also frequently repeated in the chapter titles as, for example, in chapter 2 of Part I, “Que trata de la primera salida que de su tierra hizo el ingenioso don Quijote” [“Which tells of the first sally that the ingenious Don Quixote made from his native land”]5; in chapter 6, “Del donoso escrutinio que el cura y el barbero hicieron en la librería de nuestro ingenioso hidalgo” [“Regarding the beguiling and careful examination carried out by the priest and the barber of the library of our ingenious gentleman”]; and in chapter 16, “De lo que le sucedió al ingenioso hidalgo en la venta que él se imaginaba ser castillo” [“Regarding what befell the ingenious gentleman in the inn that he imagined to be a castle”]. By highlighting this quality, Cervantes reminds readers of the inventitive nature of his protagonist’s mind.

100  Christine Orobitg The notion of ingenio is central to Huarte’s Examen, where he discusses the creative abilities of the mind in the context of intellectual innovation.6 Huarte employs ingenio to denote both an individual’s mental capacity or the “totality of the psychological abilities of an individual” (Sumillera 3) and the mind’s creative force, directly related to the individual’s humoral constitution as modified by environmental conditions such as age, weather, diet, and habit.7 Huarte criticizes Cicero’s definition of ingenio, which he found too reductive, since it did not reflect its creative and independent nature: Cicerón difinió el ingenio diciendo: docilitas et memoria quae fere uno ingenii nomine appellantur, en las cuales palabras siguió la opinión de la gente popular que se contenta con ver sus hijos disciplinables y con docilidad para ser enseñados de otros . . . Pero, realmente, esta definición es muy corta y no comprende todas las diferencias de ingenio que hay; porque esta palabra, docilitas, abraza sólo aquellos ingenios que tienen necesidad de maestro, y deja fuera otros muchos cuya fecundidad es tan grande que con sólo el objeto y su entendimiento, sin ayuda de nadie, paren mil conceptos que jamás se vieron ni se oyeron . . . (Huarte 194) Cicero defined wit by saying: docilitas et memoria quae fere un ingenii nomine appellantur, in which words he followed the opinion of the people who are content to see their children disciplinable and docile to be taught by others . . . But, really, this definition is very limited and it does not include all the differences of wit that there are; because this word, docilitas, embraces only those wits that need a teacher, and leaves out many others whose fecundity is so great that with only the object and their understanding, without help from anyone, give birth to a thousand concepts that were never seen or heard . . . In defining ingenio, Huarte relied on the word’s etymology, emphasizing the generating capacity of the human mind. Of the three Latin verbs that it could potentially derive from—gigno, ingigno, and ingene ro (186)—Huarte favored ingenero: “Y esto baste en cuanto al nombre ingenio, el cual desciende de este verbo ingenero, que quiere decir engendrar dentro de sí una figura entera y verdadera que represente al vivo la naturaleza del sujeto cuya es la ciencia que se aprende” (193–194) [And this should suffice regarding the name ingenio, which descends from this verb ingenero, which means to beget within itself a whole and true figure that vividly represents the nature of the subject whose science is learned]. Capable of generating or begetting new ideas, new images, and representations never seen or perceived before, ingenio is a parent. Huarte



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furthers this platonic notion, describing a dense fabric of images that refer to paternity: Pero hablando con los filósofos naturales, ellos bien saben que el entendimiento es potencia generativa y que se empreña y pare, y que tiene hijos y nietos, y una partera (dice Platón) que le ayuda a parir. Porque de la manera que en la primera generación el animal o planta da ser real y sustantífico a su hijo, no lo tiniendo antes de la generación, así el entendimiento tiene virtud y fuerzas naturales de producir y parir dentro de sí un hijo, al cual llaman los filósofos naturales noticia o concepto, que es verbum mentis. (187–188) But speaking with the natural philosophers, they know well that understanding is a generative power and that it gets pregnant and gives birth, and that it has children and grandchildren, and a midwife (says Plato) who helps it give birth. Because in the same manner that in the first generation the animal or plant gives real and substantive life to its son, not having it before the generation, so does understanding have virtue and natural forces to produce and give birth to a child, whom natural philosophers call acquaintance or concept, which is verbum mentis. These Huartian considerations on the generative power of the human ingenio lead us to Cervantes’s use of the metaphor of engendramiento [begetting]. Examples of this connection appear in the prologue to Don Quijote Part I, where we read, “¿qué podía engendrar el estéril y mal cultivado ingenio mío . . .” (I.Prol.7)8 [“what could my barren and poorly cultivated wits beget” (3)], as well as in the prologue of the Novelas ejemplares [Exemplary Novels], where Cervantes states “mi ingenio las engendró y las parió mi pluma y van creciendo en brazos de la estampa” (52) [my wit engendered them, my pen gave them birth, and they are growing up in the arms of the printing press]. Moreover, not only does Cervantes beget Don Quixote and his fictional world, the novel, but also within the novel, Don Quixote begets his own characters and his own fictional chivalric world, as the Duchess reminds us in Part II, when the knight complains about Dulcinea’s conversion into a peasant lady by envious enchanters: “[Dulcinea] no es en el mundo, sino que es dama fantástica, que vuesa merced la engendró y parió en su entendimiento . . .” (800) [“she does not exist in the world but is an imaginary lady, and that your grace engendered and gave birth to her in your mind . . .” (672)]. Both Cervantes’s and Don Quixote’s creative abilities are presented as a generative power, the power to bring to the world something new, something alive, animated, and dynamic, as a new life is.

102  Christine Orobitg In summary, ingenio is considered in early modernity the cognitive force behind thinking. As described and portrayed by Huarte and Cervantes, it may be defined as the cognitive force behind creativity.

The Evolving Notion of Imagination Imagination was one of the main mind faculties described in early modernity (along with memory and understanding). In the medieval representations of the mind, which were still prevailing in many texts of the sixteenth century, imagination had, above all, a filtering function with respect to reality. According to this medieval view, imagination did not create images, but collected and organized the impressions gathered by the senses and transmitted them to the intellect. This way of conceiving imagination as “receptor,” “store,” or “repository” destined to collect the information received by the senses appeared in the Summa ­theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas and continued to appear in many texts, even late ones, of the sixteenth century, such as the Introducción del símbolo de la fe [Introduction of the Symbol of Faith] (1583) by Fray Luis de Granada. It is important to acknowledge, however, that the concept of imagination was evolving during the sixteenth century,9 and, in fact, at the same time, imagination was endowed with new, creative functions, beyond merely collecting or interpreting. Examples of this new conception include the passages that Levinus Lemnius devotes to imagination in his Occulta naturae miracula [The Secret Miracles of Nature] (1559), specifically in the chapter “Of the imagination, which does the same as the truth”—included by Oliva Sabuco de Nantes in her Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del hombre [New Philosophy of the Nature of Man] (1587)—the long annotation that Fernando de Herrera dedicates to imagination in his notes to the works of Garcilaso (1580), and the famous essay XXI “De l’imagination” [On Imagination], included in the first book of Montaigne’s Essais [Essays] (1580). In this new view, imagination is capable of forging objects and images independently, with autonomy from reality and the information transmitted by the senses. Huarte’s treatise played a decisive part in this redefinition of the role of imagination, as it emphasized its connection to creativity and artifice. He states: De la buena imaginativa nacen todas las artes y ciencias que consisten en figura, correspondencia, armonía y proporción. Estas son: poesía, elocuencia, música, saber predicar, la práctica de la medicina, matemáticas, astrología, gobernar una república, el arte militar; pintar, trazar, escrebir, leer, ser un hombre gracioso, apodador, polido, agudo in agilibus, y todos los ingenios y maquinamientos que fingen los artifices . . . (395–396)



Wit, Imagination, and the Goat  103 From a good imagination are born all the arts and sciences that consist in figure, correspondence, harmony, and proportion. These are: poetry, eloquence, music, the ability to preach, the practice of medicine, mathematics, astrology, governing a republic, military art; painting, drawing, writing, reading, to be an entertaining, funny, pleasant, and witty man, and all the inventions and devices that artificers create.

The connection also appears later in the work of Alonso López Pinciano: No atiende la imaginación a las especies verdaderas, mas finge otras nuevas y acerca dellas obra de mil maneras: unas veces las finge simples; otras, las compone; ya finge especies de montes que nunca fueron, ya de las especies del monte y de las del oro, hace un monte de oro, ya del oro hace un coloso y ya un animal que tenga cabeza de hombre, cuello de caballo, cuerpo de ave y cola de pece como dice Horacio. (34) Imagination does not attend to the true species, but invents new ones and works on them in a thousand ways: sometimes it invents simple ones; other times, it composes them; it may invent species of the mounts that never existed or create a mount of gold from the species of the mounts and those of gold, it may create from the gold a colossus or an animal with the head of a man, the neck of a horse, the body of a bird, and the tail of a fish as Horacio says. This new creative power of imagination will establish the basis of the emerging novel genre pioneered by Cervantes. No longer conceived as a simple operation of mimesis, imagination allows the mind to transcend what is perceived, free itself from the referent of reality, and widen its scope of possibilities in creating fiction. It provides the writer with the opportunity to wander at will through the paths of creation. In Don Quijote, Cervantes showcases this new concept of imagination as creative power. He does so by begetting a protagonist with an active, overflowing imagination, an imagination that is presented not simply as diseased and damaged,10 but also, and more importantly, as creative, inventive, and capable of elaborating another reality parallel to the existing one, a second reality. Don Quixote sees an object but imagines something else, as it happens in the widely known windmills episode in chapter 8 of Part I, where he turns the windmills into giants. Another classic example of Don Quixote’s creative imagination appears in chapter 16 of Part I, at the inn that Don Quixote imagines to be a castle, where knight and squire are trying to sleep after the Yanguesans have beaten them up. In the quiet, dimly lit room of the inn, Don Quixote’s imagination starts to run free: Maritornes, the inn servant, becomes the daughter of the lord of the castle, who, smitten by our gentle knight,

104  Christine Orobitg escapes the vigilance of her parents at night to visit Don Quixote’s chambers. As she enters the room—to lie with the muleteer as previously agreed—Don Quixote intercepts her. He transforms her coarse body into the body of a princess. Her burlap chemise becomes a garment made of the finest silk, the glass beads she wears on her wrists, precious oriental pearls, her hair, which resembles a horse’s mane, strands of shining gold that darken the sun, and her stale salad smelling breath, a delicate and aromatic fragrance (I.16.142–143). Don Quixote’s imagination not simply generates but also elaborates carefully the details of his chivalric reality. He creates characters, names them, and invents fictional situations just as the novelist invents and christens his characters and their circumstances. For instance, in chapter 18 of Part I, when Don Quixote and Sancho see two opposing clouds of dust coming toward them, Don Quixote imagines a battle between two armies, inventing and naming its protagonists: “Y has de saber, Sancho, que este que viene por nuestra frente le conduce y guía el grande emperador Alifanfarón, señor de la grande isla Trapobana; este otro que a mis espaldas marcha es el de su enemigo, el rey de los garamantas, Pentapolín del Arremangado Brazo . . .” (I.18.157) [“You must know, Sancho, that the army in front of us is led and directed by the great Emperor Alifanfarón, lord of the great Ínsula Trapobane; the other, marching behind us, belongs to his enemy, the king of Garamantes, Pentapolín of the Tucked-up Sleeve . . .” (126)]. Cervantes writes that “Y de esta manera fue nombrando muchos caballeros del uno y del otro escuadrón que él se imaginaba, y a todos les dio sus armas, colores, empresas y motes de improviso, llevado de la imaginación de su nunca vista locura . . .” (I.18.159) [“And in this fashion he named many knights from the two hosts, which he was imagining, and for all of them he improvised armor, colors, legends, and devices, carried along by the imagination of his unheard-of madness . . .” (128)]. As illustrated by this last quote, the narrative voice in the novel often discredits the imagination of Don Quixote, presenting it as damaged, deteriorated by madness. Further examples include “le trujo a la imaginación una de las extrañas locuras que buenamente imaginarse pueden” (I.16.142) [“brought to his mind as strange a bit of madness as anyone could imagine” (112)], “llevado de la imaginación de su nunca vista locura” (I.18.159) [“carried along by the imagination of his unheard-of madness . . .” (128)], and “se le representó en su loca imaginación que otra vez, como la pasada, la doncella fermosa, hija de la señora de aquel castillo, vencida de su amor tornaba a solicitarle . . .” (I.43.452) [“it seemed to him in his mad imagination that once again, as she had in the past, the beauteous damsel, daughter of the chatelaine of that castle, had been overcome by love for him and was soliciting his favors” (379)]. However, throughout the novel, the imagination of the ingenious hidalgo often claims its own legitimacy and freedom. Such is the case in chapter 25 of Part I, where Don Quixote



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asserts his right to conceive Dulcinea as he wishes, following the example of poets, who invent their ladies’ indentities and attributes for the sake of their verses. In this manner, Cervantes establishes through Don Quixote’s view, a significant parallel with literary creation: Y, así, bástame a mí pensar y creer que la buena de Aldonza Lorenzo es hermosa y honesta, y en lo del linaje, importa poco, que no han de ir a hacer la información de él para darle algún hábito, y yo me hago cuenta que es la más alta princesa del mundo . . . [Y]o imagino que todo lo que digo es así, sin que sobre ni falte nada, y píntola en mi imaginación como la deseo, así en la belleza como en la principalidad . . . (I.25.244) And therefore it is enough for me to think and believe that my good Aldonza Lorenzo is beautiful and virtuous; as for her lineage, it matters little, for no one is going to investigate it in order to give her a robe of office, and I can think she is the highest princess in the world . . . I imagine that everything I say is true, no more and no less, and I depict her in my imagination as I wish her to be in beauty and in distinction . . . (201) Furthermore, in chapter 32 of Part II, when the Duchess asks Don Quixote if Dulcinea truly exists, Don Quixote replies that it does not matter, further claiming his right to invent his own reality, without being challenged or restrained: “Dios sabe si hay Dulcinea o no en el mundo, o si es fantástica o no es fantástica; y éstas no son de las cosas cuya averiguación se ha de llevar hasta el cabo” (II.32.800) [“God knows if Dulcinea exists in the world or not, or if she is imaginary or not imaginary; these are not the kinds of things whose verification can be carried through to the end” (672)]. As these excerpts illustrate, Cervantes presents imagination11 not only as capable of inventing but also as free, aware, and assertive, showcasing its independence and creative power and joining Huarte in his praise of originality and innovation.

The “Cabra” [Goat] and the “Capricious” Mind The last key element that we are discussing in connection with the mind’s creative process, as viewed in early modernity and expressed in the works of Huarte and Cervantes, is the notion of capriciousness and the image of the goat as a symbol of innovation. Once more, in a period where etymology is perceived as the manifestation of a truth and where words are believed to have a revealing power, it is important to first pay attention to what popular dictionaries of epithets can tell us about the epoch’s semantic associations of this animal in terms of attributes and behaviors.

106  Christine Orobitg In the Epitheta (1518), one of the main encyclopedic sources used by writers at the time,12 the humanist thinker Joannes Ravisius Textor associates the word capra [female goat] with the adjectives dumivaga [that wanders in the bushes], sylvestris [wild] and amans saxa [fond of rocks], and petulea [impertinent, daring, audacious] (96v–97r). He also relates the word hircus [male goat] to the adjectives setiger [bristly] and vagus [errant] (224v–225r). These epithets conjure an image of freedom and wandering: the goat appears as an indomitable animal (fond of rambling and vagabondage) that does not submit to rules and flees the domestic spaces but looks for peaks and uncharted fields, virgin territories far from the trodden paths. For Ravisius Textor, the word cabra is derived from the Latin verb carpere, which expresses the act of jumping, climbing, and abandoning the flat, straight, and trampled path to get lost in wild and unexplored territories: Caprae dicuntur a carpendo, texte Varrone, [quod] virgulta carpant . . . Amant dumeta potius quam situm campestrem, asperisque locis et sylvestris optime pascuntur. Nam nec aversantur rubos nec offenduntur vepribus. (Officinae 186) Goats are named from [the word meaning] “grazing,” on Varro’s authority, because they graze upon small shoots . . . They prefer thickets to fields, and graze best in rough and wooded locales. Moreover, they neither shun brambles nor are afraid of thornbushes. These preferences and behaviors are echoed in Miquel Agustí’s Libro de los secretos de agricultura [Book of the Secrets of Agriculture] (1617),13 where he underlines the natural tendency of the goat to stray, to err, and to wander on its own, unlike the sheep, which remains united in a herd and follows the shepherd: “estos animales son muy dissolutos, traviessos y se alargan y derraman mucho, al contrario de los carneros y ovejas, que van unidos y no dan tanto trabajo al Pastor de su guarda” (494) [these animals are very dissolute, mischievous, and linger and wander a lot, unlike rams and sheep, who go together and do not give the shepherd so much work to guard them]. The goat symbology, chiefly centered on errancy and audacity, reverberates in Huarte’s treatise, where he reproaches those authors who merely imitate and follow preexisting models or referents. At the end of Examen’s chapter 5, he does so specifically by opposing the goat to the sheep. For Huarte, there are two kinds of ingenios: sheeplike ingenios who follow the footpath and “capricious,” goatlike ingenios, capable of invention, of leaving the trodden path to find new trails and things: A los ingenios inventivos llaman en lengua toscana caprichosos, por semejanza que tienen con la cabra en el andar y pacer. Esta jamás huelga por lo llano; siempre es amiga de andar a sus solas por los



Wit, Imagination, and the Goat  107 riscos y alturas, y asomarse a grandes porofundidades; por donde no sigue vereda alguna ni quiere caminar con compaña. Tal propiedad como ésta se halla en el ánima racional cuando tiene un celebro bien organizado y templado: jamás huelga en ninguna contemplación, todo es andar inquieta buscando cosas nuevas que saber y entender . . . Porque hay otros hombres que jamás salen de una contemplación ni piensan que hay más en el mundo que descubrir. Éstos tienen la propiedad de la oveja, la cual nunca sale de las pisadas del manso, ni se atreve a caminar por lugares desiertos y sin carril, sino por veredas muy holladas y que alguno vaya delante. (344–345)14 Wits full of invention are called in the Tuscan language capricious, for the resemblance they maintain with a goat in their way of walking and grazing. This animal never remains in the plains; but enjoys wandering alone through cliffs and heights and approaching great depths, for it will not follow any trodden path nor will it seek any company. Such quality is found in the rational soul when it possesses a brain well-organized and tempered: it never remains in any contemplation but wonders restless looking for new things to know and understand . . . Because there are other men who never leave their contemplation nor think that there is more to discover in the world. These men have the properties of the sheep, which never leaves the trodden path, nor dares to walk through deserted places without a lane but walks through very beaten trails and with someone guiding them.

Cervantes’s character, Don Quixote, embodies many of the attributes of the goat mentioned above. Not only does he flee his domestic space to become a knight-errant and wander freely through the fields of La Mancha, but he is also daring, indomitable, and impertinent. The notion of impertinence is particularly tied to the character and the novel’s plot, as illustrated, for instance, by the title of chapter 24 of Part II: “Donde se cuentan mil zarandajas tan impertinentes como necesarias al verdadero entendimiento de esta grande historia” [“In which a thousand trifles are recounted, as impertinent as they are necessary to a true understanding of this great history”] or that of the interpolated novel “El curioso impertinente” [The Curious Impertinent]. Covarrubias’s dictionary gathers the following definitions under the entry “impertinente”: “cosa, la que no hace al proposito, hombre impertinente, el que es sin sustancia y sin modo: impertinencia, la cosa fuera de proposito” (501v) [something that does not fit the purpose, an impertinent man, a man with no substance and no method: impertinence, something out of purpose]. This definition perfectly fits Don Quixote’s project of becoming a knight-errant, which is completely “out of purpose,” unfitting or unsuitable, as is also his behavior, which constantly deviates from the norm. Don Quixote’s personality is also insubstantial and unmethodical from the point of view of what is socially acceptable.

108  Christine Orobitg Finally, related to the caprine quality of impertinence is that of “antojarse,” a verb that means to fancy, to want something vehemently. According to the Diccionario de Autoridades,15 antojadizo is someone who “se dexa llevar facil è inconstantemente de su gusto y antójo” [lets himself be carried away easily and inconstantly by his inclination and whim]. This is precisely how Don Quixote is introduced to readers in the prologue to the novel, as “un hijo seco, avellanado, antojadizo y lleno de pensamientos varios y nunca imaginados de otro alguno” (I.Prol.7) [“a child who is dry, withered, capricious, and filled with inconstant thoughts never imagined by anyone else” (3)]. Don Quixote’s personality and behavior are definitely whimsical and outside the norm. In the same way that he wanders freely, following his own inclination and impulses, his mind comes up suddenly and unexpectedly with thoughts never imagined by anyone else, just as Cervantes does in his novel. Hence, not only is Don Quixote a capricious and errant mind and a character that creatively invents himself16 as he wanders around La Mancha, but also, and more importantly, it is the very act of leaving behind preexisting molds that constitutes the creative engine for Cervantes and his quest for originality.

Errancy and Literary Innovation The goat’s quality of errancy takes special prominence in Don Quijote, to the extent that the novel can be read as “poetics of errancy,” taken in all its polysemy: spatial errancy (movement and travel), mental errancy (error, madness), and literary errancy (“capricious” writing and inventiveness that go astray and wander off the paths). I shall discuss here how these three aspects of errancy are central to the novel and together constitute the dynamic landscape of Cervantes’s innovative project.17 It is this pervading and multifaceted notion of errancy, along with the notions that we have previously examined (wit and imagination as creative powers), that integrates Cervantes’s fictional engine, allowing him to leave the trodden path and connecting him to Huarte’s call for intellectual autonomy and creative freedom. Spatial errancy in Don Quijote confers the text structural and semantic unity. Erring leads in its most obvious meaning to spatial wandering, to the act of traveling through the roads. Indeed, in the sixteenth century, as Covarrubias’s dictionary exemplifies, there is a link between errancy and spatial wandering: “Erratico, vale vagamundo, que no tiene logar ni domicilio cierto” (360v) [Erratic. He who has no true place or address]. Furthermore, the Diccionario de Autoridades defines “errar,” from the Latin “vagari,” “errare,” as “andar vagando sin saber el camino” (s.v. “errar”; acceptation #4) [to walk wandering without knowing the way] and “erradizo,” from the Latin “erraroneous, erraraticus,” as “Cosa que anda vagando, errante o vagabunda” (s.v. “erradizo”) [Thing that



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wanders, wandering or vagrant]. Don Quijote is established as a novel of movement, a narrative of displacement. This movement does not follow a rectilinear and predetermined path but is random, whimsical, and dotted by meetings and stays at several inns.18 Furthermore, on the first sally, Don Quixote lets Rocinante choose the “route” they would follow. Such randomness and the lack of geographical precision in this spatial journey confuse those who try to figure the exact itinerary of Don Quixote, which is deliberately imprecise. The route of the ingenious hidalgo is not a precise geographical route but a poetic one. Cervantes organizes his narrative following an episodic, itinerant pattern: travel and dialogue between Don Quixote and Sancho, followed by an adventure, and a new dialogue between knight and squire about the experienced events, before moving on to further adventures. The structural model is the chivalric romance—here parodied—and the act of “erring” is what characterizes the genre’s protagonist, who is the knight-errant (the “caballero andante”). Thus, the notion of spatial errancy is at the core of the literary model of Cervantes’s text.19 Thematically speaking, wandering also connects the figure of Don Quixote (characterized by several studies as a melancholic temperament) to Saturn, patron of pilgrims, 20 as well as to the hero archetype of other central works of Western culture: Ulysses, Jason, Aeneas, Hercules, and other characters are in constant movement, wandering around the world subject to random encounters and adventures, wars, and returns. As illustrated by these characters, in the collective imagination, the romance hero is defined largely by errancy. Don Quixote and Sancho correspond to this archetype, as they wander around subject to random adventures.21 However, unlike the chivalric heroes he seeks to imitate, Don Quixote fabricates his own adventures and, thus, chooses where to find them. In this regard, their capricious journey not only is liberating but also represents the autonomy and freedom to choose one’s own path to creation. Mental errancy adopts in Don Quijote diverse forms. To err is primarily to make a mistake (an “error”), as Covarrubias points out in his dictionary: “errar, del verbo Lat. erro.as, pecar, no acertar, dezimos: errar la cura, errar el camino, errar a sabiendas” (360v) [from the Latin verb erro.as, to sin, not being right. We say: to err the cure, to miss the path, to err knowingly]. Chapter 1 of Don Quijote establishes the inaugural error, the error from which the whole novel originates: “vino a dar en el más extraño pensamiento que jamás dio loco en el mundo” (I.1.30) [“he had the strangest thought any lunatic in the world ever had” (21)]. Thus, Don Quijote is the story of what at first glance appears to be the erring or “mistake” of a madman who has abandoned the path of reason. From this vantage point, it is important to note the significant presence of the word “disparates” [nonsense/foolish remarks] in Cervantes’s

110  Christine Orobitg text, especially at the beginning of the novel, in the first few chapters, which can be described as foundational, in which the story is configured and the main character is being created. For example, in chapter 2 of Part I, we read: “Con éstos iba ensartando otros disparates, todos al modo de los que sus libros le habían enseñado” (I.2.36) [“He strung these together with other foolish remarks, all in the manner his books had taught him” (25)]. The connection between Don Quixote’s mental errancy and madness is further emphasized in the novel by the use of adjectives such as “insensato” [dumb/unwise], “demente” [delirious/ mad], “insano” [insane], and “desatinado” [foolish]. The madman is out of his wits; reason abandons his mind, which then wanders lost. However, this absence of self, this emptiness of the mind that characterizes the madman is also, in classical culture, the vacatio that allows for revelation. We must remember that, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a broad set of representations inherited from the Christian tradition as well as the pagan legacy (the Platonic theory of inspired mania or pseudo-Aristotelian theory of great melancholy) associate madness, the wandering of the mind, with inspiration and genius. 22 Cervantes plays with this duality intrinsic to mental errancy and madness: the wandering mind can be viewed both as adrift and as inspired. Hence, there are in his novel speeches and judgments in which Don Quixote appears as the voice of truth, prompting others to admire his wisdom. Ultimately, the wandering of his mind, his mental errancy, in both his bright and deranged moments, allows Cervantes to emphasize the power and freedom of the imagination. Furthermore, Don Quixote’s infatuation with Dulcinea is also a case of mental errancy. In the medical books that circulated in early modern Europe, such as the well-known Lilio de medicina [Lily of Medicine] by Bernardo Gordonio (whose translation into Castilian was published in Seville in 1495) or the no less famous Traicté de l’essence et guérison de l’amour ou de la mélancholie érotique [Treatise on the Essence and Cure of Love or of Erotic Melancholy] of the doctor Jacques Ferrand (published in Toulouse in 1610), “lovesickness” (also called amor hereos or erotic melancholy) is characterized as a mental illness, generally classified among the forms of melancholy or mania and defined as a “delirium without fever.”23 Don Quixote’s falling in love is a disturbance, a deviation from the psychological norm, an error. In Cervantes’s text, the insistence (especially in the first part) on the disparity between the mental representation that Don Quixote makes of Dulcinea and her real identity (Aldonza Lorenzo) also highlights the idea of erring. However, as I discussed earlier, Don Quixote asserts his right to beget Dulcinea freely and independently. Hence, what apparently constitutes an error is, in fact, a choice. Don Quixote voluntarily deviates from chivalric norms by creating a lady who is the product of a transformation, a blend of truth and fiction, capriciously conceived by his imagination.



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The third type of errancy that articulates Don Quijote is literary errancy. Invention, experimentation, and the act of leaving behind preexisting molds constitute the creative engine for Cervantes. Taking various literary models as a point of departure, he creates a new text that resembles no other. Consequently, the creative errancy in Don Quijote supposes a freedom to wander away from literary convention. Cervantes is inspired by a myriad of literary models: chivalric romance, dialogues in all their forms (Platonic dialogues, Renaissance dialogues), folktales, and short stories, but playfully alters them while simultaneously casting doubt upon the novel’s authorship and narrative voices, as well as the truthfulness of its related facts. Within this frame, the knight-errant of the chivalric romance becomes a ridiculous and pathetic gentleman (although not always totally ridiculous nor totally pathetic) and the dialogues between knight and squire, inspired by the traditional pattern of dialogue between teacher and disciple, are at times reversed: the disciple (Sancho) becomes the teacher. These aspects also emphasize the playful and ungraspable dimension of the text. 24 Cervantes makes use of literary types, genres, and conventions in the same way that the Huartian goat chooses and enjoys wandering through the roads: he leaves them to contemplate, from the margins and at a distance, often with humor and irony, the literary path trodden by others. It is important to remember that both Huarte and Cervantes live in a period when imitatio, erudition, knowledge, and respect for the great authors (the auctoritates) are the norm. Against this intellectual backdrop, Huarte’s originality resides precisely in his praise of novelty, invention, and the ability to move away from models and referents, real or literary. In the Examen, he criticizes bitterly those who, lacking the ingenio and ability to innovate, limit themselves to repeating models, those who go around or imitate texts, authors, or preexisting references: A los demás que carescen de invención no había de consentir la república que escribiesen libros, ni dejárselos imprimir; porque no hacen más de dar círculos en los dichos y sentencias de los autores graves, y tornarlos a repetir, y hurtando uno de aquí y tomando otro de allí, ya no hay quien no componga una obra. (344) As for those who lack invention, the Republic should not allow them to write books nor let them print them; for they do nothing but go around in circles using the statements and maxims of the important authors, and to repeat them again, by stealing one from here and one from there, everyone can compose a book these days. It is much more complicated and meritorious, says Huarte, to invent new ideas and doctrines than to gloss over or copy what already exists: “como sea tan dificultoso el inventar cosas nuevas y tan fácil añadir a

112  Christine Orobitg lo que ya está dicho y tratado” (164) [as it is so difficult to invent new things and so easy to add to what has already been said and addressed]. Like Huarte, Cervantes praises invention, novelty, and freedom with respect to preexisting models. Playfully following the convention of captatio benevolentiae, he asserts in the prologue to the 1605 Don Quijote the creative capacity of its author and does it again in the prologue to the Novelas ejemplares, where he states: “. . . yo soy el primero que ha novelado en lengua castellana, que las muchas novelas que en ella andan impresas, todas son traducidas de lenguas estranjeras, y éstas son mías propias, no imitadas ni hurtadas . . .” (52) [I am the first to write novellas in the Castilian language, for the many novellas that circulate in print in this language are all translated from foreign languages, and these are my own, neither imitated nor stolen]. He takes his claim even further in the Viaje del Parnaso [Voyage to Parnassus] (1614), where the capacity for invention is defined as the sole, legitimate basis of his literary fame: Yo soy aquel que en la invención excede a muchos, y al que falte en esta parte, es fuerza que su fama falta quede. (81) I am the man who in invention’s power Many excel; who in this essential fails A consequence is in fame will likewise fail; (42) What defines literature and the true writer for Cervantes is indeed the capacity for invention. He also emphasizes this idea in Viaje, as illustrated by Mercury’s repeated use of the term “raro inventor” [“rare inventor”] to refer to Cervantes: Y sé que aquel instinto sobrehumano que de raro inventor tu pecho encierra, no te le ha dado Apolo en vano. Tus obras los rincones de la Tierra, llevándolas en grupa Rocinante, descubren, y a la envidia mueven guerra. Pasa, raro inventor, pasa adelante con tu sutil designio y presta ayuda a Apolo, que la tuya es importante. (68) This superhuman instinct I do know, Thy breast conceals a rare inventor’s prize, Which Father Apollo not in vain imparts— Thy works the very corners of the earth, On Rosinante’s crupper hoisted up, Discover, and with envy move to war.

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Pass on, inventor rare, further advance With thy subtle design, and aid supply To Delian Apollo, of vast weight—(7–8) Cervantes, thus, claims for himself this new understanding of invention and literary creation with pride, representing himself as a rare “inventor,”25 someone who possesses the rare wit and imagination to beget new ideas, new worlds, and new literary forms. He is the autonomous, errant creative mind who dares to abandon the trodden path, the impertinent, capricious, unpredictable mind who defies convention and wanders free in search of novelty and discovery.

Conclusion The notions of ingenio and imagination as creative and free put forth by Huarte and embodied in the figure of the goat, symbol of audacity and innovation, are aspects present in the textual and cultural contexts that surround the creation of Don Quijote. Undoubtedly, the caprine symbology—the “capriciousness” of the animal and its venturing off the beaten path—is essential to understand Don Quijote: the text (“hijo antojadizo” [capricious son] of the author’s ingenio) and its protagonist (idle reader and knight-errant). The intrepidness and errancy that define the goat are aspects that characterize a Cervantine text that is in permanent flux. This movement is represented by the spatial wandering of the protagonist, his mental vagaries, and, ultimately, Cervantes’s act of leaving the path trodden by other writers. Examining the novel in relation to the attributes of the goat helps us shed light on Cervantes’s view of the writing process as dynamic, whimsical, indomitable, and groundbreaking.

Notes 1 On the high circulation, popularity, and impact of the Examen in early modernity and beyond, see, among others, Martín-Araguz and BustamanteMartínez; Serés, “Introduction”; Sumillera. 2 Roaming or deviating from the beaten path. 3 See, among others, Aladro; Green; Heiple; Iriarte; Redondo; Romero López; Ruiz Pérez; Salillas; Serés, “Don Quijote.” 4 Unless otherwise noted, the translations are the editors’. 5 The chapter titles in English are from Grossman’s translation. 6 See particularly pp. 187–194. 7 On the concept of wit in early modernity and Huarte, see Sumillera 2–4. 8 All citations from Don Quijote are from the edition by Rico and refer to part, chapter, and page. 9 On this topic, see Agamben; Bundy; García Gibert, “La fuerza de la imaginación” 7ff; Harvey; Serés, “El concepto”; Serés, “La imaginación.” On the complexity of imagination and creativity in early modernity and its connection to Shakespeare’s work, see also Roychoudhury. 10 It is important to note that the “madness” of Don Quixote has been and still is the dominant explanation for the protagonist’s “distorted” perception of reality. On madness and Don Quijote, see, among others, Shuger.

114 Christine Orobitg 11 On the role of imagination in Cervantes and other early modern writers, see, for instance, Pozuelo Yvancos 47f. 12 On the relationship between the Epitheta and the work of Cervantes, see Paterson. 13 The book was originally published in Catalan in 1617 with the title Llibre dels secrets d’agricultura, casa rústica i pastoril. It was then translated into Castilian in 1626. 14 Capricho (from the Italian capriccio) also signifies in the Castilian language “dictamen formado de idea, y por lo general fuera de las reglas ordinárias y comúnes” [a statement coming from an idea and generally out of the ordinary and common rules] (in Diccionario de Autoridades). 15 The Diccionario de Autoridades is the first official Spanish dictionary published by the Royal Spanish Academy (between 1726 and 1739). It collects and expands the lexical repertoire included in Covarrubias’s dictionary, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (1611). 16 On Don Quixote’s process of self-creation, see Mancing, “Embodied.” 17 On the poetics of errancy in Don Quijote, see also Orobitg. 18 The story begins with the preparations for the first sally and closes in the most tragic way possible: Don Quixote’s definitive return home and his subsequent death. The novel narrates three sallies. The first covers chapters 1–6 of Don Quijote (1605). The second spans chapters 8–52 and is organized as follows: chapters 8–31 narrate the journey on the roads of La Mancha, where different adventures take place; chapters 32–46 correspond to the stay at the inn of Juan Palomeque; and chapters 47–52 correspond to the return of Don Quixote and Sancho to their home, at the end of the first part. The second part, Don Quijote (1615), corresponds to the third sally: chapters 1–7 recount the preparations; chapters 8–29 deal with the protagonists’ new journey and adventures throughout La Mancha; chapters 30–57 narrate their stay at the castle of the Duke and the Duchess; in chapters 58–65 they are back again on the road for their final adventures; and chapters 66–74 correspond to the definitive return of Don Quixote and Sancho, marking the end of the novel. Don Quijote is then as a coherent textual set, constructed around the ideas of wandering, travel, and vacatio. It shifts away from domestic spaces and the everyday and habitual roads. 19 See also Mancing, The Chivalric. 20 On melancholy and Don Quixote, see, for instance, Aladro; de la Higuera Espín; Groppo and Mezzetti; Heiple; Redondo; Romero López; Ruiz Pérez; Serés, “Don Quijote”; Soufas (ch. 1). On the connection between Don Quixote, Cervantes, and Saturn, see, among others, de Armas (ch. 10). 21 On the romance genre as a predictable form that emphasizes freedom and its connection to the mind creative processes, see Collins 280–282. On the developmental journey undertaken by the heroes of the Romance genre, see Jaén. 22 On the positive attributes of melancholy in relation to intellectual activity and creativity, see, among others, Jaén and Simon, this volume; Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl. On the complexity and instability of the notion of madness in connection with early modern Spain and Don Quijote, see Shuger. 23 On Don Quijote and lovesickness, see, among others, Folger. 24 See Torrente Ballester. 25 Stephen Gilman has written about the emergence of a true, creative selfconsciousness in Cervantes’s work, showing how under his pen the concept of invention moves from its old rhetorical sense (the inventio theorized in Aristotle’s Rhetoric) to its modern sense, that of a free and autonomous creative power (see 79–112).



