Citizenship, Authorship, and Disability in Cervantes and Scarron By

Citizenship, Authorship, and Disability in Cervantes and Scarron

Adleen Carlisle Crapo

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature University of Toronto

Citizenship, Authorship, and Disability in Cervantes and Scarron

Adleen Crapo

Doctor of Philosophy

Comparative Literature

University of Toronto

2020 Abstract

Noting the all-too-recent interest of disability scholars in early modern literature, this dissertation seeks to establish a way forward for the study of disability in a period-appropriate way. Through its juxtaposition of disabled authors’ Paul Scarron and Miguel de Cervantes’ paratexts and their treatment of disability in literary texts, it seeks to elucidate a possible relationship between disability and representation. It uses popular lexicographies to trace the diverse and changing vocabulary the two authors employed for different impairments. At the same time, it considers different genres, such as epic and drama, and modes like the burlesque, which were particularly accessible to disabled men of the period. This dissertation provides an account of the differing disabilities of both authors, and how their respective disabilities called into question their national identities. The stakes were high for both. Cervantes had to demonstrate that though the hand was a symbol of Hispanitas, or Spanishness, in losing his he had only become more

Spanish. For Scarron, his inflammatory disease, which had left him with a dramatic spinal curvature, meant that he needed to employ the burlesque to demonstrate both his wit (a courtly and French quality) and his natural humour. The authors' disabilities are considered in relation to the organ or functioning which was impacted, as well as its associated symbolism and history.

Since early modern people did not collapse all impairments into one category the way we do today with the term "disabled," their understanding of each impairment and its particular context and history indicates a way forward for contemporary scholars who grapple with today’s all- inclusive identity category of "disability."

iii

Acknowledgments

To my supervisor, Mary Nyquist, for showing me how to teach; I wouldn’t be half the scholar I am without you. To Jill Ross, thank you for keeping the medieval period in focus. For Grégoire Holtz, thank you for keeping the faith and for always being kind. Hilary, Caroline, and the London folks—seeing you yearly has been a joy. Susan Anderson at Leeds, Chris Mounsey and Stan Booth at Winchester, Paul Taylor at the Warburg and Elma Brenner at the Wellcome were particularly helpful during these London trips. Andrea Burke, Sarah Morrison, and Joanna de les Reyes made the format work. Eric Danz has been a constant source of strength and inspiration and also Zelda, who joined us for the ride in 2009. The Jones, the Crapos, and the Karger- Lessings helped so much in the early stages of this project. Wayne Dealy, Pamela Arancibia, Omar Badrin, and Iñaki showed me solidarity and friendship. Ayelit, Philip, Stuart, and my Bloorcourt neighbours made me smile and helped me survive. Christine Minnery used her poetic point of view to encourage looking at the world anew. Fiona, thanks for the cheer and for finding Kate, who is wonderful. Linda and Feng did domestic labour to enable my academic labour. Rosa Helena Chinchilla and the Folger seminar had seeing Cervantes in a fresh way, and Sanda Munjic always supported my work. Julia and Jose showed encouragement, patience, and compassion always. The medicals professionals Susanda Yee, Mary Jensen, and Susan Harrison kept me well in mind and in body. Blue was here for me from the beginning of this Ph.D; Sloe, a mitzvah, came along to teach me. Thank you to Joanne Craig, Claire Grogan, Heather Thomson, Erin McGregor, Jamie Joudrey, and Priscillia Lefebvre from Bishop’s, who are partially the reason I both started and finished my degree; my academic friend-colleagues Rachel F-S, Natalie Pendergast, Vanessa McCarthy, Lindsay Sidders, Jessica Copley, Matthew Risling, Megan Harris, Andrea Day and killjoys, Rebecca Janzen and others inspired by their examples. Susannah Brower read my Latin over with the patience of a saint. Salam and Mahmoud Haddad, Blandine and Claude Bouret, and les Maillard---I would have been lost without your love. Finally, I wish Peter Franklin could have lived to see the conclusion of this project. He has been constantly in my thoughts, as has Abby Franklin. Mary Whiting and Katherine Armstrong, Barbara Crapo—you also never got to see me finish this thing. I hope I have made you proud; if I have accomplished anything, it was because I was standing on your shoulders.

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgments...... iv

Introduction ...... 1

Methodology as Informed by Past Studies...... 8

Disability in the Dictionaries ...... 11

Chapter 1 Setting the Scene for Cervantes ...... 19

Chapter 2 The One-Handed Text ...... 27

Literary, but not Literal Gestures ...... 36

How Should a Hand Be? ...... 49

Chapter 3 Spanish Arms versus Spanish Blood ...... 51

The Leisurely Hand versus the Active Hand ...... 54

Numancia and Direct Action ...... 66

Exemplary Spanishness: Staging Nationalism in Algiers ...... 74

Being Heroic, Being Spanish: Algiers as Crucible for Hispanitas ...... 75

Chapter 4 Cervantes’ Legal Lives ...... 93

Limpieza for Miguel ...... 95

Información de 1578 ...... 100

Setting the terms of a Disability Narrative ...... 101

Chapter 5 Paul Scarron: Deformed Origins, Deformed Muse ...... 111

Bienséance and the Literary Limits of Propriety ...... 122

Scarron’s Deformed Muse ...... 125

Chapter 6 Scarron’s Classicism ...... 129

Deformity as an Aesthetic Concept ...... 129

Chapter 7 Wit and Its Underside ...... 151

The Roman Comique and the Writer Without Words ...... 156

Scarron’s Deforming Mode...... 160

Chapter 8 Doctor, Heal Thyself: Scarron Heals the Reader ...... 166

Chapter 9 Legacies ...... 186

Works Cited ...... 196

Introduction

Whose body is the right body? Rhetorical authority underlay who could be a citizen (as well as who could write); this authority inhered in the body.

The authors featured in this dissertation, although living at roughly the same time, had very different national contexts and experiences of disability.1 Miguel de Cervantes knew the ethnic purges of post-Reconquista Spain, the rapid colonial expansion of the Spanish empire, and the siglo de oro, with its active theatre and literary scene. Paul Scarron, a French translator of Cervantes, lived through the Fronde, a time of literary salons and rebellion, in which members of the nobility were required to publicly display their wit.

One of the reasons Scarron and Cervantes have much to say about disability in their adulthood is that for the first decades of their lives, they moved through the world with the kind of privilege enjoyed by educated men of the upper classes. Both authors lived during an era which saw the consolidation of the nation-state and conceptions of national belonging. In Spain, an ethnic nationalism prevailed, and an ideal Spanish man possessed a pure Christian lineage and a reputation for gallantry; for the French, cultural nationalism prevailed, and the ideal Frenchman possessed wit and exemplary cultural knowledge and understood the vital role France was to play as a cultural touchstone. Frenchmen’s survival was thus predicated on what below is defined on their rhetoricability, that is—others’ belief in their usage of language, a kind of credibility afforded less often to disabled men, both then and now.2

1 Occasionally, disability theorists deny the possibly of studying early modern disability, arguing that the mortality rate would have been significantly higher than in the present period, and thus, that fewer ill or disabled people would have survived to middle, if not old age. For a refutation of these specific claims, please see Margaret Pelling's introduction to Life, Death, and the Elderly: Historical Perspectives and her chapter in the same collection, entitled “Old Age Poverty, and Disability in Early Modern Norwich” 2003 in pages 74-101.

2 The arguments will largely concern men with connections and roots in the minor nobility. I use the term “men” deliberately, to call attention to the struggles that already-privileged demographic had in publicly navigating disabled identity; the struggle of disabled women included additional challenges unusual for their male contemporaries. For more on the treatment of disabled women in the early modern period, please see Encarnación Juárez-Almendros’ Disabled Bodies in Early Modern Spanish Literature: Prostitutes, Aging Women and Saints published by Liverpool UP in 2018.

As is customary in early modern texts, both Scarron and Cervantes invoke the Muses; what is unique is that each also refers to disability when doing so and creates a Muse disabled in his image. The authors even allude to classical predecessors with similar disabilities, another feature of early modern disability. Since the vocabulary of disability varied so widely, this dissertation takes into authors’ particular lexicons, as well as the particular cultural prejudices that surrounded each disability. It considers the ways in which early modern disability affected writers especially, and the ways in which early modern disability clearly anticipated later ideas about disability and the use of rhetoric. The following analysis will apply second-wave disability theory in tandem with a genealogical examination of early modern categories of bodily non- normativity to several seventeenth-century texts: La tragedia de Numancia, Don Quijote, El gallardo español, Don Japhet d’Arménie, Le Virgile travesti and Le roman comique.

Arriving at the above features of my argument required a great deal of effort, especially due to the lack of pertinent theory of early modern disability. Critics have not until recently made many inroads in discussions of early modern disability. The very first wave of disability theorists largely came out of France, inspired by Michel Foucault, and in particular, his work Madness and Civilization, which appeared in 1961. Henri-Jacques Stiker, working from the perspective of an art historian, did include some early modern art in his French-language surveys of disability representation; his first influential texts such as Corps infirmes et société were published in the 1980s and were only translated into English in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, the second wave of disability studies, primarily American in origin, and inspired by the 1991 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, initially overlooked analyses of historical disability, especially before the 18th century.

Academic studies of disability have appeared with frequency in English only since the mid- 1990s. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to divorce the critical acumen of important Anglo and American theorists of disability studies from the presentism that has often marked their works. One example is Lennard Davis, one of disability studies’ most influential proponents, who holds that “disability can be seen as the postmodern subject position.”3 Davis summarizes his thinking as “[i]mpairment is the rule, and normalcy is the fantasy. Dependence is the reality, and

3 Lennard J. Davis, Bending over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions (New York: New York University, 2002), 14.

3 independence grandiose thinking. Barrier-free access is the goal, and the right to pursue happiness the false consciousness that obscures it. Universal design becomes the template for social and political designs."4 Davis’ work has a weakness, which is that its apparatus can only allow for analysis of social trends occurring from after the Industrial Revolution; it cannot acknowledge pre-modern disability discourses. It is true as he argues that “the imperatives of industrialism and capitalism redefined the body. 'Able-bodied workers' were those who could operate machines, and the human body came to be seen as an extension of factory machinery”.5 It is however just as true that disability existed before industrialization, but with different stakes.

Instead of relying on Davis and other presentist writers, my analysis initially took as its starting point Ato Quayson's statement that “[t]he attitudes that have historically attended people with disabilities have varied over time, but reiterated in all epochs is the idea that they carry an excess of meaning and therefore offer an insistent invitation to a series of interpretative and institutional framings”.6 Though Quayson’s Aesthetic Nervousness also excluded pre-modern texts, his perspective makes visible the possibility of multiple concepts of disability across different historical eras. Without making an ahistorical essentializing argument, one that would presuppose a fixed, unchanging idea of disability, my dissertation also builds on the premise that “disability has always been the object of a negative comparison to what is typically construed as corporeal normality.”7

The models which have English-language works have used to describe the construction and reception of disability are several. The medical model of disability, largely descriptive, notes that scientific and epistemological changes in the nineteenth century came to dictate the medical field’s practices. In this model, the medical system’s attempts to cope with sick patients placed sick bodies at extreme ends of a bell curve. Statistics “determin[e] the ideal body” and the patient “[was] no longer a valuable reporter of somatic information”; instead, doctors and lab

4 Davis, Bending over Backwards, 31. 5 Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy (New York: Verso, 1995), 86-87. 6 Ato Quayson, Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 4. 7 Lennard J. Davis, Bending over Backwards, 20. Earlier English-language theorists have argued that the concept of birth defects arises from “a pre-postmodern definition of human subjects as whole, complete, perfect, and self- sustaining” present in the works of thinkers from “Pico della Mirandola, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant and so on.”

