Adventures in Paradox: Don Quixote and the Western Tradition by Charles Presberg (review)

Reviews ing machine," stands for a new and limitless capitalist economy in conttast to the ancien (mercantile) régime, which is limited and literally stone-dead (in the figure ofthe Knight Commandet ofCalattava). The schizophrenia which this chatactet subsequently produces as it distupts established hierarchies is finally contained by immobilized institutions (the King) that suppress new and unlimited desire (ot oikonomia). The fitst Don Quijote essay, using a standatd Freudian perspective, attives at a similat socio-economic conclusion by affirming that Don Quijotes mad desire fot the social sttuctures of the past can nevet (psychologically) be recovered . In this respect, Cervantes' "modem" novel is a revisionist wotk that prepares the way fot the authot's return to romance and enchantment. The pastotal vision (chaptet 8) ofDon Quijotes final moments serves a similar humanistic and seculat function. The fitst four essays in this collection deal specifically with the Comedia as a reactionary genre. They are also some of the most dated (tanging from 1986 to 1 993). They are by no means unsound ot unpetsuasive, provided one accepts that Spain was absolutist in the seventeenth century; that the cettificates ofnoble lineage were consistently applied at all times, in all places, and fot all subjects; ot that the dramatic genre of the Comedia (indeed the most populat and accessible to all tanks ofsociety) simply stopped growing ot developing, avoiding ot subsuming political, social, ot even petsonal conflicts by constantly appealing to Platonic ot neo-Aristotelian ideas. That might have been the vision of the Comedia in the 1950s and 1960s, during the heyday offamous and influential critics like Casalduero, Spitzer, or Wardropper. It does not reflect the neo-histofical scholarship that has been done in the last few yeats. That notwithstanding, Anthony J. Cascardi's Ideologies ofiHistory in the Spanish GoUdenAge offers highly innovative and pluralistic approaches to bettet appreciate and understand the great litetary genres ofthe Spanish Golden Age. % Châties Presbetg. Adventures in Paradox: Don Quixote and the Western Tradition. University Patk: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. 250p. Eloy R. Gonzalez Washington State University Upon finishing Ptesbetg's much anticipated study of patadox in Don Quixote, some questions inevitably come to mind: why is it that the commentatots ofthis novel tend to find in it some of the "hottest" critical issues of the commentators' own historical time? Is it because they were always there, as an integral and intenFALL 2001 + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW + 97 tional part ofCervantes' masterpiece, awaiting the refinement of literary theory to be found, or because rhe impreciseness that characterizes this particular work is so pervasive that it will always allow for disparate readings? Is a book such as Presberg's the discovery ofa mythical El Dorado, or just the mirage ofa myth? Without fully answering the preceding questions, one can, perhaps safely, state the following: it may be difficult to believe at times that Cervantes had a precise understanding ofall the intricate discursive relationships in his text—such as the effects ofthe imitation ofimitation—and, especially, their implications. But that as an artist he intuited at least in part some ofthese relationships and their significance seems hard to dispute after reading Adventures in Paradox. Its author offers too much evidence and solid argumentation that a genuinely creative mind was at play in Don Quixote for anyone to believe it is all a colossal coincidence. One ofthe polemics that has surrounded Don Quixote in the latter part ofthe 20th century concerns whether or not Cervantes' novel is primarily a funny book in which serious matters are treated, or basically a serious book that includes different types ofhumor to entertain diverse types ofreader. Presberg is not fazed by this quasi-conundrum: Don Quixote is "not only too illustrative ofdiscourse and human action, but also too funny not to be taken seriously" (192). And Presberg takes it very seriously indeed. His book as divided into four basic parts: in the first, he traces the concept ofparadox from antiquity to the Renaissance ; the second concerns Spanish authors prior to Cervantes (Fernando de Rojas, Antonio de Guevara, Pero Mexía); in the third segment he establishes the five topical strains ofparadox he will observe in Don Quixote, and also analyzes...