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Works Cited Agamben, Giorgio. Stanze: La parola e il fantasma nella cultura occidentale. Torino: Einaudi, 1977. Agustí, Miquel. Libro de los secretos de agricultura y casa de campo y pastoril. Perpignan: Luis Roure, [1617] 1626. Aladro, Jorge. “La melancolía de Alonso Quijano ‘el Bueno.’” Leyendo el Quijote: IV Centenario de la publicación de Don Quijote de la Mancha. Spec. issue of Príncipe de Viana 66.236 (2005): 577–588. Bundy, Murray Wright. The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Mediaeval Thought. Urbana: U of Illinois, 1927. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Ed. Francisco Rico. Madrid: Punto de lectura, 2011. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Trans. Edith Grossman. Intro. Harold Bloom. New York: Ecco [Harper Collins], 2005. Cervantes, Miguel de. Novelas ejemplares I. Ed. Harry Sieber. Madrid: Cátedra, 1997. Cervantes, Miguel de. Viaje del Parnaso. 1614. Obras completas. Ed. Ángel Valbuena Prat. Madrid: Aguilar, 1956. 66–104. Cervantes, Miguel de. The Voyage to Parnassus; Numantia, a Tragedy; The Commerce of Algiers. Trans. Gordon Willoughby James Gyll. London: Murray, 1870. 1–106. Collins, Marsha S. “Romance.” The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Ed. Barry Stocker and Michael Mack. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 263–291. . Covarrubias, Sebastián de. Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española. Madrid, 1611. Fondo Antiguo. Web. 24 Nov. 2018. . de Armas, Frederick. Don Quixote among the Saracens: A Clash of Civilizations and Literary Genres. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2011. de la Higuera Espín, Javier. “El Quijote y la melancolía.” Arbor 189.760 (2013): 1–11. . Diccionario de Autoridades (1726–39). Real Academia de la Lengua. Web. 24 Nov. 2018. . Folger, Robert. Images in Mind: Lovesickness, Spanish Sentimental Fiction and Don Quijote. Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 2002. García Gibert, Javier. La imaginación amorosa en la poesía del Siglo de Oro. Valencia: Universitat de Valéncia, 1997. Anejo 22 de la revista Cuadernos de filología. Gilman, Stephen. La novela según Cervantes. Trans. Carlos Ávila Flores. México: F.C.E., 1993. Green, Otis H. “El Ingenioso Hidalgo.” Hispanic Review 25.3 (1957): 175–193. . Groppo, Marcela, and Silvia Beatriz Mezzetti. “La melancolía, entre la enfermedad y la imaginación creadora.” El Quijote en Buenos Aires: Lecturas cervantinas en el cuarto centenario. Ed. Alicia Parodi, Julia D’Onofrio, and Juan Diego Vila. Buenos Aires: Instituto de Filología y Literaturas Hispánicas, 2006. 461–467. Harvey, E. Ruth. The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London: Warburg Institute, 1975.

116  Christine Orobitg Heiple, Daniel L. “Renaissance Medical Psychology in Don Quijote.” Ideologies & Literature 2.9 (1979): 65–72. Huarte de San Juan, Juan. Examen de ingenios para las ciencias. Ed. Guillermo Serés. Madrid: Cátedra, 1989. Iriarte, Mauricio de. “El ingenioso hidalgo y el Examen de ingenios: Qué debe Cervantes al Dr. Huarte de San Juan.” Acción Española 7.41/42 (1933) 445–458/535–547. www.filosofia.org. Web. 23 Nov. 2018. Jaén, Isabel. “Fictions of Human Development: Renaissance Cognitive Philosophy and the Romance.” The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Ed. Barry Stocker and Michael Mack. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 315–339. . Klibansky, Raymond, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl. Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art. New York: Basic Books, 1964. López Pinciano, Alonso. Philosophia antigua poetica. 1596. Vol. 1 of Obras completas. Ed. José Rico Verdú. Madrid: Fundación José Antonio de Castro, 1998. Mancing, Howard. The Chivalric World of Don Quixote: Style, Structure, and Narrative Technique. Columbia/London: U of Missouri P, 1982. Mancing, Howard. “Embodied Cognition and Autopoiesis in Don Quixote.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. 37–52. . Martín Araguz, Antonio, and C. Bustamante Martínez. “Examen de ingenios, de Juan Huarte de San Juan, y los albores de la Neurobiología de la inteligencia en el Renacimiento español.” Revista de Neurología 38.12 (2004): 1176–1185. . Orobitg, Christine. “La poética de la errancia en el Don Quijote.” Criticón 124 (2015): 87–100. . Paterson, Alan K. G. “Language as Object of Representation in Rinconete y Cortadillo.” A Companion to Cervantes’s Novelas Ejemplares. Ed. Stephen Boyd. Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2005. 104–114. Pozuelo Yvancos, José Manuel. La invención literaria: Garcilaso, Góngora, Cervantes, Quevedo y Gracián. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2014. Ravisius Textor, Joannes (Tixier de Ravisi, Jean). Epitheta. Geneva: Pierre Chovet, 1640. Ravisius Textor, Joannes (Tixier de Ravisi, Jean). Officinae Ioannis Ravisii Textoris Epitome. Geneva: Alexandrum Pernet, 1626. Redondo, Augustin. Otra manera de leer el Quijote: Historia, tradiciones culturales y literatura. Madrid: Castalia, 1997. Romero López, Dolores. “Fisonomía y temperamento de Don Quijote de la Mancha.” Estado actual de los estudios sobre el Siglo de Oro: Actas del II Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas del Siglo de Oro. Ed. Manuel García Martín. Vol. 2. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1993. 879–885. Roychoudhury, Suparna. Phantasmatic Shakespeare: Imagination on the Age of Early Modern Science. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2018. Ruiz Pérez, Pedro. “El poeta Quijano: Fisonomías.” Monteagudo 10 (2005): 65–86.



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Salillas, Rafael. Un gran inspirador de Cervantes, el doctor Juan Huarte y su Examen de ingenios. Madrid: E. Arias, 1905. Serés, Guillermo. “El concepto de fantasía, desde la estética clásica a la dieciochesca.” Anales de literatura española 10 (1994): 207–236. Serés, Guillermo. “Don Quijote, ingenioso.” Los rostros de Don Quijote: IV centenario de la publicación de su primera parte. Ed. Aurora Egido. Zaragoza: Ibercaja, 2004. 11–36. Serés, Guillermo. “La imaginación de Santa Teresa: Virtudes y desatinos de ‘la loca de la casa.’” Edad de Oro 34 (2015): 11–34. . Serés, Guillermo. “Introduction.” Examen de ingenios. By Juan Huarte de San Juan. Ed. Guillermo Serés. Madrid: Cátedra, 1989. 11–131. Shuger, Dale. Don Quixote in the Archives: Madness and Literature in Early Modern Spain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012. Soufas, Teresa Scott. Melancholy and the Secular Mind in Spanish Golden Age Literature. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1990. Sumillera, Rocío G. “Introduction.” The Examination of Men’s Wits. By Juan Huarte de San Juan. Trans. Richard Carew. Ed. Rocío G. Sumillera. London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2014. 1–67. Torrente Ballester, Gonzalo. El Quijote como juego. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1975.

6

Cervantes and the Mother of the Muses Views of Memory in Early Modern Spain Julia Domínguez

There exists an interesting reference to the relationship between memory and lifestyle in Cervantes’s well-known last two novelas ejemplares [exemplary novels], El casamiento engañoso [The Deceitful Marriage] and El coloquio de los perros [The Dialogue of the Dogs]. These two short prose works feed each other’s storyline and have at their combined center a conversation between two watchdogs, Berganza and Cipión, at a hospital in Seville. In El casamiento, Ensign Campuzano, recovering from syphilis, rests weakly in the hospital and overhears and memorizes the conversation that ensues between the two dogs. The second tale, then, is Campuzano’s written account of the dogs’ conversation. We are told that he remembered the dogs’ exchange so well that he was able to retell it in his own words “como yo estaba tan atento y tenía delicado el juicio, delicada, sotil y desocupada la memoria (merced a las muchas pasas y almendras que había comido)” (294) [“for since I was listening so attentively and my mind was in such a sensitive state, while my memory was receptive, sharp, and unpreoccupied by other thoughts (thanks to the large quantity of raisins and almonds I had eaten)” (248–249)].1 The reference pushes to the forefront the role of memory in this particular instance and anticipates its importance in the construction of the story. Since classical antiquity, the interest in the methods used to describe, maintain, and improve memory led to the publication of many manuals and treatises of Cervantes’s day. These works were written by very well-known figures within the cultural milieu (doctors, humanists, and rhetoricians) such as Juan Luis Vives, Juan Huarte de San Juan, Blas Álvarez de Miraval, Juan de Aguilera, Miguel Sabuco and his daughter Oliva, Pedro Mejía, Andrés Laguna, Bartolomé Jiménez Patón, Juan Velázquez de Acevedo, and El Brocense and his pupil, Juan de Guzmán, among many others. These manuals (mainly written during the second part of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century) gathered diverse and assorted perspectives on what memory meant to Cervantes’s contemporaries.2 The theorists discussed memory in what was called its natural state as well as its rhetorical or artificial state. They also described the way memory functioned and did so without ignoring certain dietary recommendations and the use of particular DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211-6

Views of Memory  119 home remedies and herbs that they believed contributed to improving memory as well as the illnesses and unhealthy lifestyles that minimized its proper operation. This chapter examines the prevailing ideas about memory that circulated during the early modern period and how they are reflected in Cervantes’s works. At the time, memory was an essential part of rhetoric and equally important to the study of medicine, as evidenced by its reference in philosophical and medical treatises of the early modern period. Often in his works, Cervantes refers to memory. His characters remind us time and again that memory’s hidden physical and psychological workings propel many stories, which likewise reference memory’s rich presence in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture. More specifically, in El casamiento and El coloquio, memory prominently guides the act or the process of writing, and it is memory that unifies and brings the two stories together. After all, both the dog’s tale and Campuzano’s personal story are linked through a complex narrative-framing device specifically said to be entirely dependent on memory. In the inner frame, the dog, Berganza, remembers and narrates his life adventures up to his meeting with a second canine, Cipión. That entire conversation is overheard by Campuzano, who commits to memory every word uttered by the two dogs. In the outer frame, Campuzano meets up with his old friend, the Licentiate Peralta, and shares the written record of the conversation, but not before first relating the story of his unsuccessful marriage (which left him with an unfortunate sexually transmitted disease and an extended stay in the hospital). Memory is therefore substantial to the composition of seemingly separate stories as it is linked to words. At the beginning of El coloquio, Berganza demonstrates awareness of the connection of word to memory when he realizes that he can talk: “. . . desde que tuve fuerzas para roer un hueso tuve deseo de hablar, para decir cosas que depositaba en la memoria, y allí, de antiguas y muchas, o se enmohecían o se olvidaban” (301) [“. . . for since I was strong enough to gnaw a bone I have desired the power of speech, to say the many things which have been stored up in my memory for so long that they were either going mouldy or being forgotten” (251)].3 Through Berganza’s story, Cervantes highlights what philosophers and writers knew since ancient times: memory was regarded as one of mankind’s treasures because of its remarkable capacity to reference the past.

Memory during Cervantes’s Time In art, philosophy, and literature, memory was considered the mother of all muses. Natural philosophers and physicians believed memory to be an interior sense located very specifically in the back of the brain without which neither the brain nor the other interior senses (or faculties), understanding and imagination, could function properly. Without memory, past could not be present nor could one imagine the future.4 Ethically, memory was also an important part of the soul with which

120  Julia Domínguez man could excel and improve his moral life. In rhetoric, memory was an essential instrument to study, write, and speak properly in public, as evidenced by the number of rhetorical manuals of the period that provided the tools and cues (inherited from the classical rhetoricians) to memorize texts, speeches, poems, and even entire plays. These artistic and scientific beliefs highlight the fact that memory has been studied from so many dissimilar perspectives, each with very different purposes. They also explain why one cannot talk of memory as a univocal concept. For example, according to Fray Diego Valadés, the classical theorist, Fabius Pictor, wrote that every discipline is formed with memory (364). And Saint Augustine went even further, stating that memory has the capacity to possess the universe by creating artificial worlds.5 Still others, such as José Antonio de Hebrera y Esmir, in his Jardín de la elocuencia [Garden of Eloquence] (1677) considered memory the “alma de todo” [soul of everything] (qtd. in Egido, “El arte” 35), and Valadés in his Rhetorica christiana [Christian Rhetoric] (1579) called it “el bien más necesario de la vida y un tesoro único de elocuencia” (364) [the most necessary good of life and a unique treasure of eloquence]. But it is perhaps Mejía, in his Silva de varia lección [A Miscellany of Several Lessons] (1540), who best summarizes what memory meant for the early modern mind in Spain: Entre los sentidos interiores del hombre, la memoria es el mas excelente y el tesorero y guardador de todos . . . pues lo passado haze presente. Porque lo passado es como lo que lleva la coriente del agua, mas la memoria lo detiene, y parece que da existencia y ser a lo que ya no es. Otros llaman a la memoria tesoro de las ciencias, y assi dizen, que la sabiduria es hija de la memoria y la experiencia: porque la memoria es arca y deposito de todo quanto entendemos y aprendemos y vemos. Y lo que desto guarda y retiene la memoria, esso es lo que nos queda y sabemos. (III.7.355–356) Among the interior senses of man, memory is the most excellent, and treasurer and keeper of everything . . . since it converts the past into the present; because the past is what a stream’s current carries along, but memory stops it, and seems to give existence to what no longer exists. Others call memory the treasury of sciences: and so they say that wisdom is the daughter of memory and experience because memory is an ark and a deposit of everything that we understand and learn and see. And what memory stores and retains is what we have left and we know.6 Similarly, in 1599, Álvarez de Miraval, doctor and professor at the University of Salamanca, cited Cicero stating that if memory fails “todo lo que uvieremos pensado, estudiado, y trabajado en muchos años facilmente perecera y sera de ningún provecho” (Tratado; prol. “Al sabio y docto lector”)7 [everything we have thought, studied, and worked for

Views of Memory  121 many years will easily perish and will be of no avail]. Thus, Álvarez de Miraval believed that accumulated knowledge was useless without memory, while for Mejía memory was the overarching sense that safeguarded knowledge and experience. We must bear in mind that medicine in Cervantes’s time exhibited a growing interest in the relationship between mind and body, particularly as it related to brain functions. There was, therefore, a concern for both the physical and psychological aspects of memory in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture, as part of the general quest to understand how the mind functioned. Spanish doctor Huarte de San Juan developed in his Examen de ingenios [Examination of Men’s Wits] (1575) a view that featured as central the three faculties or interior senses: imagination, understanding, and memory. His observations were based mainly on Hippocratic-Galenic criteria as well as Platonic and Aristotelian ideas.8 It was believed that the brain was divided in ventricles that were the seat of the three mental functions. According to this tradition, each of the three faculties had a particular place in the so-called cells or ventricles. The function of imagination was to create images formed from the external reality through the five external senses; the role of memory was to store those images; and understanding would then elaborate concepts based on the stored images. The connection between sensory perception and memory thus was extremely important in the process of formation of the images. Such a process is illuminated in El casamiento when Campuzano tells Peralta his story in such wildly great detail: Pisé ricas alfombras, ahajé sábanas de holanda, alumbréme con candeleros de plata . . . El rato que doña Estefanía faltaba de mi lado, la habían de hallar en la cocina, toda solícita en ordenar guisados que me despertasen el gusto y me avivasen el apetito. Mis camisas, cuellos y pañuelos era un nuevo Aranjuez de flores, según olían, bañados en la agua de ángeles y de azahar que sobre ellos se derramaba. (286–287) I trod on rich carpets, slept in linen sheets, lighted my way with silver candlesticks . . . When doña Estefanía was not at my side she was to be found in the kitchen, totally engrossed in the preparation of dishes that would tease my palate and excite my appetite. Sprinkled with orange-blossom water and other perfumes, my shirts, collars, and handkerchiefs were an Aranjuez of scented flowers. (241) Some of these images are mere descriptions of sensorial memories (visual, olfactory, and tactile) that formed following the process explained above. Once the exterior senses captured such information, it was then put in the hands of the interior senses and stored in the memory. Arguably the best way to understand the reciprocal and interdependent relationship between memory, imagination, and understanding is

122  Julia Domínguez through Huarte’s work. Huarte defines memory as malleable and soft (“una blandura del celebro”) and likens it to a blank sheet of paper on which imagination writes whatever is captured by the senses.9 To him, the main function of memory is primarily “para recebir y guardar lo que la imaginativa percibe” [to receive and store what imagination perceives] and only imagination can read what it has previously written in memory so that later that information can be utilized: “Esto mesmo hace la imaginativa: escrebir en la memoria y tornar a leer cuando se quiere acordar” (363) [Imagination does this as well: writing in memory and returning to read when one wants to remember]. In fact, during Cervantes’s time, most scholars dedicated to the study of memory agree that memory holds a secondary or auxiliary role, since imagination is the faculty that makes sense of the stored images. In Huarte’s words again, memory “sólo sirve de guardar y tener en custodia las formas y figuras que las otras potencias han concebido” (194–195) [only serves to store and hold in custody the forms and figures that the other faculties have conceived]. However, without memory, the other two faculties (understanding and imagination) cannot function appropriately: “. . . el entendimiento no puede obrar sin que la memoria esté presente . . . ni la memoria sin que asista con ella la imaginativa” (325) [understanding cannot function without the presence of memory . . . nor can memory function without imagination assisting it]. Huarte concluded that memory alone was insufficient and that imagination was fundamental.10 This would explain why memory and imagination were used interchangeably in some cases such as when Campuzano recalls his former wife whom he has “always in his memory”: “. . . pero con todo eso, sin que la busque, la hallo siempre en la imaginación, y adondequiera que estoy, tengo afrenta presente” (291; my emphasis) [“. . . and yet, even without looking for her, she occupies my thoughts (imagination) and wherever I am, I am staring disgrace full in the face” (245)].11 Furthermore, regarding the interdependence of memory and the other faculties, Huarte proposed that for the three of them to function properly, it was essential to maintain a balanced mix of humoral elements and possess the appropriate physiology of the brain (skull shape, volume of brain, and ventricles) and that the states of madness, disease, or varied sense of melancholy also made the faculties operate differently or inappropriately.12 In the following section, I will discuss the humoral conditions and other factors that can affect memory and how it can be restored and preserved as per early modern views.

Of Cashews, Almonds, and Trout: How to Preserve and Restore Memory Indeed, early modern culture was very aware of the fragility of memory and how it was subject to certain diseases, conditions, and circumstances that would lessen its function. For instance, Mejía provided a partial list

Views of Memory  123 of ways memory could be damaged: “Assi como es excelente cosa la memoria, assi es delicada, y muchas cosas la dañan y empecen: como son enfermedades, heridas, y contusiones en la cabeça, vejez, y subito miedo, y caydas de alto” (III.8.360) [Just as memory is an excellent thing, so too is it delicate and many things can damage it like diseases, wounds, head injuries and contusions, as well as sudden fear, old age, and high falls]. At the time, it was believed that the humoral imbalance that caused sickness was due also in part to other factors like food, age, sex, the annual seasons, and even where one lives. Some of these factors were also part of the long list of causes of the deterioration of memory that Álvarez de Miraval summarized as the three enemies of memory that one must avoid, which are sex, drinking and eating, and lack of sleep: “El primero es la terrena Venus y todos sus tratos, el segundo es el padre Bacho y la Ceres el tercero es la demasiada vigilia sobre noche” (Tratado; ch. 5, par. 2)13 [The first one is the earthly Venus and all her treats, the second one is Bacchus and Ceres, the third one is the excessive vigil during the night]. According to Álvarez de Miraval—citing Hippocrates—the following factors trigger humoral imbalance that is associated with memory deterioration in various forms: . . . los desmemoriados se hazen quando se enfria mucho el celebro. De mas de esto avemos de considerar, si es sola la destemplança fria la que causa este accidente, o si esta junta con humedad, o sequedad, o si es causa interior.14 Si es flegma, o humor melancholico si proviene de los de masiados estudios, o de enfermedad, de los continuos trabajos, o de algunas medicinas de excesiva frialdad, o de comidas o bebidas de esta misma calidad. (Tratado; ch. 1, par. 1)15 Forgetfulness materializes when the brain is cooled too much. Because of this, we need to consider whether or not it is only cold distemper that causes this misfortune, or if it is combined with moisture or drought, or if it is internal cause. We must also consider if the reason is phlegm, or melancholic humor that comes from studying too much, or disease, or continuous work, or certain medicines that are too cold, or food and beverages of the same quality . . . or aging. Lack of sleep was one of the most significant detractors of memory. Moreover, vigil was believed to dehydrate the brain’s blandura [softness], severely limiting functionality since moistness (derived from air and water) was an important brain quality. The brain humidifies with each restful night, favoring memory’s good state. On the contrary, sleeping little or staying up all night leads to memory’s drying and hardening and, therefore, its lack of functionality. Such view of memory sheds light on how Campuzano was able to perfectly memorize the dialogue between the two dogs: long periods of rest and sleep due to his illness afforded a hydrated and well-functioning memory. Analogously, Huarte

124  Julia Domínguez notes a tendency to have more and better memory in the morning after a restful night of good sleep: “el sueño de la noche pasada ha humedecido y fortificado el celebro y la vigilia de todo el día lo ha desecado y endurecido” (339) [the sleep of the night before has moistened and fortified the brain and the daylong vigil has dried and hardened it]. Because weak memory was believed to be a result of an imbalance in the humors, its diagnosis and therapy followed some of the traditional Hippocratic and Galenic treatments.16 To reestablish the balance of the humors, Huarte and many others proposed remedies that engaged the opposite quality of the disease, consisting of: “una regulación alimenticia, siempre teniendo como objetivo contrarrestar la fuerza de la cualidad concreta que está provocando la enfermedad” (Borges Guerra et al. 90) [a food regimen, always aiming to counteract the force of the specific quality that is causing the disease]. Thus, to combat disease, there existed common remedies such as the use of purgatives like rhubarb root—especially in the treatment of mental insanity—to eliminate the excess of humors.17 A great number of medical treatises started to appear to help protect memory and improve it by means of herbs, home remedies, and healthier lifestyles.18 For instance, Álvarez de Miraval offered a compendium of remedies to combat aging and wear caused by the imbalance and imperfection of the elements.19 Among the many remedies to improve memory he listed were powder of deer horn, castor powder, purging, bathing and irrigations with the shaved head, the preparation of anacardine, and eating raisins and almonds, the latter being the same remedy referred to by Campuzano, who, as previously mentioned, memorized the dialogue of the two dogs thanks to “las muchas pasas y almendras” (294) [“the large quantity of raisins and almonds” (248–249)] he had eaten. As stated by the humanist rhetorician Jiménez Patón in his Eloquencia española en arte [Art of Spanish Eloquence] (1604), raisins were said to be even more efficient if the seeds were removed and they were soaked in liquor overnight (122r–122v). Nonetheless, raisins were just one of the many foods that were commonly alleged to be a remedy to restore lost memory. According to César Chaparro Gómez, several thinkers such as El Brocense or his disciple Guzmán wrote recipes meant to provide guidelines to enhance memory and offered detailed instructions on the preparation and consumption of certain foodstuffs such as: “Untarse las sienes con hiel de perdiz, al menos una vez al mes; comer granos de coriandro mojados con azúcar después de las comidas; las uvas pasas, sin pipas, maceradas durante la noche en aguardiente y tomadas a la mañana siguiente; o los sesos de gallina” (96) [Spread partridge bile over the temples at least once a month; eat coriander grains soaked in sugar after meals; seedless raisins macerated overnight in liquor and eaten the next morning; or chicken brains]. Other foods that were thought to contribute to good memory included “truchas, salmones, lampreas, besugos y anguilas” (Huarte

Views of Memory  125 649) [trout, salmon, lampreys, bream, and eels]. For his part, Álvarez de Miraval referenced almonds, white wine, and savory meats, all of which were thought to sharpen memory while still others referred to cashews, coriander, and rosemary. Furthermore, Huarte makes special mention to the confectio anacardina or confectio sapientium, a confection made of cashews widely used in medicine to restore memory. 20

The Art of Memory: Recollection in El coloquio To this point, I have shown how memory is present in medical, philosophical, and literary writings, including those of Cervantes. Most writers viewed memory in two interconnected ways: one that emphasized its prominent role as a brain function and the other that connected memory to the art of rhetoric, which in turn depended on the brain function as well. Indeed, writers widely acknowledged memory’s significant role as one of the five parts of rhetoric and manuals of rhetoric normally included detailed descriptions of how memory functioned followed by how to best keep it healthy, as explained earlier in this chapter. After all, to perfect one’s memory, one needed to know first how it worked. According to classical rules for rhetoric, in order to memorize speeches, two types of memory were necessary: naturalis (natural) and artificialis (artificial). Natural memory was inherent in the individual but could be improved or enhanced by artificial memory techniques, which came to be known as the “art of memory.” The art of memory was an ongoing and expanding compendium of strategies of memorization and techniques of mnemonics that had a long tradition and which were included in many manuals and treatises of the period. The central goal of the art of memory was to memorize speeches, lessons, and knowledge in general through a sophisticated way of placing images in real or invented places following a particular order. In this regard, initial ideas about memory date to Aristotle who recommended that if one wanted to remember something, it was necessary to put things in order based on names and places. Later, the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium proposed that memory was comprised of a combination of both natura and ars and situated memory as one of the fundamental pillars of rhetoric. The development of the artificial sort of memory was so important that it would eventually be considered an art form: a deliberate method that espoused specific rules for one to properly store information. In addition to the Rhetorica, a corpus of classical publications that include Cicero’s De oratore and works by Solinus and Quintilian all provide instruction on memorization. In his Institutio oratoria, Quintilian, for example, offers numerous tips for refining mnemonics and stresses that it is easier to remember verse than prose.21 Both Quintilian and Cicero credit the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos for being the creator of an art form of memorization that depended on visualization to

126  Julia Domínguez organize and recall information. As the story goes, Simonides departed a banquet just before the roof collapsed and killed all of the other attendees. In order to identify the victims, Simonides was forced to recreate in his mind each victim’s specific seating location in the hall. Simonides’s accurate recall of the different attendees is therefore the first documented example of successful mnemonic method in a long classical tradition that achieved high esteem throughout the centuries and well into the Renaissance. In El coloquio, Campuzano’s memorization of the two dogs’ entire conversation—if we are to believe him—is no doubt an incredible feat on the scale of Simonides’s. More than that, however, his ability to remember the complete dialogue word for word also underscores how rhetorical strategies are at work since, in order to be so specific, he must be using some defined artificial strategies of memorization.22 Such techniques were not uncommon during Cervantes’s time. Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Quintilian, and Seneca, among others, originated Renaissance theories of memory with which major authors like Cervantes would have been acquainted. The theories were based on the Latin rhetoric and mnemonic devices such as the arrangement of loci et imagines [places and images] mentioned above. The notion was popular in Europe and also in Spain before, during, and after the Renaissance by such thinkers and writers as St. Teresa of Avila, Francisco de Quevedo, Giordano Bruno, and Giulio Camillo. In fact, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spain, there were a number of important works on memory that were based on classical thinking about mnemonics and its use in the art of rhetoric: Sánchez Ciruelo’s De arte memoranda [The Memorable Art] (Alcalá 1528), Aguilera’s Ars memorativa [Art of Memory] (Salamanca 1536), Velázquez de Acevedo’s Fénix (Madrid 1626), Gutiérrez Godoy’s Disputationes philosophicae ac medicae super libros Aristotelis de memoria et reminiscentia [Philosophical and Medical Discussions on Aristotle’s Book Memory and Reminiscence] (Jaén 1629), and Francisco Antonio de Artiga’s Epítome de la elocuencia española [Spanish Epitome of Eloquence] (1692).23 These works concentrated their efforts on devising a method of learning through memory that depended on recalling the disposition of mental schemes. The popularity of such techniques can be viewed in the number of artistic and literary works published during the time that emphasized the use of visual markers such as the emblem, the hieroglyphic, and other mnemonic images created in the process.24 As Paul Zumthor has stated, these treatises represented “un vínculo entre la memoria y la vista, fundado en la función de la imagen y sus relaciones con la palabra” (169) [a link between memory and sight based on the function of the image and its relations with the words]. Hence, many of the published treatises on rhetoric and memory are examples of mnemonic repetition and synthesis and were conceived as a means to link the visual with memory in order to advance knowledge, recalling yet again the didactic nature of these works.

Views of Memory  127 The art of memory was both a method for recalling information and a means to record it to later advance knowledge. It generally relied on the interdependent relationship between writing and memory. The Latin word for memory itself, “memoria,” had a double meaning that reflected this very same relationship: on the one hand, the ability to recall and, on the other, its meaning as autobiography or memoir. The Rhetorica states that memory and writing are the same in that the act of writing, which involves fixing letters in a certain order and position, is the same as the art of memory: “. . . the places are very much like wax tablets or papyrus, the images like the letters, the arrangement and disposition of the images like the script, the delivery is like the reading” (qtd. in Yates 22). 25 Metaphors that illustrate the connection between memory and writing abound throughout history. One of the most famous ones is precisely the representation of memory as a surface on which to imprint like the tablet or block of wax. In Plato’s Theaetetus, Socrates described memory to Theaetetus as a gift from Mnemosyne, whose quality varied in relation to the composition and quality of the wax: There is in our souls a block of wax, in one case larger, in another smaller, in one case the wax is purer, in another more impure and harder, in some cases softer, and in some of proper quality . . . This is the gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses, and that whenever we wish to remember anything we see or hear or think of in our own minds, we hold this wax under the perceptions and thoughts and imprint them upon it, just as we make impressions from seal rings; and whatever is imprinted we remember and know as long as its image lasts, but whatever is rubbed out or cannot be imprinted we forget and do not know. (185–187) One can see in Plato’s metaphor the centrality of memory in the construction of knowledge. The “print” or “printability” varies depending on whether the wax had the proper consistency, and therefore affects accuracy. This same metaphor will be later used by Aristotle in his theory of memory, developed with some modifications in De ­memoria et reminiscentia.26 Centuries later, it would be used again by Huarte, as we have seen previously, to describe memory as a soft substance or blandura. The metaphor became commonplace in the literature on memory. The codex, parchment, paper, and finally the book would later displace the wax tablet, but the notion of “imprinting” remained intact to this day. This connection between writing and memory is illustrative of the socalled memory books, which represent the evolution of the inner wax tablet to an outer physical object utilized by the writer to inscribe into his or her memory. Ledgers, record books, diaries, catalogues, and accounts in some form or another are all related to memory books. Perhaps one of the more famous literary examples of a memory book is that of Monipodio’s

128  Julia Domínguez in Cervantes’s novela ejemplar, Rinconete y Cortadillo [Rinconete and Cortadillo], a story that follows the transgressions of two orphaned boys from Toledo to Seville, where for a short time they become members of Monipodio’s criminal society. Monipodio’s organization is ruled by jurisprudence and orderliness. They keep written records of transgressions they have committed as well as those to be carried out, including how, when, and by whom. All of this is recorded in the “libro de memoria” [book of memory] that Monipodio “traía en la capilla de la capa” [“carried around in the hood of his cloak”] and on the first page of which one can read the following heading: “Memoria de las cuchilladas que se han de dar esta semana” (235) [“List of slashings to be carried out this week” (101)] followed by another section titled “Memorial de agravios comunes, conviene a saber: redomazos, untos de miera, clavazón de sambenitos y cuernos, matracas, espantos, alborotos y cuchilladas fingidas, publicación de nibelos, etcétera” (236) [“List of common offences, namely: hitting over the head with a bottle, daubing with juniper oil, making people wear sanbenitos and horns, tauntings and frighteners, disturbing the peace, mock stabbings, spreading slander, etc.” (102)].27 The book serves to track past and future actions, and without it Monipodio’s collective memory would not be as effective. In this way, memory books were literally appendices to memory. El coloquio, Campuzano’s written story, works in much the same way, as an appendix to Campuzano’s memory on which he is completely dependent: “Todo lo tomé de coro, y casi por las mismas palabras que había oído lo escribí otro día, sin buscar colores retóricas para adornarlo, ni qué añadir ni que quitar para hacerle gustoso” (294) [“I learned it all by heart and the following day I wrote down all that I had heard in virtually the same words, without looking for rhetorical flourishes to embroider it” (249)]. Campuzano clearly believes that he not only remembered everything exactly as it happened, but also thanks to his printed record, he was able to remember it with similar preciseness. Over time the mnemonic system and the art of memory techniques fell into disrepute, and its role as an important figure of speech within rhetoric gradually would diminish. In fact, some scholars during Cervantes’s time viewed memory as a mental faculty that did not have to be artificially enhanced. Several influential thinkers in Cervantes’s time such as Vives, Erasmus, and Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas came to believe that mnemonic techniques only facilitated rote memorization in much the same way that a parrot habitually utters words and phrases without knowing their true meaning. A parrot, it was believed, may use memory but does not use reason. Without reason, one is only mimicking. Aristotle had previously advocated for a distinction between the concepts of “memory” and “reminiscence.” For the philosopher, memory is common to all animals, not just humans. He theorized that memory was nothing more than an impression on a wax ring that is recalled by the external senses. Reminiscence, however, is an awakened memory by

Views of Memory  129 speech and reason. And since the ancients believed that only man could speak and have reason, then only mankind can possess this faculty. 28 The distinction was not lost on Cervantes. In El casamiento, he seems to take issue with this Aristotelian notion when he questions whether parrots or dogs can talk and reason: No me tenga vuestra merced por tan ignorante—replicó Campuzano—que no entienda que si no es por milagro no pueden hablar los animales; que bien sé que si los tordos, picazas y papagayos hablan, no son sino las palabras que aprenden y toman de memoria, y por tener la lengua estos animales cómoda para poder pronunciarlas; mas no por esto pueden hablar y responder con discurso concertado, como estos perros hablaron . . . (293–294) “Don’t take me for such a fool,” retorted Campuzano, “that I don’t realize that only by some miracle could dogs talk. I am well aware that if thrushes, magpies, and parrots talk, they are merely repeating words which they have learned and memorized, because they have tongues capable of pronouncing them. That is not enough, however, to enable them to speak and answer in the measured speech which the dogs used, and so, many times since I heard them . . .” (247–248) For Aristotle, memory is not subject to human reason but reminiscence is, allowing for engagement with understanding. In Cervantes’s tale, this distinction is important.29 When the two dogs acquire the gift of speech, it is as if they developed this function of reminiscence by which they can articulate their pasts, as stated by Cipión: “. . . viene a ser mayor este milagro en que no solamente hablamos, sino en que hablamos con discurso, como si fuéramos capaces de razón, estando tan sin ella que la diferencia que hay del animal bruto al hombre es ser el hombre animal racional, y el bruto, irracional” (299) [“. . . the miracle is all the greater because we are speaking coherently, as if we were capable of reason, while we are actually so lacking in it that the main difference between men and animals is that men are rational beings and animals are not” (250)]. With great wit Cervantes, however, adeptly takes up the question of whether animals have reason and can speak.30 As Cipión points out, dogs have been long considered to be animals with great memory and loyalty: “Lo que yo he oído alabar y encarecer es nuestra mucha memoria, el agradecimiento y gran fidelidad nuestra . . .” (300) [“What I have heard praised and commended are our good memory, gratitude, and great fidelity . . .” (250)]. To which Berganza adds: “Sé también que, después del elefante, el perro tiene el primer lugar de parecer que tiene entendimiento; luego, el caballo, y el último, la jimia” (300) [“I also know that, after elephants, dogs give the strongest impression of possessing understanding; then horses and finally, apes” (251)]. This is corroborated by Huerta: “De la misma suerte que

130  Julia Domínguez ay buena y mala memoria entre los hombres, la ay también entre los animales brutos: pero ay algunas especies que se aventajan en ella, como son los elefantes, los perros, cavallos, delfines, y cigueñas” (296) [In the same way that there is good and bad memory among men, there is also among the animals. But, there are some species that excel in it such as elephants, dogs, horses, dolphins, and storks]. Moreover, Huarte points out that “. . . entre los brutos animales; aquellos que se van llegando más a la prudencia y discreción humana (como es la mona, la zorra y el perro), éstos tienen mayor cantidad de celebro que los otros” (281)31 [among animals those that have prudence and discretion similar to humans (as it is the monkey, the fox, and the dog) have also larger brains than others]. Such expositions would explain why Cervantes chose the dogs over other animals as his talking protagonists: in addition to their central role as “man’s best friend,” classical authors already believed them to be capable of rational thought and speech. Cervantes likely was aware of these philosophical debates since Berganza clearly labels their ability to speak as a natural process: “. . . parece que algunos han querido sentir que tenemos un natural distinto, tan vivo y tan agudo en muchas cosas, que da indicios y señales de faltar poco para mostrar que tenemos un no sé qué de entendimiento capaz de discurso” (300) [“. . . some people have been inclined to suspect that we possess a natural instinct, which is so lively and acute in many things that it strongly suggests, but falls short of actually demonstrating, that we possess some sort of understanding capable of reasoning” (250)]. In fact, there has always been a strong connection between dogs and memory. According to Velázquez de Acevedo, three hieroglyphs are attributed to memory: the dog, the ear, and a type of ax called adze (“açuela”): El perro es symbolo de la memoria, porque la tiene maravillosa de las cosas passadas, acordandose de los beneficios recebidos, como cuenta Homero del de Ulisses, que conocio a su señor despues de veinte años de ausencia . . . La oreja se consagra a la memoria, por ser tan vezina al lugar del organo memorativo . . . La açuela es divisa de la memoria, porque los antiguos ponian la açuela, y segur en sepulcros, para dar a entender que la memoria del difunto no se devia borrar de alli . . . (8v–9r) The dog is a symbol of memory because he has a wonderful memory of things past, remembering the benefits he has received, just like Homer’s Ulysses who knew his master after twenty years of absence . . . The ear is devoted to the memory for being located so close to memory’s organ . . . The adze is a symbol of memory because the ancients used to put the adze, and the ax in graves, to signify that the memory of the deceased should not be erased there. For Velázquez de Acevedo, thus, dogs have not only an acute memory but also a surprising ability to recall information.

