Playing Doctor: Satire, Laughter and Spiritual Transformation in Valle y Caviedes’s Diente del Parnaso

PLAYING DOCTOR: SATIRE, LAUGHTER AND SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION IN VALLE Y CAVIEDES'S DIENTE DEL PARNASO R.JohnMcCaw State University of New York at Buffalo S atire has enjoyed remarkable popularity among artists and scholars, arguablybecause it lends itselfeasily to multiple interpretations based on sublime innuendo, subtle agendas and suggestive posturing. The appeal of satire comes from the playfulness involved as intellectual acuity is hamessed to raw emotion, and as the depravity of humankind is presented through the artfulness of creative energy. As it isolates, exaggerates and pokes fun at salient characteristics of individuals and societies, satire infórms and reflects one's ludie instinct until, at last, the urge to tease and the desire to be entertained are satisfied. While written and read, created and consumed, satire purges the intellect and the emotions, and tacitly or expressly fosters one's understandingofwhat, ideally, a world beyond satire might bélike: 11 Satire demands at least a token fantasy, a content which the reader recognizes as grotesque, and at least an implicitmoral standard, the latter being essential in a militant attitude to experierice" (Frye 224). In Juan del Valle y Caviedes's Diente del Parnaso, the satirist's relentless attempt to expose the moral and social dystopia of seventeenth-century colonial Lima conceals a longing for society's return to a moral standard, and promotes a modus operandi for achieving this goal.1 As is often the case with satire, the spectacle of playfulness in Diente calls attention to itself and, in so doing, may keep the reader from appreciating the moral impulses and social vision that drive the satirist to take up the pen in the first place. Johan Huizinga has argued that the act of literary creation, and poetry in particular, is grounded in playful competition (13233 ), a concept that he calls 11 agonistic aspiration" in the realm of philosophy (120). Fromthe poet's act of playful competition, and from the prophet's act of 11 agonistic aspiration," we may understand the facet of poetry and philosophy that extends beyond play: "The conceptual value of a word is always conditioned by the word which expresses its opposite. Far us, the opposite of play is eamest, also used in the more special sense of work; while the opposite of eamest can either be play or jesting, joking" (44). The satiric playfulness of Diente yields an earnest subtext which, in the context of the seventeenth-century controversies surrounding the role and CALÍOPE Vol. III No. 2 (1997): pages 86-96 ro R. Iohn McCaw 03 87 implications of medical science, itselfhas polemic value. By seeking within Diente the grounds from which Caviedes's satiric impulse emerges, we may see how the text constitutes a rudimentary program for moral reform and social change. In this way, Diente engages one of the most highly charged cultural debates of Peru's Counter-Reformation, a debate that not only questions the legitimacy and impact of medicine and its practitioners, but also explores the epistemological foundations of mundane healing: While undoubtedly offering a number of possibilities for the betterment of daily living for the general population, [science's] powers were also overestim;;1ted in sorne circles, and this inevitably led to its mystification. Caviedes counters this tendency by inferring that scientific expositipn, like other discursive forms, contains errors and therefore warrants similar scrutiny. Gohnson 90) Caviedes indeed scrutinizes the role of medica! science, but he also goes beyond scrutiny as he advances the religious life as a practicable alternative to medicine. In Dien/e, then, líes a'constructive side to satire, a literary tradition known primarily for its destructive surface.2 When we meet the acerbic wit and the mordant caricature of the harshest of literary satire, it is reasonable that we should search for motives to help explain how the target of satire has manageq to deserve such vitriol. In Diente, the main object of derision is the medica! profession, and special attention is given to specific doctors and medica! practices of Caviedes's Lima.3 The detall ofCaviedes's barbs against specific individuals and practices has led Kolb to conclude that the satirist's motives in Diente are fundamentally personal: There has been...