4 technicians hold the key to interpreting a person’s well-being and, most importantly, their normalcy.8 British activists countered the established medical model by suggesting the social model of disability. As Jay Dolmage notes, “this model posited that disability is purely social, an oppression stacked onto people on top of their impairments, which are real.”9 Katherine S. Williams reiterated in her explanation of the social model that “disability happens in the interaction between an impaired body and a world that is not built to accommodate this body…”10

Lennard Davis and his American contemporaries suggested that disability studies embrace a post-/dis-modern approach, in which “the body [was] never a single physical thing as much as a series of attitudes towards it.”11 This way of conceiving of disability forms the basis of the cultural model; it also implies that disability is, to a large extent, the norm and to be expected.

Many of the above approaches to disability have fallen short. Chief among the cultural model’s weaknesses was the questioning it elicited: “If we are all disabled by an oppressive environment in some way, why does the disability perspective really matter? How is the embodied experience of disability any different from the norm?” which risked “remov[ing] the focus on the particularity of differences of bodies and minds.”12 The social model of disability could also be problematic; by positing that disability resulted from a person’s environment, it denied the possibility of bodily suffering resulting from impairments.

My work is informed by the models mentioned above but has chosen to follow what is called “the cultural turn” in disability studies, which “offers a range of strategies and foci through which disability can be studied as medicalizing, individuating, hinged, or unhinged from materiality or the social. Cultures and their expressions can be studied for their role in making

8 Davis, Bending over Backwards, 114-15. 9 Timothy Jay Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013), 34.

10 Katherine S. Williams, "Irregular bodies: Performing Disability on the Early Modern Stage" (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2013), 3, ProQuest (1442203484). 11 Davis, Bending over Backwards, 22. 12 Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric, 34.

5 bodies, and bodies and their expressions can be studied for their roles in making cultures.”13 A cultural analysis does not deny the material reality of disability, nor does it claim that cultures have produced and are influenced by a single discourse of disability. The early modern period forms a unique cultural moment, a period before attitudes to disability became fixed and inflexible, a period in which authors drew on a wide array of texts from different linguistic traditions and historical periods dating back to classical Greece and Rome. At the same time, the early modern period saw the rise of the nation-state and early forms of capitalism, two phenomena which would shape the ways in which societies treated their disabled members. The early modern period is also unique in that it was a historical moment which recognized disability while using some of the most varied terminology to discuss it.

Though there have been some attempts at cultural analyses of Renaissance disability, listed below, there is yet to be an explicitly comparative analysis of European Renaissance disability. Medieval disability has inspired numerous works, from Irina Metzler's Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking About Physical Impairment in the High Middle Ages, to Joshua Eyler's Disability in the Middle Ages to Tory Pearman's Women and Disability in the Middle Ages.14 Since this dissertation was begun, the number of articles and publications on early modern disability slowly increased. In 2009, a Disability Studies Quarterly dedicated to Shakespeare appeared, the result of a Shakespeare conference panel; there now exists an article on Milton’s Samson Agonistes and blindness, the medico-historical writings of Margaret Pelling, and Henri- Jacques Stiker's History of Disability; a conference in 2012 at Leeds; a history of disability series to be released by Bloomsbury Press with a volume on the Renaissance edited by Susan Anderson and L.D. Haydon; an annual conference on the cultural history of disability called VariAbilities, begun in 2013; a panel at the 2015 Early Modern Studies Conference in Reading, UK. Katherine S. Williams authored a dissertation on the subject in 2013, and Allison Hobgood and David Houston Wood produced an edited collection entitled Recovering Disability in Early Modern England. Valeria Finucci and Harry Berger Jr. have focused on the Italian Renaissance and disability. Intellectual disability also escaped much critical notice, until C.F. Goodey’s History of Intelligence and Intellectual Disability in 2011. Analyses like the ones above proliferated only

13 Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric, 35. 14 Unlike Metzler, I will use 'disability' to describe various physical impairments (including deformity). I use disability simply in the sense that Ato Quayson does in Aesthetic Nervousness, defined above.

6 recently. Despite the new texts, none consider disability in a larger European or global context, though Elizabeth Bearden’s forthcoming Monstrous Kinds: Body, Space, and Narrative in Early Modern Literary Representations of Disability appears promising both in its breadth and depth.

Shakespeare remains the sole early modern author whose works have received consistent attention in disability studies since the 1990s, culminating in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, and Race (2016). From the period of 1990- 2016, Sujata Iyengar edited the collection Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body, in 2015. Disparate studies considered Shakespeare’s plays piecemeal, from The Taming of the Shrew to Titus Andronicus. Most of the critical interest was directed at Richard III; criticism also focused primarily on physical disability in male characters, though there has been analysis of Henry VIII and female infertility.

These first attempts at disability studies of the early modern period have also occasionally met with pronounced skepticism on the part of early modernists. In Disability Studies Quarterly, Jeffrey R. Wilson’s review of Disabled Shakespeares (2009) called into question the possibility of using disability studies analysis for early modern writing. Much of Wilson’s argument focused on the unlikelihood that any critic could even articulate a coherent and Shakespearean presentation of disability, much less employ disability studies to do so. Wilson holds that the plays examined in Disabled Shakespeares rather make the case for an entirely different identity category. By focusing on disability, Wilson argues that:

You will miss the invention of stigma. Shakespeare was the first writer in Western history to recognize that people who are marked off as inherently inferior, while they may be so marked for different reasons – variously related to physical deformity, racial minority, mental disability, radical criminality, bastardy, and idiocy – experience similar social and psychological situations in life.15

To use disability studies in an analysis of Shakespeare is unnecessary as “the theoretical model [does] not fully accord with the texts in question”16 Though Wilson is correct in noting the importance of stigma in the work of Shakespeare, stigma in no way forecloses the possibility of

15 Jeffrey R. Wilson, “The Trouble with Shakespeare in Disability Studies,” Disability Studies Quarterly 37(2), 2017 16 Wilson, “The Trouble with Shakespeare in Disability Studies”

7 disabled identities as Wilson implies. In fact, as we will see below, people with visible disabilities and deformities would often have to contend with impairment, ableism and stigma around the origin of their illness. In attempting to refute the analyses of Disabled Shakespeares, Wilson errs in using Shakespeare in order to make a much larger claim about what can be said about disability and identity in the early modern period.

The most recent monograph on early modern disability, Monstrous Kinds, takes a different tack in order to avoid the possible anachronism that critics like Wilson deplore in the application of disability theory to early modern literature. In it, Elizabeth Bearden considers the phenomenon of early modern disability through the lens of the monster. The aims of Monstrous Kinds and this dissertation complement each other, but without entirely overlapping. Bearden also considers the relationship between disability and literature, and she notes that "Renaissance commentators on ancient authorities echoed and amplified warnings against monstrosity of both narrative technique and content."17 Later, in this thesis, a chapter on Scarron briefly discusses a particular early modern genre and its suitability for self-representation for disabled authors; however, the overall focus is more on Scarron’s language than genre or kind. As well, though Scarron is interested in monstrosity, it is present below mainly as part of an examination of political treatises of his period.

Bearden notes the simultaneous development of generic kinds and the norms which mirror the classifications of early modern monstrosity"18 Monstrous Kinds best lays out how early modern people understood themselves to be acted on by their physical environments; passibility, as Bearden describes it, is "[an] early modern theology and humoral theory [used] to define human impressionable susceptibility or capacity for change. It emphasizes that mind and body are integrated; they suffer and change together."19 Issues of passibility also inform this thesis, but primarily insofar as passibility could affect national identity. Bearden’s work is also comparatist, though it focuses on different early modern literary traditions. As she notes:

Monstrous kinds, with their variable bodies, spaces, and narratives, impel early modern representations of disability. They are central to how early moderns imagined humanity

17 Elizabeth Bearden, Monstrous Kinds, (Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 2019), 28 18 Bearden, 4 19 Bearden, 18

and their world. Ultimately, monstrous bodies define courtly ideals and the potentialities of nature, monstrous spaces encompass the vast geographies of the global Renaissance, and monstrous narratives help to tell the story of disability in the early modern period.20 Bearden’s discussion of the monster, though relevant to disability studies, should not obscure the other disability discourses of the period. Katherine S. Williams’ focus on what she deems "irregular bodies" in her dissertation provides a way forward for examination that permits a more diverse understanding of disability discourses. Williams’ dissertation, which centres on English drama of the early modern period, allowed for important perspectives, including a more nuanced understanding of disability and deformity in the period. Amongst other insights, she notes: The discourse of ugliness… is an especially pointed example of an irregular body that is disabled—not only distinguished as ‘other’ but presumed to be conscious of bodily deficiency—through an act of perception that does not depend upon what a body can do but how this body appears.21 Williams’ attention to the English stage enables a focus on a early modern social formations, as she says, "not only medical knowledge or aesthetic standards of beauty, but also concepts of political power, citizenship, social status, and economic exchange." Her study brings out "social structures that disable a range of bodies."22 Finally, in Williams’ work, her analysis of the term and concept of deformity in Richard III demonstrates how a character with a visible deformity "reworks early modern “disability” from fixity to indeterminacy."23 This is a particularly generative reading of deformity, and one which informs some of my reading of Scarron and his staging of his spinal curvature.

Methodology as Informed by Past Studies In order to avoid the attribution of disabled subjectivity to historical characters which Wilson finds so questionable, this study began instead with the aim of understanding the ways in which disabled men discussed impairment and embodiment. By the seventeenth century, the rise of the

20 Bearden, 31 21 Katherine S. Williams, " Irregular Bodies: Performing Disability on the Early Modern Stage," PhD diss., Rutgers, 2013, ProQuest Dissertations, 188.

22 Williams, "Irregular Bodies," 222.

23 Williams, "Irregular Bodies" 19.

9 professional author made portraits and forewords a necessary part of the publishing process. Paratexts such as authors’ self-portraits allowed disabled writers to evoke disability. They also opened up the possibility of comparing autobiographical paratexts to the works they preceded. Through a close reading these autobiographical texts, as well as of literary works of prose and poetry, and a consideration of European lexicons, this project theorizes relations among disability, identity, and language.