Views of Memory  131 Much of the creation of Cervantes’s El coloquio depends on some sort of mnemonics. However, following Vives and Erasmus, Cervantes adds another significant dimension to the relationship between memory and rhetoric, that of individual introspection, which allowed for the classical emphasis on mnemonics but sharply departing from rhetoric. In this sense, although Cervantes understood the value of classical promotion of memory techniques, he did not employ them specifically in his works, opting instead for placing memory into the neo-Aristotelian philosophical tendency to view it as a natural process. Hence, in El casamiento and El coloquio, the protagonists tell about their lives, and the essential pillar of the narration is a complicated web of memories where loci and imagines abound. As part of his interest in moving beyond rhetoric’s common usage of memory is the sense that Cervantes was always experimenting with the techniques of storytelling and realized the important role that memory and experience played in it. For example, Campuzano’s recollection of his own life is only possible once Berganza goes through the mnemonic exercise of mentally reconstructing for Cipión (and Campuzano, who is listening nearby) what he has lived so far—aided by the wonder of speech and reason for the first time. Thus, both El casamiento and El coloquio become autobiographical accounts based on memories and propelled by their natural retrieval. Cervantes’s characters save in the storage of their personal memory the unabridged past that features their lived experiences, their knowledge, and their self-imposed silences. As they reconstruct the past, they also build a story: “What the telling of the Casamiento [Deceitful Marriage] and the reading of the Coloquio [Dialogue] do is reconstitute an event as the characters’ experience” (Dunn 200). Memory is therefore insufficient. The impetus for retrieval (through the art of storytelling to an interlocutor) and a significant means to access it must be present. Memory alone is not enough. Campuzano is a memorioso, that is, a person who has an excellent memory (also known as memoriones, literally “de memoria grande” [of great memory], who were very famous during the time for being able to memorize plays by seeing them just once for which they were highly criticized by Lope de Vega). Just as a memorión, he clearly states that he memorized the entire El coloquio (“Todo lo tomé de coro, y casi por las mismas palabras que había oído lo escribí otro día” (294) [“I learned it all by heart and the following day I wrote down all that I had heard in virtually the same words” (249)]. Nonetheless, commonsense tells us that despite Campuzano’s best efforts, not everything can be recorded just as Berganza and Cipión discuss. As Aurora Egido indicates, it is impossible to recount everything simply because the oral narration cannot account for all that has happened in one’s life: “El pasado se acumula, se repentiza y finalmente se transforma al ser contado. La vida es, en parte, recuerdo, pero la literatura—oral y escrita—es selectiva con él, porque nunca lo dicho puede abarcar todo lo sucedido” (“La memoria ejemplar” 478) [The

132  Julia Domínguez past is accumulated, improvised and finally transformed when it is told. Life is, in part, memory, but literature–oral and written—is selective with it, because what is said never can cover what happened]. Moreover, in such a long conversation, Campuzano simply could never capture and account for every word spoken. It seems that Cervantes was well aware of memory’s limits. The novelist hints at the impossibility of transferring to the paper everything that happened in his characters’ lives because of the changing nature of memories. Instead, he ingeniously converts that debility into a narrative strategy. The process of remembering displaces reality, it alters feelings and passions, and it manipulates the present as well, as Cañizares reminds Berganza: “Pero esto ya pasó, y todas las cosas se pasan; las memorias se acaban, las vidas no vuelven, las lenguas se cansan, los sucesos nuevos hacen olvidar los pasados” (343) [“But that’s history, just as everything becomes history; memories fade, no one lives twice, tongues tire of gossip, and new events make us forget past ones” (289)]. Memories therefore are constantly changing. Cervantes used the natural transformational tendency of memory to obfuscate questions of authority and authentication in his texts.32 The changing nature of memory and how irremediably memories transform over time are again linked to the witch Cañizares, whose words remind her interlocutor, Berganza, of this intrinsic characteristic of memories: “las apariencias de mis buenas obras presentes van borrando en la memoria de los que me conocen las malas obras pasadas” (340) [“the illusion of my present good works is gradually erasing my past misdeeds from the memory of those who know me” (286)]. Cañizares may be hinting at how collective memory helps overcome man’s mortality. According to Cicero, memory was important because it conferred a mark of immortality on man: “La memoria es argumento de la inmortalidad del anima, y divinidad en el hombre” (qtd. in Aranda 25v) [Memory is argument of the immortality of the soul, and divinity in man].

Conclusion It is clear that memory plays a very important role in Cervantes’s works, and particularly in the El casamiento and El coloquio. Through the framed stories, the act of recollection, and the process of writing, Cervantes suggests that memory is not everything. Memory cannot function alone. It is limited and fragile. Did Campuzano really overhear a “conversation” between animals; if so, is his memory so failsafe as to really memorize and recall the entire dialogue? In his defense, one has to say that it was believed, according to Saint Thomas, that “. . . las nuevas cosas y maravillosas hazen mejor impression en la memoria” (Huerta 295) [New and marvelous things make a greater impression on memory]. But, having said that, the narrative is suspect also because the tale seems so incredulous. Notwithstanding those doubts, the

Views of Memory 133 two stories provide an interesting perspective involving the process of memorization and its connection to imagination. What we learn is that memory and its care were significant sociocultural and scientific topics in early modern Spain—just as they were also discussed in Europe—and authors like Cervantes were sufficiently versed in the subject to integrate these evolving ideas into their literary texts, such as El casamiento, and its partner text, El coloquio.

Notes 1 Quotations of El casamiento engañoso and El coloquio de los perros are from the 1995 Cátedra edition of the Novelas ejemplares (Vol. 2). The English translation is from Lipson’s 1998 edition titled Exemplary Stories. 2 Some of these authors such as Jiménez Patón denounced the inclusion of memory exclusively in the manuals of rhetoric. Following the trail of Quintilian in classical antiquity, in the time of Cervantes, well-known humanists such as Erasmus, Melanchthon, or Vives disdain that memory is considered to be a part of rhetoric, and instead they place emphasis on medical considerations and observations and especially on the pedagogical function of memory, just as Vives proclaimed in De tradendis disciplinis (1531) and Erasmus stated in De ratione studii (1511): “Memory is based on three things . . . : understanding, system and care” (qtd. in Hiscock 24). 3 I take this reference from Egido who states that El coloquio is probably the most significant example of memory used for the sake of creative imagination (“La memoria y el arte” 636). 4 Natural memory is defined by Fray Diego Valadés as “La virtud del alma por la cual vuelve a tratar las cosas pasadas, para medir a partir de ellas las futuras” (368) [The virtue of the soul by which it treats previous things, to measure from them future ones]. On memory and imagination in Don Quijote, see also Domínguez’s “The Janus Hypothesis in Don Quixote: Memory and Imagination in Cervantes” and Quixotic Memories: Cervantes and Memory in Early Modern Spain. 5 See Yates 60. 6 Citations from Mejía’s Silva de varia lección come from the 1602 edition and refer to part, chapter, and page. All the translations (of the Silva as well as of the other texts) are mine unless otherwise stated. 7 Álvarez de Miraval’s Tratado does not contain numbered pages. 8 On the sources of Huarte’s works, see, among others, Serés. 9 See Huarte 363. 10 On the link between memory and imagination, see also Jaén and Simon’s chapter in this volume. For more information on the fundamental role of imagination in Huarte’s and Cervantes’s thought, see Orobitg’s chapter in this volume. 11 It is worth noting that Cervantes’s close friend and editor, Alonso López Pinciano, also emphasizes in his Philosophia antigua poética [Poetic A ncient Philosophy] (1596) the idea that memory is considered an interior sense along with common sense, imagination, and understanding, and how they rely on each other to carry out their functions. For López Pinciano, memory and understanding help distinguish truth from falseness (37). Similarly, Velázquez de Acevedo in his Fénix de la Minerva y arte de memoria [Phoenix of Minerva and Art of Memory] (1626) establishes a tight relation and dependency between memory and the other interior senses in the opening chapters of his

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book, while Mejía in Silva de varia lección (1540) shares similar ideas by considering memory as the most influential of the interior senses since, for him, memory, above all else, kept the senses safe and in check. See Huarte 304–305. No page number available. “in-interior” in the original text. No page number available. Galen inherits Hippocrates’s natural philosophy along with other related concepts on natural philosophy by Plato and Aristotle. He will become a reference through the Middle Ages and the early modern period until the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century. Galenism became the dominant system in terms of the natural philosophy of the human body. In Don Quijote, the Priest refers to rhubarb root to treat the excess of choler: “tienen necesidad de un poco de ruibarbo para purgar la demasiada cólera suya” (I.6.65) [They need a little rhubarb to purge their excess of choler]. Indeed, since the time of the ancients, to improve memory there existed an extensive pharmacopoeia and dietary advice that encouraged the use of a wide range of preparations and herbs along with good nutrition and healthy habits. Regarding the pharmacopoeia, the physician, pharmacologist, and botanist Andrés Laguna published an annotated edition of De materia medica, the celebrated work of the Greek doctor Pedanius Dioscorides whose medical advice was quite popular during Cervantes’s time. Laguna’s Dioscórides, as it was known in Spain, was published in 1555 and provided a compendium of the plants, foods, and herbs that could be used, among many other things, to maintain and restore memory. Laguna’s Dioscórides circulated widely in educated circles, but it is difficult to gauge to what degree Cervantes was aware of it. For more details on the connections between the works of Laguna and Cervantes, see López-Muñoz and Álamo’s chapter in this volume. See Tratado and La conservación. NB: Álvarez de Miraval appended in 1599 his aforementioned treatise on memory, Tratado de la firme memoria y de el bueno y claro entendimiento [Treatise on Firm Memory and on the Good and Clear Understanding], to La conservación de la salud del cuerpo y del alma [The Maintenance of Health of the Body and the Soul], whose first edition was published in 1597. Anacardina was not, of course, the only plant referenced by these authors as a means to improve health and memory. It is not an accident that Cervantes tends to use the verb “memorize” alongside “sonnet,” “ballad,” “poetry,” or “verse.” On orality and poetry in Don Quijote, see Gasta. Woodward has seen a tight connection between the structure of both exemplary novels, El casamiento and El coloquio, where the first is the introduction to the second. Cervantes does it according to the “ordo artificialis.” These rhetorical prescriptions were probably “well known to any schoolboy who had undergone a formal training in grammar” (80) just like the boys that Berganza accompanies to school carrying their vade mecum. For more information, see José Rico Verdú’s La retórica española de los siglos XVI y XVII. As Michael Nerlich notes, the portrait of the dogs in El coloquio engages the emblem tradition (274–275). According to Fernando Rodríguez de la Flor, “la ars mnemonica . . . en España (sobre todo en la primera mitad del siglo XVII) . . . se produce en sincronía con la extensión de la cultura emblemática” (24) [the art of memory . . . in Spain (especially in the first half of

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25

26

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30 31 32

the seventeenth century) . . . occurs synchronously with the extension of the emblematic culture]. As we saw previously, Huarte had observed a similar connection between the memorization process and writing, expressed in the analogy between the scribe, who writes on paper the things he wants to go back to and read so that they are not forgotten, and imagination, which writes in the memory the records of the things perceived by the five senses and understanding (363). Early modern memory theory is in great part indebted to both Plato and Aristotle. The Platonic tradition will continue through Saint Augustine and Ficino; Aristotle’s notions on memory, on the other hand, were further developed by Arab commentators such as Averroes and Avicenna and transmitted by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Quotations of Rinconete y Cortadillo are from the 1997 Cátedra edition of the Novelas ejemplares (Vol. 1). The English translation is from Lipson’s 1998 edition titled Exemplary Stories. On memory and reminiscence in humans versus animals, see also the section on Pereira in Martín Araguz’s chapter in this volume. Aristotle considered memoria, “remembering” (mneme), as the capacity to store representations of events and things witnessed or learned; it was also the space where the images were located and memorization took place; on the other hand, reminiscentia, “recollection” (anamnesis), is the reconstructive process by which something is recalled and the memory retrieved with its internal operations (mainly through laws of association). His observations on human memory reveal also that memory is an aspect of cognition important to general questions such as truth and falsehood and the overall problem with retrieving memories, observed by Plato in his Theaetetus as well. On the animal ability to reason in relation to Cervantes’s work, see Wagschal’s chapter in this volume. See also Gómez Pereira’s Antoniana Margarita (1554). Prior to Cervantes, Valadés had advocated a similar idea: “Pues la memoria regresa a las cosas de manera crítica y bien distinta” (368) [Memory comes back to things critically and very different, creating images with different intentions].

Works Cited Álvarez de Miraval, Blas. La conservación de la salud del cuerpo y del alma. Medina del Campo: Sanctiago del Canto, 1597. Álvarez de Miraval, Blas. Tratado de la firme memoria y de el bueno y claro entendimiento. Salamanca: Casa de Diego Cussio, 1599. Aranda, Juan de. Lugares comunes de conceptos, dichos, y sentencias, en diversas materias. Seville: Juan de León, 1595. Borges Guerra, M., P. García Moreno, and R. León del Río. “La neuropsicología del Renacimiento Examen de ingenios de Huarte de San Juan.” Revista E spañola de Neuropsicología 1.1 (1999): 67–94. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Ed. Francisco Rico. Madrid: Punto de lectura, 2011. Cervantes, Miguel de. Exemplary Stories. Trans. Lesley Lipson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Cervantes, Miguel de. Novelas ejemplares. Ed. Harry Sieber. Vol. 1. Madrid: Cátedra, 1997. Cervantes, Miguel de. Novelas ejemplares. Ed. Harry Sieber. Vol. 2. Madrid: Cátedra, 1995.

136  Julia Domínguez Chaparro Gómez, César. “La memoria en el Examen de ingenios para las ciencias de Juan Huarte de San Juan.” Estudios de Humanismo español: Baeza en los siglos XVI–XVII. Ed. María Águeda Moreno Moreno. Baeza: Ayuntamiento de Baeza, 2007. 93–104. Domínguez, Julia. “The Janus Hypothesis in Don Quixote: Memory and Imagination in Cervantes.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. 74–90. . Domínguez, Julia. Quixotic Memories: Cervantes and Memory in Early Modern Spain. Toronto: U of Toronto P, forthcoming. Dunn, Peter N. “Shaping Experience: Narrative Strategies in Cervantes.” MLN 109.2 (1994): 186–203. . Egido, Aurora. “El arte de la memoria y El Criticón.” Gracián y su época: Actas de la I reunión de filólogos aragoneses. Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1986. 25–66. Egido, Aurora. “La memoria ejemplar y El coloquio de los perros.” Cervantes: Estudios en la víspera de su centenario. Ed. Kurt Reichenberger. Vol. 2. Kassel: Reichenberger, 1994. 465–481. Egido, Aurora. “La memoria y el arte narrativo del Persiles.” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 38.2 (1990): 621–641. . Gasta, Chad M. “‘Señora, donde hay música no puede haber cosa mala’: Music, Poetry and Orality in Don Quijote.” Hispania 93.3 (2010): 357–367. Hiscock, Andrew. Reading Memory in Early Modern Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. Huarte de San Juan, Juan. Examen de ingenios para las ciencias. Ed. Guillermo Serés. Madrid: Cátedra, 1989. Huerta, Gerónimo de, trans. Historia natural de Cayo Plinio Segundo. By Pliny the Elder. Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1624. Jiménez Patón, Bartolomé. Eloquencia, española en arte. Toledo: Tomás de Guzmán, 1604. López Pinciano, Alonso. Filosofía antigua poética. Ed. Pedro Muñoz Peña. Valladolid: Rodríguez, 1894. Mejía, Pedro. Silva de varia lección. Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1602. Nerlich, Michael. “On the Philosophical Dimension of El casamiento engañoso and El coloquio de los perros.” Cervantes’s Exemplary Novels and the Adventure of Writing. Ed. Michael Nerlich and Nicholas Spadaccini. Minneapolis: Prisma Institute, 1989. 247–329. Pereira, Gómez. Antoniana Margarita. Ed. and Trans. José Luis Barreiro Barreiro, Concepción Souto García, and Juan Luis Camacho Lliteras. Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2000. Plato. Theaetetus. Sophist. Trans. H. N. Fowler. Vol. 2. New York: Putnam, 1921. Rico Verdú, José. La retórica española de los siglos XVI y XVII. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1973. Rodríguez de la Flor, Fernando. Teatro de la memoria: Siete ensayos sobre mnemotecnia española de los siglos XVII y XVIII. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 1996.

Views of Memory  137 Serés, Guillermo. “Introduction.” Examen de ingenios para las ciencias. By Juan Huarte de San Juan. Ed. Guillermo Serés. Madrid: Cátedra, 1989. 11–122. Valadés, Fray Diego. Retórica Cristiana. México: F.C.E., 1989. Velázquez de Acevedo, Juan. El Fénix de Minerva, y arte de memoria. Madrid: Juan Gonçalez 1626. Woodward, L. J. “El casamiento engañoso y El coloquio de los perros.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 36.2 (1959): 80–87. . Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory. London: The Bodley Head, 2014. Orig. published. 1966. Zumthor, Paul. La letra y la voz: De la “literatura” medieval. Trans. Julián Presa. Madrid: Cátedra, 1989.

Section III

Altered Minds Causes, Effects, and Remedies

7

Melancholic Consciousness Cervantes’s Contribution to Early Modern Views of Melancholy and the Emergence of the Fictional Mind Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon

Early modern Europe sees a profound transformation in the ways that humans understand and theorize about the world. Not only are the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries marked by the influence of humanism and its emphasis on man1 but also, as cognitive literary studies scholars remind us, by an interest in what happens inside the human mind and a conception of the self as linked to the mind’s inner workings.2 At the same time, medieval ideas and values are being questioned by an emerging secular culture that favors observation and reasoning over analogy and the intuitive connection to nature, difference over sameness.3 New discoveries challenge the existing views about the place of man in the world and the figure of the independent creative thinker progressively appears, foregrounded in the philosophy and literature of the time.4 The transition toward a modern epistemological view results in a tension between existing and rising paradigms, between the old and the new order of things, as early modern scientists and writers infuse tradition with innovation.5 One of the shifting paradigms that represents this tension is melancholy. The melancholic mind, epitomized by the intellectual and the artist, becomes central to the Renaissance discussion on knowledge making and creativity from a wide array of perspectives, including the scientific and the literary, and is both praised and viewed with suspicion.6 In this context, philosophers and doctors attempt to explain the complexity of melancholy from a physiological and psychological point of view, while writers demonstrate this ambivalence through their portrayal of melancholic characters. It is important to remember that the ambivalent attitude toward melancholia exhibited by Renaissance thinkers has its origins in the fifteenth-century melancholy redefinition propelled by Neoplatonist ideas that link it both to Saturn—representing reason and speculation— and to the pseudo-Aristotelian association of melancholy and genius.7 The early modern view of melancholy is thus modified or enriched by the incorporation of these “positive” aspects, further amplified by the DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211-7

142  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon Erasmian representation of the wise fool,8 and, thereby, melancholy is considered not only a pathology but also an advantage, a condition enabling intelligence and brightness.9 In this chapter, we will discuss how Cervantes contributes with his character Don Quixote to the understanding of melancholy in early modernity. We will argue that the portrayal he makes of his hero’s psychology not only is an illustration of the mixed conception of melancholy in early modernity but also constitutes a fictional tool to explore the human mind, and its possibilities and limitations. We will be focusing on two aspects of Cervantes’s work that are particularly innovative and in synchrony with early modern medicalphilosophical ideas: (1) his focus on the physiological and psychological processes of melancholy, which is consistent with the efforts of Juan Luis Vives, Juan Huarte de San Juan, Andrés Velásquez, Oliva Sabuco, and others to present the brain as the physical site of cognition as well as an interconnected entity; and (2) the fact that Cervantes focuses not only on the behavioral or “external” aspects of the melancholic condition but, more importantly, on the “inner” ones. He does so via the portrayal of a mind lost in an interior fictional world, a mind that thinks differently and is able to create an alternative reality, a mind that is both free and deranged, whose emotional energy sustains yet eventually destroys his organism. In this regard, to obtain a sharper image of how Cervantes’s portrays melancholy, it is essential to trace, in addition to the thinking, the feeling aspects of human cognition in relation to the mind he creates,10 that is, the emotional elements that articulate Don Quixote’s consciousness and are responsible for his vitality and decline in the context of how affects were believed to impact the body and the mind. These two unique aspects of Cervantes’s work connect his project to the development of what scholars have identified as a rise of fictional representations of human cognition—the “emergence of mind”11—in early modern Europe, a phenomenon that coincides with the scientific interest in the human mind and its functioning as an organ. Cognitive literary scholar Elizabeth Hart asks: “But might this tendency toward richer portraits of interiority in the early modern period indicate a phenomenological as well as a literary sea change?” and concludes that “the heightened impulse to represent consciousness bespeaks a shift in people’s actual experiences of themselves, insofar as the act of engaging one’s consciousness as such became an aspect of human life newly worth telling, writing, and reading about” (104; emphasis in original). We will discuss here how Cervantes leads this phenomenological and literary change by creating one of the richest literary portrayals of consciousness in early modernity: Don Quixote’s melancholic mind. Ultimately, we aim to contribute to the development of the research on early modern literature and the mind that has been taking place during the past two decades within cognitive literary studies, particularly in relation

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to Spanish literature and Cervantine studies.12 This line of research seeks to demonstrate how works of fiction such as Don Quijote explore human psychology (e.g., development, emotion, creativity, madness), providing a parallel perspective that adds to, and arguably enhances, the scientific discourses put forth by the philosophy of mind of the time: Whereas treatises such as Huarte’s or Vives’s remain fundamentally on an abstract level (with the exception of few specific examples), the fictional medium that Cervantes employs affords the concretization of the matter at hand, with characters functioning as models of human psychology. (Jaén, “Cervantes” 55) We must stress that, while certainly fiction writers can be inspired by scientific ideas and even specific treatises (just as scientists can be inspired by fiction), medical works “need not be considered source material for the literature of the Golden Age” but rather “simultaneous expressions of many of the same issues the authors of artistic literature examine and react to in their writings” (Soufas, Melancholy 10) and that the boundaries between scientific and fictional discourses in early modernity are fuzzy.13 Before we delve into how Cervantes’s work contributes to the early modern discourses of the mind by providing a complex fictional representation of melancholy, it is important to contextualize our discussion by offering a brief panorama of the medical-philosophical ideas about melancholy that circulated in the Iberian Peninsula at the time.

Philosophical and Medical Views of Melancholy in Early Modern Spain From a medical-philosophical standpoint, melancholy represents a wide array of physiological and psychological phenomena that depend on nuances in the natural temperament of the person and environmental factors such as climate and habits. The melancholic condition, generally considered a disorder, is manifested through diseases and behaviors such as mania, epilepsy, acedia, hypochondria, and lovesickness. However, when given certain circumstances, it can also be a benign and favorable condition. In this section, we will discuss the early modern physiological and psychological views of melancholy that more directly pertain, in our view, to Cervantes’s melancholic protagonist, Don Quixote. Humoral View of Melancholy In the Examen de ingenios [Examination of Men’s Wits], one of the most widely disseminated psychological treatises in early modern Europe,14 Huarte tells us that “en los cuatro humores que tenemos, ninguno hay

144  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon tan frío y seco como la melancolía”15 (332) [of all the humors that we have, none is as cold and dry as melancholy]. He then highlights the melancholic temperament as the most adequate for wisdom, stating that “todos cuantos hombres señalados en letras ha habido en el mundo dice Aristóteles que fueron melancólicos” [all the notable men of letters that there were in the world, Aristotle says, were melancholics] and “todos convienen en que la sequedad hace al hombre muy sabio” [they all agree that dryness makes a man very wise] (332). Huarte further distinguishes two types of melancholy: “Una natural, que es la hez de la sangre, cuyo temperamento es frialdad y sequedad con muy gruesa sustancia, ésta no vale nada para el ingenio, antes hace los hombres necios, torpes y risueños porque carecen de imaginativa. Y la que se llama atra bilis o cólera adusta,16 de la cual dijo Aristóteles que hace los hombres sapientísimos” (372; emphasis in original) [one natural, which is the waste of the blood, whose temperament is coldness and dryness with a very gross substance, this one has no value for the intellect but makes men foolish, slow, and of an easy grin because they lack imagination. And another kind called atra bilis or adust choler, of which Aristotle said that makes men extremely wise]. Aristotle also explained that this type of melancholy “es muy desigual: unas veces se pone calidísima, y otras fría sobremanera” (Huarte 460) [is very unequal: sometimes is exceedingly hot and sometimes cold in the extreme]. Later on, in 1585, Andrés Velásquez’s Libro de la melancholia [Book on Melancholy], one of the main early modern treatises on this condition, clarifies that while the word “melancholia” is primarily associated with one of the four humors produced in the liver for the purposes of digestion (48r), another meaning is what doctors call atra bilis: “Como lo vemos en la ceniza, que aunque fria y seca de su naturaleza, guarda en si aquella ignicion que dezimos” (48r–48v) [as we see in ash, that although cold and dry by nature holds within itself that ignition of which we speak]. As opposed to natural melancholy, atra bilis has a bitter and acidic taste and can be originated in three different ways: “quemandose la misma melancholia natural, o el otro humor melancholico, que se engendra de lo mas gruesso dela sangre podresciendose ella, o asandose aquel genero de cholera, que llamamos flava” (48v) [by the burning of the natural melancholia itself, or the other melancholic humor, which is produced from the dregs of blood putrifying itself or by the roasting of that genre of choler, which is called flava]. Atra bilis is, according to Velásquez, the humor that “mas bravos y terribles accidentes haze en los cuerpos humanos” (48v) [provokes the most fierce and terrible accidents in the human body]. Furthermore, adust melancholy is associated with mania. In his discussion of melancholia morbus (ch. 6), Velásquez explains that furor, mania, insanity, and melancholia are all due to “una enagenacion de razon o entendimiento, sin calentura” (55r) [a mental derangement without fever] caused by atra bilis.17



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As illustrated by these two mainstream medical views of Huarte and Velásquez, from the humoral point of view, both natural melancholy and adust melancholy possess in early modernity a double beneficialprejudicial nature. Degree and balance are key: while the cold and dry qualities found in natural melancholy predispose minds for intellectual activity and wisdom, in excess, natural melancholy can be very detrimental to the organism and cause death. Regarding adust melancholy, because heat favors imagination, it can either sharpen thinking or derange minds and, thus, adust melancholic temperaments—as we will further discuss below—live in constant fluctuation, as they shift from the heating and cooling points of their melancholy. We may conclude that while there seems to exist a “healthy” degree or quality of melancholy (associated with the heat aspect of adust melancholy), early modern Spanish philosophy and medicine consider this condition, from the humoral point of view, an unhealthy imbalance and the physiological cause for psychological states and behaviors that inspire both wonder and pity.18 Melancholy and Faculty Psychology Another important aspect in the discussion of melancholy in early modernity has to do with the impact of this condition on the cognitive faculties. Regarding the role and functioning of the faculties, Vives explains in his treatise De anima et vita [On the Soul and on Life] (1538) that there exists a faculty that serves to receive the images impressed upon the senses (imagination), another that serves to retain them (memory), a third one that serves to complete them (fantasy), and, finally, one that distributes them according to its evaluation of them (estimative).19 Only a few decades later, in 1575, Huarte lists three main rational faculties in his Examen: memory, imagination, and judgment (estimative), stressing their interdependence and describing the effects of imbalance: “la memoria, para ser buena y firme . . . pide humidad y que el celebro sea de gruesa sustancia; por el contrario, el entendimiento, que el celebro sea seco y compuesto de partes sutiles y muy delicadas. Subiendo, pues, de punto la memoria, forzosamente ha de bajar el entendimiento . . .” (206–207) [To be good and firm, memory needs moisture and the brain ought to be of gross substance; on the contrary, judgment needs a dry brain composed of subtle and very delicate parts. Thus, if memory ascends, judgment must necessarily descend]. He continues to say, “Lo mesmo pasa en la imaginativa cuando sube de punto: que, en las obras que son de su jurisdicción, engendra conceptos espantosos” (207) [The same happens in the imagination when it is on the rise: it begets horrible concepts in the deeds that pertain to it]. Judgment and memory are viewed not only as opposed but also as complementary faculties, since judgment cannot operate without memory being present, nor memory

146  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon can operate without the assistance of imagination.20 However, memory is fundamental because “sin ella no vale nada el entendimiento ni la imaginativa” (335) [without it neither judgment nor imagination are of any value]. Huarte explains that the adust melancholics “juntan grande entendimiento con mucha imaginativa; pero todos son faltos de memoria por la mucha sequedad y dureza que hizo en el celebro la adustión” (458) [possess great understanding and much imagination but lack memory due to the dryness and harshness caused in their brain by the adustion process]. Nonetheless, they compensate this fault with their own inventive capacity: “aunque les falta la memoria, es tanta la invención propria que tienen, que la mesma imaginativa les sirve de memoria y reminiscencia, y les da figuras y sentencias que decir sin haber menester a nadie” (458) [although they lack memory, they have so much invention that their imagination acts as memory and reminiscence and gives them figures and sentences to deliver without them needing anyone]. For this reason, adust melancholics can make good preachers. The characteristics and behavior of adust melancholics when melancholy ignites include, among other manifestations, being affable and very good conversationalists but also lascivious, proud, haughty, blasphemous, or astute. On the contrary, when melancholy cools down, they exhibit “castidad, humildad, temor y reverencia de Dios, caridad, misericordia y gran reconocimiento de sus pecados con suspiros y lágrimas” (462) [chastity, humility, fear and reverence of God, charity, compassion, and great acknowledgement of their sins with sighs and tears]. Thus, adust melancholics live in contradiction and a state of constant internal fight, since sometimes they act viciously and others virtuously. 21 Melancholy and the Passions The bidirectional connection between the body and the mind is clearly understood and described by the philosophy and medicine of Cervantes’s time, as the works of Vives, Huarte, Velásquez, Sabuco, and others evidence. These thinkers emphasize the bodily aspects of emotion and the fact that our bodies influence our emotional states as much as our emotional states influence our bodies. In Book III of Vives’s De anima, dedicated precisely to the passions of the soul, we learn that emotions can be warm, cold, dry, or a mixture of those, following the same qualities that determine the temper of the body (3). 22 Vives continues on to say: Consequently, the affections that fit an individual’s nature and temperament arise and are reinforced easily, while those that differ are not. Internal and external causes tend sometimes to exacerbate and sometimes to repress the influence of our bodily temperament. Among the internal causes we find the emotions themselves: sadness



Melancholic Consciousness  147 makes us cold and dry, joy makes us warm and wet. Emotions both reflect and contribute to the temperament of the body. Among the bodily causes we find food, beverages, age, and diseases, not always and in every case, but in most of them. These circumstances bring about substantial bodily changes that result in a variety of emotions, particularly among those people who submit to their domination and are not steered by the judgment of accurate reasoning. (3–4)

It is important to note, then, that not only do our temperaments and emotions influence each other but also our habits can change the temperament of our bodies: “To all these causes we must add the impact of intense thinking, the influence of lengthy and consuming studies, both of which make people melancholic” (4). Finally, there exist other factors: our opinions about the nature of reality; external causes such as time (seasons of the year, hour of the day); the condition of our private and public affairs; and our local environment, home, clothing, companions, occupations, etc. (4). While early modern thinkers point to atra bilis or adust melancholy as responsible for passions related to heat, such as anger, hatred, or revenge, they also acknowledge the duality inherent in the adust melancholic condition, due to its two phases of ignition and cooling. For instance, Vives states that “Hot bile leads to irritation and anger, but when the bile cools off, the flame of our excitement is extinguished” (74). Additionally, in connection with hatred, he tells us that it “proceeds from the cold and the dry and thrives therefore in such people, locations, and climates, as among melancholics, in winter, during sickness, when one is needy, hungry, or has a bad name. In all these cases hatred casts deep roots, but remains weak and inactive; with heat, however, it becomes violent and aggressive” (76). About revenge, Vives explains that The desire of revenge subsides internally when the blood is cooled by the lungs, or when it loses its heat by itself, as in those whose bile heats up quickly but burns out in a very short time, as burning flax does. Melancholic and phlegmatic people are more stubborn when they are kindled, while being slower to catch fire. (92–93) When found in excess in the body, natural melancholy produces bad thoughts, sadness without cause, and withdrawal from human contact. 23 This connection between melancholy and the emotion of sadness is indeed highlighted by Vives: sadness causes black bile and is also intensified by black bile, whose effect is “to darken our minds; our souls become lifeless and our faces betray the obfuscation of the spirit” (96). Vives continues to describe the physiological effects of this cold and dry passion, which mostly affects people of a melancholic disposition: “Sadness dries up the body and contracts the heart to such an extent that

148  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon in people who died of sadness the heart was not bigger than a membrane. The heart emaciates the face, its own image, and ends destroying our health” (96). A damaging condition, melancholy can be mortal, as gathered also by Oliva de Sabuco in her Nueva filosofia de la naturaleza del hombre [New Philosophy of Human Nature] (1587). Melancholy is also triggered, Sabuco tells us, by the negative affect of “desperança de bien” [hopelessness]. As such, it can kill: “esta desperança mata a unos a la larga con la tristeza, y no gana de vivir: que como perdio la esperança de aquel bien que esperava, sin el no quiere la vida” (28v) [this hopelessness kills some in the long-run with the sadness and lack of will to live: since it lost the hope of the good he expected, he does not want to live without it]. Following Aristotle, Sabuco continues, “y assi luego le causa melancolia y tristeza, para yr ala muerte poco a poco, por la discordia del alma y cuerpo, y otros con mas vehemencia . . . ellos mismos por la misma causa y daño se matan” (28v–29r) [and thus it then causes him melancholy and sadness, to die little by little, because of the discord between soul and body, and others more vehemently . . . they kill themselves because of the same reasons].24 As we see, Vives’s and Sabuco’s approaches to melancholy as linked to the passions of sadness and hopelessness emphasize the physiological aspects of this condition, pointing to how melancholy is both cause and effect of negative and destructive emotions. Melancholy and the Early Modern Thinker The medical views linking melancholy to intellectual activity and wisdom as well as the emphasis on the genius melancholic mind propelled by Neoplatonist philosophers result in early modernity’s perception of melancholy as a desirable condition, prompting a whole sociological phenomenon of “melancholy vogue.”25 Melancholy is more than a widespread disease;26 it becomes a social performance27 where many pose as melancholics in order to be considered brilliant. In this context, the so-perceived melancholic intellectual is the object of both admiration and suspicion, as he possesses a thinking, creative mind capable of giving birth to new ideas, ideas that can threaten the established order. The work of the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino28 is instrumental in the development of the important connection between melancholy and genius. In Book I of De tripliciti vita [Three Books on Life], considered the first treatise on the health of intellectuals, 29 Ficino lists three kinds of causes that make learned people melancholics: celestial, natural, and human causes. The celestial causes have to do with the influence of Mercury, “who invites us to investigate doctrines,” and Saturn, “who makes us persevere in investigating doctrines and retain them when discovered” (113). Regarding the natural causes, he explains that “The soul must draw in upon itself from external things to internal as from the circumference to the center, and while it speculates,



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it must stay immovably at the very center (as I might say) of man. Now, to collect oneself from the circumference to the center, and to be fixed in the center, is above all the property of the Earth itself, to which black bile is analogous” (113). He continues on to explain: Therefore black bile continually incites the soul both to collect itself together into one and to dwell on itself and to contemplate itself. And being analogous to the world’s center, it forces the investigation to the center of individual subjects, and it carries one to the contemplation of whatever is highest, since, indeed, it is most congruent with Saturn, the highest of planets. Contemplation itself, in its turn, by a continual recollection and compression, as it were, brings on a nature similar to black bile. (115) Finally, on the human (or induced) causes of melancholy, Ficino says, “Because frequent agitation of the mind greatly dries up the brain, therefore, when the moisture has been mostly consumed—moisture being the support of the natural heat—the heat also is usually extinguished; and from this chain of events, the nature of the brain becomes dry and cold, which is known as the earthy and melancholic quality” (115). Furthermore, in this first book’s chapter 5, entitled “Why Melancholics Are Intelligent and Which Melancholics Are So and Which Are Not,” he not only relies on the Aristotelian Problemata to stress that “all those who are renowned in whatever faculty you please have been melancholics” but also calls on Plato and Democritus, respectively, to remind his readers that “most intelligent people are prone to excitability and madness” and that “no one can ever be intellectually outstanding except those who are deeply excited by some sort of madness” (117). He finally clarifies that “madness of this kind is never incited in anyone else but melancholics” (117). Interestingly, melancholic wisdom is not connected for Ficino to adust melancholy. In fact, “[a]ny melancholy which arises from adustion, harms the wisdom and the judgment” since it makes people excited and frenzied when it is kindled and burns but stolid and stupid when it is extinguished, rendering people out of their wits and senselessness (117). It is natural bile that leads us to judgment and wisdom but, as Ficino further clarifies, not always. There is a particular humoral combination or formula that one must possess: . . . let black bile abound, but very rarefied . . . let it be so mixed with bile and with blood, that one body is made of the three humors, compounded in a double proportion of blood to the [sum of the] two others; where there are eight parts blood let there be two portions bile and two again of black bile. Let the black bile be kindled a bit from these two others, and having been kindled let it shine, but not burn . . . . (119)

150  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon According to Ficino, black bile must be tempered adequately so it can, once kindled, burn longer: . . . because it is very powerful in the concentration of its very tenacious dryness, it burns vehemently. Like wood in straw when both are kindled, it burns and shines more and longer. But certainly by means of long-lasting and vehement heat, there arises huge radiance and vehement and long-lasting motion. This is what Heraclitus meant when he said, “A dry light, a soul most wise.” (121) In addition to this detailed description of what constitutes the “right” kind of black bile—which in fact is “white bile” and must be “sought and nourished as the best” as well as “avoided as the worst” (Ficino 123)— one of the most remarkable aspects of Ficino’s ideas on melancholy is his emphasis on its human causes as well as on the intellectual’s agency to actively pursue this ideal type of bile through habit. To this purpose, the scholar must avoid a series of “enemies” that include sexual intercourse, gluttony, and sleeping in the morning. Sleep habits are particularly relevant. In this sense, the scholar must avoid staying awake and studying during the night, as not only does the more intense and cold type of melancholy dominate at night (along with phlegm, rendering the spirits totally unfit for reflection) but also this practice goes against nature and the order of things (day is assigned to wakefulness and night to sleep), and going against this order makes the entire body and the spirits and intelligence very unsteady (127).30 In sum, as we have seen, melancholy is viewed as a pathology, that is, a humoral imbalance responsible for a variety of physiological/psychological imbalances, behavioral patterns such as antisocial and obsessive behavior, and, ultimately, a condition conducive to the destruction of the organism. Yet, it is also viewed as a positive attribute that can be nurtured in order to achieve intellectual brilliance.

