Cervantes' Rinconete y Cortadillo and the Imposition of Form: Part of the Story

CERVANTES' RINCONETE Y CORTADILLO AND THE IMPOSITION OF FORM: PART OF THE STORY by Edward H. Friedman* In Don Quijote and the Novelas ejemplares, Cervantes accentuates the distinction between art and nature, causing the reader to make himself aware of literary conventions. So-called reality becomes a backdrop and a basis for comparison. In the Quijote, prologues and chapter divisions, the competence of the narrator (and behind him the author), fictional time ("real" and psychological ), ordering of events, and other aspects of the art of writing a novel—seen as playing off of each other complexly and infinitely —unite the process of artistic creation with the creation itself. The Novelas ejemplares may be seen as variations on the theme of tension between internal and external points of reference. Rinconete y Cortadillo, for example, explores a historical milieu and the intratextual realm of the picaresque novel, but its essence lies in neither extreme. Rinconete y Cortadillo is not Cervantes' attempt to create picaresque fiction, but rather a work which presents and then nullifies picaresque and idealistic conventions in order to define a new form of fiction. The critic may impose a form on the work, but there is always a part of the structure which resists form, which seems to defy classification. The literary text serves a multiperspectivist cause, and the diversity of viewpoints offers an equilibrium of sorts. Ultimately, however, the critical response must reflect not only the rules of order which the author imposes upon himself, but the inventive violation of these rules. Literature is an imaginative representation of man, the universe , and man's relationship with man and the universe. The creator of literature may represent the universe as unified or chaotic , and formal and linguistic elements of the literary work may correspond to this unity or chaos. Literature is a paradoxical art by virtue of an implicit indirectness, detachment and dissimilarity from that which it describes. Literature provides a model for viewing existence, a model which is at least one step removed from reality and yet which endeavors to make a statement about reality through conventions particular to verbal communication. Whether one describes a literary work in terms of an open or closed structure , whether his view is that of literature as containing the key to existence, as part of a process, as self-perpetuating, or as selfdestructive , the individual work forms some type of analogue which is both imitative and original. The analogue may be an •EDWARD FRIEDMAN is an associate professor of Spanish at Arizona State University . His research areas include Golden Age narrative and the comedia. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW205 Edward H. Friedman attempt to approximate reality (a direct analogue) or an attempt at antithesis (a reverse or ironic analogue). Imitation is, then, always incomplete, always a point of departure only. Literature's tendency to use itself as a mediating factor allows for increased flexibility on the part of the author and the theorist. Literature provides a narrative voice, a narrative stance, and a narrative concept which, much like historiography, works at ordering events or establishing a pattern of disorder. The historian is free to create a system; the writer of fiction is free to create a world. Pedro Salinas' treatment of Luis de Góngora in Reality and the Poet in Spanish Poetry elaborates the uniqueness and the autonomy of the creator of literature: the attempt to reproduce reality must necessarily fall short of that which exists in reality, so one must work to surpass reality on his home ground, by creating a complete analogue with the resources at his disposal. In Salinas' terms, "Telling and describing what one sees is not poetry. What must be done to convert it into poetry? Raise it, intensify its characteristics to an extreme degree, elevate it above its natural forms and extract from the latter all their esthetic content by means of the imagination and fantasy. Reality must be transformed, transmuted into another kind of poetic reality, material, sonorous, plastic, but not idealized; the artist must operate on it with the magic power of word, metaphor , image."1 Cervantes' artistic production stems from the same type of confidence in the literary endeavor, in authorial power. The goal...