While it is true that capitalism and industrialization did much to create the contemporary barriers which exacerbate disability, it is not capitalism alone that did so. The rise of the nation-state, and, for example, the subsequent interest in recording soldiers’ impairments as part of local pension-granting process in places were early examples in which the state officially recognized disability. One early modern lexicon, A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the 24 Canting Crew, indicates such an interest in sailors no longer fit to work; Spanish legal records like Informaciones Cervantes and his family had made demonstrate a similar interest in naming and describing men who were injured in their service to the crown.

By the mid-sixteenth century in England, the dissolution of the monasteries had made people with varying impairments homeless, and the state attempted to distinguish between those who needed aid, and those who were “sturdy beggars,” merely feigning impairment to avoid work.25 On the continent, the state attempted to organize the hospitalization of the elderly, infirm, and poor.26 These political changes coincided with capitalism but were not entirely caused by it, and allowed for the creation of disabled identities, even if under different terms.

For those whose impairments led to disability, there were numerous discourses to use in discussing it. As Katherine S. Williams notes, it is not accurate (as some might assume) to say that early modern ideas of disability were primitive or caught up in the concept of monstrosity. It is equally inaccurate to say that Early Modern ideas of disability already exactly mapped onto those of the modern era: “[r]ather, plentiful and diverse disability narratives must be understood

24 See the Lexicon of Early Modern English (https://leme.library.utoronto.ca/) for this work, published in 1698. 25 Marjorie Keniston McIntosh, Poor Relief in England: 1350-1660, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 142 26 Henri-Jacques Stiker, Corps infirmes et sociétés, (Paris : Aubier, 1982)

10 as already in conversation with each other at the turn of the [seventeenth] century, with one discourse not dominating or determining but rather each informing the others.”27

The variety of discourses of the early modern period far surpass present-day conceptions of disability. This diversity is in fact what makes the period an ideal subject of study for disability scholars. A return to early modern portrayals of disability enables us to see the many facets of disabled experiences that we would otherwise miss. For example, the Renaissance considered each impairment as having not only its own specific meaning but also its own particular history and associated historical figures; the meaning of each impairment was closely linked to its own corresponding organ or sense, and thus with the valences or beliefs linked with those senses as well. All of these ideas coexisted with the historical developments evoked above, such as the rise of the nation-state, mercantilism, and the creation of new institutions specifically to house people with impairments.

This study aims to create a genealogy of early modern disabilities through a close consideration of early modern language. The flexible terminology that the period employed for impairments also meant that early modern people were less likely to collapse all impairments into a single idea of ‘disability.’ To understand the disabilities foregrounded in Cervantes’ and Scarron’s major works, it is necessary to consider early modern writings about the senses and the normative functioning of the body’s various parts. As we will see, the early modern interest in the classics meant that disabled men would often foreground disabled classical forerunners in discussing disability, a way of asserting a kind of legitimacy.

Any study of disability in the period, whether explicitly literary or historical, should focus on literature, as the early modern or Renaissance body was as much a function of rhetoric as it was a physical phenomenon. The perils of disability for a literary writer are clearly enumerated in the study laid out in Jennifer Nevile’s Eloquent Body, a ground-breaking work on the humanists and dance education. Though Nevile’s analysis begins and ends in Renaissance Italy, it illustrates the numerous ways in which a male body was considered an instrument of language. A visible disability would clearly signal a man’s corporeal ineloquence and perhaps rhetorical illegitimacy.

27 Katherine S. Williams, “Enabling Richard: The Rhetoric of Disability in Richard III,” Disability Studies Quarterly 29, no. 4, 2009

Nevile argues that “just as the humanists were concerned with eloquence in their texts, so too were the dance masters concerned to promote eloquence in movements of the human body.”28 A reliance on rhetoric, as well as theorists such as Aristotle, was common in dance treatises. As Nevile notes, both Cicero and Quintilian “argued in their writings on rhetoric that gestures voice, and pronunciation were, in effect, corporeal eloquence.29 In one example, dance masters emphasized misura, that is “measure in the Aristotelian sense of always keeping to and avoiding extremes.” Elsewhere, Cicero states that delivery and gestures comprise “the language of the body.”30 If an ineloquent body was a sign of an ineloquent character or mind, then visible disability, or any disability which precluded ease of movement, could negate someone’s participation in intellectual and public life.

Disability in the Dictionaries As we will see in the lexical analyses below, the terms used to depict various impairments existed during the rise of the term “disabled,” It was not common to use the word “disabled” to describe an early modern person with an impairment. It was less common to collapse all impairments into one category, though that collapse occasionally happened.31 However, one possible meaning of “disabled” did gesture to its later usage.

A disabled person could indicate a man who cannot perform duties crucial to his gender role; Cotgrave uses “impotence” as a synonym in 1611, and B.E., the author of the New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew goes so far as a definition of frigid to indicate “a weak disabled husband, cold impotent” in 1699. The failure of the male body in a sexual situation, a subject of much anxiety, appears less often than early modern discussions of female sterility, but, nevertheless, failures of male reproduction are treated alongside discussions of the nascent state bureaucracy. At the end of the century, in 1693, Bohun notes in his Geographical Dictionary that "Chelsey is a Magnificent and most Delightful hospital…for the

28 Jenifer Nevile, The Eloquent Body (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 9. 29 Nevile, The Eloquent Body, 83. 30 Nevile, The Eloquent Body, 84. 31 David Turner and Daniel Blackie, “Introduction,” in Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical impairment in British Coalmining, 1780-1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)

12 refuge of maintenance of disabled, poor, and Veterane Soldiers.”32 Similarly, in 1699, A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew notes that a man who has “had a leg shot off, or cut off, or is disabled” is entitled to smart-money, or compensation.”33

A consideration of the early modern word “disabled” and its connotations in the period allows us both to understand the nascent meanings of the concept, while also underlining the ways in which the early modern period anticipated later thought in disability studies. A keyword search of the Lexicon of Early Modern English demonstrates this thoroughly, as does a look at the Oxford English Dictionary. The verb “to disable” appears in 1445 as a legal phenomenon, meaning “To incapacitate legally; to pronounce legally incapable; to hinder or restrain (a person or class of persons) from performing acts or enjoying rights which would otherwise be open to them.”34 The significance of this early legal meaning lies in the linkage of the term and a person’s credibility within the legal system. One example often given is the role of women in court. An Englishwoman was “disabled to contract with any…without her husband’s consent and privity.”35 As a legal state, disability existed, as lexicographers note, because of the system of coverture. That is to say, disability was also, then as now, a contingent status, again created by external situations and laws. The argument of current disability theorists, that disability is an inherently ‘modern’ situation, one created by bureaucracy of nascent states that struggle to assimilate and understand disabled soldiers, when they can no longer work or fight, is misguided.

Most significantly for this study, the first lexicons of the early modern period suggest disability to be a rhetorical condition, and link disability to the making of meaning. The renowned translator and lexicographer John Florio gave nine equivalent Italian words for the verb “to disable,” from “difettare, to taxe one with anie defect” to “villpéndere” which he defined as “to despise, to condemn” in 1598. An early modern English speaker could similarly “disable the

32 LEME, “Disabled,” Bohun’s Geographical Dictionary, accessed 25 January 2019 33 LEME, “Disabled,” B.E. Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, accessed 25 January 2019 34 In the same entry, The Oxford English Dictionary cites Caxton’s usage in 1492, which consisted a brief mention of the transitive verb, ‘to disable’ someone, but that meaning rarely recurs for a century. The Oxford English Dictionary, “disabled,” definition. 1), accessed Jan 15, 2019. 35 Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME), “Disable” from The interpreter: or Book Containing the Signification of Words, accessed 20 February 2019.

13 persons of their enemies, and abuse their forces” through insults.36 An early modern man could even disable himself through an avowal of his own lack or flaws; much as martial violence could disable a person through physical injury, verbal violence (whether inward or outwardly directed) could produce a social disability, in which a man would lose his standing just as quickly as a soldier on the battlefield would lose a limb. Renaissance reputational disability anticipated contemporary claims about the social creation of disability.37

As the early modern period progressed, the more familiar or expected meanings for disabled appear, such as “weakened, disabled of bodie” as well as “deformed, disfigured, maimed, weakened, disabled, defective”38 and in the later bilingual dictionary by Guy Miège, as a verb meaning “to enable, to render incapable, to take from someone the force or power to do something.”39 Though today’s usage was not yet common, The Tragedy of Herod and Antipater (c. 1613) has Herod ask “by what means comes she thus disabled?” when confronted with the injuries of his sister-in-law, whose suicide attempt has left her unable to walk.40

Disability in the early modern lexicons thus gestures to the many layers of meaning which underlie discussions of disability in the present day: impairments, legal barriers, social exclusions, inabilities to fulfill a gender or social role. The most crucial definition for this dissertation and one that is particularly relevant to the early modern period is the one I will return to here, that of rhetorical disability.

George Puttenham’s Art of Poesy gestures to the crucial link to the origin of the term "disability" and its relationship to literary creation. Puttenham equates the terms “meiosis” and “disabler.”41

36 LEME, “Disable,” from The Art of English Poesie, accessed 20 February 2019. 37 Davis, Bending over Backwards, 50. Davis stresses that “Disability is not so much the lack of a sense of the presence of a physical or mental impairment as it is the reception and construction of that difference.” 38 LEME, “Disabled,” from Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionary of French and English Tongues, accessed 25 January 2019 39 In the original the definition reads "affaiblir, render incapable, ôter la force ou le pouvoir de faire quelque chose," LEME, “Disabled,” A New Dictionary, French and English, with another, English and French, London, accessed 25 Janaury 2019 40 Gervase Markham and William Sampson, The True Tragedy of Harold and Antipater (London: Rhodes), 1622,,iv, scene 1 41 LEME, “disabler” taken from George Puttenham’s Art of Poesy (London: Field, 1589), accessed 10 February 2019.

In his definition, Puttenham argues: “if you diminish and abbase a thing by way of spight or mallice, as it were to depraue it, such speach is by the figure Meiosis or the disabler spoken of hereafter in the place of sententious figures. A great mountaine as bigge as a molehill, A heauy burthen perdy, as a pound of fethers.” The disabler serves in rendering important things minor seeming, and sometimes in creating understatement, or irony in humour. At its worst, the disabler/meiosis is a kind of dishonesty that “speak[s] less than the truth.”42 Though the disabilities which this dissertation discusses arise from the lived experiences of early modern writers, there is something suggestive in the early use of the term and its use in writing, which gestures to a truth disabled authors would articulate: disability acknowledges that conveying meaning using language is a human endeavour that often fails. At the same time, the fact that humans cannot seamlessly understand each other (which is a kind of disability) is what makes language and its uses (such as writing) necessary and vital.