Don Quixote’s Melancholy Melancholy in relation to Cervantes, and especially Don Quijote, is a fruitful field of research that includes a plethora of rich and enlightening studies. Scholars have wondered from a humoral perspective whether Don Quixote possesses a melancholic or a choleric temperament, often classifying him as a choleric.31 Such conclusion is not far-fetched, since not only do these two temperaments/conditions exhibit overlapping symptomatology as evidenced by the early modern treatises but also, as previously discussed, the terms adust melancholy and adust choler can be used interchangeably.32 Moreover, from a faculty psychology standpoint, there has also been a debate about which is the failing faculty in Don Quixote’s mind, and frequently imagination has been singled out as the damaged or dysfunctional one.33



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The choice of using melancholy as the psychological template for Don Quixote seems to make sense in the context of the early modern interest in this condition, and Cervantes might have indeed profited from the many circulating anecdotes and types regarding melancholia and its behavioral manifestations (fear, delusion, obsession, extreme sadness, etc.) to create characters such as Don Quixote, the licenciate Vidriera, or Cardenio. For instance, in the treatises dealing with melancholy, we find numerous stories of individuals who believe themselves to be chickens, wolves, or made of glass.34 These types and characters not only signal an interest in melancholy per se but also in the workings of the human mind, within the cultural context we described at the beginning of this chapter, characterized by a focus on the individual, the development of philosophy of mind during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the discoveries about the human body and the brain that are made in connection with Vesalian anatomical investigations. Finally, Cervantes’s portrayal of Don Quixote’s melancholic mind points to his own interest in the processes of thinking and creativity— connected to his personal project and ambition of innovating the literary panorama of his time—as well as his exploration of human affect through his characters. What is of particular interest—going back to our main thesis—is precisely the fact that he not only blends ideas and approaches to melancholy that are consonant with those exhibited by the medical and philosophical texts of his time, showcasing its complexity and ambivalence. In essence, he privileges the inner workings of the melancholic mind over its behavioral manifestations, demonstrating the inseparability of body and mind, thinking and feeling, while at the same time unraveling for his readers the audacity, dangers, and consequences of seeing the world differently. In the first chapter of Cervantes’s masterpiece, Don Quixote is introduced to readers as Alonso Quijano, a man who spends day and night immersed in the intellectual activity of reading, to the point of withdrawing from his social environment and forgetting the administration of his estate. He abandons himself to the books of chivalry and begins to inhabit an inner fictional world, whose details he studies with precision, admiring their prose and tenaciously trying to understand the meaning of representative and profound sentences such as “La razón de la sinrazón que a mi razón se hace, de tal manera mi razón enflaquece, que con razón me quejo de la vuestra fermosura” (I.1.29) [The reason of the unreason to which my reason is subjected so weakens my reason that with reason I complain of your beauty].35 Like a meticulous scholar, he masters the subject of chivalry. In the process, he ends up interiorizing the chivalric world to the point of believing himself a knight-errant. Nature and nurture both play an important role in the making of Don Quixote. On the one hand, from Cervantes’s physical description of the character—dry and lean, attributes that coincide with that of the melancholic temperament—we know that he has a predisposition to

152  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon melancholy. On the other, we read about his diet, which includes lentils, a food believed to produce melancholy, 36 and, more importantly, about his unhealthy scholarly habits, such as reading at night, something that, as we saw in our discussion of Ficino, was not recommended to the intellectual from a hygienic point of view. These habits further dry up the already dry temperament of Alonso. Thereby, Don Quixote’s melancholic condition is aggravated, falling under the pathological symptomatology described by Velásquez and other theorists. Indeed, Don Quixote exhibits many of the negative manifestations associated with melancholy and, in particular, with adust melancholy, such as furor, mania, loss of reasoning and understanding, “imaginaciones tan varias” [disparate imaginations], and “obras tan corrompidas” [corrupted actions] (Velásquez 67r). Throughout his travels and adventures in La Mancha, the degree of heat that was already present as part of his scholarly intellectual adust melancholy produces more aggressive moments that alternate with more tranquil and lucid ones. The exploding points of these alternations seem to portray the double nature of kindling and cooling off of the atra bilis. Further detail in the novel adds to Cervantes’s nuanced and ambivalent portrayal of melancholy, relating it even more closely to the adust melancholic temperament described in treatises such as Velásquez’s or Huarte’s. We saw earlier that heat is believed to favor imagination and the degree of heat in the adust melancholic can either sharpen or derange his mind. Moreover, as Huarte had warned, when imagination is on the rise, it can beget horrible concepts. This seems to be the theme presented by Cervantes in those moments when Don Quixote hallucinates, turning reality into menacing entities (windmills into giants, sheep into armies, etc.). We are witnessing the delusion of a pathological mind. It is important to note, however, that in early modern mind philosophy and medicine, the faculty of imagination is viewed as connected to creativity; to the arts and sciences that consist in figure, correspondence, harmony, and proportion, such as poetry, painting, and music; and also to reading and writing, and being witty and able to invent.37 It is also associated with strategy, the ability to anticipate actions and to know what others are thinking, and it is essential for the job of governing the Republic. Furthermore, Huarte tells us in the Examen of a Spanish nobleman whose entertainment was to write chivalry books because he possessed the kind of imaginative faculty that invites to create fiction and lies. Thus, Don Quixote’s delusions may also be viewed as creations or inventions in the context of Cervantes’s ambivalent portrayal of imagination as both the aberrant biproduct of melancholy and the generative faculty responsible for human creativity38: Don Quixote is a deranged melancholic mind, but is also a creative mind that carefully and strategically constructs his identity as a knight-errant.39 Indeed, Don Quixote’s inventions are more than just the result of the out-of-control imagination of an adust melancholic; they are intentional



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acts of world-making. In this sense, they echo Cervantes’s own creative endeavor, and we may say that Don Quixote’s fictional world operates as a microcosm in relation to Cervantes’s macrocosmic fiction project, establishing an analogy that highlights the process of alternative thinking and creation.40 As Cervantes ironically states in the prologue to his novel—where he portrays himself as lost in his thoughts, adopting the conventional melancholic pose of a scholar: suspended in front of the paper, the pen behind his ear, his elbow on the desk, and his cheek resting on his hand—his work lacks the conventions and citations traditionally included in books (so their writers can be taken as well read, erudite, and eloquent). Rather, his sterile and poorly cultivated wits, he says, have created “un hijo seco, avellanado, antojadizo y lleno de pensamientos varios y nunca imaginados de otro alguno, bien como quien se engendró en una cárcel” (I.Prol.7) [a dry, withered, capricious child, filled with disparate thoughts never imagined by anyone else, as expected of someone who has been begotten in a prison]. Cervantes’s falsely modest (captatio benevolentiae) words are obviously contradicted by the content of his story, delivered in an innovative way by employing a new format for storytelling, one that allows for the extended portrayal of the mind’s inner workings and for an in-depth psychological development of characters: the novel. As he states also in another one of his prologues to his Novelas ejemplares [Exemplary Novels] (1613), yo soy el primero que he novelado en lengua castellana, que las muchas novelas que en ella andan impresas, todas son traducidas de lenguas estranjeras, y éstas son mías propias, no imitadas ni hurtadas; mi ingenio las engendró, y las parió mi pluma, y van creciendo en los brazos de la estampa. (52) I am the first to write novellas in Castilian, for the many novels that circulate printed in this language are all translated from foreign tongues, and these are my own, neither imitated nor stolen: my wit begot them and my pen gave them birth, and they are growing up in the arms of the printing press. Very much like his protagonist, Cervantes is intentionally creating a fictional world that defines his identity as “different.” He is fully aware, nonetheless, that he is deviating from the norm and that his innovations may meet with the censorship of conservative attitudes: “el mal que han de decir de mí más de cuatro sotiles y almidonados” (Novelas 53) [the negative comments about me that more than four subtle and starched individuals may make]. Don Quixote’s creative mind is also evidenced through his oratorical ability.41 Contrary to what his adust melancholic heat-phase bursts convey, he is not an unreasonable madman who lacks understanding.

154  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon In fact, as an adust melancholic—following the description by Huarte that we saw previously—he is capable of delivering well-constructed and reasoned speeches, since he possesses great imagination and understanding. Although he lacks memory, this faculty can be replaced with his invention, facilitated by his great imaginative capacity, which provides him with the content for the speeches. An illustrative example is the discourse on the Edad Dorada [the Golden Age],42 delivered to a group of goatherds in chapter 11 of Part I of the novel, where Don Quixote updates this classic theme by focusing on chivalry. After the knight concludes his thorough and well-argued explanation of the raison d’être for instituting the order of knights-errant—among other reasons, to protect maidens in this detestable age—Cervantes’s writes that “Toda esta larga arenga (que se pudiera muy bien excusar) dijo nuestro caballero, porque las bellotas que le dieron le trujeron a la memoria la edad dorada, y antojósele hacer aquel inútil razonamiento a los cabreros” (I.11.99) [All this long harangue (which could easily have been avoided) our gentleman spoke, because the acorns that they gave him brought to his memory the Age of Gold, and made him feel like making that useless reasoning to the goatherds]. While his exposition is presented as useless and can be interpreted as the diatribe of a “loco melancólico”43 [melancholic madman], it also showcases the oratorical abilities of the adust melancholic. Moreover, Don Quixote’s speech is not useless because of its content but, rather, in spite of it. It is useless because it is directed to the wrong audience, an audience that is not prepared to receive it. In sum, both Don Quixote’s delusions and his deranged speeches are portrayed ambivalently in the novel: on the one hand, they are the imbalances and errors of an adust melancholic mind, while, on the other, they are the products of a creative mind that is capable of alternative world-making within a context that is not prepared for his radical innovation. As critics have noted, Don Quixote’s melancholy and his resulting fabrications do not remain static throughout the novel. Soufas has described the knight’s melancholic trajectory as a circular pattern, stating that “Quijote comes full circle in his alternations from contemplative melancholic to active, manic adust melancholic and then back to the colder, sadder, inactive melancholia” (Melancholy 36). She has also noted that Don Quixote’s condition gradually changes due to the fact that over the novel’s two parts he returns home twice and experiences periods of sleep, allowing for the moistening of his dried-up brain (an explanation consistent with humoral and faculty psychology views). Don Quixote’s heightened imagination seems to significantly descend in degree44 as the novel unfolds, and he “must progressively rely upon the convenient notion of enchantment to explain to himself what is happening, for the gradual moistening of his brain is allowing him to compare and interpret more sanely” (Soufas, Melancholy 34). It is indeed the case that our hero increasingly blames evil enchanters, to make sense of the disintegrating



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cohesiveness of his self-built chivalric world, as he glimpses reality through the curtains of his fiction. An example of this gradual dismantling is the outcome of the episode of Maese Pedro in chapter 26 of Part II. In this episode, Don Quixote is transported into the fictional story performed by a puppeteer and based on the medieval legend of Lady Melisendra, held captive by the Moors and rescued by her lover Don Gaiferos. During the performance, unable to inhibit his participatory impulses as an audience member45 and hoping to help the Christian lovers, Don Quixote draws his sword and delivers a tempest of blows on the crowd of the Moorish puppets that chase the fleeing couple. Once he calms down and becomes aware of the destruction that he has caused, Don Quixote excuses himself by, again, blaming the enchanters: “Real y verdaderamente os digo, señores que me oís, que a mí me pareció todo lo que aquí ha pasado que pasaba al pie de la letra: que Melisendra era Melisendra, don Gaiferos don Gaiferos . . .” (II.26.757) [Really and truly I tell you, gentlemen who are listening to me, that it seemed to me that everything that happened here was actually happening, that Melisendra was Melisendra, Don Gaiferos Don Gaiferos . . .] and continues to explain, “Por eso se me alteró la cólera, y por cumplir con mi profesión de caballero andante quise dar ayuda y favor a los que huían, y con este buen propósito hice lo que habéis visto: si me ha salido al revés, no es culpa mía, sino de los malos que me persiguen” (II.26.757) [That is why my choler was altered,46 and to comply with my profession of knight-errant I wanted to help and favor those who were fleeing, and with this good intention I did what you have seen: if I have done things wrong, it’s not my fault but that of the evil beings that pursue me]. Finally, he offers financial compensation to Maese Pedro: “. . . de este mi yerro, aunque no ha procedido de malicia, quiero yo mismo condenarme en costas: vea maese Pedro lo que quiere por las figuras desechas, que yo me ofrezco a pagárselo luego, en buena y corriente moneda castellana” (II.26.757) [for my error, although it did not derive from malice, I want to condemn myself to pay the costs: may Maese Pedro see what he wants for his broken figures, for I offer to pay him right away in good ordinary Castilian currency]. In this episode, Cervantes encapsulates the two aspects or moments of atra bilis or adust melancholy: the kindling phase, with its disparate imaginations and corrupted actions, and the subsequent cooling off. Moreover, if we follow Soufas’s circular trajectory reading, we may state that the episode also anticipates the transformation of Don Quixote’s heated, manic adust melancholy into his initial colder, contemplative one, which brings him back to sanity. In this sense, this episode serves as a reminder to us readers of the dynamic nature of Don Quixote’s melancholic condition regarding both what he is and what he is becoming. The humoral-faculty psychology explanation for Don Quixote’s change put forth by Soufas and other scholars is plausible in the context of

156  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon Cervantes’s elaboration of the melancholy paradigm, as stemming from physiology and in connection with early modern medical-philosophical views. Nonetheless, we would like to offer here an alternative view, one that links Don Quixote’s affects to Cervantes’s attitude toward the limits imposed to the creative mind. Including such a perspective is key to understanding Cervantes’s view of melancholy as connected to thinking and feeling as well as to creativity. Moreover, it helps us demonstrate that Don Quixote’s melancholy trajectory is in fact linear (not circular) and moves in a crescendo, as the character suffers a gradual (but not exempt from fluctuation) weakening and lifelessness, caused by hopelessness and other harmful passions, that ultimately collapse his organism. First, we must note that not only do Don Quixote’s temperament and, as a result, the functioning of his faculties change but also his emotional state of mind evolves significantly during the second part of the novel. This happens especially, as his ability to build his alternative chivalric world is eclipsed by that of the Duke and the Duchess, rendering him a passive participant rather than an active creator.47 He becomes increasingly demotivated in a context where he can sense that he is being invalidated and the object of ridicule. The decisive point in this change comes after his defeat by the Knight of the White Moon in chapter 65 of Don Quijote, Part II. Just before this episode, we are in front of a progressively disenchanted but still hopeful Don Quixote, who claims “para todo hay remedio, si no es para la muerte” (II.64.1044) [there is a remedy for everything, except for death]. However, in the course of the few chapters following his defeat and his resigned acceptance of the knight’s imposition of abandoning his profession for a year, Don Quixote’s disenchantment accelerates and his mood quickly deteriorates. While in chapter 65 he still believes in the temporary nature of his imposed retirement, claiming “volveré a mis honrados ejercicios” (II.65.1050) [I’ll return to my honorable practice] only a chapter later, we hear from him a disheartened—and disheartening—“yo no estoy para dar migas a un gato” (II.66.1056) [I am not worthy to throw crumbs to a cat]. Don Quixote enters an emotional state that begins to affect his organism, making him fall into precisely the kind of melancholy that Vives and Sabuco warned against: one that is produced by the negative passions of hopelessness and sadness. Hopeless and sad at the thought of not being able to exercise knighterrantry for such a long time—and perhaps, he senses, never again— Don Quixote initiates the return to his village. On the way, two events further trigger in him the negative passions that inundate him. The first of these circumstances appears as knight-errant and squire—now simply amo y mozo [master and servant]—are leaving Barcelona and pass by the site of Don Quixote’s defeat, where he laments: “. . . aquí finalmente cayó mi ventura para jamás levantarse!” (II.66.1054) [here, finally, my fortune fell never to rise again]. The second, a few chapters later, is their



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encounter with two boys at the entrance of Don Quixote’s village, when one of them utters the enigmatic statement, “no la has de ver en todos los días de tu vida” (II.73.1094) [you’ll never see her again in all the days of your life]. Although the boy is apparently referring to a cricket’s cage that he just stole from his friend, Don Quixote interprets these words as a bad omen: he will never be able to see Dulcinea again, a thought that sharply accentuates his hopelessness and sadness. Nonetheless, our defeated and disheartened knight makes a last attempt to shake off these emotions, as well as his intuition that he might be facing the end of his chivalric career: he suggests to Sancho a pastoral interval as shepherds. This is a plan that Sancho and Don Quixote’s friends, the priest and the barber, will dangle in front of our hero in a desperate attempt to take him out of the mortal melancholy that he falls into once settled back in his home.48 These efforts, however, are to no avail: “llegó su fin y acabamiento cuando él menos lo pensaba; porque o ya fuese de la melancolía que le causaba el verse vencido o ya por la disposición del cielo, que así lo ordenaba, se le arraigó una calentura que le tuvo seis días en la cama” (II.74.1099) [His end arrived when he least expected; because either due to the melancholy that finding himself defeated caused him or to the will of heaven, he was taken over by a fever that kept him in bed for six days]. The novel’s narrator provides the doctor’s judgment: “Fue el parecer del médico que melancolías y desabrimientos le acababan” (II.74.1099) [It was the opinion of the doctor that melancholy and disappointments were killing him]. As Cervantes makes clear, Don Quixote dies a pathological melancholic, finished by an acute melancholy, caused, as we have argued, mainly by hopelessness, the impossibility of obtaining the expected well-being and satisfaction (Sabuco), and sadness. In fact, Don Quixote’s fatal melancholic illness is caused by an amalgam of negative emotions, assaulting his organism at once and undermining his defenses. Besides hopelessness, Cervantes seems to hint at several other emotions that had also been highlighted by Sabuco as damaging to the organism: embarrassment (at his defeat), dreadful anticipation (of his arrival to his village and return to the passive life, as Alonso Quijano, that he had left for action and adventure), and loss of freedom (the freedom he had found in his new identity and life as Don Quixote). The root of this complex blend of emotions—the defeat and mandate of Don Quixote’s “friend,” Sansón Carrasco (disguised as the Knight of the White Moon) to abandon the knight-errant profession for a year—was well intentioned. Its purpose was to bring back to sanity a man whose good judgment had been lost because of his obsessive reading of chivalry books (II.65.1049). However, rather than curing him, the limitations imposed on Don Quixote’s free chivalric mind result in a negative outcome, not just for the knight but also for the rest of the characters, and for Cervantes’s readers, as both the life of Don Quixote and the novel

158  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon come to an end. The terrible loss that the world could suffer, should Don Quixote retire, is acknowledged by Don Antonio (Don Quixote’s host in Barcelona), as he replies to Sansón Carrasco’s explanation of his intent to cure Don Quixote: “Dios os perdone el agravio que habéis hecho a todo el mundo en querer volver cuerdo al más gracioso loco que hay en él . . . porque con su salud, no solamente perdemos sus gracias, sino las de Sancho Panza su escudero, que cualquiera de ellas puede volver a alegrar a la misma melancolía” (II.65.1049–50) [may God forgive the harm you have done to the entire world in wanting to restore the sanity of its most amusing madman . . . because with his health not only do we lose his drolleries but also those of his squire Sancho Panza, anyone of which can cheer melancholy itself]. This thought is also echoed by the viceroy, when Antonio shares with him what Carrasco had told him: “el visorrey no recibió mucho gusto, porque en el recogimiento de don Quijote se perdía el [gusto] que podían tener todos aquellos que de sus locuras tuviesen noticia” (II.65.1050) [the viceroy wasn’t pleased, because with Don Quixote’s retirement the delight obtained from hearing about his mad exploits would be lost]. Indeed, the enjoyment of hearing and reading about Don Quixote’s disparate imaginations and Sancho’s simplicities, the delight obtained by following their minds as they both drift into a world ingeniously created by Don Quixote’s brain, is the engine of Cervantes’s masterpiece. It is precisely this pleasure of following two stray, deviated minds49 on their adventures what keeps us entertained and amused, constituting a powerful antidote to sadness and, hence, melancholy, as Antonio had pointed out (“cheer melancholy itself”). We realize that perhaps the novel has been conceived by Cervantes as a cure against the kind of melancholy brought up by apathy and sadness. In fact, the idea of finding delight or pleasure in stories is not only quite old but also part of the early modern therapeutic recommendations to fight negative emotions, their symptoms, and consequences.50 Vives reminds us of the proverb “A joyful heart is the health of the body; but a depressed spirit dries up the bones” and also of the fact that “those whose heart is cold and hard with black bile are inclined to be and remain sad” (51), which is the reason why the idea of “cheering melancholy itself” as well as “moving the melancholic to laughter,” as Cervantes’s friend, in the prologue to Don Quijote, Part I, recommends him to try with his writing, are difficult but worthy aims. Vives continues to discuss in his treatise that pleasure can be enjoyed by both the external and internal senses. Pleasure or delight is different from amusement, but amusement can bring delight (53). Our mind finds pleasure in fiction and also in what brings novelty to our senses (56). Pleasure can be particularly obtained through the unusual and the unexpected, often moving to laughter, an external manifestation of joy and pleasure: “Laughter caused by an emotion proceeds from the novelty of a joy or a pleasure, and begins when they first touch and affect the soul.



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The sudden and unexpected affects us more and causes us to laugh faster and with more intensity” (58). Nonetheless, making the melancholic laugh, as it is suggested to Cervantes in the prologue, seems an impossible goal, since, according to Vives, “[i]ntense thinking prevents both emotion and laughter” and “people of great intelligence have a bodily temperament that predisposes them to black bile. Intelligent people forbid themselves to burst out with laughter as an improper form of behavior” (58). Thus, we find in Don Quijote two different and complementary approaches to the pleasure of reading fiction as therapy for melancholy. On the one hand, we have the layman conception of melancholy as a temporary condition caused by sadness or boredom, which the pleasure of reading amusing stories can alleviate—a view voiced by the comments of Antonio and the viceroy—and, on the other, of melancholy as a temperament, hence the irony intrinsic to the comment made by Cervantes’s friend about moving the melancholic to laughter, an impossible task. The melancholic temperament individual, the intellectual whose pleasures belong to the mind and to contemplation—the most noble pleasures (Vives, Passions 54–55)—can still find delight in fiction and certainly would find it in Don Quijote, but this is a somehow different and “higher” kind of delight, one that will be obtained by reading silently in solitude, a pleasure, we will argue, based on following the characters’ minds and not simply their actions. This pleasure is undoubtedly connected to the interest in what happens inside the human mind that, as we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, marks strongly the Renaissance period. It also reflects the early modern focus on melancholy as both one of the body-mind conditions most intriguing and ambivalent in the period and the temperament of the intellectual and artist. Within this frame, Cervantes masterfully designs his novel to appeal to different audiences. Those who are illiterate will mostly hear, through group readings, the unusual and surprising adventures, extravagances, and foolishness of Don Quixote and Sancho, looking for amusement and comic relief. Yet, Cervantes also directs his novel about melancholy to a literate melancholic intellectual audience, a group of which he seeks approval but cannot belong to, 51 just as Don Quixote cannot belong to his social reality. Frederick de Armas has discussed the connection between Cervantes’s status as an “independent” (out of the mainstream circles) intellectual and his melancholy: “As someone outside the literary centers of his time, Cervantes consciously crafts a new persona for himself. He may be rejected by Apollo in Parnassus; he may not be under the influence of a solar ruler and his court. He need not be part of the great masses of poets that cluster around the Sun. Instead, he is a solitary figure that writes under Saturn” (“Banished” 209). In this regard, we may argue that Cervantes’s self-creation of his melancholic solitary, brilliant, and excluded persona is recreated and mirrored in his creation of his melancholic character Don

160  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon Quixote and, if you will, even in Don Quixote’s self-creation as a melancholic knight following chivalric models.52 It is important to highlight, however, that Cervantes excludes himself voluntarily, as de Armas notes, “by placing himself outside of Parnassus, outside the realms of the sun-god and in contrast to the famed figures of his time, Cervantes embraces his shadowy presence and marks his work as different, as other” (“Banished” 206). He is the melancholy mind who takes advantage of his outsider position to explore and pursue innovation. Cervantes’s melancholic mind escapes literary limitations to create an alternative and innovative novelistic world. In turn, Don Quixote’s melancholic mind escapes the boredom and mind limitations of his life as Alonso Quijano by creating a world of chivalry. Similarly, we contemporary readers have been letting our minds free and finding delight in following Don Quixote and Sancho in their exploits. As we now take a step back to ponder the complexities of melancholy and the melancholic mind as portrayed in the novel, we see that, indeed, Cervantes provides us with a nuanced and multifaceted representation of melancholy that is consistent with the medical, philosophical, and literary ideas of this condition—as evidenced in the treatises and works of art of the time— while also showcasing the inner workings of the mind and the inseparable nature of cognition, emotion, and environment, pioneering the fictional portrayals of human psychology that emerge in connection with the development of the novelistic genre.

Conclusion We have in Don Quijote a melancholic character whose trajectory begins with a self-induced melancholy, to which he is predisposed by his melancholic temperament and that he aggravates through his unhealthy scholarly habits, drying his brain and impairing his faculties. Cervantes presents him as an adust melancholic with a heightened imagination who exhibits moments of mania and insanity that cause great social disruption, along with others of lucidity and brilliance, an ambivalence that is consistent with the view of adust melancholy in early modernity. In his journey, Don Quixote breaks rules and builds alternative realities, via his imagination. At his best, he is a creative mind that causes admiration both in the other characters and in us readers. At his worst, he is a madman out of control who is ridiculed but also pitied. Don Quixote’s melancholy path ends in the most pernicious form of this condition: the melancholy caused by negative affect, by harmful emotions such as sadness and hopelessness, by the general state of disillusionment caused by limits imposed to his free creative mind, and by not having been able to achieve the fame and status as a knight-errant that he was hoping for. We can think of Don Quixote as the subject of Cervantes’s investigation on the virtues and dangers, the possibilities and limitations, of

Melancholic Consciousness 161 the creative mind, as well as the emotional impact that invalidation and failure may have on the organism. More importantly, we can think of Cervantes’s nuanced account of the melancholic mind, as one of the most powerful portrayals of human consciousness created in early modernity and, as such, a crucial contribution to emergence of the fictional mind.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9

10

11 12

13

14

Kristeller 30. See Hart. See Crane, Losing. See Orobitg, this volume. Scholars have described this tension as a transvaluation of medieval values in the Renaissance and considered melancholy as one of the central transvalued concepts. See, for instance, Kaiser; Soufas, Melancholy; Wind. On this tension, the new order of things, and change of values, see also Foucault; LaCapra; Levao; Reiss. On this ambivalence, see Soufas, Melancholy (preface and ch. 1). Connection established in Problemata XXX (see Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl 18–29). See Kaiser. On melancholy from a historical and cultural standpoint as well as its connection to early modern literary production, see, among others, Bernard; Gowland, The Worlds; Jackson; Lund; Lyons; Radden; Schleiner; Shirilan; Starobinski; Trevor. Specifically in connection with early modern Spanish culture and literature, see, among others, Bartra; de Armas, “La Celestina”; Orobitg; Soufas, “Melancholy.” For an understanding of melancholy in the context of the early modern passions, the reader will also find useful the chapters contained in Paster, Rowe, and Floyd-Wilson’s Reading the Early Modern Passions and in Carrera’s Emotions and Health, 1200–1700. In discussing not only the thinking but also the feeling (affective) aspects of cognition as portrayed by Cervantes, this chapter intersects with and complements the chapters by Jaén and Carrera included in this volume. It is important to remember, as neuroscientists remind us today (see, for instance, Damasio) that emotion cannot be dissociated from cognition, something that was also understood in early modernity, as the works of Vives, Sabuco, and other thinkers illustrate. See Herman. In the field of English studies, see, for instance, Crane’s Shakespeare’s Brain and Cook’s Shakespearean Neuroplay. In Hispanic studies, see Simon, Simerka, and Mancing’s Cognitive Cervantes and Jaén and Simon’s Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. For an overview of the field in connection with Spanish literature, see also Simon’s “Contextualizing Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature.” As Soufas also reminds us, scientific works “often cross the dividing line between medical tract and artistic literature,” and not only “[m]etaphor and symbolism were useful in scientific discussions of melancholy” (Melancholy 11) but also the inclusion of anecdotes and stories about melancholic subjects in these works “diminish the distance between them and creative literature of the period” (Melancholy 12). Early modern treatises and works dealing with melancholy include Boorde; Bright; Burton; Du Laurens; Elyot; Garzoni; Wright. From Spanish authors,

162 Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon

15

16

17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31

32

in addition to the ideas we are discussing in this chapter by Velásquez, Huarte, Sabuco, and Vives, we find, among others, the works of Freylas; Lobera de Ávila; Mercado; Murillo y Velarde; Santa Cruz. See also, for instance, the works of Bravo de Sobremonte; Daza Chacón; Foresto; García Carrero; López de Villalobos; Pérez de Herrera. The word “melancholia” is employed in this case to mean the actual humor whose predominance produces the melancholic temperament. This is a common use in early modern Spanish treatises. The historic dictionary, Diccionario de Autoridades, includes both meanings (the humor and the condition) associated with melancholy (“Melancholia”). Huarte employs the terms “melancolía adusta” and “cólera adusta” interchangeably, attesting to the similarities perceived in early modernity between adust melancholy and choler. This has led to confusion in the attempts to describe Don Quixote from a humoral point of view. On melancholy and mania, see also Lobera de Ávila 36v–40r. For details on the psychological states and behaviors related to melancholy, see Velásquez 67r–68v. See De anima 326; Book I, chapter X. On the link between imagination and memory, see also Domínguez’s chapter in this volume. Huarte points to adust melancholy as the original temperament of St. Paul, as evidenced by the furor of his persecution of the Church and the grief of the Synagogues for having lost him, as well as by the rational choler he would use to speak and answer to the proconsuls and judges, his imperfect tongue, the vices he confessed to possess before his conversion, and, more importantly, the constant inner battle he confessed to have between his superior and inferior parts (see 463–464). In the remainder of the chapter, all quotes from and references to Vives’s work are from The Passions of the Soul, Noreña’s English translation of Book III of Vives’s De anima. See Lobera de Ávila 37r. Sabuco states that the remedy to this hopelessness—and resulting melancholy— is to give the hopeless hope, even if it is a fictitious one. This is what Sancho does when Don Quixote is on his deathbed (see Jaén, this volume). On the popularity of melancholy or “melancholy vogue,” see, among others, Anglin 21–22; Babb 74; Soufas, Melancholy 9. On the rise of melancholy in early modernity and the question of whether it constituted an epidemic, see Gowland, “The Problem.” Anglin 22. The impact of Ficino’s thought in the Iberian Peninsula has been shown by early modern scholar Susan Byrne (see her recent book Ficino in Spain). See Kaske and Clark’s introduction to the 1998 edition of Ficino’s Three Books on Life. On the connection between melancholy and intellectual activity, as well the impact of the scholarly life on health, see also Charron; Lemnius. These are two of the seven reasons that Ficino provides for avoiding study at night (see 125, 127, 129). Among the studies of Don Quijote from a humoral and faculty psychology standpoint and in relation to the ideas of Huarte, we find Aladro; Carrera, this volume; de la Higuera Espín; Domínguez; Green; Halka; Heiple; Jaén, “Cervantes”; Jaén, this volume; López-Muñoz, Álamo, and García-García; Martín Araguz and Bustamante Martínez; Melczer; Salillas; Christopher Soufas. For a discussion on the ambiguity that has led scholars to characterize Don Quixote as a choleric temperament, see Soufas, Melancholy 24–25.

Melancholic Consciousness 163 33 See, for instance, Avalle-Arce as well as Soufas’s discussion of his views in Melancholy 24–25. Concerning the debate on Don Quixote’s temperament and his damaged faculties, Soufas has argued that Cervantes makes his protagonist a melancholic character and that his entire faculty network (not only his imagination) is damaged, a damage that is triggered by his defective memory due to the dryness of his brain (see Melancholy; ch. 1). On the relationship between melancholy and memory, see also Egido. 34 On these melancholic types and melancholy delusions, see, among others, Babb 42–47; Santa Cruz 15; Soufas, Melancholy 12; Velásquez 67v. On the glass delusion, see also Speak. 35 All citations from Don Quijote are from the edition by Rico and refer to part, chapter, and page. Unless otherwise noted, the translations are the authors’. 36 See Nadeau 149. 37 On the link between imagination, creativity, and inventiveness, see Huarte 395–396, 420. 38 See Orobitg, this volume. 39 On Don Quixote’s process of self-creation, see Mancing. 40 Orobitg has shown how Don Quixote is capable of creating an alternative reality, “another reality parallel to the existing one, a second reality,” establishing a link to Cervantes’s and Huarte’s praise of innovation (see her chapter in this volume). 41 On the connection between melancholia and discursive abilities, see also Soufas, Melancholy 33. 42 It is important to remember here that the Age of Gold is the reign of Saturn. 43 Soufas, Melancholy 29. 44 John Jay Allen also calls attention to the fact that there are fewer transformations of reality in Don Quijote, Part II (236). 45 On Don Quixote’s fictional transportation and lack of inhibition in this episode, see Ródenas de Moya and Valenzuela. 46 The use of the word “cólera” [choler] by Cervantes takes us back to the interchangeable nature of the terms (adust) melancholy and (adust) choler in early modernity. 47 While we are focusing here on the harmful effects of hopelessness and sadness, it has also been noted that Don Quixote’s melancholy is aggravated in the second part of the novel by the loneliness caused by his separation from Sancho (see, for instance, Nabokov 69; Egido 36). 48 See Jaén, this volume. 49 The human thirst for following fictional minds and pleasure obtained by doing so has been studied within the field of cognitive literary studies from a theory of mind perspective. See, for instance, Zunshine’s Why We Read Fiction. 50 Interestingly, Don Quijote as a cure is an idea that has also been proposed in contemporary therapeutic contexts, such as the treatment of trauma (see Davoine). 51 On Cervantes’s struggle and mostly unsuccessful intellectual wish to be part of the writers’ establishment in Spain, see de Armas, “Banished.” 52 On melancholy, lovesickness, and Don Quijote, see Folger.

Works Cited Aladro, Jorge. “La melancolía de Alonso Quijano ‘el Bueno.’” Leyendo el Quijote: IV Centenario de la publicación de Don Quijote de la Mancha. Spec. issue of Príncipe de Viana 66.236 (2005): 577–588.

