On Narration and Theory. Book Reviews

On Narration and Theory. by Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America Book Summary

These remarks are prompted by Howard Mancing's article on "Cervantes as Narrator of Don Quijote" in this journal. Howard and I have known each other for many years, so my comments are offered in the spirit of friendly exchange. He may be surprised to learn that I feel empathy--even nostalgia--for his basic premise, that Cervantes is the narrator of Don Quixote. I read the book exactly that way the first time through. I was 22 then. Today, alas, I have been seduced into thinking that fictional tales told almost entirely in third person have a narrator other than the author, a narrator that may be explicit or implicit. There was a growing sensation of deja-vu as I proceeded with Howard's article, and it dawned on me finally that I had offered a brief response to this thesis in 1988, in my Don Quixote: An Anatomy of Subversive Discourse (30). What he presents in his recent article is a variation on a position he has maintained for many years, a perspective now supplemented by an accessory that gives new meaning to "cutting-edge': Ockham's razor (i.e., the principle of parsimony). Howard is to be congratulated on his skillful wielding of Ockham's freshly-stropped straight razor, without apparent damage to any body parts. The unkindest cut of all, in my estimation, is to Cervantes' narrative art. If Cervantes was manco before, he may be considered doubly so now, thanks to the commonsense paring away of his intratextual extremities by this sharp object. Viewed from another perspective, one students of art might appreciate, here we have Cervantes as Saturn, devouring and assimilating his diegetic offspring. Think of the painting by Goya that hangs in the Prado. Or, in terms Sancho might savor, the baby has been tossed out with the bath water.

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