The disabled irony of Paul Scarron, seen in a chapter below, functions in a such a way as to make disability both stand for and fill the gap between the real world and the ideal world. For Scarron’s readers, his body represented this gap, and served as a source for his humour. The possibilities for an author are numerous, as to disable rhetorically is to reduce the represented object through diminishing it. A disabler is a shortcut that functions precisely because it relies on lack, and the ways in which something falls short or does not live up to its metaphoric size. As we will see in the Scarron chapter that considers the literary aesthetics of “deformitas,” it is impossible to de-link rhetoric and ideas of bodily fault precisely because the words we use for bodily fault have a second function as terms from rhetoric. Terms like “disabler” and “deformed” enact the kind of lack that makes representation necessary and possible. In fact, the tension which is articulated in the concept of a disabler is one which the early modern authors below relied on and struggled against in their own work. Lack (or disability) is what makes representation possible for writers. At the same time, lack can cause a writer or author to lose credibility, neither listened to nor allowed to intervene in larger debates.

In fact, as the critic Jay Dolmage argues, rhetoric requires fault, or lack, and especially bodily lack, in order to function:

42 OED, “meiosis”. Definition 1 b, Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2002, URL: oed.com/myaccess/library.utoronto.ca, accessed 10 Feb 2019.

[…] all metaphors are disabled. In positing one thing in terms of another, metaphors might be seen as bridges or ramps on the verbal map. Indeed, the Greek root of the word metapherein means “to carry across.” What we might focus on here is not the carrying itself, but the need for it. Meaning itself can be metaphorized as immobile, “crippled,” delayed, in need of assistance. As such, metaphor should be seen as the space within language where the breakdown of meaning is addressed not with correction or seamless substitution, but with something else: where the holes in language are plugged with squares and triangles, or where we recognize the inaccessibility of all meaning-making.43

The force which drives representation is the difficult, sometimes futile desire to make something that is intelligible to others. Representation, writing, and art serve as reminders that humans are incomplete, that humans rely upon language to try to make meaning, and that by making meaning, often imperfectly, humans draw attention to the lack they are trying to fill. In this, disability studies is helpful as it allows critics to “view the disabled body as meaningful. In this way, embodied rhetoric is always prosthetic. Through the theory of prosthesis, this connection between rhetoric, embodiment, and disability can be persuasively illustrated.” 44

The foundational work on the subject is Wills’ Prosthesis, which takes as a starting point his father’s prosthesis in order to write a wide-ranging piece of cultural criticism.45 His focus is on the idea of prosthesis as the disjunction, rather than conjunction, that (for example) a new artificial limb represents. “Prosthesis treats of whatever arises out of that relation and of the relation itself, of the sense and functioning of articulations between matters of two putatively distinct orders: father/son, flesh/steel, theory/fiction, translation/quotation, literal/figurative, familiar/academic, rhetoric/medicine, rhetoric/cybernetics, French/English, nature/artifice, public/private, straight/limping, and so on”.46 Wills further notes the origin of prosthesis, which itself comes from rhetoric: “the word prosthesis was first used in English in 1553 to refer to the addition of a syllable to the beginning of a word. Only in 1704 was the word prosthesis first used to refer to the replacement of a missing part on the body. But this history reveals the ways that

43 Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric, 103. 44 Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric, 106. 45 David Wills, Prosthesis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 9. 46 Wills, Prosthesis, 10.

16 prosthesis fuses linguistic and corporeal supplementarity in our embodiment…”47 Linguistic and corporeal supplementarity are themes to which disability constantly calls attention in contemporary and in early modern literature.

Jay Dolmage indicates a similar tendency embodied in the figure of the limping god Hephaestus, a god of art, a smith and maker of things, a god whose disability was generative. As Dolmage notes, “both his bodily difference and his craftsmanship are evidence of the particular form of intelligence that Hephaestus was said to symbolize: mētis. In this way, his disability is his ability.”48 Mētis, the origin of terms like métissage or mestizaje, stands for adaptive intelligence. It is “the craft of forging something practical out of these possibilities, practicing an embodied rhetoric, changing the world as we move through it.”49

In early modern literature, it was common to find non-normative embodiment described through the lens of monstrosity and deformity.50 These terms are in fact omnipresent, and authors often insist on their Latin origins as a key to meaning. In French, the dictionaries of Abel Boyer, Furetière, Bayle and the Académie Française provide an essential window into French thought of the period. Similarly, a survey of the Spanish lexical tool Corpus Diacrónico del Español (CORDE) indicates how prevalent were words ranging from “monstruosidad” to “deformidad” were. For example, a CORDE search of the word “monster” (more often spelled “monstro,” from the Italian, and not “monstruo”) in 16th and 17th century Spanish texts demonstrates that it was in Maria de Zayas' Desengaños (where she discusses masculine and feminine behavioural strictures), in Montemayor's Diana, and in picaresque novels such as Guzmán de Alfarache. In early modern English examples cited by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), “monstrous” takes on multiple connotations, ranging from “Of things, material and immaterial: Deviating from the natural order; unnatural” to “of animals and plants: Abnormally formed; deviating congenitally from the normal type; malformed.” It's important to note that the adjectival form of “monster” is entirely early modern; its first usage, according to the OED, was in 1465.

47 Wills, Prosthesis, 107. 48 Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric, 166. 49 Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric, 149.

50 57

“Prodigy” is a term often used in conjunction with monstrosity, and typically indicated monsters’ divine and revelatory qualities.

Aside from the early modern thinkers who often discussed the “monstrosity” of certain bodies in the public sphere, especially within political contexts,51 monsters surfaced in the writings of early modern figures from Montaigne to Bacon.52 Before the early modern period, monstrosity was seen as a “revelation of divine agency” or as an “instrument of renewal,” when writers were inspired by Augustine and Cicero's treatments of monstrosity.53 Monsters’ treatment by early modern authors was less uniform: although monstrosity was sometimes considered the outcome of godly displeasure or maternal transgression or more commonly a sign of political unrest, by the early modern period, treatments of monstrosity varied widely. Landes and Knoppers note that it is not possible to argue that the meaning of monstrosity followed a teleological progression from irrational (in the medieval period) to medical and logical (in the early modern period), but rather that discourses of monstrosity were fluid and non-linear in their evolution.54

Scarron and Cervantes did discuss monstrosity with respect to their enemies, but significantly, they rarely used it with respect to themselves. Disabled early modern writers were not positioning themselves as prodigies; often they focused instead on the tensions that they had to navigate as part of their meaning-making and as part of their assertions of citizenship. Cervantes opted to fill his work with examples of Spanish hands making sacrificial gestures. Instead of Spanish blood, the valorous hand which Cervantes sacrificed came to signify the possibility of true Hispanitas, or Spanishness. Scarron proved the importance of wit and verbal acuity while claiming to his readers that his deformity, and his resulting ‘deformed’ language would heal them.

The analysis below considers the mētis that Cervantes and Scarron both developed through becoming disabled after having lived as privileged, able-bodied men. This mētis was especially

51 For a discussion of monstrosity and the Fronde, see Wes Williams, Monsters and Their Meanings in Early Modern Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); for a discussion of monstrosity during the English Civil wars, see Knoppers and Landes cited below in note 81. 52 Lennard Davis, Bending over Backwards, 52. 53 Laura Knoppers and Joan Landes, Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2004), 9. 54 Knoppers and Landes, Monstrous Bodies, 11.

18 necessary in navigating the tension between the early modern understanding of the text as a necessarily incomplete body with the early modern suspicion of irregular bodies. The latter denied disabled men the right to rhetorical intervention and creation. Though Scarron and Cervantes were not disabled in the same way, their respective disabilities called into question their legitimacy as men and writers while creating the opportunity to make a case for their unique auctoritas. In both cases, disability gave both men unique opportunities that they did not enjoy in their able-bodied lives: in Cervantes’ case, he could call into question Spanish ideas of pure blood and valour, while Scarron was able to show that he possessed compensatory depths of the wit Frenchmen were expected to demonstrate. By negotiating the various disadvantages of disability and prejudice, as well as the advantages of mētis, both convinced their audiences of their importance as disabled writers and citizens.

Chapter 1 Setting the Scene for Cervantes

To be manco, or physically lacking a hand, carried especial meaning in Cervantes’ context. Preconceived notions about disability in the period depended on the senses affected by disability and their perceived importance and function. The early modern vogue for dissection, and for the metonymic reduction of people to body parts in literature, combined with the hierarchy of the senses, rendering the symbolic differences among disabilities especially significant.55 In the hierarchy of the senses, it is crucial to ask what the symbolic import of the hand would be as an organ of touch. The hand’s function as a symbol of masculine agency and as a rhetorical supplement meant that in Cervantes’ time to be missing a hand would have triggered deep anxiety. Moreover, though two of the best-selling literary theorists of Cervantes’ time took for granted that incompleteness was the starting point of writing and artistic creation generally, the loss of a hand was threatening enough so as to challenge this received truth about disability. In the early modern period, the hierarchy of the senses placed touch at the lowest point. The low opinion of touch and its potential in provoking sinful action dates as far back as Plato. Later Christian thinkers were similarly apprehensive about touch, and more specifically its erotic possibilities. In her study of touch in the early modern period, Sharon Assaf demonstrates that visual depictions of the hand showed touch as problematic and anxiety-inducing.56 Assaf notes of two contrasting sixteenth-century pictorial representations of the sense of touch: […] [A]t the centre of the woodcut illustration to Badius’s text, and in Pencz’s depiction of the personification of touch, is the hand. In each, the hand is perceived as the organ of touch, but in the former it is depicted as

55 For more on the vogue for dissection and its effects on early modern culture, see The Body Emblazoned, ed. Jonathan Sawday, New York: Routledge, 1996. For more on the metonymic reduction of people to body parts, see in particular Laura Knoppers’ essay “Noll’s Nose or Body Politics in Cromwellian England,” Form and Reform in Renaissance England: Essays in Honor of Barbara Kiefer Lewalski Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000, 21-44. 56 To further complicate our understanding of early modern ideas of touch, this sense was not limited to the hand. Carla Mazzio in fact goes so far as to argue that touch is the one sense that the early moderns did not associate with a particular organ. 19

an offending appendage, whereas in the latter it is shown [working on a loom].57 The key to deciphering the differing interpretations of the hand’s position in Pencz and Badius is how it was used—too much otium, or leisure time associated with creation, turns the hand against its own moral end. At the same time, otium made possible a life of the mind. There was a parallel tradition, dating to Aristotle and Galen, in which the hand became “the instrument of instruments.”58 Katherine Rowe’s Dead Hands demonstrates the ways in which the hand was linked to agency, both in medicine (which esteemed hands, since they were essential in processes such as dissection) and in literature and the visual arts, where the hand was shown to be a symbol of political agency especially. Although Rowe’s sources derive from the English Renaissance canon, Cervantes’ own discussion of his injury supports Rowe’s insights into the symbolic import of the hand in early modern thought. These warring discourses about touch and hand had a significant impact on early modern thought.

The hand occupied a paradoxical position in the early modern period precisely because it existed at a locus point where prejudices about the sense of touch intersected with reverence for the hand’s importance as an instrument in medicine and science. The hand could even play a role in ensuring someone’s understanding of proper religious doctrine. Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, a catalogue of a Folger Shakespeare Library exhibition, demonstrates that the hand was considered to hold mighty power in the early modern period as an essential tool in learning and memorization. In the religious woodcuts that the exhibition foregrounded, “the hand itself forms a complete and familiar visual structure that aids the reader/viewer in mastering all types of knowledge,”59 teaching readers to create a type of memory palace built not in the mind, but on the body itself. In particular, it could be used as a pedagogical and memory tool to help readers to remember the theology of Christ’s sacrifice.