164  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon Allen, John Jay. “Don Quixote and the Knight of the White Moon.” Self, Other, and Context in Early Modern Spain: Studies in Honor of Howard Mancing. Ed. Isabel Jaén, Carolyn A. Nadeau, and Julien Jacques Simon. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2017. 227–245. Anglin, Emily. “‘Something in Me Dangerous’: Hamlet, Melancholy, and the Early Modern Scholar.” Shakespeare 13.1 (2017): 15–29. . Avalle-Arce, Juan Bautista. Don Quijote como forma de vida. Valencia: Fundación Juan March y Castalia, 1976. Babb, Lawrence. The Elizabethan Malady: A Study of Melancholia in English Literature from 1580 to 1642. East Lansing: Michigan State College P, 1951. Bartra, Roger. Cultura y melancolía: Las enfermedades del alma en la España del Siglo de Oro. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2001. Bernard, J. F. Shakespearean Melancholy: Philosophy, Form, and the Transformation of Comedy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2018. Boorde, Andrew. The Breviarie of Helthe. London, 1647. Bravo de Sobremonte, Gaspar. Resolutionum & Consultationum Medicarum. Lyon, 1671. Bright, Timothy. A Treatise of Melancholie: Containing the Causes Thereof, & Reasons of the strange Effects It Worketh in Our Minds and Bodies: With Physicke Cure, and Spirituall Consolation for Such Have Thereto Adioyned an Afflicted Conscience. London, 1586. Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Philadelphia: J. W. Moore, 1852. Byrne, Susan. Ficino in Spain. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2015. Carrera, Elena, ed. Emotions and Health, 1200–1700. Leiden: Brill, 2013. . Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Ed. Francisco Rico. Madrid: Punto de lectura, 2011. Cervantes, Miguel de. Novelas ejemplares I. Ed. Harry Sieber. Madrid: Cátedra, 1997. Charron, Pierre. Of Wisdome. Trans. Samuel Lennard. London, 1640. Cook, Amy. Shakespearean Neuroplay: Reinvigorating the Study of Dramatic Texts and Performance through Cognitive Science. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. . Crane, Mary Thomas. Losing Touch with Nature: Literature and the New Science in Sixteenth-Century England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2014. Crane, Mary Thomas. Shakespeare’s Brain: Reading with Cognitive Theory. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Damasio, Antonio R. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt, 2000. Davoine, Françoise. Don Quichotte pour combattre la mélancolie. Paris: Stock, 2008. Daza Chacón, Dionisio. Practica y teorica de cirugia en romance y latin. Valencia, 1673. de Armas, Frederick A. “La Celestina: An Example of Love Melancholy.” Romanic Review 66.4 (1975): 288–295. de Armas, Frederick A. “Banished from Parnassus: Cervantes in the Shadow of Success.” Self, Other, and Context in Early Modern Spain: Studies in Honor of Howard Mancing. Ed. Isabel Jaén, Carolyn A. Nadeau, and Julien Jacques Simon. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2017. 201–213.



Melancholic Consciousness  165

de la Higuera Espín, Javier. “El Quijote y la melancolía.” Arbor 189.760 (2013): 1–11. . Domínguez, Julia. “The Janus Hypothesis in Don Quixote: Memory and Imagination in Cervantes.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. 74–90. . Du Laurens, André. A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: Of Melancholike Diseases; Of Rheumes, and of Old Age. Trans. Richard Surphlet. London: Shakespeare Association, 1938. Egido, Aurora. “La memoria y el Quijote.” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 11.1 (1991): 3–44. Elyot, Sir Thomas. The Castel of Helth. New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles Reprints, 1937. Ficino, Marsilio. Three Books on Life. Ed. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark. Tempe: Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona SU, 2019. Folger, Robert. Images in Mind: Lovesickness, Spanish Sentimental Fiction and Don Quijote. Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 2002. Foresto, Pedro. Observationum et curationum medicinalium sive medicinae theoricae & practicae. Frankfort, 1611. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things. New York: Vintage Books, 1971. Freylas, Alonso de. Conocimiento, curacion y preservacion de la peste y un tratado del arte de descontagiar las ropas de seda y un discurso si los melancolicos pueden saber lo que està por venir: con la fuerça de su ingenio, o soñando. Jaén, 1606. García Carrero, Pedro. Disputationes medicae super sen primam. Madrid, 1612. Garzoni, Tommaso. The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles. London, 1600. Gowland, Angus. “The Problem of Early Modern Melancholy.” Past & Present 191 (May 2006): 77–120. . Gowland, Angus. The Worlds of Renaissance Melancholy: Robert Burton in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. . Green, Otis. “El ‘Ingenioso’ Hidalgo.” Hispanic Review 25.3 (1957): 175–193. . Halka, Chester S. “Don Quijote in the Light of Huarte’s Examen de ingenios: A Reexamination.” Anales cervantinos 19 (1981): 3–13. Hart, F. Elizabeth. “1500–1620: Reading, Consciousness, and Romance in the Sixteenth Century.” The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English. Ed. David Herman. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2011. 103–131. Heiple, Daniel L. “Renaissance Medical Psychology in Don Quijote.” Ideologies & Literature 2.9 (1979): 65–72. Herman, David. “Introduction.” The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English. Ed. David Herman. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2011. 1–40. Huarte de San Juan, Juan. Examen de ingenios para las ciencias. Ed. Guillermo Serés. Madrid: Cátedra, 1989. Jackson, Stanley W. Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986. .

166  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon Jaén, Isabel. “Cervantes on Human Development: Don Quixote and Renaissance Cognitive Psychology.” Don Quixote: Interdisciplinary Connections. Ed. Matthew D. Warshawsky and James A. Parr. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2013. 35–57. Jaén, Isabel, and Julien Jacques Simon, eds. Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. . Kaiser, Walter. Praisers of Folly. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1963. Kaske, Carol V., and John R. Clark. “Introduction.” Three Books on Life. By Marsilio Ficino. Ed. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark. Tempe: Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona SU, 2019. 3–90. Klibansky, Raymond, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl. Saturn and Melancholy. New York: Basic Books, 1964. Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Thought and Its Sources. Ed. Michael Mooney. New York: Columbia UP, 1979. LaCapra, Dominick. Rethinking Intellectual History. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983. Lemnius, Levinus. The Touchstone of Complexiones. Trans. Thomas Newton. London, 1576. Levao, Ronald. Renaissance Minds and Their Fictions: Cusanus, Sidney, Shakespeare. Berkeley: U of California P, 1985. Lobera de Ávila, Luis. Remedio de cuerpos humanos y silva de exp[er]iencias y otras cosas utilissimas. Alcalá de Henares, 1542. López de Villalobos, Francisco. Sumario de la medicina. 1498. Ed. Luis S. Granjel. Salamanca: Real Academia de Medicina de Salamanca, 1977. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “Locos y dementes en la literatura cervantina: A propósito de las fuentes médicas de Cervantes en materia neuropsiquiátrica.” Revista de Neurología 46.8 (2008): 489–501. . Lund, Mary Ann. Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading the Anatomy of Melancholy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. . Lyons, Bridget Gellert. Voices of Melancholy: Studies in Literary Treatments of Melancholy in Renaissance England. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975. Mancing, Howard. “Embodied Cognition and Autopoiesis in Don Quixote.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. 37–52. . Martín Araguz, Antonio, and C. Bustamante Martínez. “Examen de ingenios, de Juan Huarte de San Juan, y los albores de la Neurobiología de la inteligencia en el Renacimiento español.” Revista de Neurología 38.12 (2004): 1176–1185. “Melancholia.” Diccionario de Autoridades—Tomo IV [1734]. Real Academia Española, versión 1.1. Web. 3 Oct. 2020. . Melczer, William. “Did Don Quixote Die of Melancholy?” Folie et déraison à la Renaissance. Ed. Alois Gerlo. Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1973. 161–170. Mercado, Pedro. Dialogos de philosophia natural y moral. Granada, 1558. Murillo y Velarde, Tomás. Aprobacion de ingenios, y curacion de hipochondricos, con observaciones, y remedios muy particulares. Zaragoza, 1672.



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Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Don Quixote. Ed. Fredson Bowers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. Nadeau, Carolyn A. Food Matters: Alonso Quijano’s Diet and the Discourse of Food in Early Modern Spain. Toronto: Toronto UP, 2016. Orobitg, Christine. Garcilaso et la mélancolie. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1997. Paster, Gail Kern, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson, eds. Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2004. Pérez de Herrera, Cristóbal. Proverbios morales, y consejos christianos muy provechosos para concierto, y espejo de vida, adornados de lugares, y textos de las divinas, y humanas letras. Madrid: 1733. Radden, Jennifer, ed. The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. . Reiss, Timothy J. The Discourse of Modernism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982. Ródenas de Moya, Domingo, and José Valenzuela. “Don Quixote’s Response to Fiction in Maese Pedro’s Puppet Show: Madman or Transported Reader?” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. 148–163. . Sabuco, Oliva. Nueua filosofia de la naturaleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcançada de los grandes filosofos antiguos: la qual mejora la vida y salud humana. Madrid: P. Madrigal, 1587. Salillas, Rafael. Un gran inspirador de Cervantes, el doctor Juan Huarte y su Examen de ingenios. Madrid: E. Arias, 1905. Santa Cruz, Alfonso de. Diagnotio et cura affectuum melancholicorum. Madrid, 1622. Appended to Antonio de Ponce de Santa Cruz. Opuscula medica, et philosophica. Madrid, 1624. Schleiner, Winfried. Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1991. Shirilan, Stephanie. Robert Burton and the Transformative Powers of Melancholy. New York: Routledge, 2016. Simon, Julien Jacques. “Contextualizing Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. 13–33. . Simon, Julien Jacques, Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing, eds. Cognitive Cervantes. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012). Soufas, C. Christopher. Subject, Structure, and Imagination in the Spanish Discourse on Modernity. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. Soufas, Teresa Scott. Melancholy and the Secular Mind in Spanish Golden Age Literature. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1990. Soufas, Teresa Scott. “Melancholy, the Comedia, and Early Modern Psychology.” A Companion to Early Modern Hispanic Theater. Ed. Hilaire Kallendorf. Leiden: Brill, 2014. 299–310. . Speak, Gill. “An Odd Kind of Melancholy: Reflections on the Glass Delusion in Europe (1440–1680.” History of Psychiatry 1.2 (1990): 191–206. .

168  Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon Starobinski, Jean. History of the Treatment of Melancholy from the Earliest Times to 1900. Basel: J. R. Geigy, 1961. Trevor, Douglas. The Poetics of Melancholy in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Velásquez, Andrés. Libro de la melancholia, en el qual se trata de la naturaleza desta enfermedad, assi Ilamada melancholia, y de sus causas y simptomas. Sevilla, 1585. Vives, Juan Luis (Vivis Valentini, Joannis Ludovici). De anima et vita. Vol. 3 of Opera omnia. Ed. Gregorio Mayans. Officina Benedicti Monfort, 1782. 300–520. Vives, Juan Luis. The Passions of the Soul: The Third Book of De anima et vita. Ed. Carlos G. Noreña. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen P, 1990. Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. London: Farbar and Farber, 1968. Wright, Thomas. The Passions of the Minde in Generall. London, 1621. Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006.

8

Mind-Altering Agents in Cervantes’s Work Regarding His Sources on Pharmacology Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo

Introduction Cervantine works, in particular Don Quijote (1605/1615), have been studied from practically all realms of human knowledge, including the field of medicine.1 Within this line of research, one of the most debated aspects has been the extent of Cervantes’s medical knowledge (López Méndez). There is no doubt that said knowledge was not superficial, 2 as evidenced by the detailed and accurate medical descriptions he provides in his books, such as those of “clinical cases” of a number of conditions, not only of a somatic nature (traumas and rheumatic illnesses, deafness, common colds, infectious diseases, etc.) but also from a psychiatric perspective (e.g., the mental condition of Don Quixote or of the licentiate Vidriera).3 In fact, the accuracy of these descriptions is such that the literary works of Cervantes have allowed literary scholars to expand their knowledge on how numerous illnesses (and their remedies), including mental disorders,4 were understood during that period.5 In this chapter, we will argue that the passages of Cervantes’s work in which the mind of the characters is being affected via the ingestion of potions or concoctions relied, to a large extent, on Andrés Laguna’s Dioscórides. We will delve into the Cervantine mentions of mind-altering agents and their different uses—therapeutic remedies, toxic and poisonous agents (love elixirs, poisonous potions), and abusive substances (witches’ ointments)—to defend our hypothesis that Laguna’s text was the primary source used by Cervantes to describe these mind-altering substances and their effects. Before doing so, we will provide a brief historical overview of how the use of plants in relation to the mind was viewed and practiced in early modernity, with a particular focus on its therapeutic aspects.6

Therapeutic Uses of Plants in Cervantes’s Time We must begin by stating that the Galenic medical ideas that prevailed in previous eras continued to set the therapeutic trend during the Renaissance. While mental illnesses were often misdiagnosed as diabolic DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211-8

170  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo interventions, with those suffering from mental disorders being regarded as simply “possessed” (Montiel), during this period mental illnesses were viewed as humoral imbalances.7 In this sense, the physical treatment of the mentally ill, whose goal was to counterbalance the production of materia infirmitatis, was based on two simple pillars: an appropriately regimented lifestyle, especially from the dietary perspective, and, when necessary, the supplementation of various drugs, mainly of herbal origin.8 Pharmacological remedies for mental disorders at the end of the sixteenth century are quite scarce, of a markedly unspecific nature, and of vegetable derivation. As an example of a hypothetical etiological remedy, we can include hellebore, whose emetic properties were understood as tools of catharsis, purification, or purgation. It is also necessary to point out that the entire pharmacotherapeutic arsenal available in that era, regardless of its disputed clinical effectiveness, increased thanks to new drugs and remedies derived from the botanical species brought from the New World, such as the extracts of quina cinchona bark, used as a tonic for patients listed as “asthenic,” or tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), used as a stimulant and “cerebral decongestant.”9 Finally, we must stress that, regarding the therapeutic use of plants, the contribution of Renaissance humanist physicians also enjoyed considerable enrichment from the classical tradition (Montiel). Two examples of this are how classical texts, mainly Dioscorides’s De materia medica, were notoriously enriched by commentators (the most noted example being Laguna’s annotated edition published in 1555 and now referred to in Spain as Dioscórides) and the emergence of the first official pharmacopoeias, whose goal was to homogenize the composition and modes of elaboration of formulas prescribed by the physicians of the era.10 Additionally, the discovery of the New World and the commercial expansion toward the East allowed for the growth of the therapeutic armamentarium available to European Galenists (Puerto Sarmiento). In the following section, we will discuss what Cervantes might have known about the medicinal uses of plants.

Cervantine Knowledge of the Therapeutic Uses of Plants Various authors have argued that the works of Cervantes reflect unequivocally the therapeutic procedures in use at the time and may serve as a way to delve into the medical knowledge of the late Renaissance.11 Nonetheless, before detailing the therapeutic aspects of the Cervantine corpus, we must take into account that, while clinical manifestations of different illnesses—including psychiatric ones—are extensively and elaborately described by the author, the same cannot be said of therapeutic remedies, whose mention is proportionally small. Keeping these premises in mind, it is possible, as asserted by Juan Esteva de Sagrera (108), that Cervantes knew the benefits of numerous

Mind-Altering Agents  171 plants, available in the herbal shops of his time, that were used for the popular and affordable treatment of different conditions without the need of specialized help from Galenists or apothecaries. Of the same opinion is José Manuel Reverte Coma, who argues that Cervantes would have known, among other things, the healing properties of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis); the stomachic and soothing properties of St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum); the emollient properties of groundsel (Senecio vulgaris); the astringent properties of dwarf periwinkle (Vinca minor); the vermifuge, stomachic, and anthelmintic properties of tansy (Tanacetum vulgare); the soothing properties of European black nightshade (Solanum nigrum); or the poisonous properties of the black hellebore (Helleborus niger). Furthermore, Ramón Morales Valverde, in a meticulous botanical study on the plants mentioned in the complete works of Cervantes, finds 835 references, corresponding to 150 different species, of which only nine are classified by the author as being medicinal in nature.12 Through our research, we have found in Cervantine texts ten plants mentioned for their hypothetically therapeutic or dangerous health properties13: chicory (Cichorium intybus), oleander (Nerium oleander), henbane (Hyoscyamus albus/niger), opium (Papaver somniferum), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), rhubarb (root of Rheum officinale [Chinese rhubarb] or Rumex alpinus [monk’s rhubarb]), tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), French tamarisk (Tamarix gallica), caper spurge (Euphorbia lathyris), and verbena (Verbena officinalis). Of these, seven are mentioned in relation to their mind-altering properties, as outlined in Table 8.1. Apart from the medicinal plants themselves, we may assume that Cervantes also knew the different apothecary concoctions prepared with them. The pharmacopoeia of Cervantes’s time was fundamentally based on the application of oils, ointments, balms, roots, barks, and syrups (Esteva de Sagrera 108–116). All of these concoctions, some fictional and others real, are reflected in his works. We need to only mention the famous balm of Fierabrás often referred to in Don Quijote: rhubarb powder14 (one of the most used therapeutic agents for purging during the Renaissance era), white ointment, or oil of Aparicio. In addition to discussing Cervantes’s connection to the therapeutic pharmacology of his time, it is important to consider how he represents and what he might have known about the nontherapeutic uses of plant substances. We will briefly describe this idea in our next section.

Cervantine Knowledge of the Nontherapeutic Uses of Plants The appearance of marginalized characters is one of the defining features of Cervantine texts, and it seems evident that Cervantes also knew the concoctions that were created with herbal remedies by people situated

Papaver somniferum L.

Rosmarinus officinalis L.

Rheum officinale B. Rheum palmatum L. Rumex alpinus L. Rumex patientia L. Rumex acetosa L. Nicotiana tabacum L.

Verbena officinalis L.

Opiumb

Rosemary

Rhubarb Sorrel

Verbena

a b c

Verbenaceae

Solanaceae

Polygonaceae

Lamiaceae

Papaveraceae

Purgative Stimulant Antiinflammatory Antipyretic Antispasmodic Tonic

Hypnotic Analgesic Antitussive Antispasmodic Choleretic Diuretic Vulnerary Purgative Emetic Tonic

Tonic Digestive Hypnotic Hypnotic Analgesic

Therapeutic propertiesa

Magical properties

Psychostimulant

Purgative

Universal remedyc Anti-inflammatory

Narcotic

Narcotic

Hypnotic

Properties described in Cervantes’s texts

For traditional properties, see Bruneton, Farmacognosia; Font Quer. Cervantes refers to ointments that are “alopiados” (i.e., prepared with opium, among other ingredients). Ingredient in the Balsam of Fierabrás.

Tobacco

Hyoscyamus albus/niger L. Solanaceae

Henbane

Asteraceae

Cichorium intybus L.

Chicory

Family

Scientific name

Plant

Pedro de Urdemalas

Viaje del Parnaso

Don Quijote (Part I, ch. VI)

Don Quijote (Part I, ch. XI) Don Quijote (Part I, ch. XIII) La gitanilla

La Galatea Viaje del Parnaso [Journey to Parnassus] El celoso extremeño

Don Quijote (Part I, ch. VIII)

Cervantes’s works

Table 8.1 Medicinal plants mentioned in the works of Cervantes in relation to their mind-altering properties (therapeutic, recreational, or toxic)

172  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo

Mind-Altering Agents  173 on the margins of official medicine with nontherapeutic purposes.15 The clearest examples of this type of characters are found in his Novelas ejemplares [Exemplary Novels] (1613), whose witches or enchantresses are very much related to the unorthodox practice of medicine and clearly associated, in the Spanish imagination of the time, with individuals of Moorish or Jewish heritage.16 And it is in the novel, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda [The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda] (1617), where the deep popular conviction concerning the Jewish link to the practice of sorcery and the elaboration of poisons (via the Hebraic tradition of Kabbalistic texts and their close link with the practice of medicine) is made most manifest (Díez Fernández and Aguirre de Cárcer). However, through a detailed medical reading of Cervantine works, one can deduce that, with regard to poisons, toxins, and recreational substances, Cervantes tends to avoid specific mention of the names of these concoctions (see the case of opium). This may not be due to the author’s ignorance; as we have commented, he was not a stranger to the field of medicine and therapy. Rather, while we don’t reject other possible explanations (e.g., that it was a mere narrative choice to not delve into that level of detail), we believe that it was due to excessive zeal in the face of the Inquisition, given the controversial and discredited nontherapeutic use of these substances, much criticized by Church authorities (Fraile et al.).17 For this reason, Cervantes confined himself to annotating the properties of the herbal concoctions popularly used, without revealing their hypothetical composition.

The Dioscórides by Laguna: A Cervantine Source Laguna’s Dioscórides18 is the only treatise from the medical field cited by Cervantes in his works (specifically in Don Quijote). It is our group’s hypothesis19 that it constitutes the main source employed by Cervantes in the literary passages that relate to minds altered not only by plants endowed with medicinal properties but also by those used for their recreational or felonious properties, although Cervantes might have consulted other sources. 20 The Dioscórides is the popular and vulgarized denomination in Spanish of the treatise De materia medica, the principal scientific work by the Greek Pedanius Dioscorides (Anazarbus, c. 40–c. 90), who worked for much of his life as a military surgeon in the Roman army under Nero, Caligula, and Claudius. The De materia medica 21 represents a compilation, not only of the previously mentioned knowledge of therapy but also of all the observations (for the most part, of an herbalist nature) that Dioscorides gathered during his frequent journeys with the Roman army. This treatise contains five parts or “books.” In all, the text describes the medicinal properties of some six hundred plants, roughly ninety minerals, and around thirty substances of animal origin. 22

174  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo The first Spanish edition of Dioscorides’s De materia medica (titled Dioscórides in Spanish) was that of Andrés Laguna in 1555. It enjoyed a level of success on par with that of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s, given that until the eighteenth century it was reprinted on twenty-two occasions compared to Mattioli’s seventeen reprints (Dubler). An indicator of Laguna’s great original contribution to this classical compendium is the fact that his comments duplicate to a large extent the complete text of Dioscorides. In these comments, one can find observations and opinions formed as a result of his ample experience as a botanist and pharmacologist as well as his frequent trips throughout Europe, during which he made a point of compiling and studying all the herbs and plants he could. To the treatise, he also added a sixth book describing different toxic and poisonous agents, along with their antidotes and the way to treat poisonings. 23 Additionally, Laguna included annotations on plants from the New World, such as the antisyphilitic properties of guayaco, although in this case his comments were not firsthand. As emphasized by Daniel Eisenberg, Cervantes, in his literary works, was very fond of mentioning, commenting on, and even criticizing several of the books and manuscripts that he made use of. Turning our attention to Eisenberg’s reconstruction of the library of Cervantes, the edition used had to correspond to the Salamanca edition of 1563, or one of its reprintings of 1566 or 1570. As we said previously, the Dioscórides is the only work of the medical-scientific kind that Cervantes cites in all his literary production. 24 It is precisely mentioned in Don Quijote: “Con todo eso—respondió don Quijote—, tomara yo ahora más aína un cuartal de pan o una hogaza y dos cabezas de sardinas arenques, que cuantas yerbas describe Dioscórides, aunque fuera el ilustrado por el doctor Laguna” (I.18.164) [All in all, replied Don Quixote, I would more readily have a quarter of bread or a loaf and two heads of herring than all the herbs described by Dioscorides, even if they came from the edition commentated by Dr. Laguna]. 25 Cervantes is not the only author to cite Laguna’s work. Other renowned writers from the Golden Age period cite it in their literary creations, such as Lope de Vega himself. 26 Contrary to the opinion of some authors (see Puerto, “La materia”) who contend that Cervantes never read Laguna’s Dioscórides, in spite of citing it, we maintain that some of his knowledge (ample in some aspects) is derived from reading Laguna’s text, which served as a document source for those passages of a mind-altering nature. 27 Evidence of this can be found in the fact that Cervantes’s descriptions of the effect of some plants coincide with those offered by Laguna, as is the case, for instance, with the hallucinogenic effects and the Galenic nature of “coldness” of the witches’ ointments (in El coloquio de los perros [The Colloquy of the Dogs]) and the therapeutic properties of rosemary in the treatment of wounds and lesions (in Don Quijote). Cervantes also describes the narcotic effects of opium (in El celoso extremeño [The

Mind-Altering Agents  175 Jealous Extremaduran]) and, without citing their composition, the hallucinogenic effects of certain concoctions (in El licenciado Vidriera [The Glass Graduate]), 28 as well as certain poisons (in La española ­inglesa [The English Spanishwoman]), all created from an herbal base that closely coincides with the descriptions given in some chapters of Laguna’s work referring to Solanaceae (datura or European black nightshade “que saca de tino” [that drives one crazy], henbane, mandrake). However, the clearest evidence of this premise is the use of an actual phrase from Laguna referring to rhubarb in which Don Quixote is told about the need to “purgar su exceso de cólera” [purge his excess of choler] (see also López-Muñoz and Álamo 213). Table 8.2 shows the consistency, almost absolute at some points, between the annotations from Laguna’s Dioscórides and some passages of Cervantes’s works. The fact that Laguna’s text was written in an easily accessible Castilian language strengthens our hypothesis. Indeed, some scholars have posited (see, for example, Baranda) that Laguna wrote his annotations to the De materia medica in such a way that they could be used and understood, not only by medical professionals of the era but also by lay people in the therapeutic field, given that he refrained from using jargon-laden language (Gutiérrez Rodilla 304). In doing so, Laguna regularly turned to anecdotes, commentaries from firsthand experiences, stories and legends from distant lands, etc., with the objective of making the reading more approachable and pleasant to nonspecialists. His success at reaching a wider nonspecialized audience is made evident by the existence of copies of the work in the libraries of well-known famous figures, such as the painter Velázquez (de Micheli 486). In this scenario, the consultation of the Dioscórides by readers like Cervantes must have been a likely and feasible circumstance.29

Similitudes between Cervantes and Laguna: Examples of Therapeutic and Nontherapeutic Knowledge The Balsam of Fierabrás as a Universal Remedy In Don Quijote, the therapeutic remedies par excellence are balms, and among them, the so-called Balsam of Fierabrás, 30 a kind of curative panacea for Don Quixote.31 The Balsam of Fierabrás, a remedy on the margins of the conventional medicine of the time, is one of the magical cures that the Chivalric romance genre is riddled with (Prieto).32 The salutary and effective balm mentioned by Don Quixote, administered in his case orally and endowed with the ability to heal any type of disease, is composed of oil, wine, salt, and rosemary. Its preparation is based on a usual procedure in the practice of pharmacy at the time, namely, the mixture of several simple medicinal products (three of vegetable origin and one mineral) to obtain a compound, in the style of the famous

Unturas alopiadas [Opiate ointments]d El celoso (fol. 151r)

El coloquio (fol. 264r)

El coloquio (fol. 264r)

El coloquio (fol. 264r)

“. . . estava rodeada de todos los plazeres y IV.75.422 deleytes del mundo . . .” [I was surrounded by all the pleasures and delights of the world] “. . . le hara dormir in aeternum.” IV.66.415 [It will make him sleep in aeternum.] “. . . se adormece de un tan pesado sueño, VI.18.586 que no despierta jamas.” [he falls asleep from such a heavy dream that he never wakes up.]

IV.75.422

IV.75.420

IV.75.422

“. . . compuesto de yervas en ultimo grado frias . . .” [composed of herbs extremely cold] “. . . priva del entendimiento y sentido . . .” [it deprives of understanding and of the senses] “. . . creen, haver hecho despiertas, todo quanto soñaron durmiendo.” [they believe, to have done awake, all the things they dreamed while sleeping]

El coloquio (fol. 263r)

Ungüentos de brujas [Witches’ ointments]c

III.2.263

“Purga la colera y la flema el Reobarbaro . . .” [Rhubarb purges choler and phlegm]

Don Quijote (I.6.65)

“. . . tienen necesidad de un poco de ruibarbo para purgar la demasiada cólera suya . . .” [They need a little rhubarb to purge their excess of choler] “. . . jugos de yerbas en todo estremo fríos . . .” [extremely cold herb juices] “. . . nos privan de todos los sentidos . . .” [they deprive us of all the senses] “. . . en la fantasía pasamos todo aquello que nos parece pasar verdaderamente.” [in fantasy we experience everything that seems to be really happening to us] “. . . gozamos de los deleites que te dejo de decir . . .” [we enjoy the delights that I will refrain from telling you] “. . . tenía tal virtud que, fuera de quitar la vida, ponía a un hombre como muerto.” [. . . had such virtue that, without endangering life, it made a man lie like one dead.]

Ruibarbo [Rhubarb]

Referenceb

Reference

Quotes from Cervantes’s texts

Plant or preparation

Quotes from Laguna’s Dioscórides

Table 8.2  Comparison and concordance between different passages from Cervantes’s literary texts and Laguna’s Dioscóridesa

176  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo

b c d e

a

“. . . hizo dar [a Isabela] cantidad de polvos de unicornio, con muchos otros antídotos que los grandes príncipes suelen tener prevenidos para semejantes necesidades.” [. . . (the Queen) requested that she (Isabela) be given a lot of unicorn powder, along with many other antidotes that the great princes usually have ready for such needs.]

Polvo de unicornio [Unicorn powder]

VI.Preface.577

VI.15.585

“Mas esta cura no se puede administrar sino VI.20.588 a Pontifices y Emperadores . . .” [But this cure can only be administered to Pontiffs and Emperors]

“A los que tragaron el Hyoscyamo [beleño] blanco. . . apostemaseles la lengua, hincheseles la boca de espuma, inflanmanseles y paranseles turbios los ojos, estrechaseles el haliento . . . y una comezón en las enzias, y en todo el cuerpo.” [Those who swallowed the hyoscyamus albus (white henbane) . . . have abscesses on the tongue, their mouth gets filled by foam, their eyes get swollen and blurry, their breath shortens . . . and (experience) itchiness in the gums, and throughout the body.] “De todas las medicinas preservativas contra pestilentia y veneno, al cuerno del Unicornio . . . se da la gloria primera . . .” [Of all the preventive medicines against pestilence and poison, the horn of the unicorn . . . holds a prominent place . . .]

Table modified from López-Muñoz and Álamo, “El Dioscórides”; López-Muñoz et al., “Tósigos.” Citing book, chapter, and page numbers. Solanaceae (black nightshade/henbane). Papaveraceae (opium). Solanaceae (henbane or Hyoscyamus).

La española (fol. 102r)

“. . . cuando a Isabela se le comenzó a La española hinchar la lengua y la garganta, y a (fol. 101v) ponérsele denegridos los labios, y a enronquecérsele la voz, turbársele los ojos y apretársele el pecho . . . .” [when Isabela’s tongue and throat started to swell, and her lips to blacken, and her voice to grow hoarse, her eyes to be disturbed and her chest to get squeezed]

Tósigos [Poisons]e

Mind-Altering Agents  177

178  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo “triacas”33 (López Alonso, Molimientos; Prieto; Puerto, La fuerza). The elaboration of the balm is described by Don Quixote in this manner: the four “simple” ingredients must be cooked in a pot for a long time, so that the final product or “compound” can be poured into an “alcuza de hoja de lata” [cruet made of tin], on top of which one needs to pray “more than eighty” paternosters, Ave Maria’s, Hail Mary’s and Credos, accompanying each word with a gesture of a cross “as a blessing” (Part I, ch. XVII), essential for the balm to be effective.34 The effects of the Fierabrás balm are also described by Cervantes: initially intense vomiting, followed by a great sweat and fatigue and subsequently a deep sleep. Upon waking up (three hours later), the restorative effect is so intense that the gentleman thinks he is completely healed. Possibly, the true psychopharmacological effect of the preparation stems from its ability to induce a “deep sleep,” responsible for the subsequent healing effect (Bailón Blancas). Of the ingredients of the Balsam of Fierabrás, rosemary stands out as an agent to which many therapeutic properties have been attributed. Such was the consideration of its supposed clinical virtues and its popularity during the sixteenth century that it was incorporated into the Spanish pharmacopoeia brought to the New World. Rosemary belongs to the Lamiaceae family and is known for its diuretic and choleretic properties. Likewise, there are indices that it could have antispasmodic properties too, due to one of its components: borneol. Its stimulating properties are also manifest (Bruneton, Farmacognosia).35 Regarding rosemary, Laguna wrote in the Dioscórides: “Comida su flor en conserva, conforta el celebro, el coraçon, y el estomago: abiva el entendimiento: restituye la memoria perdida: despierta el sentido: y en summa, es saludable remedio contra todas las enfermedades frias de cabeça, y de estomago” (III.83.321) [eating its flower preserved, it comforts the brain, the heart and the stomach; it enhances understanding, restores lost memories, awakens the senses, and, in short, it is a healthy remedy against all cold diseases of the head and stomach].36 Laguna’s comment attests to the therapeutic effects of this plant not only on the body but also on the mind, illustrated by Don Quixote’s sense of being healed and his high-spirited mood after he wakes up from the deep sleep induced by the Balsam of Fierabrás. The Purgative/Laxative and Emetic Properties of Rhubarb The first plant whose effects (purgative and emetic) are described very similarly in Cervantes’s and Laguna’s work is rhubarb. In Don ­Quijote, purgatives/laxatives are mentioned in the epoch’s prevailing sense, that is, as substances capable of eliminating morbid humors, thus allowing for a spiritual purification (López-Muñoz et al., “‘The Herbs’”; López-Muñoz et al., “‘La virtud’”). For instance, during the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library, Pero Pérez, Don Quixote’s/Alonso Quijano’s village priest, comments in relation to the four parts of Belianís de Grecia [ Belianis of Greece] (1547–1579) (Jerónimo Fernández)

Mind-Altering Agents  179 that “tienen necesidad de un poco de ruibarbo para purgar la demasiada cólera suya” [They need a little rhubarb to purge their excess of choler] (I.6.65). The rhizome of monk’s rhubarb (Rumex alpinus or Rumex patientia), a plant that grows in the north of Spain and is rich in tannic and chrysophanic acids, possesses laxative and tonic properties, and it was used to purge choleric and phlegmatic humors (Valle Nieto). 37 The other types of rhubarb (Rheum spp.), popularly known as “Chinese rhubarb,” also possess the same laxative properties (Foust), although their exotic origin (Far East) would have rendered their popular use almost impossible in sixteenth-century Spain. On the other hand, in the Iberian Peninsula there is abundant growth of sorrel or garden sorrel (Rumex acetosa), a plant commonly called “spinach dock,” and whose rhizome is also rich in chrysophanic acid. With regard to the root of this plant, Laguna comments that “por conocerse en ella una valerosa virtud laxativa, la administravamos . . . ordinariamente los medicos, en lugar del Reobarbaro [ruibarbo], para purgar la colera: por el qual respecto, muchos varones doctos la tienen por el vero Reobarbaro” (II.106.200) [for its known powerful laxative virtue, doctors ordinarily administered it instead of rhubarb to purge choler, so much so that many learned men think it is real rhubarb]. It is possible that Cervantes’s comment on rhubarb could have referred to any of the plants of the Rumex type, which would further reinforce the hypothesis concerning the reading of Laguna’s Dioscórides by Cervantes. Chicory as a Hypnotic Agent Another therapeutic agent that Cervantes alludes to is the chicory water, which is mentioned by the latter in the famous episode of the windmills in Don Quijote: “Toda aquella noche no durmió don Quijote, pensando en su señora Dulcinea . . . . No la pasó así Sancho Panza, que, como tenía el estómago lleno, y no de agua de chicoria, de un sueño se la llevó toda . . .” (I.8.78) [Don Quixote did not sleep at all that night, thinking of his lady Dulcinea. . . . Sancho Panza did not do the same, since his stomach was full, and not of chicory water, he slept the whole night through]. This remedy was obtained by distilling the tops of Cichorium intybus in water, and it was heavily used in the treatment of insomnia, as well as tempering inflammation of the liver and to relieve obstructions (Puerto, “La materia”). In general terms, it contained a tonic and stomachic agent. Laguna describes in detail a wild variety of this plant, called Hedypnois, emphasizing that it contains a substance described as “acarreadora de dulce sueño, porque haze dormir, sin cuydado” (II.121.215) [sweet dreams inducing, because it makes you sleep, soundly]. Additionally, in a search for the word “chicoria” in the CORDE38 database of the Real Academia Española [Royal Spanish Academy] for the 1550–1620 period, Cervantes was the only literary author who came up. This leads us to conclude that at the time the association of chicory with inducing sleep

180  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo was not common knowledge. Cervantes’s use and knowledge of this medicinal plant’s effect further supports the hypothesis that Laguna’s Dioscórides constituted his source of knowledge in the therapeutic field. Witches’ Ointments Ointments, within the realm of the Renaissance apothecary, were formulas to be administered topically, created from a fat, wax, or resin base. However, their elaboration by healers, sorcerers, and witches had been a habitual practice since the Middle Ages.39 The processes instituted against witches by the Tribunal of the Inquisition40 confirmed the use of potions and ointments, habitually created with hallucinogenic plants, such as black nightshade or European black nightshade (Solanum nigrum), mandrake root, henbane, and belladonna or deadly nightshade, which were brewed in their famous cauldrons along with fats and many other substances (Levack).41 The ingredients of these ointments produced daylight hallucinations (the sensation of flying, sexual fantasy, visions of strange beings, etc.). Later on, there would come a deep sleep after which the sleepers, upon waking, had their reality confused. As an example, among the effects of henbane42 can be found the induction of a strange sensation of lightness and weightlessness, which may explain the strong conviction that one is flying, as in the case of witches flying on their brooms (Font Quer). Cervantes elaborately describes these effects in El coloquio, when Berganza comments on the activities of one of his housekeepers, an old woman known as Cañizares (an integral member of a known community of witches in the village of Montilla) who confesses to him the very practices of witchcraft and the use of specific ointments in these practices: “Este ungüento con que las brujas nos untamos es compuesto de jugos de yerbas en todo estremo fríos, y no es, como dice el vulgo, hecho con la sangre de los niños que ahogamos.” (263r) —This ointment with which we witches anoint ourselves is composed of extremely cold herb juices, and it is not, as the common people say, made with the blood of the children we drown. “Pero dejemos esto y volvamos a lo de las unturas; y digo que son tan frías, que nos privan de todos los sentidos en untándonos con ellas, y quedamos tendidas y desnudas en el suelo, y entonces dicen que en la fantasía pasamos todo aquello que nos parece pasar verdaderamente. Otras veces, acabadas de untar, a nuestro parecer, mudamos forma, y convertidas en gallos, lechuzas o cuervos, vamos al lugar donde nuestro dueño nos espera, y allí cobramos nuestra primera forma y gozamos de los deleites que te dejo de decir . . . buenos ratos me dan mis unturas . . . y el deleite mucho mayor es imaginado que gozado . . .” (264r–264v)

