From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
11.2 (1991): 103-05.
Copyright © 1991, The Cervantes Society of America
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This book is “a study of Don Quixote
in relation to its author, . . . his goals in writing the book,
what he thought it meant, and how he desired it to be read” (xiii).
To be sure, Eisenberg's masterfully scholarly study begins on a polemical
note, challenging the reader from the first page with the assumptions that
inform his reading. Eisenberg's thesis is based on the premises that “we
take Cervantes at his word” and that because “the importance of
intention is stressed in the text,” characters' intentions reflect those
of the author. Consequently, when the canon of Toledo criticizes the libros
de caballerías, he is voicing Cervantes's own opposition to those
“dangerous” texts, which will result in a number of subsequent
responses to the problem.
When literary critics take a controversial
stance with regard to interpretation, they must prepare themselves for the
inevitable rebuttal. Eisenberg follows his position statement (“that
every character is a mouthpiece for the author, unless there is evidence
to the contrary”) by anticipating his own critics, who, he proposes,
will undoubtedly answer that Cervantes's irony has to be taken into account
(xvii). His response is the least convincing aspect of the book: “True,
Cervantes is ironic, but he is not obscure, at least not deliberately so.
It is surprisingly easy to distinguish statements Cervantes meant us to accept
from those he meant us to reject. . . . I have assumed
that from the text itself we can tell how it was intended to be read, that
this guidance is straightforward and sincere” (xvii-xviii). Eisenberg
rightly notes that explicit statements of authorial intent are out of fashion
these days, and he contrasts contemporary reader expectations with those
operant in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, suggesting that
because we do not read the Quixote through the libros de
caballerías, we simply cannot have the same experience with the
text as that of early readers. Consequently, we must work to understand exactly
what Cervantes was trying to do when he stated that he intended to do away
with the pernicious libros. Eisenberg speculates that “Cervantes's
interest in literature, his aspirations as a writer, and most of all, his
religiosity, patriotism, and concern for truth” made him champion this
cause. And, although those speculations fly in the face of Wimsatt and
Beardsley's 1946 challenge
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| 104 | CATHERINE LARSON | Cervantes |
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to the privileging of intention as an interpretive tool —not to mention
the challenges of countless other Poststructuralist,
“death-of-the-author” critics— Eisenberg invites us to reconsider
our own critical positions with regard to the relationship between author,
text, and reader. His authorial approach lies at the heart of his argument,
and readers of A Study of Don Quixote should be willing to confront
the implications of that approach.
If we accept Eisenberg's premise (that we must
trust that the author's purported purpose in writing Don Quixote was
to do away with the libros de caballerías), other conclusions
follow. First, Cervantes's interest in the topic led him to conceive an
unfinished chivalric novel, the Bernardo. Bernardo del Carpio would
be, according to Eisenberg, the perfect subject of the ideal Spanish libro
de caballerías, and he further suggests that this Christian hero
would have none other than Santiago serving as his sabio encantador.
Eisenberg's reconstruction of the lost Bernardo is important for
“setting the context” of Don Quixote, a task that he continues
in a chapter devoted to the question of genre. This discussion analyzes
Cervantes's works from the perspective of the generic categories that existed
in the author's time, moving from the lost Bernardo, the ideal libro
de caballerías, to the Quixote, which Eisenberg describes
as a burlesque libro de caballerías.
The examination of the burlesque aspects of
Don Quixote leads naturally to Eisenberg's chapter on humor in the
work. He explores the types of humorous elements that turned the conventions
of the libros upside down for the public of the Golden Age, supporting
in the process those who view Cervantes's creation as a funny book. This
lengthy chapter (with a specific focus on the character of Don Quixote and
Part I) is a tour de force of detail; it goes beyond the scope of
earlier treatments of the concept by listing and analyzing carefully the
multiple techniques that Cervantes employed to create humor. In addition
to its comic elements, Eisenberg maintains, Don Quixote was conceived
as a didactic work, and he follows the chapter on the Quixote's humor
with one on the provecho of the book, thereby uniting the two in the
Golden Age admonition to enseñar deleitando. The main part
of the study concludes with a discussion of why Don Quixote is a classic.
Eisenberg examines both the universal appeal and the contradictions inherent
in the novel, showing how texts change with time and with readers; this chapter
offers a fascinating analysis of the characteristics and constitutive elements
of classical texts.
A Study of Don Quixote includes an appendix
on the influence of the Quixote on the Romantic movement, an extensive
bibliography, an index listing the references to Cervantes's works appearing
in the study, and a second, detailed index of names and subjects. The author
provides literally hundreds of footnotes, and even a cursory glance at them
indicates the enormity of Eisenberg's critical project: this study is clearly
the result of years of painstaking research and serious thought on the topic.
Unfortunately, his text contains a rather large number of editing problems,
the worst of which involve the transposition of several pages. A Study
of Don
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| 11.2 (1991) | Review | 105 |
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Quixote is simultaneously exciting and exasperating, polemical and logical. It merits careful examination, and it is guaranteed to challenge its readers.
| CATHERINE LARSON |
| Indiana University |
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Digitized with the help of Contessa Marion |
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| Fred Jehle jehle@ipfw.edu | Publications of the CSA | H–Cervantes |
| URL: http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/cervante/csa/articf91/larson.htm | ||