57 Sharon Assaf, “The Ambivalence of the Sense of Touch in Early Modern Prints,” Renaissance and Reform, 29, no. 1 (2005), 77-75, 78. 58 Katherine Rowe, Dead Hands: Fictions of Agency, Renaissance to Modern, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 5. 59 Claire Richter Sherman, “Introduction,” in Writing on Hands, eds Claire Richter Sherman and Peter M. Lukeheart (Carlisle: Dickinson College, 2000.),12-22, 14.

Generally speaking, hands were considered “a privileged part of the body, linked to the soul”60 standing in as a “symbol or figure of the whole person.”61

Even critics like Carla Mazzio, who complicates the relationship between touch and the hand, agrees with the primacy of the hand in early modern thought, and in its relation to language. Mazzio suggests that the early modern attitude to touch was much more complex than contemporary critics allow; to her, early modern thought found touch so threatening precisely because it disrupted the early modern expectation that each sense be linked to a specific organ or member, and in so doing, it called into question the metonymic understanding of the body and the senses. Using as an example the play Lingua, or the Combat of the Five Senses, Mazzio goes argues that touch in the period is in fact not localized merely in the hands. To the contrary, touch is everywhere, she states, and thus it “challenges the logic of synecdoche and metonymy on which analogies between macrocosm and microcosm depend.”62 In particular, touch was identified with the heart, “a particularly resonant locus of touch and vulnerability, not only for the melancholic but for the physical body literally ‘touched to the quick.’”63 Elsewhere, critics note that “the perceptive act of touching implies a certain permeable quality to the hand (certainly to the skin covering it)” and thus it can be “significantly passive as well as active; it is a movement of the hand that potentially blurs distinctions between perceiving subject and perceived object.”64

Whether part of a model of the senses that links the hand to the heart, or the limb that most upset distinctions between inside and outside, the hand’s power lay its potential to make someone vulnerable to the environment around them and to others’ attempts to break down boundaries between people. Most significant for this study is the hand’s relationship to language and the interdependence of the former and the latter which could call into question a writer’s use of

60 Sherman, “Introduction,” 13-22, 14. 61 Rowe, Dead Hands, 5. 62Carla Mazzio, “Acting with Tact: Touch and Theatre in the Renaissance,” in Sensible Flesh: On Touch in Early Modern Culture, ed. Elizabeth D. Harvey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylviania Press, 2016), 159-186,184. 63 Mazzio, “Acting with Tact,” 184. 64 Anne Sophie Refskou and Laura Søvsø Thomasen, “Handling the Theme of Hands in Early Modern Cross-Over Contexts,” EMCO 1(5), 2014, accessed 2 September 2019.

22 language. As Mazzio explains, “to have ‘tact’ is to have just the right touch, a manifest sensitivity to one’s linguistic and social surround. And if it is tact, in every sense of word, at work in the most powerful tragic dramas of the English Renaissance, it may deserve much more of the very recognition it gives.”65 Even in models like Mazzio’s which complicate the picture of the hand as the organ of touch, the hand and touch more generally remain inseparable from language and its proper uses in communicating a person’s wit and will.

Concerns about the hand and communication arose as part of colonial contact with the Americas. Because the hand was such a crucial part of communication in colonization, hand, touch, gesture and language became inextricable parts of the colonial project. As Adam Kendon notes: the expansion of contacts between Europeans and peoples of other lands, especially the encounters with the natives [sic] of the New World…led to the realization that, although spoken languages were diverse and unintelligible, communication was yet possible through gesture and greatly reinforced the idea that universal principles of expression and communication could be found in gesture.66 The hand propelled the colonial project not simply through the gestures it made that enabled communication and cross-cultural understanding but also through writing, the way in which the absent colonizers in the metropole could still ensure their presence was felt. Jonathan Goldberg demonstrates that for young men of the privileged classes, the compensation they received for learning good penmanship (a manual skill, looked down upon as not gentlemanly) was their mastery of “the proper tools necessary for the tasks of civilization—the writers’ weapons of quill and quillcase.”67 Thanks to their new manual skill, they could take up colonial administration as an act of violence, one that mirrored the violence young men imposed on themselves in learning to have a “good hand.”

65 Mazzio, “Acting with Tact,” 186.

66 Adam Kendon, Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004) 22.

67 Goldberg, Writing Matter, 63.

Because the hand was a symbol of agency as well as the point of contact between peoples, it became the natural target of symbolic punishments during Spanish incursions into the Americas. As we will see below, for early modern Spanish men, the hand functioned as a potent symbol of national military might; any attack on a hand was an attack on the man himself. Spanish valor resided in the arms (or hands) of its male noble class. Imperialist conquistadores easily projected the linkage between hands and national identity onto the bodies of conquered peoples. Bartolomé de las Casas records that one particularly devastating Spanish tactic was to take indigenous resisters and to “cut off both their hands and [and make the resisters] wear them hanging, and tell them, ‘Go with letters.’ Which should be understood as meaning, carry the news to the people who had run away to the mountains.”68 That is, the hands become the “cartas” or letters bearing a message of colonial dominance, requiring no written script to be understood. At the same time, by amputating Indigenous resisters’ hands, the Spanish “stri[p] them of the very instruments of 'natural language' in which the universal kinship of humankind was embodied.”69 Writers from the Italian peninsula, England and France all agreed that gesture comprised a universal language; Bulwer’s full title implies as much: Chirologia, or the Naturall Language of the Hand. By cutting off indigenous hands, Spanish conquistadores emphasized the degradation of the native peoples into animals, or perhaps implied that the indigenous people were already animals, rendering their victims unable to use the one human language that supposedly extended into the pre-lapsarian past.70

As Michael Neill notes, “the amputated member seems charged with a surplus of obscure significance that threatens to rupture the semiotic boundaries of the gesture, rendering it as impossibly full (or empty) of meaning as a scream.”71 Through the hand’s pure manual communication the European colonial project is possible, as it is the only form of speech both English and Amerindigenes comprehend.72 Neill comments on the “extraordinary symbolic

68 Or, “Cortábanles ambas manos y dellas llevaban colgando, y decíanles: ‘Andad con cartas’ Conviene a saber, lleva las nuevas a las gentes que estaban huídas por los montes" in the Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias, (Madrid : Castalia, 1999.) 81 69 Michael Neill, "Amphitheatres in the Body': Playing with Hands on the Shakespearean Stage," Shakespeare Survey 48 (1995): 29.46. 70 Neill, “Ampitheatres in the Body,” 46. 71 Neill, “Ampitheatres in the Body,” 24. 72 Neill, “Ampitheatres in the Body,” 41.

24 value invested in the hand — a value which the circumstances of early modern culture had, if anything, enhanced. It was no accident the bodies of early modern suicides should have been symbolically punished for their self-cancelling crime by the amputation of their right hand.73 The cultural association of suicide with the use/misuse of the hand is clear in Cervantes’ Numancia, where the power of the Numantine people, or their actions, lies in the perversity of turning their hands on themselves. In fact, because the hand is “figured as the locus of a second self—one that can be distanced, and if necessary separated, from the true self" it can also be "made to suffer as a scapegoat, drawing punishment away from those symbolic loci of identity with which it is so often paired—the head and the heart.”74

Significantly, though, Neill also notes that the right hand is “the symbol and model of all aristocracy”; the left hand is “an auxiliary” and “sinister”, being ‘on the side of death’ and weakness; the left hand is the hand of perjury, treachery, & fraud.’”75 In Bulwer’s phrasing, the left hand is to be feared because it is “idle” and thus suited for thieves.76 Neill argues that Mucius Scaevola, a classical figure whom this chapter discusses below, “rehabilitates” his remaining left hand by mutilating the right. Cervantes performed the contrary action: loss of Cervantes’s left hand could be read as a kind of purification, the sacrifice of a significant member, albeit a member that denoted humanity’s baseness and sinister side.77 In Italian dialects, manco often meant "less, lesser, not so much, failing, ailing, wanting, lacking, defective, unperfect. Also one that lacketh a limb or that hath but one hand."78 Its general signification remained "weak, lesser" an indication of its lowly status.79

73 Neill, “Ampitheatres in the Body,” 40. 74 Neill, “Ampitheatres in the Body,” 41. 75 Neill, “Ampitheatres in the Body,” 24. 76 Neill, “Ampitheatres in the Body,” 135. 77 In early modern Italian literatures and dialects, often the left-hand side was even referred to as “a mano manco,” as if it were already in some way disabled. 78 LEME, “Manco,” from John Florio’s World of Words, (London: Hatfield, 1598) URL: https://leme.library.utoronto.ca/lexicon/entry/231/21943 accessed 10 November 2019 79 LEME, "Manco," from William Thomas’ Principal Rules of the Italian Grammar (London: T. Berthelet, 1550) URL: https://leme.library.utoronto.ca/lexicon/entry/70/4402 accessed 6 November 2019

Don Quixote demonstrates his awareness of this distrust for the left-hand when he tells Sancho in book II of Don Quixote, “[…] you must know, Sancho, that a man not knowing how to read, or being left-handed, means one of two things: either he was the child of parents who were too poor and lowborn, or he was so mischievous and badly behaved himself that he could not absorb good habits or good instruction.”80 Although Don Quixote is rarely to be taken seriously, his verdict on left-handedness accorded more generally with contemporary prejudices. The action at Lepanto which deprived Cervantes of his left hand saved him from the corrupting presence of the sinister hand, ensuring that he would henceforth only express his agency through the proper member.

As the policy of Spanish colonial dismemberment suggests, the loss of a hand held great political, cultural and rhetorical significance and as an injury it could also be extremely ambiguous: just as “hand” can “denot[e] the whole limb from shoulder to fingertip,”81 the Spanish term for Cervantes’s disability, “manco,” could indicate a person missing a hand, or an arm, or with a hand or an arm that s/he could not use. The vagueness of the term allowed Cervantes rhetorical leeway in his discussion of his injury, rendering his absent or disabled hand an ever-present symbol of whatever rhetorical function he needed it to fulfill. The polyvalence of “manco” is especially evident in Cervantes’s early years as a disabled man, when his family attempted to secure a pension or monetary reward for his services at Lepanto. At a trial to establish that Cervantes was owed a ransom from the Crown, one witness from Lepanto testified that “that the said Miguel de Cervantes came out of the battle wounded in a hand, such that he was one-handed/armed, which this witness saw such that he was [effectively] one-handed, such that he cannot manage it/take advantage of it/have to do his bidding.”82 Striking in this passage is the unintentional word play. The verb “mandar” originated in the Latin “mandare,” meaning to delegate, to put in hand, itself from the word “manus” or hand.83 The verb “mandar” which can

80 Neill, “Ampitheatres in the Body, 735. 81 Katharine Rowe, Dead Hands, 39. 82 Or, “el dicho Miguel de Cerbantes salió herido de una mano, de tal manera questa manco de ella y que este testigo le ha bisto que de la dicha mano hisquierda esta manco, de tal manera que no la puede mandar” from Información de Miguel de Cervantes de lo que ha servido a S.M. Y de o Que Ha Hecho Estando Captivo en Argel, transcription by Pedro Torres Lanzas, Madrid : Collección cervantina, 1981) 40. 83 A look at early modern dictionaries reveals the associations between the “manus” and the idea of management or control in Spanish. As the Diccionario de autoridades noted mandar “significa tambien regir, gobernar y tener domínio sobre alguna cosa: como Mandar un Exército, una Plaza.” Another term for manage also looks back to its

26 also mean roughly “to manage” underlines the significance of the hand as a kind of instrument of the will84 and the ultimate symbol of agency and power. Cervantes’s witness thus notes both that he no longer has the hand, but also that he no longer can manage it.