Mind-Altering Agents  181 —But, let’s leave this and go back to that of the ointments; and I say that they are so cold, that they deprive us of all the senses in anointing us with them, and we end up stretched out and naked on the ground, and then they say that in fantasy we experience everything that seems to be really happening to us. Other times, soon after being anointed, in our opinion, we change shape, and turned into roosters, owls or crows, we go to the place where our master awaits us, and there we change shape for the first time and enjoy the delights that I will refrain from telling you . . . good times give me these ointments . . . and delight is much greater imagined than experienced . . . “Curiosos hubo que se llegaron a hincarle alfileres por las carnes, desde la punta hasta la cabeza: ni por eso recordaba la dormilona . . .” (265v) —There were curious people who went as far as to stick pins in her flesh, from head to toe: even so, she could not remember being asleep . . . In this passage, Cervantes masterfully describes the mind-altering effects of the mixtures of hallucinogenic agents administered topically (out-ofbody experiences, visual hallucinations, euphoric sensations, etc.). In the chapter that corresponds to the “solano que engendra locura” [black nightshade that breeds madness] (IV.75.420), Laguna, when talking of its consumption, highlights similar effects to those attributed to Berganza (coldness, drowsiness, disorientation, etc.). Black nightshade: . . . representa ciertas imaginationes vanas, empero muy agradables: lo qual se ha de entender entre sueños. Aquesta pues deve ser (segun pienso) la virtud de aquellos unguentos, con que se suelen untar las bruxas: la grandissima frialdad de los quales, de tal suerte las adormesce, que por el diuturno y profundissimo sueño, las imprime en el celebro tenazmente mil burlas y vanidades, de suerte que despues de despiertas confiessan lo que jamas hizieron . . . . (IV.75.421) . . . produces certain vain visions, but very pleasant: which is to be understood as when half asleep. This, then, must be (I think) the virtue of those ointments, with which witches often anoint themselves: the great coldness of which hence puts them to sleep, that because of the long and very deep sleep, a thousand mockeries and vanities are tenaciously imprinted in their brain, so that after waking up they confess what they never did . . . . In a story that Laguna tells in his work, this correlation between the Cervantine text and Laguna’s Dioscórides is even more obvious. Being a salaried physician in the French city of Metz, in the house of one of the sorcerers condemned by authorities, he found a pot half full of a

182  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo green ointment “con el qual se untavan: cuyo olor era tan grave y pesado, que mostrava ser compuesto de yerbas en ultimo grado frias y soporiferas: quales son la Cicuta, el Solano, el Veleño y la Mandragora . . .” (IV.75.422) [with which they anointed themselves: whose smell was so severe and heavy that it revealed to be composed of herbs extremely cold and sleep-inducing: which are hemlock, black nightshade, henbane and mandrake . . .]. Subsequently, Laguna tested this potion on a woman so deeply jealous that “havia totalmente perdido el sueño y bueltose quasi medio phrenetica” (IV.75.422) [(she) had totally lost sleep and had become almost half frantic]. After anointing herself, the woman went into a deep sleep, thirty-six hours long, from which it was difficult to wake her up, even using various means, such as “fuertes ligaduras43 y frictiones de las extremidades, con perfusiones de azeyte costino, y de euphorbio, con sahumerios y humos à narizes, y finalmente con ventosas . . .” (IV.75.422) [strong tourniquets/ligatures and frictions of the limbs, with perfusions of costino and euphorbia oil, with aromatic smoke to the nostrils, and finally with suction cups . . .]. Upon waking, the woman commented that “estava rodeada de todos los plazeres y deleytes del mundo . . .” (IV.75.422) [I was surrounded by all the pleasures and delights of the world]. These notes of a toxicological nature shed new light on the social perception at the time of witches and sorceresses, who began to be seen as “insane” and “intoxicated” rather than as “possessed.” In fact, on multiple occasions the ointments were elaborated for patently recreational and festive purposes, effectively invalidating the ritual/satanic explanation. Laguna himself, according to Rothman, may have been the first scientist to demonstrate the direct correlation between the consumption of mind-altering substances (contents of plants from the Solanaceae family) and the practice of witchcraft (566). The similarity between the descriptions by these two authors of the effects of these hallucinogenic plants supports our hypothesis that Cervantes closely relied on the scientist’s text.44 Love Philters In the context of the popular tradition associated with witchcraft, the elaboration of potions and “love philters” with herbal remedies45 capable of altering the feelings and the will of those who consumed them is also recounted in some Cervantine works, such as the Exemplary Novel El licenciado, in which the protagonist, Tomás Rodaja, is given a poisoned quince. In this novel, Cervantes turns to a sorceress of Moorish descent as the one in charge of elaborating such a “love philter”; the context of this story can clearly be identified as “magia erótica” [magic eroticism] (Simó).46 Cervantes describes the toxic effects of the concoction as follows: Comió en tan mal punto Tomás el membrillo, que al momento comenzó a herir de pie y de mano como si tuviera alferecía, y sin volver en sí estuvo muchas horas, al cabo de las cuales volvió como

Mind-Altering Agents  183 atontado, y dijo con lengua turbada y tartamuda que un membrillo que había comido le había muerto . . . . Seis meses estuvo en la cama Tomás . . . . Y, aunque le hicieron los remedios posibles, sólo le sanaron la enfermedad del cuerpo, pero no de lo del entendimiento, porque quedó sano, y loco de la más estraña locura que entre las locuras hasta entonces se había visto. Imaginóse el desdichado que era todo hecho de vidrio . . . . (115v–116r) Tomás ate the quince at such a bad time that he immediately began to have convulsions in the arms and legs as if he had epilepsy, and without coming back to his senses he spent many hours, after which he came back stupefied, and he said with a troubled and stuttered tongue that a quince he had eaten had killed him . . . . Tomás spent six months in bed . . . . And, although they tried all the possible remedies, they only healed the disease of the body, but not that of the understanding, because he was sane and mad, of the strangest madness that had been seen until then among all the madness. The unfortunate man imagined that he was completely made of glass . . . . In the above passage, we find ourselves facing an initial picture of dreamlike mental confusion of clearly toxic origin, which could well have been brought on by mandrake root or jimsonweed; one of the toxic effects of mandrake is indeed the inducement of convulsive fits, due to its being rich in atropine (Bruneton, Plantas). Additionally, according to Laguna, “Tras la bevida Mandragora se sigue luego profundissimo sueño . . . y tan pertinaz porfia de dormir, que el tal accidente no diffiere nada de lethargia” (VI.16.586) [After drinking mandrake, a very deep sleep will follow . . . and such a pertinacious urge to sleep, that such state does not differ from lethargy]. And he notes that “La Mandragora offende principalmente al celebro, templo y domicilio del anima. . . . por quanto luego emborrachan, dan vaguedos de cabeça, obscurecen la vista, y engendran sudores frios, precursores de la muerte, ya vezina, y cercana . . .” (VI.16.586) [The mandrake affects mainly the brain, temple and domicile of the anima. . . . as it gets you drunk, makes you dizzy, obscures your vision, and generates cold sweats, precursors of death, already near and close. . .]. All of this aligns with the effects of the “love philter” administered to the licentiate Vidriera (see also Table 8.2). Narcotic Substances in the Game of Love Narcotics and sedative agents, in spite of their wide clinical use, are barely mentioned by Cervantes in his literary works, possibly because of their controversial and discredited nontherapeutic use, much criticized by Church authorities. In fact, opium, a prototype of these substances, is not expressly cited in any of them.47 However, there does exist an

184  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo interesting quote in the Exemplary Novel El celoso, when the young wife Leonora administers a narcotic concoction (of whose composition, nothing is revealed) to her elderly husband Carrizales: . . . los polvos, o un ungüento, vendría la siguiente noche, de tal virtud que, untados los pulsos y las sienes con él, causaba un sueño profundo, sin que dél se pudiese despertar en dos días, si no era lavándose con vinagre todas las partes que se habían untado . . . (148v) . . . powders, or an ointment, would come the following night, of such virtue that, anointing the wrists and temples with it, it caused a deep sleep, from which one could not wake up in two days, unless washing with vinegar all the parts that had been anointed. . . . . . y asimismo le untó las ventanas de las narices . . . . Poco espacio tardó el alopiado ungüento en dar manifiestas señales de su virtud, porque luego comenzó a dar el viejo tan grandes ronquidos . . . (149v) . . . and in the same way she rubbed the nostrils . . . . The opiate ointment took little time to give clear signs of its virtue, since the old man began then to loudly snore . . . . . . el ungüento con que estaba untado su señor tenía tal virtud que, fuera de quitar la vida, ponía a un hombre como muerto. (151r) . . . the ointment with which her lord was anointed had such virtue that, without endangering life, it made a man lie like one dead. In this passage, Cervantes uses an Italianized adjective (“alopiado”) to give account of how the ointment applied by the wife is made with opium. According to Maria Grazia Bucalo, this meaning, which is not to be found in any other Spanish author of the time,48 derives from the term “alloppiato,” which had been used in Italy since the fourteenth century to designate those drinks containing opiate derivatives.49 The description of the effects from that “alopiado” ointment also coincides with the descriptions offered by Laguna in his Dioscórides (see Table 8.2). With regard to Papaver hortense, especially the variety called Papaver pithitis or Papaver nigrum, Laguna notes that dada una onça de su simiente à un hombre de complexion delicada, le hara dormir in aeternum. La lechezica de la simiente del blanco . . . haze dormir suavissimamente. . . . Es tan grande la frialdad del Opio, que quita el sentido a las partes, y ansi adormenta . . . . En summa, el Opio, enemigo del cuerpo humano, es un veneno sabroso, que de nuestro calor natural no puede ser, si no difficilmente, alterado. (IV.66.415)

Mind-Altering Agents  185 giving an ounce of its seed to a man of delicate complexion will make him sleep in aeternum. The milky juice of the white seed. . . makes one sleep very softly. . . . The coldness of opium is so great that it desensitizes the parts, and thus puts one to sleep. . . . In short, opium, the enemy of the human body, is a tasty poison, which our natural heat can, hardly, alter. In this instance, Cervantes avoids giving concrete data on the composition of the ointment—probably, as mentioned above, to err on the side of caution with regard to the possible censorship and punishment of the Tribunal of the Holy Office, turning instead to the Italianized term “alopiado” as a way to mask any explicit reference to opium. Poisonous Potions In the context of witchcraft with amorous aims, Cervantes turns to the use of poisons (Simó). In La española, the protestant maid of honor (of the Queen of England) decides to poison Isabela for having rejected her son’s love: Y fue su determinación matar con tósigo a Isabela . . . aquella misma tarde atosigó a Isabela en una conserva que le dio, forzándola que la tomase por ser buena contra las ansias de corazón que sentía. Poco espacio pasó después de haberla tomado, cuando a Isabela se le comenzó a hinchar la lengua y la garganta, y a ponérsele denegridos los labios, y a enronquecérsele la voz, turbársele los ojos y apretársele el pecho: todas conocidas señales de haberle dado veneno. (101v)50 And it was her determination to kill Isabela with a poison . . . that same afternoon she poisoned Isabela in a preserve she gave her, forcing her to take it for being good against the heart afflictions she felt. Little time passed after having taken it, when Isabela’s tongue and throat started to swell, and her lips to blacken, and her voice to grow hoarse, her eyes to be disturbed and her chest to get squeezed: all known signs of having given her the poison. The term “tósigo” comes from the Latin toxicum and is referred to in the Dioscórides as a poison that inflames the tongue and lips and induces madness. Laguna describes in a similar way (see Table 8.2) the toxic effects induced by henbane: . . . a los que tragaron el Hyoscyamo [beleño] blanco . . . sobreviene gran relaxation de juncturas, apostemaseles la lengua, hincheseles la boca de espuma, inflanmanseles y paranseles turbios los ojos, estrechaseles el haliento, acudeles sordedad con vaguedos de cabeça,

186  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo y una comezón en las enzias, y en todo el cuerpo. De mas desto, embotaseles el sentido, vieneles borrachez . . . (VI.15.585) . . . those who swallowed the Hyoscyamus albus [white henbane] . . . are suddenly overcome by a great looseness of the joints, have abscesses on the tongue, their mouth gets filled by foam, their eyes get swollen and blurry, their breath shortens, they get afflicted by deafness with dizziness, and by itchiness in the gums, and throughout the body. Additionally, their consciousness weakens, they get suddenly inebriated . . . Nevertheless, other toxic substances could also cause the symptomatology described by Cervantes. Specifically, in the chapter geared toward the “toxico” (or “tósigo” [poison]—a poison that “inflamma . . . la lengua, y los labrios” (VI.20.587) [inflames . . . the tongue and the lips]—), Laguna disputes the nature of this substance mentioned by Dioscorides. In the same way, given its synonymy, Laguna associates the “toxic” with the “taxus,” that is to say those poisons created with “zumo del texo” [the juice of the yew], of which he comments that, once eaten, it is a quick-acting poison (see ch. 20, “Del Toxico,” VI.20.587–588). 51 With regard to the secondary effects of these agents, another of the consequences of poisoning, as described by Cervantes, is no less curious: Finalmente, Isabela no perdió la vida, que el quedar con ella la naturaleza lo comutó en dejarla sin cejas, pestañas y sin cabello; el rostro hinchado, la tez perdida, los cueros levantados y los ojos lagrimosos. Finalmente, quedó tan fea que, como hasta allí había parecido un milagro de hermosura, entonces parecía un monstruo de fealdad. Por mayor desgracia tenían los que la conocían haber quedado de aquella manera que si la hubiera muerto el veneno. (102r)52 Finally, Isabela did not lose her life, as nature’s siding with her left her instead without eyebrows, eyelashes and without hair; her face swollen, her complexion lost, her skin peeled and her eyes watery. Finally, she became so ugly that, just as up until then she had seemed a miracle of beauty, she then looked like a monster of ugliness. Those who knew her considered her ending up that way a bigger misfortune than if the poison had killed her. Conversely, Cervantes also mentions in this novel a therapeutic remedy originating in medieval medicine (though still active in the Renaissance) supposedly useful for the treatment of said poisoning. Thus, Cervantes tells us that the queen “hizo dar [a Isabela] cantidad de polvos de unicornio, con muchos otros antídotos que los grandes príncipes suelen tener prevenidos para semejantes necesidades” (102r) [requested that she (Isabela) be given a lot of unicorn powder, along with many other antidotes

Mind-Altering Agents  187 that the great princes usually have ready for such needs]. According to Laguna: De todas las medicinas preservativas contra pestilentia y veneno, al cuerno del Unicornio . . . se da la gloria primera . . . . (VI.Preface.577) Of all the preventive medicines against pestilence and poison, the horn of the unicorn. . . holds a prominent place . . . . Prefiere el Conciliador a qualquiera otro remedio, el polvo de la esmeralda, del qual manda dar dos dramas con vino. Mas esta cura [so] se puede administrar a Pontifices y Emperadores, pues dos dramas de Esmeraldas perfectas, valen poco menos que dos ciudades. (VI.20.588) The Conciliator prefers over any other remedy, the emerald powder, of which he recommends taking two adarmes with wine. But this cure can only be administered to Pontiffs and Emperors, since two adarmes of perfect emerald are worth little less than two cities. This passage, which constitutes the last example that we present in this chapter, further strengthens the hypothesis that Cervantes drew on the work of Laguna (see also Table 8.2).

Conclusion In his works, Cervantes demonstrates to have ample knowledge of medicine, possibly arising from his family environment and friendships, as well as the reading and handling of a diverse array of treatises on this subject, some of which seem to have formed his private library. Regarding the aspects related to mental and nervous disorders, these books may have helped the author of Don Quijote to portray, from a medical perspective, some of his characters, a point which has been widely disputed, and possibly proven, for instance, in the case of the Examen de ingenios para las ciencias [The Examination of Men’s Wits] (1575) by Juan Huarte de San Juan.53 With respect to the subject of pharmacological therapies, the only book in existence in Cervantes’s private library was allegedly a copy of the Dioscórides by Laguna. This is also, curiously, the only book of a medical nature that Cervantes cites in all of his literary production (Don Quijote). Our research team has recently posited, and we argue here that this work was likely used by Cervantes in the drafting of some of his literary creations. In the situations in which psychotropic substances with unorthodox purposes are being used, Cervantes goes beyond merely describing the practices of sorcery or the subjects partaking in them or suffering

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from them. He goes one step further by showing in detail and with great accuracy the physiological effects (mainly on the mind and the ability to reason) of toxic substances and concoctions. Cervantes routinely avoids giving concrete information on the composition of these unorthodox concoctions that he cites in his works; neither does he tend to specify any of their ingredients, as we have emphasized, in spite of often indicating their herbal origin. This cautiousness was likely to avoid any censorship and punishment from the Inquisition. Nonetheless, the description of the symptoms that befall his characters allows us to infer, from a toxicological perspective, which ingredients could have been part of the composition of said concoctions: henbane, European black nightshade or belladonna in the case of El coloquio, mandrake or datura in El licenciado, henbane or yew in La española, and, of course, opium in El celoso. In sum, the accuracy with which Cervantes describes herbal substances, concoctions, and their pharmacological effects in his work attests to his interest and knowledge of herbal therapies, obtained from his reading of Laguna’s Dioscórides, a medical source that was accessible to a wide audience and, thus, very popular at the time not only among doctors and specialists in early modern pharmacology but also among writers and artists.

Notes 1 See, for example, Alonso-Fernández; Bailón Blancas; Beá and Hernández; Chiappo; Esteva de Sagrera; García Barreno; López Méndez; López-Muñoz et al., “A propósito”; López-Muñoz et al., “Las cuatro caras”; López-Muñoz et al., “‘The Herbs’”; López-Muñoz et al., “Locos”; López-Muñoz et al., “Narcóticos”; López-Muñoz et al., “Psychotropic”; López-Muñoz et al., “‘Than All the Herbs’”; López-Muñoz et al., “Tósigos”; López-Muñoz et al., “‘La virtud’”; López-Muñoz and Álamo; Montes-Santiago; Osterc; Peleg et al.; Peña y Lillo Lacassie; Puerto, La fuerza; Puerto, “La materia”; Reverte Coma; Sánchez Granjel, “Lectura”; Valle Nieto; Villamil Cajoto and Villacián Vicedo. 2 See Osterc; Palma, Palma, and Simon, this volume. 3 Furthermore, given the nosographic nature of some of his clinical descriptions, some authors have suggested that Cervantes may have even studied some specific areas of medicine (Villamil Cajoto and Villacián Vicedo), and a French author, in a doctoral thesis from the end of the nineteenth century, went so far as to posit that the author of Don Quijote had actually been a doctor (Villechauvaix). 4 Mental disorders (e.g., madness in Don Quijote) is a concomitant theme that we are not directly covering in this chapter. For a recent study on madness in Don Quijote, see, for example, Shuger. For a more general discussion of madness in the early modern period, see Atienza; Baquero; López Alonso, Locura; Tropé. 5 See, for example, Beá and Hernández; Chiappo; Esteva de Sagrera; López Méndez; López-Muñoz et al., “‘The Herbs’”; Peña y Lillo Lacassie. 6 It is important to note that our intent in this chapter is not to offer a historiographical perspective on early modern Spanish medical cultures and pharmacology, but rather to focus on Cervantes’s literary representations of the effects of mind-altering plants in relation to the work that, we argue,

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17 18

constituted his main source: Laguna’s Dioscórides. For a historiographical perspective on early modern medical cultures as related to the Hispanic world, see Slater et al. On humoral theory and mental illness in relation to Don Quijote, see, for example, Heiple; Jaén and Simon, this volume; Soufas (ch. 1). See, for example, González de Pablo. See, for example, López-Muñoz et al., “Historia.” Worthy of mention from among them are the Nuovo receptario compositio (Florencia, 1498) and the famous Concordie apothecariorum Barchinone medicines Compositis (Barcelona, 1511). See Fraile et al.; Iranzo et al. Morales Valverde also compared these results to Shakespeare’s work and found a similar number of references to plants and vegetal products: 143 versus 150 (73). See López-Muñoz et al., “Las cuatro caras”; López-Muñoz et al., “‘The Herbs’”; López-Muñoz et al., “Psychotropic”; López-Muñoz et al., “‘La virtud.’” Root of Rheum officinale (Chinese rhubarb) or Rumex alpinus (monk’s rhubarb). For more details on this topic, see López-Muñoz et al., “Narcóticos”; LópezMuñoz et al., “Tósigos.” Similarly, in Cervantes’s Spain there existed an overt difference between witchcraft and sorcery (see Caro Baroja). Witches conducted satanic rituals and pacts, and they tended to be people of rural Christian background, generally from the north of Spain (e.g., Galicia, Basque Country, or Navarra). Conversely, sorceresses, normally of Moorish or Jewish background, were women who devoted themselves to the elaboration of remedies and cures (pertaining to health or love), and they practiced their arts in urban settings in the southern portion of the Peninsula. In this sense, we must not forget the writer’s specific vulnerability, as he had to establish, in a lasting way, the immaculate cleanliness of his bloodline. We would like to offer here a brief biographical note on this important author: Andrés Fernández de Laguna (1499–1560) may be considered a prototype of the scientific Renaissance humanist, and in spite of being the son of a converted Jewish doctor, he would rise to fame in life as one of the brightest figures of European culture at the time. Laguna studied arts and classical languages at different Spanish universities and later medicine in Paris between 1530 and 1536 as a direct apprentice to Jean de la Ruelle (1474–1537), one of the first translators of the Dioscórides. After his return to Spain in 1536, he worked as a professor at the University of Alcalá. Soon after he began his habitual travels, first through England and later in the company of the Emperor Charles V (serving as his personal physician) through the Netherlands and Germany, finally settling in the city of Metz, in France, between 1540 and 1545 to be a physician. His restless life continued in Italy, where he remained until 1554, achieving the post of personal physician to Pope Julius III. Following extensive stays in Venice, along with the Spanish ambassador and great humanist Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503–1575), as well as in the Netherlands, he returned to Spain in 1557, also becoming physician to King Phillip II. It was thanks to this very monarch that he achieved one of his great aspirations, the founding of a Royal Botanical Garden in the city of Aranjuez, something which he had requested in the dedicatory letter of his Dioscórides. Although he wrote more than thirty works on a variety of subjects, including philosophy, history, politics, and literature, as well as works that were strictly medical, Laguna’s most

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famous work is the commented translation of the De materia medica by Dioscorides, commonly referred to in Spanish as the Dioscórides. See López-Muñoz et al., “‘Than All the Herbs’”; López-Muñoz and Álamo. It is important to note that Cervantes, an avid reader, could well have consulted other technical texts from the therapeutic field, for example, the work of the doctor from Seville, Nicolás Monardes (1507–1588), whose pinnacle scientific work, which enjoyed wide success in its time, was the Historia Medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven en Medicina [Medicinal History of Things Brought from Our West Indies That Assist in Medicine]. The oldest copies of this work still in existence are the Codex Vindobonensis, a Byzantine version compiled at the start of the sixth century and located in the National Library of Vienna, and the Dioscorides Neapolitano, more modern by a hundred years and preserved in the National Library of Naples. Later on, during the Middle Ages, it was translated into Arabic, in the translation schools of Baghdad and Cordoba. As a result of the Renaissance’s renewed interest in classical works, in the fourteenth century they began to be translated in Europe (Riddle), especially by Pietro d’Abano (1250–1315) in 1478 and by Ermolao Barbaro (1454–1493) and by the Canon of Paris, Jean de la Ruelle, both in 1516. However, the most relevant commented version of the De materia medica was that of the doctor from Siena, Pietro Mattioli (1500–1577), first published in Italian in 1544. This work, steadily expanded with comments as well as illustrations, continued to be printed until the eighteenth century, to a total of seventeen editions. The great importance of this work can be extrapolated from its great historical preservation, which lasted until the eighteenth century, making it the most significant treatise on medications in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, thanks to the large number of copies, translations, and commented editions that were published during this eighteen-century period (see Dubler). For more details on Laguna’s Dioscórides, see, for example, González Manjarrés; Sánchez Granjel, “El médico.” In this sense, we must bear in mind that Laguna’s Dioscórides was a work that suffered far fewer problems of censorship from the Inquisition than the rest of the scientific texts that Cervantes may have used in his writings on the subject with which we are dealing, such as those of Huarte or Erasmus. In fact, the main censorship exercised over the Dioscórides was the one corresponding to the Índice [Index] of 1632, well after the death of Cervantes (see Baranda). All citations from Don Quijote are from the edition by Rico and refer to part, chapter, and page. All the translations (of Don Quijote as well as of the other texts) are the editors’. See, for example, Andrade-Rosa et al.; de Micheli. See also López-Muñoz et al., “‘Than All the Herbs’”; López-Muñoz and Álamo. See López-Muñoz et al., “Narcóticos”; López-Muñoz et al., “Psychotropic.” Generally speaking, although Laguna’s work is only mentioned in chapter eighteen of the first part of Don Quijote, we must add that the relevance of the botanical knowledge contained in the Dioscórides surfaces in other passages of this work, as well as in other Cervantine texts. For instance, in episode 18 of Part II, Don Quixote asserts that the knight-errant “ha de ser médico, y principalmente herbolario, para conocer . . . las yerbas que tienen la virtud de sanar las heridas . . .” (II.18.682) [must be a doctor, and mainly herbalist . . . to know the herbs that have the virtue of healing wounds]. In Persiles, there are also comments about enchanters knowing “la virtud de

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35

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las yerbas” [the virtue of herbs] (218); an idea similar to what was said, with respect to the enchantresses and witches, in El coloquio. López-Muñoz et al., “‘Than All the Herbs’”; López-Muñoz et al., “‘La virtud.’” The balms, medicines made with aromatic substances and intended to heal wounds and sores, were widely used during the Renaissance. In the Chivalric romance Historia caballeresca de Carlomagno [The Chivalric History of Charlemagne], Fier-a-bras (from the French meaning “fierce-arm”) was a Saracen giant, son of Emir Balan (King of Spain), who carried on his horse two barrels of the balm employed in the burial of Jesus to embalm his corpse. In the course of a battle, the giant lost the barrels, which were found by his enemy Oliveros [Oliver], one of the Twelve Peers of France, who drank from the balm and was healed of his mortal wounds. It is necessary to bear in mind, in this sense that a version of this romance acquired a certain popularity in sixteenth-century Spain, when a translation into Spanish was published in Seville (Morales Valverde). Pharmaceutical preparations used in the past and composed of several ingredients, chiefly among them opium. Possibly, the recipe described by Cervantes was based, as pointed out by Prieto, on actual formulations available at the time. In fact, a very similar formula (i.e., cooking rosemary in olive oil) and for the same purposes (i.e., to obtain “a very precious and very virtuous ointment”) appears in a 1272 book entitled Thesaurus pauperum, attributed to the Portuguese physician Petrus Hispanus (1215–1277), future Pope John XXI (Font Quer; Prieto). During the sixteenth century, rosemary became part of the composition of numerous preparations, some cosmetic, such as the Water of the Queen of Hungary, and other medicinal products, such as the balms of Opodeldoc, Porras, and Aparicio or the “bálsamo tranquilo” [calming balm] (Font Quer). We have used the Salamanca edition of the Dioscórides of 1563 printed by Mathias Gast, the same one that Cervantes could have used. This type of rhubarb was customarily grown in the cloisters of monasteries, to be used in the monastic apothecary. CORDE stands for Corpus Diacrónico del Español [Diachronic Corpus of Spanish] and is a database of Spanish texts of various types (literary, scientific, legal, historical, religious, etc.) emanating from the four corners of the Hispanic world. The proliferation of witches throughout all of Europe, especially starting in the twelfth century, filled popular culture with all sorts of legends, which eventually became a sort of authentic “reality,” hotly contested by civil as well as canonical authorities: night-flights on broomstick and barrel, transformation into different animals, carnal relations with the devil in the infamous covens, etc. (see Caro Baroja). Inquisitorial justice against witches reached its expressive peak in Cervantes’s time. And between 1580 and 1650 the persecution of witches, the so-called witch hunt, was at its peak (Levack 190). Nevertheless, this persecution was much more brutal and intense in central Europe, France, and England than it was in Mediterranean countries like Italy and Spain (Levack 222–223). These ointments were often applied to the genital area, and their effects were almost immediate, with quick absorption of the main active hallucinogens into the vaginal mucosa (see Harner). In the Balearic Islands, “henbane” is called “witch’s candy.” The Diccionario de Autoridades defines ligadura as follows: “Se llama tambien el garrote o tormento, que se da a los que se quedan sin sentído, atándoles mui apretadamente en los muslos algunas cintas o cordeles, para

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52

53

que vuelvan en sí con lo sensible deste dolor” [It is also called tourniquet or torment, which is given to those who are left unconscious, tying them very tightly on the thighs using ribbons or strings, so that they come to their senses thanks to the inflicted pain] (“Ligadura,” def. 2). For more details on this, see also López-Muñoz et al., “‘The Herbs’”; LópezMuñoz and Álamo. Also generally composed of different Solanaceae or nightshades. The traditional dedication of the Moorish collective to medicine, evident even during the Cervantine period (see García Ballester), and the scope of its knowledge concerning the management of herbs and plants, makes the choice of this sorceress a likely approximation to the connoisseurship of popular botany in Spain during the sixteenth century. Even in his longest novel, Don Quijote, there is no reference to the use of this kind of agent. A search on CORDE for the term “alopiado” seems to confirm Bucalo’s assertion. Cervantes is the only writer (fiction and nonfiction) to have used this term (once only) in the entire database. Cervantes often turned to the use of Italianisms in his works (Bucalo), given his journey to Italy as a young man, between 1569 and 1575. Note that the poison was administered in a “preserve,” that is to say, a medication of soft consistency, mixed with a vegetable substance and sugar, such that the main active therapeutic ingredient was preserved and facilitated its use. Today the paralyzing toxic effects of “taxane” are known. It is a potent alkaloid derived from trees of the genus Taxus, of which, additionally, modern chemotherapy agents have been extracted, known as taxanes or taxoids (paclitaxel and docetaxel). Specifically, one of the most common side effects of taxanes (frequency greater than 10%) is the inducing of alopecia, due to its antitumoral mechanism, the inhibition of the functioning of microtubules, essential for cellular division, which is why these agents are catalogued as “mitosis poisons” (Horwitz). On Huarte’s Examen and Cervantes, see, among others, Escobar Manzano; Jaén, “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas”; Jaén, “Cervantes on Human Development”; Jaén, this volume; Salillas.

Works Cited Alonso-Fernández, Francisco. El Quijote y su laberinto vital. Barcelona: Ed. Anthropos, 2005. Andrade-Rosa, Cristina, Francisco López-Muñoz, and Juan D. Molina. “La materia terapéutica en La Arcadia, de Lope de Vega.” Humanidades Médicas 17.1 (2017): 201–236. Atienza, Belén. El loco en el espejo: Locura y melancolía en la España de Lope de Vega. New York: Rodopi, 2009. . Bailón Blancas, José Manuel. La psiquiatría en El Quijote: El diagnóstico de ayer y de hoy. Barcelona: Ars Medica, 2006. Baquero, Aurelio. Bosquejo histórico del hospital real y general de Nuestra Señora de Gracias de Zaragoza. Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1952. Baranda, Consolación. “Los lectores del Dioscórides: Estrategias discursivas del Doctor Laguna.” Criticón 58 (1993): 17–24.

Mind-Altering Agents  193 Beá, Josep, and Victor Hernández. “Don Quixote: Freud and Cervantes.” The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 65 (1984): 141–153. Bruneton, Jean. Farmacognosia: Fotoquímica: Plantas medicinales. 2nd ed. Zaragoza: Editorial Acribia, 2001. Bruneton, Jean. Plantas tóxicas: Vegetales peligrosos para el hombre y los ­animales. Zaragoza: Editorial Acribia, 2000. Bucalo, Maria Gracia. “Los italianismos en las Novelas Ejemplares de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.” Cuadernos de Filología Italiana 5 (1998): 29–80. Caro Baroja, Julio. Las brujas y su mundo. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2003. Cervantes, Miguel de. El celoso extremeño. Ed. Florencio Sevilla Arroyo. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2001. Web. 14 Feb. 2021. . Cervantes, Miguel de. El coloquio de los perros. Ed. Florencio Sevilla Arroyo. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2001. Web. 14 Feb. 2021. . Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Ed. Francisco Rico. Madrid: Punto de lectura, 2011. Cervantes, Miguel de. La española inglesa. Ed. Florencio Sevilla Arroyo. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2001. Web. 14 Feb. 2021. . Cervantes, Miguel de. El licenciado Vidriera. Ed. Florencio Sevilla Arroyo. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2001. Web. 14 Feb. 2021. . Cervantes, Miguel de. Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. New York: Lanuza, Mendia and Co, 1827. Archive.org. Web. 14 Feb. 2021. . Chiappo, Leopoldo. “La última melancolía de Alonso Quijano, el Bueno.” Acta Psiquiátrica y Psicológica de América Latina 40.1 (1994): 69–76. “CORDE (Corpus Diacrónico del Español [Diachronic Corpus of Spanish]).” Real Academia Española. Web. 22 Jan. 2020. . de Micheli, Alfredo. “Influencias erasmianas en médicos renacentistas.” Gaceta médica de México 138.5 (2002): 483–487. Díez Fernández, José-Ignacio, and Luisa-Fernanda Aguirre de Cárcer. “Contexto histórico y tratamiento literario de la ‘hechicería’ morisca y judía en el Persiles.” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 12.2 (1992): 33–62. Dubler, César Emil. La Materia medica de Dioscórides: Transmisión medieval y renacentista. Barcelona: Tipografía Emporium, 1953–1959. Eisenberg, Daniel. “La biblioteca de Cervantes.” Studia in honorem prof. M. de Riquer II. Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1987. 271–328. Escobar Manzano, Fernando. Huarte de San Juan y Cervantes en la locura de Don Quijote de la Mancha: Breve estudio clínico psicosomático. Granada: José M. Ventura Hita, 1949. Esteva de Sagrera, Juan. “La farmacia en el Quijote.” OFFARM: Farmacia y Sociedad 24.4 (2005): 104–116. Font Quer, Pío. Plantas medicinales: El Dioscórides renovado. 5th ed. Barcelona: Ediciones Península, 2003. Foust, Clifford M. Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992.

194  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo Fraile, José Ramón, Ángeles de Miguel, and A. Yuste. “El dolor agudo en El Quijote.” Revista Española de Anestesiología y Reanimación 50.7 (2003): 346–355. García Ballester, Luis. El ejercicio médico morisco y la sociedad cristiana. Granada: Real Academia de Medicina, 1975. García Barreno, Pedro R. “La medicina en El Quijote y en su entorno.” La ciencia y El Quijote. Ed. Juan Manuel Sánchez Ron. Barcelona: Crítica, 2005. 155–179. González de Pablo, Ángel. “El tratamiento racional de la patología mental: Hipocratismo y galenismo.” Historia de la Neuropsicofarmacología: Una nueva aportación a la terapéutica farmacológica de los trastornos del Sistema Nervioso Central. Ed. Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo. Madrid: Ediciones Eurobook, 1998. 23–38. González Manjarrés, Miguel Ángel. Entre la imitación y el plagio: Fuentes e influencias en el Dioscórides de Andrés Laguna. Segovia: Obra Social y Cultural de Caja Segovia, 2000. Gutiérrez Rodilla, Bertha M. “La medicina, sus textos y sus lenguas en la España de Cervantes.” Panace@ 6.21–22 (2005): 299–306. Harner, Michael J. “The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft.” Hallucinogens and Shamanism. Ed. Michael J. Harner. New York: Oxford UP, 1973. 125–150. Heiple, Daniel L. “Renaissance Medical Psychology in Don Quijote.” Ideologies & Literature 2.9 (1979): 65–72. Horwitz, Susan Band. “Mechanism of Action of Taxol.” Trends in Pharmacological Sciences 13 (1992): 134–136. . Iranzo, Alex, Joan Santamaría, and Martín de Riquer. “Sleep and Sleep ­ in Don Quixote.” Sleep Medicine 5.1 (2004): 97–100. . Jaén, Isabel. “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas of His Time: Mind and Development in Don Quixote.” Cognitive Cervantes. Ed. Julien Simon, Bar­ bara Simerka, and Howard Mancing. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012): 71–98. . Jaén, Isabel. “Cervantes on Human Development: Don Quixote and Renaissance Cognitive Psychology.” Don Quixote: Interdisciplinary Connections. Ed. Matthew D. Warshawsky and James A. Parr. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2013. 35–57. Laguna, Andrés. Pedacio Dioscórides Anazarbeo, acerca de la materia medicinal, y de los venenos mortíferos, traduzido de lengua griega en la vulgar castellana illustrado y con claras y substantiales annotationes, y con las figuras de innumeras plantas exquisitas y raras por el Doctor Andres de Laguna. Salamanca: Mathias Gast, 1563. Facsimil edition of Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de santé (Paris). Archive.org. Web. 14 Feb. 2021. . Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. 2nd ed. New York: Longman, 1995. “Ligadura.” Diccionario de Autoridades (1726–1739). Real Academia Española, n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2019. . López Alonso, Antonio. Molimientos, puñadas y caídas acaecidos en el Quijote. Alcalá de Henares: Editorial de la Universidad de Alcalá, 1996.