Katharine Rowe argues contrary to Carla Mazzio, discussed above, that the sense associated with the hand, touch, is “a common sense, distributed throughout body” but that “the hand its rational and controlling agent."85 The most important faculty associated with the hand is that of agency.86 Cervantes is aware of the symbolic lack of agency signified by the loss of a hand, and that he constantly struggles to refigure his disability such that he gains (or maintains) authorial agency and Hispanitas, or Spanishness. As will see below, in Cervantes’ moment, two major Spanish texts of literary theory “tak[e] incompletion as the starting point of literary creation."87

However, to be literally missing a hand was another thing all together—and as critics and Cervantes grappled with the idea of one-handedness, they revealed key tensions in Spanish ideas about national identity, masculine agency, and the links that allowed an author’s inner thoughts to be part of an outer dialogue with others.

Latin origins in the hand, manejar, which is “metaphoricamente vale gobernar y disponer alguna cosa con destreza y habilidad” according to the 1734 Diccionario de autoridades. 84 Rowe, Dead Hands, 33. 85 Rowe, Dead Hands, 38. 86 Rowe, Dead Hands, 45. 87 Mary Malcolm Gaylord, “Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory in the Text of Fiction,” Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America Self Portrait of the Artist 6, no.1 (1986), 67.

Chapter 2 The One-Handed Text In the Viaje del parnaso, Cervantes reimagined a popular Italian literary genre by envisioning his own trip to the Parnassus to meet the gods and dissect the Spanish literary scene. In this excursion, as always, the Cervantes-narrator reminds the reader (and other characters) of his war wound, a missing (or maimed) left hand. Cervantes draws on the common symbolism of the handclasp as a “happy point of amity,” figuratively extending his maimed hand to readers as a gesture welcoming them into his text.88 By the seventh chapter, Cervantes has moved from the foregrounding of his own hand to invoking a Muse who is disabled in his image: You, belligerent muse, you who have a voice of bronze and a tongue of metal, when you come to sing of the proud Mars; You for whom the human race always annihilates itself and wanes; you, who can take my pen from ignorance and waning; You, broken-handed and great with mercies, I tell you in doing these [mercies] I ask you for one of my own, one that will not make you less rich.89 Cervantes’ “beligera musa” posseses a “mano rota.” In Castilian idiom, a “mano rota” can indicate a facility or ability to do something.90 But the phrase has a literal meaning as well, since

88 John Bulwer, Chirologia and Chironomia (London: Thomas Harper, 1644), 108-109. 89 In the original, it reads: “Tú, belígera musa, tú, que tienes la voz de bronce y de metal/la lengua, cuando a cantar del fiero Marte vienes; tú, por quien se aniquila siempre y mengua/el gran género humano; tú, que puedes/ sacar mi pluma de ignorancia y mengua; tú, mano rota y larga de mercedes, digo en hacellas, una aquí te pido. que no hará que menos rica quedes,” Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Viaje del parnasso (Madrid: Alianza. 1997), VII.1-9, 129. 90 A search of early modern lexicons and concordances demonstrates how many possible meanings underlie the “mano rota.” The “mano rota” of the Muse is a good example of the ways in which the hand and the idioms using hands or handedness were used by Cervantes to allude to the rich semantic field around the hand. Here, Cervantes’ invocation of the muse serves as an especially apt example. The broken hand of the Muse mirrors’ Cervantes own, of course. Cervantes’ use of the expression “mano rota” stands at a temporal midpoint between the adjective “manirroto,” a common way of referring to spendthrifts or the overly generous, and the later use of the phrase “tener una mano rota” to indicate talent for something. In early modern Castilian, the verb “romper” usually gave the participle “rompido/a” instead of “roto/a” so using "rota" as a participle is unusual. Even “rompido” itself gestured to both brokenness and fallowness, like that of a field “broken in” through tilling—this is what Covvarubias says (R15), and this is what the Diccionario de los Autoridades claims in its definition of “romper.” The roots of 27

“rota” could indicate a broken hand. Cervantes’ Muse boasts a broken hand as a counterintuitive signal of her talent and generosity. At the same time, Cervantes invokes this Muse’s belligerent and sinister nature—the human race “se aniquila siempre y mengua” when she so inspires us. In Cervantes’ semi-jocular presentation, the broken-handed Muse uses her powers to assist destruction as well as creation. The double nature of the Muse with her broken hand presents readers with the unsettling image of a capricious goddess and underlines the anxiety that writing can produce—failed results of human effort, as well as the uncanny feeling that the hand had a will of its own. Both were ideas that Cervantes and contemporaries grappled with.

The polysemous “mano rota” points to a key tension which recurs throughout Cervantes’ work, in that a hand can be simultaneously absent or non-functional (in the case of the above citation, allowing riches to drop over the writer) and present--that is, both able to retain the Muse’s wealth despite its profligacy while serving as a conduit of the writer’s artistic talent. Moreover, the Muse’s broken hand can give and give without depleting her personal store of riches, another benefit which it accrues, despite its brokenness.

Cervantes’ own discussions of his hand occur against a larger early modern backdrop in which discourses about the hand are as contradictory as the expression “tener la mano rota.” The hand and its potential powers were a source of great concern to Cervantes’ contemporaries; the early modern perception was that the organ had a special “sympathy” with a person’s will, if not a will of its own.91 At the same time, the early modern discussions of artistic creation which Cervantes followed propounded that the hand could be the tool that served to reveal a creator’s genius, or perhaps even a source of that genius itself. The hand served as an important conduit for a writer’s personal style, described as manera (from the Latin manus) and the source of her possible creative genius, or ingenio.92 A well-directed hand would make known a person’s talent and

“romper” from the Latin “rumpere” also indicated both brokenness and the state of being broken in. In early modern Italian, broken hands served as a symbol of generosity primarily as Il Vocabolario Etimologico di Pianigiani, dignitized by Bonomi in 2008, indicates. In early modern French, on the other hand, “rompu” (from the same origins) more often indicated talent, as Cotgrave noted in his 1611 Dictionarie of French and English Tongues. Finally, it’s important to note that a mano “rota” could also be a torn hand, one through which money flowed too easily. At Lepanto, Cervantes would have seen his hand broken and torn apart by an arquebus. It’s impossible to know which meaning Cervantes intended, but an early modern reader could have interpreted the phrase in any or all of the above ways.

91 Bulwer, Chirologia, 2, 110. 92 John Bulwer addresses his works on the hand and its gestures to “the ingenious reader of this text” just as the prefatory material includes a letter from a friend of his to “the ingenious autho.,”

29 careful wit, according to early modern doctors. However, just as a hand could reveal someone’s` genius, it could also reveal a writer’s lack, either of wit, or talent, or willpower. As one early modern physician had it, the hand was the “substitute and vice regent of the tongue” and the most effective and accurate means of communication.93 The hand was capable of the expression of words and ideas and, better than speech, was “the brain’s midwife.”94 Cervantes alludes to his hand at times when he draws his readers’ attention to his heroism and the resulting maimed hand in order to ensure that they will spend less time considering his ingenio, or wit, as it manifests itself in the creations of his ‘good’ hand.

Cervantes further plays with attitudes to the hand and creation, using his manco or damaged hand to distract readers from the creations of his remaining hand. This chapter will juxtapose these contradictory discourses of creation, the hand, and wit with the case of Mucius Scaevola, a Roman man whose patriotic sacrifice of his hand provoked ambivalence in the early modern period. In light of classical and early modern interpretations of his story, Cervantes’ allusions to Mucius demonstrate the ways in which Cervantes wished to separate himself from a hero whose hand earned him glory but at a high cost. Even once a person’s hand had been partially tamed through discipline and education, early modern literary writers, doctors, and artists debated the tensions between natural skill and education, attributing the effects of both to the hand. Cervantes demonstrates an almost oppressive awareness of what he can and must do with his wounded hand. Literarily, he has more than mastered the “mētis” required of disabled creation defined as “the rhetorical concept of cunning and adaptive intelligence” possessed by figures like Vulcan”.95 Mētis also allows contemporary literary scholars to read in a manner akin to Cervantes’ contemporaries; the idea that mētis requires, that “all rhetoric is embodied”96 is hardly a new one; in fact, the most influential of literary theorists in sixteenth-century Spain argued something quite like this. As Dolmage notes, “If Hephaestus was so respected and celebrated as a tradesman and an artist, why should we believe that craft and art, that rhetoric and expression, are exclusively the realm of the ‘able-bodied’?”97 Since in Cervantes’ moment some

93 Bulwer, Chirologia, 2. 94 Bulwer, Chirologia, 4-5. 95 Jay Dolmage, Rhetorical Disability (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2016), 195. 96 Dolmage, Rhetorical Disability, 195. 97 Dolmage, Rhetorical Disability, 181.

30 of the best-selling literary theory posits that "incompletion [can be] the starting point of literary creation,”98 there was some small space for disabled writers to create. Cervantes takes ideas of generative incompleteness to the next level, as he ensures his works begin with his own physical disabilities as a way of introducing both himself and his writing to readers.

Below, I will consider Cervantes’s rhetorical use of his disability and its evolving importance in his various prefatory works in tandem with his family’s legal challenges, and several of his plays and prose works in order to unfold Cervantes’ use of manual symbolism. Three literary paratexts are particularly significant: Don Quixote II’s preface (1615) as well as the prologue to the Novelas Ejemplares (1613). The last piece Cervantes ever wrote, the Prologue to Persiles y Sigismunda, turns on his hand as he stages an extraordinary encounter between himself and a student on the road to Toledo.

Cervantes’ adaptive use of disability was especially timely; popular Spanish texts on literary theory published in the latter half of the sixteenth century often fell back tropes of disability in discussing writing. The literary theory of Cervantes’ Spain foregrounded the body as a site of creation. The two most influential literary theorists, Juan Huarte de San Juan and Alonso López (called “El Pinciano”), represented texts as bodies that needed to be whole as well as bodies that derived their meaning from incompleteness. Unsurprisingly, Huarte and El Pinciano were both doctors. Though they were not impaired themselves, Huarte and El Pinciano take for granted the connection and possible tension between a writer’s incomplete, disabled body, and a body of text.

El Pinciano justified his authority in literary theory through both classical mythology and medicine. He invoked doctors’ right to give literary counsel by reminding readers that “Apolo was a Doctor and a Poet, as these arts were so similar.”99 The two arts were linked because “if a

Doctor tempers the humous, Poetry trains the customs born from the humours.”100 The way El

98 Mary Malcolm Gaylord, Cervantes, “Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory in the Text of Fiction,” Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America Self Portrait of the Artist 6, no.1 (1986): 67. 99 “Apolo fué Médico y Poeta por ser estas artes tan afines” from Alonso López Pinciano, Philosophia antigua poética (Madrid: C.S.I.C., 1973), vol 1, 3-4. 100 In the original, it reads “si el Médico templa los humores, la Poética entrena las costumbres que de los humores nacen,”López Pinciano, Philosophia antigua poética, 2.

Pinciano connects medicine to poetry gives the poetry primacy as an ur-creative force, one that precedes even the existence of individual bodily tendencies. Though much of his text as well as Huarte’s suggests the converse relationship, his claim is significant. In his foreword, El Pinciano dares to suggest that in the beginning, there was poetry, and it was an embodied poetry.

In his dialogue, El Pinciano figured texts as having their own corporeal existence, similar to that of humans. He used disability as a way of describing texts that were somehow lacking, either in their structure or in their use of language. A bad poem becomes a “cuerpo muerto adornado”101 ["a decorated corpse"] while at the same time a narrative that lacks sufficient episodes is “manca”.102 In her analysis of El Pinciano and his influence on Cervantes, “Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory in the Text of Fiction,” Mary M. Gaylord notes that “manco” appears with frequency within the Filosofía Antigua poética to describe writing.103

El Pinciano recognizes the contradictions inherent in crafting an argument for a kind of poetry that is a complete body. One participant in his dialogue even admits that “poetry, like all things, has its fragilities and impotence.”104 In response, El Pinciano underlined the importance of physical lack in literary creation, citing the example of Hephaestus, the disabled god of creation. I can see….that for this the ancients made and represented as healthy all their gods, except one amongst them that was artifice, and he was ‘crippled [sic].”105 The invocation of Hephaestus is significant. Gaylord’s discussion of Hephaestus and his meaning in both Cervantes’ literary self- portraits and the literary theory of his time anticipates Jay Dolmage’s later argument which holds that “all of rhetoric is connected to the negotiation—the enforcement, the transgression, the resignification—of bodily and intellectual norms, of embodied meanings.106 Early modern literary theory, much like contemporary disability theory, allowed that “a work’s imperfections

101 López Pinciano, Philosophia antigua poética, I.279. 102 López Pinciano, Philosophia antigua poética, I.66. 103 Gaylord, “Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory,” 66. 104 “La poesia, como todas las demás tiene sus fragilidades y impotencies,” from, Philosophia antigua poética, II.73. 105 “Yo lo veo…que por esto los antiguos hizieron y fingieron sanos a todos sus dioses, excepto uno que entre ellos era artifice, el qual era cojo,” López Pinciano, Philosophia antigua poètica, II.73. 106 Dolmage, Rhetorical Disability, 67.

32 are not blamed only on an inept poet, but on art itself.”107 For Cervantes’ contemporaries and for 21st century readers, it isn’t simply art that is inherently lacking or vulnerable, but meaning itself.

Pinciano’s dialogue also highlights a key tension in early modern theories of literary creation, and the contradiction that Cervantes, as a disabled artist, literally embodied: on the one hand, as Gaylord notes: The crippled Artifex represents Art itself as a human endeavor with its soaring ambitions and its built-in obstacles to perfection—that is to say, art’s axiom is necessary imperfection.108 This tension between necessary incompleteness and the goal of writers to make whole texts meant that Cervantes lived and embodied a key contradiction: on one hand, his body resembled an incomplete or failed text, a text that was itself manco. At the same time, Cervantes could claim that as a disabled man he had as a predecessor the mythological disabled artist-creator, Hephaestus.

Pinciano’s predecessor Huarte poses even more significant questions for disability studies theorists interested in Cervantes. Huarte wrote his Examen as an attempt to classify the characteristics that affected men’s intelligence, or ingenio; since different men possessed different kinds of ingenio, depending on nation and diet and climate, his text aimed to enable men to use their natural talents in ways that most suited their temperaments. Gaylord notes that Huarte’s text, Examen de ingenios, “set[s] out from the familiar Aristotelian metaphor of bodily perfection, [and] it subjects that trope to literal dissection at the hands of a good Castilian physician.”109 Huarte naturally focuses “not on the rules of art, but on the human soil from which it springs, not on Poetry or Poetics, but on poets as men—with bodies.”110 The jumping-off point of Huarte’s argument is a citation from Cicero’s Orator: All artes (saith Cicero) are placed vnder certaine vniuersall principles, which being learned with studie and trauaile, finally we so grow to attaine vnto them: but the art of poesie is in this so speciall, as if God or nature

107 Gaylord, “Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory,” 67. 108 Gaylord, “Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory,” 67. 109 Gaylord, “Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory,” 67. 110 Gaylord, “Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory,” 62.

make not a man a Poet: little auailes it, to deliuer him the precepts and rules of versifieng. For which cause he said thus, the studying and learning of other matters consisteth in precepts and in artes: but a Poet taketh the course of nature it selfe, and is stirred vp by the forces of the minde, and as it were inflamed by a certaine diuine spirit. But herein Cicero swarued from reason: for verily there is no Science or Art, deuised in the commonwealth, which if a man wanting capacitie for himselfe to apply, he shall reape anie profit thereof.111 Huarte’s entire treatise is rife with contradiction, including his main argument; though he sets his treatise in opposition to Cicero’s error, in fact, Huarte’s insistence on working within a person’s natural talents suggests that it was perhaps not possible or desirable to try to learn just anything. A person’s ingenio was formed by their circumstances; it was also embodied and difficult to work around, though the contradictions in Huarte’s text suggest that he was ambivalent about how mutable human aptitudes could be. An artist like Cervantes would raise significant questions about ingenio and its functioning; as a man born able-bodied who was disabled in adulthood, he had experienced an extreme example of embodied change, one which could have impacted his talents and abilities.

Huarte’s text spoke to larger debates of his time and the views of his contemporaries across Europe. In particular, His analysis of ingenio and its role in literary creation paralleled many of the contemporary Italian discussions of ingegno in both the visual and literary arts. In Spanish literature, el ingenio and la invención were often used to signify two phases of the creative process. Ingenio engenders or generates (engendra), while invención, governed by the understanding (entendimiento), slowly and conscientiously gives artistic form and coherence to whatever was engendered.”112 In the creative process, the fourth element was maniera/manera or estilo (from the Latin stylus), the preferred terms for describing an artist’s own individual identifiable marks or mastery of technique.

111 In this case, the citation is from an Early Modern translation and not a more recent one. This choice of citation is deliberate as it demonstrates the interest in the subject throughout Europe. Juan Huarte, Examen de ingenios, trans. Richard Carew, London, 1594, 102. Early English Books Online: Text Creation Partnership. July 15, 2018. http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A12777.0001.001/. 112 Stephen Gilman, The Novel according to Cervantes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 105.

Both critics and artists, however, preferred to ignore the etymology of both manera and stylus; though the hand was the organ which authors best controlled, “mediating between ideas and materials, imagined and visual form,”113 it also stood in for “the instrument of production” that “evoked physical labour”.114 Much like Cervantes’ mentions of his hand, which he figured as simultaneously lacking and a focus of others’ interest, manera’s physical origins remained constantly in the foreground yet conveniently overlooked. Just as the hand of the visual artist channeled his ingegno, revealing the artist’s individuality through his maniera, according to theories of his time, Cervantes’ literary wit would reveal itself in the work of his hands, both wounded and whole. As if to foreclose possible criticisms of his work or his person, Cervantes evokes his ingenio self-deprecatingly and with great frequency.

Cervantes would have been aware of contemporary Italian aesthetic debates on ingenio and maniera due to his two sojourns in Italy (1569-mid 1570; 1572-1575). In the Tuscan dialect of the time, writers consistently (though not solely) used maniera to denote their proper style. Manera, the Castilian cognate, operated similarly, as did ingenio. Cervantes’s Don Quijote describes its protagonist as “el ingenioso hidalgo,” using irony to call attention to the character’s strange thinking and lackluster executive function. The Cervantes of the Quijote’s prologue also tells readers that his book is the product not of his flesh and blood, but rather of his own "sterile and poorly cultivated ingenio."115 Cervantes frequently reminds the reader of his other works that he lacks the well-tended ingenio that marks creation; in the Viaje del parnaso, Cervantes calls himself an "an ingenious layman,"116 which could counterintuitively indicate scholarly failure.117

Cervantes’ concern with his own ingenio frequently comes through in his later paratexts, too. In the prologue to the Novelas ejemplares he boasts that his ingenio helped conceive them, after

113 Philip Sohm, Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 153. 114 Sohm, Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy, 153. 115 This is my translation of "estéril y mal cultivado ingenio,” by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote, trans. Edith Grossman (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 29. 116 Cervantes, Viaje, VI.174,122. 117 This is my translation of "ingenio lego." For a detailed discussion of the meaning of "lego," please see Paul Mérimée,"A propos de l'expression ‘ingenio lego’ appliquée à Cervantes," Bulletin Hispanique, tome 49, n°3-4, 1947, 452-455. Stephen Gilman reads "ingenio lego" as an ironic dig at Lope de Vega.

35 which "his pen gave birth to them.”118 Depending on the text, Cervantes could alternate between decrying his ingenio as “seco” or dry or “resfriado” or cold —both signs of a humoural imbalance causing cognitive impairment—and choosing to laud himself instead (through the words of Apollo) as a “raro inventor.”

In Cervantes’ time, while ingenio (ingegno) sprang effortlessly from men’s hands, invenzione (invención) came to indicate the effects of education and effort on creation—part of the larger debate of talent (ingenium) versus art or education (ars).119 In debates on style and creation, the hand figured as a source or conduit of or block to talent. At the same time, the class implications of manual labour meant that it was anxiety-producing for a gentleman to contemplate its symbolism too extensively; it was a delicate balance for theorists of literary and artistic creation.