Mind-Altering Agents  195 López Alonso, Carmen. Locura y sociedad en Sevilla: Historia del Hospital de los Inocentes (1436?-1840). Seville: Diputación Provincial Sevilla, 1988. López Méndez, Harold. “La medicina en el Quijote.” Actas Luso-Españolas de Psiquiatría y Neurología 30 (1971): 35–44. López-Muñoz, Francisco, and Cecilio Álamo. “El Dioscórides de Andrés Laguna en los textos de Cervantes: De la materia medicinal al universo ­literario.” Anales Cervantinos 39 (2007): 193–217. . López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Eduardo Cuenca. “Historia de la Psicofarmacología.” Tratado de psiquiatría. Ed. Julio Vallejo Ruiloba and Carmen Leal Cercós. Vol. II. Barcelona: Ars Medica, 2005. 1709–1736. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “Las cuatro caras del phármakon y la ‘falta de juicio’ en los textos cervantinos.” Farmacología y Toxicología 1.1 (2011): 1–15. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “‘The Herbs that Have the Property of Healing . . .’: The Phytotherapy in Don Quixote.” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 106.3 (2006): 429–441. . López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “Locos y dementes en la literatura cervantina: A propósito de las fuentes médicas de Cervantes en materia neuropsiquiátrica.” Revista de Neurología 46.8 (2008): 489–501. . López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “Narcóticos y alucinógenos en las obras literarias de Cervantes: El poder mágico de las plantas.” Actualidad en Farmacología y Terapéutica 6.2 (2008): 111–125. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “Psychotropic Drugs in the Cervantine Texts.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 101.5 (2008): 226–234. . López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “‘Than All the Herbs Described by Dioscorides . . .’: The Trace of Andrés Laguna in the Works of Cervantes.” Pharmacy in History 49.3 (2007): 87–108. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “Tósigos y antídotos en la literatura cervantina: Sobre los venenos en la España tardorrenacentista.” Revista de Toxicología 28.2 (2011): 119–134. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Pilar García-García, and Cecilio Álamo. “‘La virtud de aquel precioso bálsamo . . .’: Aproximación a El Quijote desde la vertiente de la psicofarmacología.” Actas Españolas de Psiquiatría 35.3 (2007): 149–161. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Gabriel Rubio, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar GarcíaGarcía. “A propósito de la locura del hidalgo Alonso Quijano en el marco de la medicina española tardorrenacentista.” Anales de Psiquiatría 22.3 (2006): 133–145. Montes-Santiago, Julio. “Miguel de Cervantes: Saberes médicos, enfermedades y muerte.” Anales de Medicina Interna (Madrid) 22.6 (2005): 293–297. Montiel, Luis. “La medicina de la mente en el periodo moderno.” Historia de la Neuropsicofarmacología: Una nueva aportación a la terapéutica farmacológica de los trastornos del Sistema Nervioso Central. Ed. Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo. Madrid: Ediciones Eurobook, 1998. 39–50. Morales Valverde, Ramón. Flora literaria del Quijote: Alusiones al mundo vegetal en las obras completas de Cervantes. Albacete: Instituto de Estudios Albacetenses “Don Juan Manuel,” 2005.

196  Francisco López-Muñoz and Cecilio Álamo Osterc, Lúdovik. “Cervantes y la medicina.” Verba Hispanica 6.1 (1996): ­17–22. . Peleg, Roni, Howard Tandeter, and Aya Peleg. “The Medical Cervantes.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 165.12 (2001): 1623–1624. Peña y Lillo Lacassie, Sergio. “La locura del Quijote.” Revista Médica de Chile 127.1 (1999): 89–93. Prieto, José María. “El Bálsamo de Fierabrás.” Boletín Latinoamericano y del Caribe de Plantas Medicinales y Aromáticas 4.3 (2005): 48–51. Puerto Sarmiento, Francisco Javier. “La terapéutica y la farmacia durante el barroco.” El mito de panacea: Compendio de historia de la terapéutica y de la farmacia. Ed. Francisco Javier Puerto Sarmiento. Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles, 1997. 299–382. Puerto, Javier. La fuerza de Fierabrás: Medicina, ciencia y terapéutica en tiempos del Quijote. Madrid: Editorial Just in Time, 2005. Puerto, Javier. “La materia medicinal de Dioscórides, Andrés Laguna y El ­Quijote.” La ciencia y El Quijote. Ed. Juan Manuel Sánchez Ron. Barcelona: Crítica, 2005. 141–154. Reverte Coma, José Manuel. “Antropología médica del Quijote: Farmacopea en el Quijote.” Previsión Sanitaria Nacional 76 (1992): 38–44. Riddle, John M. Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine. Austin: U of Texas P, 1985. Rothman, Theodore. “De Laguna’s Commentaries on Hallucinogenic Drugs and Witchcraft in Dioscorides’ Materia medica.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 46.6 (1972): 562–567. Salillas, Rafael. Un gran inspirador de Cervantes, el doctor Juan Huarte y su Examen de ingenios. Madrid: E. Arias, 1905. Sánchez Granjel, Luis. “Lectura médica de El Quijote.” III y IV Centenario de El Quijote en la Real Academia Nacional de Medicina. Madrid: Real Academia Nacional de Medicina, 2005. 159–173. Sánchez Granjel, Luis. “El médico Andrés Laguna.” Andrés Laguna: Humanismo, ciencia y política en la Europa renacentista. Ed. Juan Luis García Hourcade and Juan Manuel Moreno Yuste. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2001. 11–22. Simó, Lourdes. “Los ‘tósigos de amor’ en las novelas de Cervantes.” Espéculo: Revista de estudios literarios 29 (2005): N.p. Web. 11 Sept. 2019. . Shuger, Dale. Don Quixote in the Archives: Madness and Literature in Early Modern Spain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012. Slater, John, María Luz López-Terrada, and José Pardo-Tomás, eds. Medical Cultures of the Early Modern Spanish Empire. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Soufas, Teresa Scott. Melancholy and the Secular Mind in Spanish Golden Age Literature. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1990. Tropé, Hélène. Locura y sociedad en la Valencia de los siglos XV al XVII. Valencia: Diputaciò de València, 1994. Valle Nieto, Ángel del. “Botica y farmacia en el Quijote.” Anales de la Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia 68.4 (2002): 693–734. Villamil Cajoto, Iago, and María José Villacián Vicedo. “Cervantes, El Quijote y la medicina.” Revista Médica de Chile 133 (2005): 1258–1260. . Villechauvaix, J. Cervantes: Malade et médecin [Cervantes: Patient and doctor]. Diss. Faculté de médecine de Paris, 1898.

9

Don Quijote and Cervantes’s Knowledge of Neurological Disorders José-Alberto Palma, Fermín Palma, and Julien Jacques Simon

Introduction In episode twenty-two of Part II, Sancho says of his master: “Yo pensaba en mi ánima que sólo podía saber aquello que tocaba a sus caballerías, pero no hay cosa donde no pique y deje de meter su cucharada” (II.22.716)1 [I used to think in my soul that he could only know things related to knight-errantry, but there is nothing he won’t have a finger in]. Cervantes, like his hero, has a finger in everything, and Don Quijote encapsulates many universal themes that cannot be explored in any simple way: the story of Don Quixote and his counterpart Sancho Panza is at the same time literary satire, social criticism, mirror of the decadent grandeur of the Spanish Empire, and echo of the eternal conflict between comedy and tragedy, dream and reality, folly and reason, and idealism and materialism. Certainly, all of what characterizes the epoch—its sentiments, passions, prejudices, customs, and institutions—came to find a place in the novel. Herein lies the powerful interest of the book that is considered one of the most important and influential works of Western prose, rivaled only by the Bible for the number of languages into which it has been translated. Aside from its value as a work of the imagination, scholars in the area of medicine have looked at how Don Quijote reflects the medical knowledge of the time. 2 While some have highlighted the medical historiographical aspects that the novel reveals, others have shown how it also stands out for the nosographic3 talent of its author and the wide array of medical conditions that are “playfully,” yet accurately, portrayed. For instance, seventeenth-century physician Thomas Sydenham, known as the English Hippocrates, once famously advised his disciple, Richard Blackmore, to read Don Quijote in order to become a better doctor (Johnson 236) and Sir William Osler, often called the Father of Modern Medicine for his contributions to the development of medical education, included Don Quijote in his recommended list of bedside books for medical students (Murray 90). The interrelation of Cervantes’s texts and medicine has been widely studied. However, a subset of the medical domain, namely, the disorders DOI: 10.4324/9781315228211-9

198  José-Alberto Palma et al. of the brain (or neurological disorders), has been understudied, although the brain has a prominent role in the genesis of the novel. Early on, Cervantes states that “del poco dormir y del mucho leer, se le secó el celebro, de manera que vino a perder el juicio” (I.1.29–30) [from little sleep and too much reading his brain dried up and he lost his wits]. This “perder el juicio” will be framing the entire story, and it is precisely a brain condition, the “drying up” of the protagonist’s brain caused by sleep deprivation, that will alter his mind and set him on the path of knight-errantry. The present chapter will discuss the episodes in which Cervantes’s portrayal of altered minds is or could be rooted in a neurological disorder. The underlying question will be then to what extent his fictional representations rely on knowledge he might have acquired through different sources and situations, such as treatises of the epoch (the “by default”/standard assumption of critics), conversations with acquaintances, friends or family members with knowledge of medicine, or firsthand observations of people suffering from some neurological disorder. By adopting a holistic approach that considers a diversity of possible sources, from treatises to firsthand experience, we aim to (1) reconsider the notion of brain disorder as portrayed by Cervantes, moving beyond the phenomenon of humoral imbalance, melancholy, and madness, as brought about by his temperament and habits such as sleep deprivation, in order to discuss epilepsy and mercury poisoning as known causes of mind alteration during his time, which he incorporates into his work, and (2) consider to what extent the knowledge of neurological disorders that Cervantes acquired through diverse sources might have enriched his literary representations of the altered mind, hence rendering his work more verisimilar or “novelistic.”4 Before delving into the next section of our study, we would like to offer a few clarifications. First, we must point out that we are not attempting in this chapter to diagnose the characters, to zero in on a particular disease. Rather, our goal is to show that analyzing the neurological underpinnings of Cervantes’s work can help us understand how the literary tropes in Don Quijote are “enhanced” by his observations of people suffering from neurological disorders (e.g., epileptics) and his knowledge of the science of the time. Second, when we talk about Cervantes’s knowledge of neurological disorders, we do not mean medical knowledge per se (i.e., the ability to diagnose a patient and subsequently find the best treatment for the diagnosed disease), but rather “familiarity” with the knowledge of medicine and in our case more specifically of the (“neurological”) diseases that affect the brain/mind.5 As mentioned, in looking for the sources of Cervantes’s “knowledge,” we distinguish two main ones: (1) his knowledge of the science of his time, whether it stems from treatises, acquaintances, and/or family members, and (2) his ability to accurately describe neurological diseases, that is, their symptoms (the latter is the facet of Cervantes’s knowledge that has marveled physicians

Neurological Disorders  199 for a long time, and it still does today). Finally, while the terms “neurology” and “neurological” were not used at the time, the neurological disorders analyzed in this chapter (i.e., epilepsy [“epilepsia” or “gota coral”], seizures, and tremors) were known (albeit not as well understood) disorders affecting the brain and body, and were often viewed and discussed by the epoch’s medical community and beyond as diseases. For instance, in his dictionary (Tesoro de la lengua castellana) in the entry for “epilepsy,” Sebastián de Covarrubias calls it a “disease.” In this sense, it is important to note that our use of the contemporary terminology is not intended to be anachronistic but rather to emphasize the mind-body nature of these diseases of the nervous system and their manifestations.

Why Did Cervantes Have Such a Deep Knowledge of Neurological Disorders? Throughout Don Quijote, Cervantes exhibits a considerable understanding of medical conditions, leading some scholars to argue that Cervantes was a doctor himself,6 although this possibility remains unlikely.7 What is actually known, however, is that his father, Rodrigo de Cervantes (1509–1585), was a barber surgeon8 and his sister, Andrea de Cervantes (1544–1609), was a nurse,9 which suggests that the young Miguel grew up in a medical environment. Witnessing medical practices and reading his father’s books, combined with his skills as a fine observer of people, may have contributed to Cervantes’s knowledge and the accuracy of his mind-alteration portrayals. His nosological ability is evident when he describes symptoms and signs of illness; a noted example can be found in the interpolated novel “El curioso impertinente” [The Curious Impertinent] in Part I of Don Quijote where Anselmo says to his friend Lotario that “. . . yo padezco ahora la enfermedad que suelen tener algunas mujeres que se les antoja comer tierra, yeso, carbón y otras cosas peores, aun asquerosas para mirarse, cuanto más para comerse” (I.33.340) [I am now suffering from a disease that women sometimes suffer from when their craving seizes them to eat clay, plaster, charcoal, and other worse things, disgusting to look at, much more to eat]. This abnormal and compulsive desire to eat substances not normally eaten, such as soil, clay, and plaster, is a textbook example of pica, the compulsive appetite to eat nonfood substances (Larraín 610)10 and is one of the many examples that illustrate Cervantes’s engagement with the medical science of his time. Juan Huarte de San Juan, for instance, mentions this condition in his Examen de ingenios para las ciencias [The Examination of Men’s Wits] (1575): “. . . le hace mejor gusto yeso, tierra y carbones, que gallinas y truchas” (481; emphasis added) [Plaster, dirt and charcoal taste better to her than chickens and trout].11

200  José-Alberto Palma et al. An additional factor that may explain Cervantes’s nosographic aptitude is the fact that while living in Seville, he frequently visited the Hospital de inocentes, a mental asylum that served as a holding place for people suffering from mental disability, criminal insanity, epilepsy, and poverty.12 There is evidence that he frequented this institution, which is mentioned in chapter 1 of Don Quijote, Part II. Additionally, according to Rojo Vega, Cervantes, during his second stay in Valladolid, lived next door to the Hospital de la Resurrección (186). Let us not forget that this hospital is mentioned in the preamble to the Coloquio de los perros [The Colloquy of the Dogs] (1613): “Novela y coloquio que pasó entre Cipión y Berganza, perros del Hospital de la Resurrección, que está en la ciudad de Valladolid” [Novel and colloquy that took place between Cipión and Berganza, dogs of the Hospital of the Resurrection, which is in the city of Valladolid]. Finally, when he moved back to Madrid in 1608, he lived next to the Hospital Antón Martín for about a year (Canavaggio 232). Firsthand experience with the residents of these hospitals could have been instrumental in creating, with such exactitude, characters who exhibit abnormal behaviors. Beyond his family circle, Cervantes’s friends also included acclaimed doctors,13 such as Francisco Díaz (1527–1590)—who wrote a treatise on urology14 —and Antonio Ponce de Santa Cruz (1561–1632)—physician to King Philip III and King Philip IV, who published in 1631 (i.e., after Cervantes’s death) a treatise on epilepsy.15 These friendships may have acquainted him with the medical knowledge of his time and perhaps motivated him to expand his knowledge, on his own, via the reading of treatises and commentaries. Several of these texts are assumed to have belonged to his library. In a 1987 study, Daniel Eisenberg tried to “reconstruct” Cervantes’s library by analyzing the texts mentioned and alluded to in his works.16 The result of this “reconstruction” is a list of about two hundred books.17 Among the medical works that he owned via his father’s library are Luis Lobera de Ávila’s Libro de las quatro enfermedades cortesanas que son. Catarro. Gota arthetica Sciática. Mal de piedra y de Riñones e Hijada. E mal de buas: y otras cosas utilíssimas [Book of the Four Courtly Diseases Which Are: Cold, Gout, Kidney Stones and Syphilis; and Other Useful Things] (1544) and Juan de Vigo’s Libro o pratica en Cirurgia [Book or Practice of Surgery] (1537). The medical works mentioned in Cervantes’s works are Andrés Laguna’s Dioscórides (1555), in Don Quijote, Part I (ch. 18), and Dionisio Daza Chacón’s La primera parte de la Cirujia que trata de los humores praeternaturam [The First Part of the Surgery That Deals with the Humors Praeternaturam] (1580) and Francisco Díaz’s Tratado nuevamente impresso de todas las enfermedades de los Riñones, Vexiga, y Carnosidades de la verga, y Urina, dividido en tres libros [Treatise, Newly Published, of All the Diseases of the Kidneys, Bladder, and Flesh of the Penis and Urethra; Split in Three

Neurological Disorders  201 Books] (1588), both in the “Canto de Calíope” [Song of Calliope].18 As Eisenberg states, this list “sólo corresponde a una parte de su biblioteca” (273) [only corresponds to a part of his library]. For instance, many researchers have seen parallels between Cervantes’s work and Huarte’s Examen, which is not included in Eisenberg’s list.19 Based on these identified sources and related studies, it is reasonable to assert that Cervantes had an interest in the natural and medical philosophy of his time, whether it be pharmacology (i.e., Laguna), 20 faculty psychology (i.e., Huarte), 21 or natural philosophy (i.e., Vives). 22 Although we will not draw a parallel between Cervantes’s work and a specific medical work in this chapter, we will argue that, as a result of his readings (from borrowed or owned books), his interactions with friends and family members, and his firsthand experiences, Cervantes possessed and exhibited in his works an undeniable aptitude to accurately portray neurological disorders, thereby creating situations and characters that resonate with readers then and now.

Too Much Reading and Too Little Sleep As we saw earlier, at the very beginning of the novel (in Part I, ch. 1) Cervantes reveals the origin of Don Quixote’s unusual behavior: excessive reading that leads to sleep deprivation. Modern medicine continues to link sleep deprivation to a variety of effects on the body. In Cervantes’s time, the notion that sleep deprivation could cause serious mental problems was not unheard of and was supported by renowned scholars. For instance, in his only book, La conservación de la salud del cuer po y del alma [The Improvement of the Body’s and Soul’s Health] (1597), Blas Álvarez de Miraval, 23 professor of medicine and theology at the University of Salamanca, warns against the danger of sleep deprivation because it can “abrevia[r] la vida” [shorten one’s life] and adds that “es señal muy peligrosa quando el enfermo no duerme, ni de dia, ni de noche, porque el sueño es un vicio y descanso para todos los sentidos” (87v) [It is a very dangerous sign when a patient does not sleep, neither during the day, nor at night, because sleep is essential for the relaxation of the senses]. Álvarez de Miraval wrote several chapters on sleep (and dreams), highlighting the importance of sleep for good health, especially “sueños nocturnos” [nocturnal/night sleeps] which are “los más principales y mejores” [the most important and the best] (88v). Likewise, he cautioned his readers about the risks of excessive wakefulness (“la demasiada vigilia”) which can gravely affect the body since “consume toda la humidad del cuerpo, y adelgaza grandemente las carnes, entristeze el alma, deshaze los spiritus, deslustra la hermosura del cuerpo, corrompe su color y resplandor, haze los ojos cóncavos, daña a la digestion, quita el entendimiento, enfria el cuerpo, y lo derriba de su natural complexion . . .” (90r; emphasis added) [it consumes all

202  José-Alberto Palma et al. the humidity of the body, and greatly slims down the flesh, saddens the soul, dissipates the spirits, tarnishes the beauty of the body, corrupts its color and radiance, makes the eyes concave, disrupts the digestion, takes away one’s understanding, cools down the body, and makes it lose its natural complexion]. This definition resonates with the physical description the narrator makes of Alonso Quijano/Don Quixote at the beginning of the novel, 24 with Don Quixote’s self-dubbing in chapter 19 of Part I as the “Caballero de la Triste Figura” [The Knight of the Sad/ Sorrowful Face], and of course with Don Quixote’s alleged “madness” or his affected entendimiento [understanding/judgment], which as we know is due to too much reading and especially too little sleep. The symbiosis that exists between Álvarez de Miraval’s vision about sleep and its physiological underpinnings and Cervantes’s literary manifestations suggests that either Cervantes knew the doctor’s work or the latter is a paradigmatic work that illustrates the typical medical knowledge of the time. In the next pages, we will further explore other neurologic signs and symptoms that appear in Don Quijote supporting our hypothesis that Cervantes possessed a wide and source-diverse understanding of neurological disorders, which included, importantly, firsthand knowledge, extracted from direct observation.

Epilepsy and Seizures Seizures in Don Quijote: Accuracy of Their Descriptions In Don Quijote, one can find several instances of seizures being described with great accuracy. For example, in chapter 23 of Part I there is a brilliant description of an absence or “petit mal” seizure25 (a brief, sudden lapse of consciousness accompanied by a series of facial symptoms) in the story of Cardenio, a young man who went mad when he found out that his beloved Luscinda was going to marry another man (or so he thought) and who, broken-hearted, retired to the mountains of the Sierra Morena to live alone: . . . estando en lo mejor de su plática, paró y enmudeciose; clavó los ojos en el suelo por un buen espacio . . . con no poca lástima de verlo, porque por lo que hacía de abrir los ojos, estar fijo mirando al suelo sin mover pestaña gran rato, y otras veces cerrarlos, apretando los labios y enarcando las cejas, fácilmente conocimos que algún accidente de locura le había sobrevenido. Mas él nos dio a entender presto ser verdad lo que pensábamos, porque se levantó con gran furia del suelo, donde se había echado . . . (I.23.219–220; emphasis added) . . . when he got to the best part of his speech, he stopped and became silent, he fixed his eyes on the ground for some time . . .

Neurological Disorders  203 and very sorry to see him like that, opening his eyes, staring at the ground with eyes wide open without moving an eyelash for a while, and other times closing them, compressing his lips and arching his eyebrows, we could see clearly that a fit of madness of some kind had come upon him. However, he quickly let us know that what we were thinking was true, for he arose in a great fury from the ground where he had thrown himself . . . In the medical literature, “absence seizures” are characterized by “staring episodes” or subtle facial movements such as “fluttering eyelids” or “lip smacking.” These symptoms echo those of the story of Cardenio (i.e., staring and blinking). And although the movement of the mouth does not corroborate fully (compressing vs. smacking lips), the lips are identified as one of the parts of the face whose movement can signal an absence seizure. Additionally, the fact that those who were listening to him thought that “algún accidente de locura le había sobrevenido” [a fit of madness of some kind had come upon him] means that what was happening was something beyond being merely “absent minded” or beyond the literary trope of the sudden fainting. Further on, Cardenio depicts what can be viewed (or “reread”) as a seizure with loss of consciousness26: Yo quedé a pie, rendido de la naturaleza, traspasado de hambre, sin tener ni pensar buscar quien me socorriese. De aquella manera estuve no sé qué tiempo, tendido en el suelo, al cabo del cual me levanté sin hambre y hallé junto a mí a unos cabreros, que sin duda debieron ser los que mi necesidad remediaron, porque ellos me dijeron de la manera que me habían hallado, y cómo estaba diciendo tantos disparates y desatinos, que daba indicios claros de haber perdido el juicio; y yo he sentido en mí después acá que no todas veces le tengo cabal, sino tan desmedrado y flaco, que hago mil locuras, rasgándome los vestidos, dando voces por estas soledades, maldiciendo mi ventura y repitiendo en vano el nombre amado de mi enemiga, sin tener otro discurso ni intento entonces que procurar acabar la vida voceando; y cuando en mí vuelvo me hallo tan cansado y molido, que apenas puedo moverme. (I.27.272; emphasis added) I found myself on foot, surrendered to nature, pierced with hunger, without even thinking about looking for someone to help me. In that way I stayed there not sure how long, lying on the ground, after which I got up without hunger and found some goatherds next to me, who surely must have been those who remedied my need, because they told me about how they had found me, and how I was saying so many foolish things and nonsense, that gave clear indications of having lost my mind; and I have felt in me afterwards that not all the time do I have it level-headed, but so disheveled and weak

204  José-Alberto Palma et al. that I engage in a thousand follies, tearing my clothes, shouting in these solitary places, cursing my fortune and repeating in vain the beloved name of my enemy, without having any other purpose or motive but to end my life crying; and when I recover my senses, I’m so tired and exhausted that I can barely move. 27 In the first part of the recounting of what happened, Cardenio lost consciousness (“tendido en el suelo”). His appetite changed too. Upon waking up, he was no longer hungry and could not remember what had happened. And during his seizure, he was picking at his clothes (“rasgándome los vestidos”) and his mood changed (“dando voces”). The correspondence of the symptoms in this episode is again compelling, and these correlations lead us to think that Cervantes had a certain familiarity with the typical symptoms of this type of seizure. Source of Cervantes’s Knowledge of the Symptomology: Firsthand We hypothesize that the accuracy of Cervantes’s descriptions of seizures must have been purely based on firsthand observations, since the science of the time was not advanced enough as to the symptomology of seizures or epilepsy; the latter corresponding in the premodern period to both the attack (or seizure) and the disease (see below for a brief survey of the science of epilepsy then). In sum, his knowledge could not have been based on medical treatises, since the symptomology described by his contemporaries was not as precise. To them, a person having a seizure was a person falling on the ground for no apparent reason and convulsing from head to toe. For example, Lobera de Ávila, in his Remedio de cuerpos humanos [Remedy of Human Bodies] (1542), indicates that epilepsy is a “enfermedad que haze caer el hombre en tierra” (31v) [disease that makes man fall on the ground] and further adds that it is a “spasmo universal de todo el cuerpo” (32r) [universal spasm of the entire body]. In all likelihood, Cervantes observed epileptics in a hospital, perhaps in Seville (see Alonso-Fernández) or elsewhere (Valladolid or Madrid), to be able to portray the symptoms with such accuracy. Contextualizing Epilepsy and Seizures Although we are arguing that Cervantes had an interest in (and access to) the medicine of his time, Don Quijote should not be seen as a treatise fictionalizing the latest discoveries. Nevertheless, his work is also a reflection of the thinking of the epoch. For instance, in the episode of Sancho’s governorship (of the “Isla Barataria”) in Part II, one can read the description of a typical seizure (e.g., loss of muscle control leading to sudden collapse, uncontrollable jerking movements), that of an epileptic

Neurological Disorders  205 boy whose father is making a request to the governor (Sancho) to receive a sum of money for his son’s dowry. Besides the description of the seizure (i.e., “aporrearse” and “darse de puñadas” [beating and punching himself]), whose frequency (three or four times per day) lead us to conclude that the boy suffers from epilepsy, what stands out in this passage is the reference to the popular belief, at the time, that when someone had a seizure, they were “endemoniados” [possessed] and tormented by the “malignos espíritus” [evil spirits]: . . . mi hijo es endemoniado, y no hay día que tres o cuatro veces no le atormenten los malignos espíritus, y de haber caído una vez en el fuego tiene el rostro arrugado como pergamino y los ojos algo llorosos y manantiales; pero tiene una condición de un ángel, y si no es que se aporrea y se da de puñadas él mismo a sí mismo, fuera un bendito. (II.47.907) My son is possessed by the devil, and there is not a day that goes by that the evil spirits don’t torment him three or four times, and because he once fell into the fire, his face is all wrinkled like a parchment and his eyes are somewhat teary and runny; but he has the disposition of an angel, and if it weren’t for the fact that he beats and punches himself, he’d be a saint. Hippocrates had called epilepsy the sacred disease (“morbus sacer”) because it was perceived as supernatural and sacred but in the popular culture (as well as in the scientific realm at times) of the early modern period its association tended to be more with the devil (“endemoniado”), as seen above. Agustín G. de Amezúa in his prologue to Fray Martín de Castañega’s Tratado de las supersticiones y hechicerías [Treaty on Superstitions and Sorceries] (1529) writes that “Creíase . . . en su tiempo que los epilépticos, neurasténicos, histéricos y otros pacientes aquejados de dolencias nerviosas lo estaban por influencia y acción diabólicas . . .” (xiv) [It was believed . . . in his time that epileptics, neurasthenics, hysterics and other patients afflicted with nervous ailments were ill due to diabolical influence and action]. As an illustration of the position of the medicine of the epoch (in a chapter on the “Causas y señales de la gota coral” [The Causes and Signs of Epilepsy]), Lobera de Ávila, physician of the Emperor Charles V, writes in his Remedio that Azaravio . . . dize que esta enfermedad muchas vezes es causa de demonio . . . y dize que el no sabia la causa desta enfermedad hasta que leyendo en ciertos libros de un antiguo: donde dezia que las enfermedades vienen a los hombres en quatro maneras: O por mal regimiento en comer y beber, o por los pecados, o por las prevaricaciones, o por causa de los malditos demonios. (32v–33r; emphasis added)

206  José-Alberto Palma et al. Azavario . . . says that this disease is often due to the devil . . . and says that he did not know the cause of this disease until reading in certain books of an ancient where he said that diseases come to men in four ways: due to bad eating and drinking habits, or due to sins, or due to delinquent behavior, or due to the wicked demons. He continues: “Pero ha se de advertir que esta enfermedad como singularmente dize Paulo Gineta más vezes viene por causa apropriada y essencial al cerebro” (33r; emphasis added) [But it should be noted that this disease, as Paulo Gineta singularly says, more often occurs as a result of a cause typical of and essential to the brain]. Lobera de Ávila’s position in this passage is akin to that of Antonio Ponce de Santa Cruz who will dedicate much of his reflections in Praelectiones Vallisoletanae (1631)28 — the first extensive Spanish treatise on epilepsy29 —to the natural origin of the disease, a return to a Hippocratic view on the etiology of epilepsy, away from the magic and the devil which prevailed in the Middle Ages (García-Albea 103). Ponce de Santa Cruz was perhaps more inclined to abandon dogma than his counterparts. As Robert A. Gross argues, in “A Brief History of Epilepsy and Its Therapy in the Western Hemisphere,” in the Renaissance “physicians were more eager . . . to rely more on observation than dogma,” but they were also “reluctant to abandon the idea of evil or demonic possession” (69–70). For Gross, the doctor’s task was then “to determine whether a seizure was due only to epilepsy (i.e., to uterine vapors, excess phlegm or black bile), or whether lunacy30 or demonic possession was the true etiology” (70).31 However, the reality is that at the time the views on epilepsy were changing in the medical community and in the society at large, and the fact that the dogmatic view was put in Don Quijote in the mouth of the epileptic boy’s father, “uneducated” and coming across as ignorant and not worthy of our sympathy in the passage, suggests that Cervantes was likely rejecting said dogmatic explanation. In sum, while Cervantes is acknowledging (possibly mocking) the “dogmatic” understanding of epileptic attacks still prevalent in his epoch (via the father of the “endemoniado”), one must note the accuracy of the description of their manifestation, which both ushers in the nascent scientific ethos of the early modern period and strikes the neurological experts of today for their precision. What on the surface of things appears to be mere literary tropes to adorn the text, advance the plot, and add suspense to the story may conceal another level of interpretation where observation prevails over dogma.

Tremors and Mercury There are in Cervantes’s work many references to tremulous conditions, mostly related to the emotion of fear.32 In other instances, tremors are related to the feeling of anxiety. Although references to trembling

Neurological Disorders  207 (“temblar”) or temblors (“temblores”) cannot be distinctive factors of the literature of the time, throughout Don Quijote there are some curious mentions of mercury-induced tremor33 (“temblar como azogado”), for example, in these two passages: “Levantado, pues, en pie don Quijote, temblando de los pies a la cabeza como azogado, con presurosa y turbada lengua dijo” (II.32.792; emphasis added) [Don Quixote, then, having risen to his feet, trembling from head to toe like a man poisoned/ doused with mercury, spoke in a quick and agitated voice] and “A cuya vista Sancho comenzó a temblar como un azogado, y los cabellos de la cabeza se le erizaron a don Quijote . . .” (I.19.167; emphasis added) [At which spectacle Sancho began to tremble like a man poisoned with mercury, and Don Quixote’s hair stood on end]. “Azogado,” literally mercury poisoned or covered with mercury, is often used at the time in the expression “temblar como azogado” [trembling like a man poisoned with mercury] (several instances of the expression can be found in the “Corpus del Nuevo Diccionario Histórico del Español”). In a metaphorical sense and referring to a person, it sometimes means “restless” or “fidgety” (“Azogado”).34 Considering that mercury can induce tremors and can be the cause of the symptoms of epilepsy, 35 could this seemingly innocuous reference to mercury poisoning reveal something about Cervantes’s familiarity with neurological disorders? During Cervantes’s time, it was a well-known fact that mercury was toxic. Sebastián de Covarrubias, for instance, writes in the entry on “azogue” [mercury]: “Los que andan en las minas del azogue, viven muy poco” (9r) [Those who work in mercury mines don’t live long]. We may ponder if Cervantes’s familiarity with mercury did go beyond this vox populi knowledge. Several scholars have made this claim.36 The accuracy of Cervantes’s descriptions of symptoms of epileptic behaviors, seizures, and tremors leads us to think that he may indeed have been in contact with people who were mercury poisoned. Harold López Méndez, in his “Glosario de términos médicos mencionados en el Quijote” [Glossary of Medical Terms Mentioned in Don Quijote], corroborates the link between mercury poisoning and its description in Don Quijote: “En las frases del Quijote: ‘temblando de los pies a la cabeza,’ ‘tienen y atan las manos’ y ‘hablan con presurosa y turbada lengua,’ se hace referencia a las contracciones y espasmos de los intoxicados por el azogue” (208) [In the following Don Quijote phrases: “trembling from head to toe,” “they hold and tie the hands,” and “he spoke in a quick and agitated voice,” reference is made to the contractions and spasms of those poisoned with mercury]. He follows up by reminding us that Cervantes “sufrió prisión en la cárcel de Almadén, cuando se vio complicado en un asunto financiero en Sevilla” [was jailed at the Almadén prison, when he became embroiled in a financial dispute in Seville], and for this reason, he may have known in depth “los síntomas y los resultados de la enfermedad” [symptoms and results of the

208  José-Alberto Palma et al. disease] (208) since the jail was composed of criminals forced to work the mercury mines of Almadén. In an earlier publication, López-Méndez also states that Cervantes may have visited the mines of Almadén on several occasions to raise funds for the Armada invencible [Spanish Armada] (La medicina 36). Additionally, according to Konstantin Mierau there may have been another connection between Cervantes and the workers of the mines of Almadén, via Mateo Alemán, who, besides being the famed Golden Age writer of the picaresque novel Guzmán de Alfarache (1599), penned a report (the “informe secreto” [secret report]37) on the working conditions in the mines. It is not clear whether Cervantes read the informe or not, but being contemporaries and possibly in similar literary circles, it is possible that he came in contact with what the report contained and the descriptions of the epileptic attacks. Mierau explains that Es difícil probar, a ciencia cierta, que los dos discutieron el caso, o que Cervantes hubiese visto el informe. La desaparición del informe no implica, ni mucho menos, que no se conociera el proyecto de Mateo Alemán en los círculos de los escritores y los arbitristas madrileños—a los cuales se asociaron Cervantes y Alemán y entre los cuales, muy probablemente, se reconociera una posible alusión al informe de Alemán en el Quijote. (362) It is difficult to prove, for sure, that the two discussed the case, or that Cervantes had seen the informe. The disappearance of the informe in no way implies that Mateo Alemán’s project was not known in Madrid’s circles of writers and arbiters—with which Cervantes and Alemán associated and among which a possible reference in Don Quijote to Alemán’s informe was, most probably, accepted. Mierau, and others, have also highlighted striking similarities between the informe and the episode of the galeotes in chapter XXII of Don Quijote, Part I. As he argues, because of the difficulties of finding people able and willing to work at the mines, it was decided to hire galley slaves and Alemán himself oversaw their transport, hence the accuracy of the descriptions in his text as well as in Don Quijote. The evidence of Cervantes’s presence in Almadén (in its jail or as a traveling tax collector) or of his acquaintance with people who were mercury poisoned (whether firsthand or secondhand via Alemán’s Informe) may be inconclusive, but mercury and the symptomology of mercury poisoning appear with a certain frequency in his work. López-Muñoz, Álamo, and García-García, in their study of Cervantine texts from a toxicological perspective, discovered that mercury (azogue) is the only mineral mentioned in Don Quijote as well as in several of his comedias [plays] and entremeses [interludes] and in one exemplary novel.38 In these texts, azogue is

Neurological Disorders  209 associated with being unusually energetic, often while dancing (in “Pedro de Urdemalas,” “La entretenida” [The Diversion], “El retablo de las maravillas” [The Marvelous Puppet Show], “El rufián viudo” [The Scoundrel Widow], and “La ilustre fregona” [The Illustrious Scullery-maid]39), with being indefatigable in reference to horses or donkeys—whose speed could only be explained because somebody had injected azogue [mercury] into their “oídos” [ear]—(in “La ilustre fregona” and Don Quijote, Part I [twice]), with being relentless (in “El laberinto de amor” [The Labyrinth of Love]), and with being especially alert (in Don Quijote, Part II). Together with the three references to azogado (in Don Quijote, Parts I and II and in El licenciado Vidriera [The Licentiate Vidriera]), that’s thirteen mercury-related references in total, which compared to López de Úbeda’s five references to azogue and/or azogado (in the Pícara Justina [The Spanish Jilt]), to Lope de Vega’s four references, to Quevedo’s three references,40 and even to Mateo Alemán’s three references, it does reveal mercury’s relative importance in Cervantes’s craft and mind. Qualitatively speaking, it must also be noted that every single one of these references in Cervantes’s texts alludes to the physiological or mental impact that this metal had on people. For some of the other authors above, the reference to mercury is sometimes to the metal only. Moreover, among early modern literary authors, Cervantes seems to be the only one to follow up with (or provide) a brief description of what being “azogado” entails (i.e., “con presurosa y turbada lengua”).41 For these reasons, Cervantes’s observation of the ravages of mercury poisoning likely constitutes a source of inspiration in the crafting of his stories. Perhaps, “temblar como azogado” was, to Cervantes, not a trite but a meaningful expression that could be read on a more literal level, that is, being poisoned with mercury, thus leading us to ponder if this firsthand experience can explain the accuracy of the epileptic attacks described in the passages analyzed earlier.

Conclusion While Cervantes’s medical knowledge and how it transpires in his work has been a frequent object of study among scholars, scientists, and physicians, the neurological knowledge encapsulated in the text and exhibited by the author is an understudied subtopic. In this chapter, one of our goals has been, therefore, to focus more specifically on the portrayal of neurological disorders in the novel, highlighting the possible links to the scientific knowledge of the time.42 One can only be struck by the extent of Cervantes’s familiarity with mental/neurological disorders and by the fact that his descriptions of symptoms are extremely accurate. In the scholarship on Cervantes’s alleged scientific knowledge, the focus has often revolved around (1) textual relations (e.g., treatises of prominent thinkers of the time, such as Huarte), (2) his acquaintance with renowned thinkers of the era, and sometimes (3) his family ties (many

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members of his family were part of the medical profession). However, beyond the accuracy of the descriptions of neurological conditions (an important fact in itself), it is crucial to consider his possible firsthand experience with people who suffered these ailments. This experience, coupled with his keen and “clinical” eye, translated into a wide spectrum of symptomatic descriptions of neurological afflictions that, rather than merely being in line with the science of the era, described the reality that he saw himself. This explains the psychologists and scientists’ insistence on studying Don Quijote—as illustrated in the preamble to this study— and in highlighting its relevance as a medical literary “source” today.

Notes 1 All citations from Don Quijote are from the edition by Rico and refer to part, chapter, and page. Unless otherwise noted, the translations are the editors’. 2 See, among others, García Barreno. 3 See, for example, Ife. 4 About Don Quijote’s verisimilitude and the rise of novelistic discourse, see Shuger 2. 5 “Brain” is a term widely used at the time. 6 See Villechauvaix (especially pp. 12–30). 7 It must be noted that many doctors have highlighted Cervantes’s medical knowledge. See, among many others, Montes-Santiago; Villamil Cajoto and Villacián Vicedo. 8 Barber surgeons, of lower rank than physicians, gave enemas, applied cups, sold unguents, and pulled teeth. 9 See López-Muñoz, Álamo, and García-García, “Locos y dementes.” 10 For more details on pica in Don Quijote, see Larraín. 11 The only other literary author to reference this condition is Quevedo. In a search for “yeso” [plaster] in CORDE (for the 1550–1620 period), only Cervantes and Quevedo (and Huarte) used it in association with tierra [soil] or barro [clay]. In Capitulaciones matrimoniales (1611), Quevedo wrote: “. . . que coma barro y yeso y otras cosas dañosas . . .” (468–469; emphasis added) [that she eats mud, plaster and other harmful things]. NB: CORDE stands for Corpus Diacrónico del Español [Diachronic Corpus of Spanish] is a database of Spanish texts of various types (literary, scientific, legal, historical, religious, etc.) emanating from the four corners of the Hispanic world. It is hosted by the Real Academia Española [Royal Spanish Academy]. 12 See Alonso-Fernández. 13 See López-Muñoz, Álamo, and García-García, “Locos y dementes.” 14 Allegedly it is the first treatise on urology published in Spain and beyond. For more details on this treatise and its significance, see Bush and Bush. 15 For more details on this treatise and its significance, see García-Albea. 16 Readers of Don Quijote will remember, for example, the episode of the escrutinio of Don Quixote’s library (in Part I, chapter 6), in which the barber and the priest critique the hidalgo’s collection of books. Examples of such direct references to books abound in Cervantes’s works, and in particular in the “Canto de Calíope” and the Viaje del Parnaso [Voyage to Parnassus] that mention 100 and 150 authors, respectively.

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17 This list also includes the books that he actually owned, that is, the books that his father, it is assumed, bequeathed to him as well as the ones he purchased at an auction (for which there is documented evidence). See Eisenberg. 18 See Eisenberg 283–284. 19 See, for example, Orobitg, this volume. 20 See López-Muñoz, Álamo, and García-García, “Than All the Herbs”; López-Muñoz and Álamo, this volume. 21 See, among many others, Iriarte; Orobitg, this volume; Salillas. 22 See Jaén, “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas”; Jaén, “Cervantes and Human Development”; Jaén, this volume. 23 For more details on Álvarez de Miraval’s work and significance, see Granjel. 24 “Era de complexión recia, seco de carnes, enjuto de rostro . . .” (I.1.28) [(He) was of sturdy constitution, lean-bodied, thin-faced]. 25 During episodes of absence seizure, a person may “stop walking and start again a few seconds later; stop talking in mid-sentence and start again a few seconds later” and the person usually does not fall. Additionally, “specific symptoms of typical absence seizures may include: changes in muscle activity, such as no movement, hand fumbling, fluttering eyelids, lip smacking, chewing; changes in alertness (consciousness), such as staring episodes, lack of awareness of surroundings, sudden halt in movement, talking, and other awake activities” (“Absence seizure”; emphasis added). 26 According to MedlinePlus, “specific symptoms depend on which part of the brain is involved. Symptoms occur suddenly and may include: brief blackout followed by a period of confusion (the person cannot remember for a short time); changes in behavior, such as picking at one’s clothing; drooling or frothing at the mouth; eye movements; grunting and snorting; loss of bladder or bowel control; mood changes, such as sudden anger, unexplainable fear, panic, joy, or laughter; shaking of the entire body; sudden falling; tasting a bitter or metallic flavor; teeth clenching; temporary stop in breathing; uncontrollable muscle spasms with twitching and jerking limbs. Symptoms may stop after a few seconds or minutes, or continue for up to 15 minutes. They rarely continue longer” (“Seizures”; emphasis added). 27 According to Aristotelian theories, the heart was supposed to be the seat of emotions, and when these emotions were disturbed, the changes of the cardiac rhythm could reach the arms and the hands, giving rise to tremor. This conception was supported by several authors, including Juan de Barrios (1563–1646), who explained in chapter 34 (entitled About Palpitations, Tremors and Heart Problems) of his work Verdadera medicina, cirugía y astrología [True Medicine, Surgery and Astrology], published in Mexico in 1607, that “diferenciase la palpitacion de el coraçon a el tremor por que la palpitacion se puede hazer en casi que en todas las partes [del cuerpo]” (92v) [the palpitation of the heart and tremor can be differentiated in that the palpitation of the heart can arise in almost any part (of the body)]. A similar view can be found in Quaestiones practicae, medicae et chirurgicae (1589) by Agustín Vázquez, Chair of Medicine in the University of Salamanca. 28 Although it was published in 1631, Cervantes may have been aware of some of the ideas it contains early on. A clinical case study described in the book (that of the “glass delusion”) was fictionalized in Cervantes’s El licenciado Vidriera (García-Albea 101n2). 29 For more details, see García-Albea. 30 We should point out in passing that according to Gross “certain planets were said to be associated with epileptic states, including Saturn, Mars and the moon” (69). As an illustration of this view of the epoch, Lobera de Ávila again informs us that epileptic attacks can appear for some people “en

212 José-Alberto Palma et al. el crescimiento de luna” [when the moon is waxing] and for others “en el menguante de la luna” [when the moon is waning], which is why “muchos llamaron a la gota coral lunacion: que es enfermedad que acomete en ciertos tiempos y disposicion de la luna, y a los epilepticos llaman lunaticos” [many called the epilepsy lunacy, as it is a disease that strikes during certain times and phases of the moon, hence epileptics are called lunatics] (32r). 31 Generally speaking, Gross notes that Advances were made, however, which looked forward to a more modern practice of medicine. Preceding trauma was widely recognized as a cause of seizures, and descriptions exist of operations which cured seizures, including evacuation of pus from a head wound and skull trephination to remove a depressed skull fracture. It was recognized that epilepsy might be inherited, or associated with other diseases, including syphilis, ergotism and measles. These observations resulted in the important distinction that epilepsy (or, rather, seizures) could be a symptom of other diseases. (70; emphasis in original) 32 See, for example, the following passages: “. . . estaba yo colgado de sus palabras, temblándome las piernas, de manera que apenas podía sostenerme” (I.27.267) [I was hanging on his words, and my legs were trembling so much that I could barely stand] and “. . . pero, apenas hubo oído dos versos que el que cantaba iba prosiguiendo, cuando le tomó un temblor tan extraño como si de algún grave accidente de cuartana estuviera enferma . . .” (I.43.447) [but, she had barely heard two verses from the singer when a strange tremor struck her as if she was suffering from some sort of serious quartan fever]. 33 Mercury was first used in the sixteenth century to treat syphilis, giving rise to the saying: “One night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury.” Mercury could be administered in the form of calomel (mercury chloride), an ointment, a steam bath, or a pill. Unfortunately, the side effects were as painful and terrifying as the disease itself. Many patients who underwent mercury treatments suffered from extensive tooth loss, ulcerations, and neurological damage (including seizures and tremors). The use of mercury therapy continued until the first effective treatment, Salvarsan, was developed in 1910 by the immunologist Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915) (Dayan and Ooi). 34 Additionally, in a search in CORDE for the term “azogado” for the 1400– 1620 period in literary texts, several instances of “temblar como azogado” can be found in, for example, Alfonso Martínez de Toledo’s Arcipreste de Talavera (1438) and Fernando de Rojas’s Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (1499–1502), among a few others. 35 For instance, in a 1938 study on mercury poisoning, Neal explains that “Mercury taken into the body in the form of vapor circulates as such, or in other combinations, and gives rise to the nervous symptoms, tremor, spasms, erethism, and also to emaciation and cachexia” (911). See also Bernhoft. 36 See López-Méndez, “Glosario”; López-Méndez, La medicina; Mierau. 37 See Bleiberg. 38 See Table 4 of López-Muñoz, Álamo, and García-García, “Tósigos” 129. 39 Not mentioned in López-Muñoz, Álamo, and García-García’s study. 40 In a search in CORDE for the terms “azogue” and “azogado” for the 1400–1620 period in literary texts. 41 See CORDE search for “azogado” mentioned in an earlier footnote, at the beginning of this section. 42 See also Palma and Palma.

Neurological Disorders  213

Works Cited “Absence seizure.” Medical Encyclopedia. MedlinePlus, reviewed on 27 Feb. 2018. Web. 19 Jan. 2020. . Alonso-Fernández, F. “Dos especies psicopatológicas: Don Quijote y el Licenciado Vidriera.” Torre de los Lujanes: Boletín de la Real Sociedad Económica Matritense de Amigos del País 56 (2005): 45–64. Álvarez de Miraval, Blas. La conservación de la salud del cuerpo y del alma. Salamanca: Casa de Andrés Renaut, 1601. Amezúa, Agustín G. de. Prologue. Tratado de las supersticiones y hechicerías. By Fray Martín de Castañega. Madrid: Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1946. v–xix. “Azogado.” Diccionario de Autoridades—Tomo I [1726]. Real Academia Española, versión 1.1. Web. 23 Jan. 2020. Barrios, Juan de. Verdadera medicina, cirugia, y astrologia: En tres libros dividida. Mexico, 1607. Bernhoft, Robin A. “Mercury Toxicity and Treatment: A Review of the Literature.” Journal of Environmental and Public Health 2012 (2012): N.p. Web. . Bleiberg, Germán. El “Informe secreto” de Mateo Alemán sobre el trabajo forzoso en las minas de Almadén. London: Tamesis Books, 1985. Bush, Ronnie Beth, and Irving Marvin Bush. Francisco Diaz and the World of Sixteenth Century Urology. Northridge: Riker Laboratories, 1970. Canavaggio, Jean. Cervantes. Trans. from the French by J. R. Jones. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Ed. Francisco Rico. Madrid: Punto de lectura, 2011. “CORDE (Corpus Diacrónico del Español [Diachronic Corpus of Spanish]).” Real Academia Española. Web. 29 Dec. 2020. . “Corpus del Nuevo Diccionario Histórico del Español [Corpus of the New Historical Spanish Dictionary] (CDH).” Instituto de Investigación Rafael Lapesa de la Real Academia Española, versión 3.1. Web. 22 Jan. 2020. . Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de. Parte primera del tesoro de la lengua castellana, o española. Madrid: Melchor Sánchez, 1674. Dayan, Linda, and Catriona Ooi. “Syphilis Treatment: Old and New.” Expert Opinion on Pharmacotherapy 6.13 (2005): 2271–2280. . Eisenberg, Daniel. “La biblioteca de Cervantes.” Studia in honorem prof. M. de Riquer II. Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1987. 271–328. García-Albea, E. “Praelectiones Vallisoletanae (1631) de Antonio Ponce de Santa Cruz, el primer gran tratado español sobre la epilepsia.” Revista de Neurología 26.149 (1998): 101–105. . García Barreno, Pedro R. “La medicina en El Quijote y en su entorno.” La ciencia y El Quijote. Ed. Juan Manuel Sánchez Ron. Barcelona: Crítica, 2005. 155–179. Granjel, Luis S. “La obra de Álvarez de Miraval.” Clínica y Laboratorio 53 (1957): 271–286.

214  José-Alberto Palma et al. Gross, Robert A. “A Brief History of Epilepsy and Its Therapy in the Western Hemisphere.” Epilepsy Research 12.2 (1992): 65–74. . Huarte de San Juan, Juan. Examen de ingenios para las ciencias. Ed. Guillermo Serés. Madrid: Cátedra, 1989. Ife, Barry. “Sickness and Health in the Work of Cervantes.” Clinical Medicine (London) 7.6 (2007): 608–610. . Iriarte, M. de. El doctor Huarte de San Juan y su Examen de ingenios: Contribución a la historia de la psicología diferencial. 3rd ed. Madrid: CSIC, 1948. Jaén, Isabel. “Cervantes and the Cognitive Ideas of his Time: Mind and ­Development in Don Quixote.” Cognitive Cervantes. Ed. Julien Simon, ­Barbara Simerka, and Howard Mancing. Spec. cluster of essays of Cervantes: ­Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 32.1 (2012): 71–98. . Jaén, Isabel. “Cervantes on Human Development: Don Quixote and Renaissance Cognitive Psychology.” Don Quixote: Interdisciplinary Connections. Ed. Matthew D. Warshawsky and James A. Parr. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2013. 35–57. Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the English Poets. Ed. George Birkbeck Hill. Vol. 2. London: Oxford/Clarendon P, 1905. Larraín, Camilo. “Pica en Don Quijote.” Revista Médica de Chile 133 (2005): 609–611. . Lobera de Ávila, Luis. Remedio de cuerpos humanos y silva de exp[er]iencias y otras cosas utilissimas. Alcalá de Henares: Casa de Joan Brocar, 1542. López-Méndez, Harold. “Glosario de términos médicos mencionados en el ­Q uijote [1969].” Panace@ 6.21–22 (2005): 205–236. López-Méndez, Harold. La medicina en el Quijote. Madrid: Editorial Quevedo, 1969. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “Locos y dementes en la literatura cervantina: A propósito de las fuentes médicas de Cervantes en materia neuropsiquiátrica.” Revista de Neurología 46 (2008): 489–501. . López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “‘Than All the Herbs Described by Dioscorides. . .’: The Trace of Andrés Laguna in the Works of Cervantes.” Pharmacy in History 49.3 (2007): 87–108. López-Muñoz, Francisco, Cecilio Álamo, and Pilar García-García. “Tósigos y antídotos en la literatura cervantina: Sobre los venenos en la España tardo­ rrenacentista.” Revista de Toxicología 28.2 (2011): 119–134. Mierau, Konstantin. “Entrevistas de galeotes: Cervantes, Alemán y la m ­ icrohistoria de los marginados.” Neophilologus 100 (2016): 357–371. . Montes-Santiago, Julio. “Miguel de Cervantes: Saberes médicos, enfermedades y muerte.” Anales de Medicina Interna (Madrid) 22.6 (2005): 293–297. Murray, T. Jock. “Read Any Good Books Lately?” McGill Journal of Medicine 12.1 (2009): 90–91. Neal, Paul A. “Mercury Poisoning from the Public Health Viewpoint.” American Journal of Public Health and the Nation’s Health 28.8 (1938): 907–915. .

Neurological Disorders  215 Palma, Jose-Alberto, and Fermín Palma. “Neurology and Don Quixote.” European Neurology 68.4 (2012): 247–257. . Quevedo, Francisco de. Capitulaciones matrimoniales. Obras de Don Francisco de Quevedo Villegas. Ed. Don Aureliano Fernández-Guerra y Orbe. Madrid: Imprenta y Estereotipía de M. Rivadeneyra, 1852. 467–469. Rojo Vega, Anastasio. “Las enfermedades de los años de Cervantes (II).” Re vista española de investigaciones quirúrgicas 19.4 (2016): 183–189. Salillas, Rafael. Un gran inspirador de Cervantes: El doctor Juan Huarte y su Examen de ingenios. Madrid: Victoriano Suarez, 1905. “Seizures.” Medical Encyclopedia. MedlinePlus, reviewed on 27 Feb. 2018. Web. 19 Jan. 2020. . Shuger, Dale. Don Quixote in the Archives: Madness and Literature in Early Modern Spain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012. Simon, Julien Jacques. “Contextualizing Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016. 13–33. . Villamil Cajoto, Iago, and María José Villacián Vicedo. “Cervantes, El Quijote y la medicina.” Revista Médica de Chile 133 (2005): 1258–1260. . Villechauvaix, J. Cervantes: Malade et médecin [Cervantes: Patient and doctor]. Diss. Faculté de médecine de Paris, 1898.

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Aesop 62–63, 79, 94 affects see emotion; passions Agustí, Miquel 85–87, 94, 106 Alfonso, Pedro 52, 62–63, 67 Álvarez de Miraval, Blas: and memory 120–121, 123–125, 134n19; and sleep deprivation 201–202 animals: dogs 11–12, 34, 38, 80–83, 130; in fables 79–80; as a feast for humans 90–91; horses 34, 80, 83, 85–87, 129–130; vs. humans 14, 21n27, 27–29, 33–34, 37–38, 56, 78–79, 90, 95, 96n13, 128–130; mechanistic view of 10–12, 83–85; monkeys 11–12, 38, 89–90, 130; and pain 85, 91, 94, 96n8; pigs 84–86, 90, 96n7; sheep 106–107; see also brute-to-human paradigm; goat animals in Cervantes’s work: dogs 90, 118–119, 123–124, 129–130; horses 93–94, 129, 209; lions 92–93; monkeys 90; Sancho’s donkey 39, 43, 94, 209; sheep 91 Antoniana Margarita (Pereira) 10–13, 20n8, 20n12, 79 Ariosto 64, 66 Aristotle 32, 43, 55–56, 60, 67, 78–79, 90, 125–129, 144, 148 Balsam of Fierabrás 171, 172, 175, 178, 191n32 Boiardo 64, 66 brain: in animals 38, 130; disorders 198–199, 206, 211n26; and Don Quixote 154–158, 160, 163n33, 198; and Ficino 149; and Huarte

16–19, 21n36, 31, 39, 107, 121–122, 145–146; and Laguna 178, 181, 183; and memory 119, 123–125; and mind xiii, 15, 198; and Pereira 10–13; and Sabuco 13–16, 34–35, 37; and Vives 58; see also cognition; mind brute-to-human paradigm 3, 28, 37, 44 Calderón de la Barca 28 El casamiento engañoso (Cervantes) 4, 118–119, 121, 129, 131–133, 134n22 Celestina (Rojas) 28, 46n7, 212n34 El celoso extremeño (Cervantes) 53, 62, 69n7, 172, 174, 176, 184, 188 Cervantes: and medical knowledge 4–5, 169, 198–202, 209, 210n7; and medical-philosophical ideas in his works 27–28, 40, 170, 197, 202, 209 Cervantes and brain disorders: seizures in Don Quijote 202–204; sources of knowledge 199–201, 204; tremors and mercury poisoning 206–209; see also epilepsy and seizures Cervantes and emotion 2–3, 37–45; and Cañizares 54, 59, 61, 63–66, 68; in Don Quijote 4, 90–91, 93–95; and Don Quixote 142–143, 156–157, 160–161; and Sancho 39–45; in El viejo zeloso 50–51, 62–63, 66–68; see also human development

218 Index Cervantes and human development 3, 27, 143; and characters 153; and emotion 37–45, 68; and Sancho 38–45 Cervantes and imagination: and Don Quixote 40, 98, 103–105, 110, 150, 152, 154–155, 158, 160, 163n33; and Sancho 40–41; in El viejo zeloso 54, 66–67 Cervantes and judgment or understanding: and El coloquio 130, 176; and Don Quixote 153– 154, 157, 202; and El licenciado Vidriera 183; and Sancho 39–40; and El viejo zeloso 62 Cervantes and melancholy 142, 151, 153, 159, 198; in Don Quijote 159–160; and Don Quixote 4, 44, 109, 142, 150–160, 163n33, 163n47; and Don Quixote’s delusion 152, 154; and Don Quixote’s disenchantment 156–157; and Don Quixote’s oratorical ability 153–154; and Don Quixote’s trajectory as a character 154–160; and imagination 150, 152, 154– 155, 158, 160, 163n33; and El licenciado 151 Cervantes and memory: in El casamiento and El coloquio 4, 118–119, 121, 125–126, 128–129, 131–133; and Don Quixote 154, 163n33; in Rinconete y Cortadillo 127–128; and Rocinante 94; and Sancho 40–41 Cervantes and mind-altering agents: and Laguna’s Dioscórides 4, 169–170, 173–175, 176–177, 188, 190–191n29, 200–201; and nontherapeutic uses of plants 171, 172, 173, 180–187; and therapeutic uses of plants 170–171, 172, 175, 178–180, 190n20; see also plants Cervantes and the mind’s creative processes: and the capricious mind 105–108; and errancy and literary innovation 108–113; and the evolving notion of imagination 98, 102–105; and ingenio as creative force 98–102, 113; see also goat; ingenio Cicero 71n26, 72n32; and ingenio 100; and memory 120, 125–126, 132; and Vives 60–61, 67, 71n25

cognition: ancient and medieval views 56–57, 60; in animals 3, 10, 38, 78–83, 87–89, 93–94; early modern views 54–55, 70n18, 70n19; and emotion 27, 35, 50–51, 54–56, 61, 65, 68, 160, 161n10; and Huarte 31, 38, 51; impact of age on 3, 54, 57–58, 68; and ingenio 99, 102; and Pereira 10, 12; and Vives 51, 56, 58, 61, 65, 78; see also animals; brain; emotion; mind cognitive approaches to literature xiii, 1–2, 27, 45n1, 51, 141, 163n49; and Cervantes 54, 70n13; and early modern Spanish literature xivnn4–5, 1, 142; and English studies xiii, 161n12; historizing xiv cognitive historicist approach (cognitive historicism) 2, 5, 5–6n5, 27, 45n1, 70n13; see also cognitive approaches to literature cognitive literary studies see cognitive approaches to literature El coloquio de los perros (Cervantes) 3–4, 90, 118–119, 125–126, 128, 131–133, 133n3, 134n22, 134–135n24, 174, 176, 180, 188, 190–191n29, 200 La conservación de la salud (Álvarez de Miraval) 134n19, 201 Covarrubias, Sebastián de see Tesoro de la lengua “El curioso impertinente” (Cervantes) 107, 199 De anima et vita (Vives) 29, 51, 57, 68, 69n3, 78, 145–146 De concordia (Vives) 45 De institutione feminae christianae (Vives) 3, 51, 60, 67 De materia medica (Dioscorides) 134n18, 170, 173–175, 189–190n18, 190n21 De officio mariti (Vives) 57 De tradendis disciplinis (Vives) 133n2 Descartes, René 2; and Pereira 10, 20n12–13, 79, 85, 95n2 Diccionario de Autoridades 108, 114nn14–15, 162n15, 191–192n43, 207 Dioscórides (Laguna): and censorship 190n24; and Cervantes 4–5, 134n18, 169, 173–175, 176–177, 187–188, 188–189n6, 190–191n29, 200; and

Index  219 De materia medica 170, 173–175; see also De materia medica emotion: ancient and early modern views 55, 61, 70n16, 211n27; and animals 3, 78–79, 83–84, 86–88, 90–91, 93–95; and the body 146; and cognition 27, 37, 54–55, 161n10; and early modern terminology 45n2, 55–56; and the effect of images on 67; and Huarte 31, 33, 58–59; and human development 2–3; and impact of age 3, 50, 54, 56–59, 68; and passions 70n14; and Pereira 79; and Sabuco 3, 16, 34–37, 39, 43, 79, 148, 156– 157, 162n24; and temperament 58–59; and Vives 29–31, 56–57, 61, 146–148, 158–159; see also Cervantes and emotion; fear; jealousy; passions epilepsy and seizures 202–209, 211nn25–26; and demonic possession 205–206; early modern views 204–206, 211n27, 211– 212n30; and mercury poisoning 198, 206–209; see also Cervantes and brain disorders La española inglesa (Cervantes) 175, 177, 185, 188 Examen de ingenios (Huarte): and censorship 21n36, 32; and chivalry books 152; and Don Quijote 19, 21n34, 98, 187, 201; impact of 16, 31, 143 faculties 38, 102, 119; in animals 79, 82, 93; in Cervantes’s work 37, 39–40, 44, 156, 160, 163n33; and Huarte 18, 31–33, 121–122, 145; and Sabuco 34–35, 37; and Vives 29, 31, 56–58, 61–62, 64, 70–71n21, 145; see also imagination; judgment or understanding; memory; senses fear: ancient models 55, 59, 71n26; and animals 87–88; early modern views 50; and melancholy 146, 151; and memory 123; and Sabuco 34, 40, 43; and Sancho 40–44, 93; and seizures 211n26; and tremor 206; and Vives 29–30, 51, 57, 59–61, 64–65, 67–68, 71n23, 72n33 Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo 87–89, 91, 95

Ficino, Marsilio 1, 69n6, 135n26, 148–150, 152, 162nn28–30; see also Three Books Galen 15, 18, 32, 39, 71n22, 71n24, 134n16 goat 84–85; and the capricious mind 105–108; and errancy and literary innovation 108–111; as a symbol of audacity and originality 98, 113; see also ingenio Hippocrates 32, 123, 134n16, 205 Huarte de San Juan, Juan: and brain 16–19, 21n36, 31, 39, 107, 121–122, 145–146; and Cervantes xiii, xivn6, 19, 21nn41–42; and cognition 31, 38, 51; and emotion 31, 33, 58–59; and faculties 18, 31–33, 121–122, 145; and human development 18, 31–33; and imagination 4, 18–19, 31, 98, 102–103, 121–122, 135n25, 144– 146; and ingenio 16–17, 100, 106, 111, 113, 144; and judgment or understanding 3, 16, 18–19, 21n36, 31–32, 39, 101, 121–122, 125n25, 145–146; and melancholy 122, 143–146, 152, 162n16, 162n21; and memory 18–19, 31, 122, 130, 135n25, 145–146; and passions 33, 38; see also Examen de ingenios human development 2–3, 27–28; and brute-to-human narratives 28; and Huarte 18, 31–33; and Sabuco 33–37; and Vives 29–31, 45; see also Cervantes and human development imagination (faculty): and adust melancholy 145, 152; early modern views 55, 102; and Huarte 4, 18–19, 31, 98, 102–103, 121–122, 135n25, 144–146; and López Pinciano 103; and Vives 3, 50, 56, 70–71n21, 145; see also Cervantes and imagination; Cervantes and the mind’s creative processes ingenio [wit]: and Cervantes 19, 113, 153; as creative force 98–102; goatlike vs. sheeplike 106–107; and Huarte 16–17, 100, 106, 111, 113, 144; see also Cervantes and the mind’s creative processes

220 Index jealousy: in Ariosto’s Orlando 64; in Boiardo’s Orlando 64, 66; in Los celos de Rodamonte (Lope) 64–66; in El celoso 53; and Sabuco 35; and Vives 51, 59–61, 65, 67, 69n7 Jiménez Patón, Bartolomé 118, 124, 133n2 judgment or understanding (faculty): and Álvarez de Miraval 202; and Aristotle 55, 129; early modern views 70n16, 71n22, 102, 119, 133–134n11; and Ficino 149; and Huarte 3, 16, 18–19, 21n36, 31–32, 39, 101, 121–122, 125n25, 145–146; and Laguna 178; and Pereira 10; and Sabuco 34, 37; and Vives 29–31, 56, 64–65, 67, 147; see also Cervantes and judgment or understanding Laguna, Andrés: biographical note on 189–190n18; and Cervantes 118, 175–188; and chicory 179–180; and hallucinogenic plants 180–182; and mandrake 183; and opium 184–185; and rhubarb 178–179; and rosemary 178; and toxic and poisonous plants 185–187; see also Dioscórides Lemnius 102, 162n29 Libro de la melancholia (Velásquez) 144 Libro de los secretos de agricultura (Agustí) 85, 106 El licenciado Vidriera (Cervantes) 175, 182–183, 188, 209, 211n28 Lobera de Ávila, Luis 161–162n14, 200, 204–206, 211–212n30 Lope de Vega 64, 66, 131, 174, 209 López Pinciano, Alonso 103, 133–134n11 madness: and altered states of consciousness 4, 181, 183, 185; and Cervantes 4–5, 198; in Don Quijote 108, 143, 188n4, 203; and Don Quixote 40, 104, 110, 113n10, 154, 202; and Huarte 122; and melancholy 149 Martínez de Espinar, Alonso 80–83, 94 Mejía, Pedro 118, 120–123, 133–134n11

melancholy: adust melancholy or atra bilis 144–147, 149–150, 152–155, 160, 162n16, 162n21, 163n46; ambivalence 141–142, 152; and the early modern thinker 148–150; and faculty psychology 145–146; and Ficino 148–150; and genius 110, 141–142, 148; and Huarte 122, 143–146, 152, 162n16, 162n21; humoral view of 16, 31, 34–35, 123, 143–145, 162n15; and imagination 145, 152; and the passions 146–148, 156–157, 161n9; philosophical and medical views in early modernity 110, 143–152, 161–162n14; and Sabuco 34–36, 43, 148, 156, 162n24; as a shifting paradigm 141, 161n5; and Velásquez 1, 142, 144–146, 152; and Vives 145–147; see also Cervantes and melancholy memory: and Agustí 86; and Álvarez de Miraval 120–121, 123–125, 134n19; and Aristotle 125–129, 135n29; the art of 125–132; early modern views 4, 61, 102, 118–122, 133n2, 133n4, 133–134n11, 135n26, 135n32; how to preserve and restore 122–125, 134n18, 134n20; and Huarte 18–19, 31, 122, 130, 135n25, 145–146; and imagination 119, 133; and Mejía 120, 122–123; and Pereira 11; and Sabuco 34; and Vives 56, 131, 133n2, 145; see also Cervantes and memory mind (human): altered states of 5, 64, 110, 152, 169, 198–199, 203; and altering substances 171–174, 178, 181–182, 188; and animals 80, 83–84, 86, 92–93; and body 16, 27, 43, 50, 55, 57, 59, 65, 71n22, 121, 146, 199; and brain xiii, 15, 198; capricious 105–108; creative 98–100, 113, 142, 148, 151–154, 156, 160–161; and emotions 51, 55–56, 142; and habits 33, 37–38, 44; impact of age on 56–59; materialistic understanding of 32; and melancholy 141, 145, 147, 149; and memory 126–127; and soul 28, 35, 51, 55, 72n33; see also brain; cognition Montaigne 16, 102

Index  221 Novelas ejemplares [Prologue] (Cervantes) 101, 112, 153 Nueva filosofía (Sabuco) 33, 79, 102, 148; and authorship controversy 20n22 Orlando furioso (Ariosto) 64, 72n29 Orlando inamorato (Boiardo) 64 Ovid 54, 66–67 passions: ancient and early modern views 55, 60, 67, 70n14, 147; and cognition 68; and Don Quixote 156; and Huarte 33, 38; and human development 27; and melancholy 146–148, 156–157, 161n9; and memory 132; negative 3, 27–28, 31, 33, 42, 46n7, 156; and Sabuco 14, 37; and temperament 59, 146–147; in El viejo zeloso 62, 64–65; and Vives 29–31, 37, 51, 56–61, 65, 67, 71n23, 146–148, 156–161; see also emotion Pereira, Gómez: and animal perception, cognition, and sentience 10–12, 79; and the automatism of beasts 10–13, 79, 85, 93; and Descartes 10, 20n12–13, 79, 85, 95n2; and humans vs. animals 3, 11–12; and reflex arc 12–13; see also Antoniana Margarita plants: Cervantes’s knowledge of nontherapeutic uses 171–173; Cervantes’s knowledge of therapeutic uses 170–171; therapeutic uses in Cervantes’s time 169–170; in witches’ ointments 180–182; see also Cervantes and mind-altering agents; Laguna Plato 32, 101, 127, 134n16, 135n26, 135n29, 149 Quintilian 125, 126, 133n2 Remedio de cuerpos humanos (Lobera de Ávila) 204–205 Rinconete y Cortadillo (Cervantes) 127–128 Sabuco, Oliva: and animal emotion 34, 37, 79; and brain and nervous system 13–16, 34–35, 37; and Cervantes 28, 39–40, 43–45, 118, 142, 156, 162n24; and faculties

34–35, 37; and fear 34, 40, 43; and friendship and love 36–37, 45; and human development 33–37; and human emotion 3, 14, 16, 34–37, 39, 43, 79, 148, 156–157, 162n24; and jealousy 35; and judgment or understanding 34, 37; and melancholy 34–36, 43, 148, 156, 162n24; and memory 34; and psychosomatic approach 3, 13–16, 33, 146; see also Nueva filosofía Saint Augustine 120, 135n26 senses 11, 18, 35, 54–57, 70n19, 102, 122, 135n25, 145, 176, 178, 181, 201; animal 78, 82; inner or interior 54, 56, 67, 119–121, 133–134n11, 158; outer or external 56, 62, 67, 128; see also faculties soul: ancient and early modern views 51, 55, 202; and Ficino 148–150; and Huarte 17–19, 21n36, 31–33, 107; and human development 27–28, 38–39, 43, 45; and memory 119, 127, 132; and Pereira 10, 13; and Sabuco 14, 16, 33–35, 37; and Vives 29–31, 51, 72n33, 78, 146–148, 158; see also mind Tesoro de la lengua castellana (Covarrubias) 54, 88, 99, 107–109, 114n15, 199, 207 Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (Cervantes) 173, 190–191n29 Tratado de la firme memoria (Álvarez de Miraval) 134n19 Valadés, Fray Diego 120, 133n4, 135n32 Velásquez, Andrés 1, 142, 144–146, 152 Velázquez de Acevedo, Juan 118, 126, 130, 133–134 n11 Viaje del Parnaso (Cervantes) 112, 172, 210n16 La vida es sueño (Calderón) 28 El viejo zeloso (Cervantes): and deception 54, 67; and didactic value 66–67; and fear 3, 50, 53, 57, 59, 61, 64–66, 68; and female desire 66, 68; and the jealous husband theme 52, 68; and jealousy 3, 50, 53, 59, 61, 63–64, 68; and locked-up wife theme 50, 52–53; and the

222 Index May-December marriage theme 50, 53, 69–70n9; and Ovid 54, 66; and the trick of the tapestry 63–64 Vives, Juan Luis: and body temperament 57–59, 71n23, 146; and Cervantes 51, 56, 131, 143, 201; and Cicero 60–61, 67, 71n25; and cognition 51, 56, 58, 61, 65, 78; and faculties 29, 31, 56–58, 61–62, 64, 70–71n21, 145; and fear 29–30, 51, 57, 59–61, 64–65, 67–68, 71n23, 72n33; and human development 29–31, 45; and

humans vs. animals 29, 78; and imagination 3, 50, 56, 70–71n21, 145; impact of 69n6; and jealousy 51, 59–61, 65, 67, 69n7; and judgment or understanding 29–31, 56, 64–65, 67, 147; and laughter 158–159; and melancholy 145–147; and memory 56, 131, 133n2, 145; and passions 29–31, 37, 51, 56–61, 65, 67, 71n23, 146–148, 156–161; see also De anima; De concordia; De institutione; De officio; De tradendis