Cervantes’ own discussions of ingenio suggest his concerns about what his style said about his wit. If his wit was as maimed as his hand, Cervantes is presenting readers with this secondary and implied disability resulting from being manco. He employs his disabled hand as a place of contact with the reader where “Cervantes” can also address his obvious ingenio (or lack thereof). At the same time, however, for a very self-conscious author like Cervantes, his injury allowed him to quickly raise the possibility of literary failure, while simultaneously distracting or impressing readers with his martial history. The qualities of one’s style manifested themselves literally in one’s hand (in this case, meaning “handwriting”); according to Huarte, “writing also discouereth the imagination, and so we see, that few men of good vnderstanding, doe write a faire hand.”120 Rough or illegible penmanship demonstrated not a lack of literary ability but a surfeit. In Huarte’s view, ingenio transcended intention—it would reveal itself through the workings of the hand, regardless of a person’s will. To others, the hand required some mastery, and in particular the invisible discipline of learning how to write in both secretary and italic styles, a skill which assured men their proper role within

118 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Novelas ejemplares, ed. Roberto González Echevarría, trans. Edith Grossman, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 5; In the original, he claims "A ésto se aplicó mi ingenio, por aquí me lleva mi inclinación, y más que me doy a entender, y es así, que yo soy el primero que ha novelado en lengua castellana, que las muchas novelas que en ella andan impresas, todas son traducidas de lenguas extranjeras, y éstas son mías propias, no imitadas ni hurtadas ; mi ingenio las engendró, y las parió mi pluma, y van creciendo en los brazos de la estampa" from Prólogo, Novelas ejemplares, Barcelona: Crítica, 2001. 119 Sohm, Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy, 40.

120 Juan Huarte, Examen de ingenios, 131.

36 the class hierarchy of an imperialist country.121 The relationship between the hand, literary ability, and masculine success would raise troubling questions for someone who was manco.

Moreover, the early modern way to compensate for verbal (rhetorical) lack required using the hand, meaning that a manco’s text could be doubly disabled: Decencie is properly spoken of Gesture, and motions of the Hand and Body, and it so exalts Beauty from the concrete into the abstract, that Nature and the tacit voice, and assent of all men, allow of it as a thing were material in commerce, and is so look’d for at the Hand of an Orator, that the defects of extemporarie and jejune Orations, have been covered by the Elegancies of this Artifice; and those that have come off handsomely with their expressions, for want of these comely and – palliating graces of Elocution, were ever laughed at, and justly derided on manual pronunciation.122 A rhetor’s words required the hand for an essential completeness. The right use of the hand became, for those who preached, a religious duty. Preaching manuals of the period show that Catholics and Protestants expected that even the Gospel would benefit from manual aid.123

Literary, but not Literal Gestures Lacking a functional hand, Cervantes would in many respects have to supplement his use of language even more than someone without his disability. In later paratexts to the Novelas ejemplares and Persiles y Sigismunda, Cervantes invokes the missing hand in a literary gesture, and to fill a rhetorical gap. Instead of an orator gesticulating proficiently, Cervantes the author pulls aside his sleeve, demonstrating his maimed extremity as readers strive to reconcile Cervantes’ heroic past with the author whose work they are reading.

Cervantes knows that the best rhetorical defense of himself consists of a good offense. In seeking out others’ attention and fixing it on his wounded hand, Cervantes counterintuitively ensures that readers would think more of his heroism and its effects on the one hand than on his possible wit

121 Goldberg, 63. 122 Bulwer, Chironomia, 1. 123 Kendon, 20-21.

37 and its production on the other. At the same time, Cervantes deprecates his own ingenio, raising the issue before others could.124 He employs rhetorical sleight of hand, ensuring that both of his hands and their production remain slightly out of focus for readers. By virtue of Cervantes’ maneuverings, manera remains front and center, his self-consciousness highlighting some of his stylistic and literary choices while obscuring his more questionable ones.125

Cervantes’ efforts to extend a maimed hand as a point of readerly focus and distraction culminates in his final paratext. In the prologue to the Persiles y Sigismunda, which was written mere days before his death, he stages an extraordinary encounter between himself and a student on the road to Toledo. Cervantes had long suffered from diabetes and was riding to the city, perhaps hoping to recuperate or receive medical treatment there; he died several days after his trip. The student had been following behind Cervantes’s group when he finally caught up to the author. Cervantes tells us that upon learning that he was one of the group’s travelers, the student was overcome by awe. Cervantes says: No sooner did he hear the name Cervantes than the student slid down from his mount, letting his saddlebag fall on one side, his portmanteau on the other (for he was carrying all his luggage with him). He ran up to me and threw himself upon me and seized me by the left hand. ‘Ah, yes!’ he cried, ‘so this is the maimed one who is whole, the wholly famous and brilliant writer, in short, the darling of the Muses.126 In Cervantes’s retelling of the encounter with the student, his left hand, described elsewhere as “estropeada” [maimed/destroyed] in the Battle of Lepanto, becomes not only an identifying characteristic, but also the literal, physical point of contact for him and the student, and by extension, the reader. The student seemingly conflates Cervantes’s disability with his favoured status with the Muses, which is to be expected. Since his early career, Cervantes had gone to

124 Except Avellaneda, whose false continuation of the Quixote raised the question of Cervantes’ supposed insanity. 125 This intervention does not have the space or purview to consider Cervantes and his theories of representation, but it is significant to consider that Cervantes’ hand is a point of connection between criticism and discussions of representation and realism in his works with Cervantes’ own discussions of his body. 126 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda: A Northern Story, trans. Celia Richmond Weller and Clark A. Colahan, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009), 19. The original reads: “Apenas hubo oído el estudiante el nombre de Cervantes cuando, apeándose de su cabalgadura, cayéndose aquí el cojín y allí el portamanteo, que con toda esta autoridad caminaba, arremetió a mí, y acudiendo asirme de la mano izquierda, dijo: Sí, sí, este es el manco sano, el famaso todo, el escritor alegre, y finalmente el regocijo de las musas," Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, (Madrid: Catedra, 2005), 12.

38 great lengths to link his authorial personae to his identity as a wounded veteran of Lepanto. The wounded or maimed hand in the prefaces becomes a site of Cervantes’s literary anxieties or perhaps, a site of displacement for Cervantes’s literary anxieties—a focus for a kind of authorial sleight of hand.

In the Novelas ejemplares, published in 1613, Cervantes had also linked his disability to his status as author. Cervantes took advantage of a paratextual lack, a missing portrait of himself that his friend neglected to submit to the publisher, to create a literary portrait of himself, one which foregrounds his disability. To broach the subject of his portrait, Cervantes notes that the responsibility for its absence “lies with a friend of mine, one of many I have acquired over the years, more by luck than judgment, who could well have engraved my portrait on the title-page of this book, as is the custom.”127

The convention of placing a portrait before a text often accompanied a literary portrait of the author. As we shall see, Scarron would do the same thing, foregrounding his disability in his address to readers of the Roman comique. The vogue for literary self-portraits offered disabled authors an ability to reclaim, rewrite, and re-signify their disabilities in paratextual acts of authorial self-assertion. Cervantes, whose visible disability is more easily hidden than Scarron’s disability and deformity, has the advantage in how and when to direct the reader to his hand. His focus begins on his “rostro aguileño, alegres ojos, las barbas de plata” or [“aquiline face, joyful eyes, and silvery beard.”]128 Fresh-faced and rather fair than dark, he is also showing signs of premature ageing "algo cargado de espaldas, y no muy ligero de pies" [“somewhat stooping and none too light on his feet”];129 instead of passing on to an immediate discussion of his hand, Cervantes pointedly underlines his authority by concluding that “this […] is the likeness of the author of La Galatea and Don Quixote de la Mancha, after him who wrote the Viaje del Parnaso […] and other stray works that may have wandered off without their owner’s name.”130

127 Cervantes Saavedra, Exemplary Novels, trans. Grossman, (New Haven: Yale UP, 2016). 5 ; In the original, Cervantes says of his friend “el cual bien pudiera, como es uso y costumbre, grabarme y esculpirme en la primera hoja de este libro,” Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares¸ (Barcelona : Edicin Crítica, 2001), 77. 128 Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares¸ 78. 129 Cervantes Saavedra, Exemplary Novels, 5 ; the original in Novelas ejemplares, 5 130 Cervantes, Exemplary Novels, 5; in the original: "Esto, digo, que es el rostro del autor de La Galatea y de Don Quijote de la Mancha, y del que hizo el Viaje del Parnaso…y otras obras que andan por ahí descarriadas y quizá sin el nombre de su dueño," 78, García López.

Cervantes only mentions his hand in the second paragraph of his self-portrait, significantly, still using the third person and not the first: He lost his left hand in the naval battle of Lepanto, from a blunderbuss wound, which, although it looks ugly, he considers beautiful, since he collected it in the greatest and most memorable event that past centuries have ever seen or those to come may hope to see, fighting beneath victorious banners of the son of that glorious warrior, Charles V of happy memory.131 He assumes an appearance of detachment when his narration directs readers to his hand, which apparently shows evidence of being maimed, wounded, even ugly, but re-figures his disfigurement as beautiful. Cervantes’ depiction of his efforts at Lepanto recalls Don Quixote’s rhetoric of chivalry, and his superlatives such as “greatest and most memorable event past centuries have ever seen” with “victorious banners” and “glorious son of Charles V” efface the supposed ugliness of his wound. If Don Quixote dared to describe any event in the same way, the reader’s immediate and conditioned reaction would be laughter; here, it is significant to ask what function the contrast is supposed to serve, and to what extent it is borne out by the context.

When Cervantes’ maimed hand recurs once more in his prologue to the novelas, he declares that, “if it happened somehow that the reading of these novels could encourage the person reading them to any evil desire or thought, I would rather cut off the hand what wrote them than make them public.”132 This rhetorical formulation is, of course, shocking, but also misleading: how could a man who is effectively one-handed use a knife in his bad hand to cut off his good one? This threat of self-mutilation serves two purposes: firstly, it draws attention to Cervantes’s hand wound once again, as a reminder to the reader of his past deeds, which should have increased his and his family’s honour. However, it also calls attention to his ingenio, and the path it takes from his mind to his hand.

131 Cervantes, Exemplary Novels, 3; the original reads “Perdió en la batalla naval la mano izquierda, de un arcabuzazo, herida que, auque parece fea, él la tiene por hermosa, por haberla cobrado en la más memorable y alta ocasión que vieron los pasados siglos, ni esperan ver los venideros, militando debajo lasvencedoras banderas del hijo del rayo de la guerra, Carlo Quinto, de felice memoria,” Novelas ejemplares, 78-79. 132 Cervantes, Exemplary Novels, trans. Grossman, 5; The original reads “Si por algún modo alcanzara que la lección de estas novelas pudiera inducir a quien las leyera a algún mal deseo o pensamiento, antes me cortara la mano con que las escribí que sacarlas en público,” 80.

When Cervantes declares that he will amputate his hand if the stories lead astray, he also promises to not only punish the ingenio that led to the stories’ creation, but also (depending on interpretation), leave his ingenio entirely cut off from the world. For a writer, the hand that played an essential part of the text’s birth should receive any punishment the text incurs; it is both midpoint of the path from ingenio to the text, a path which needs disruption, or possibly the stand-in for the writer’s misguided wilfulness.133 Cervantes claims that “if you look closely, you will see that there is not one [story] from which you cannot extract some profitable example.”134 His linking of the novelas’ exemplarity to his physicality must occur in tandem with his promise to amputate a hand if unsuccessful, functioning to link the new genre to the medieval exemplum: the story of the author who cut off his remaining hand sounds like one. Moreover, readers reflecting on Cervantes’ wound would be likely to think of its origins in combat, and thus be more likely to attribute virtues than vice to him.

The Prologue also implies that Cervantes has some anxiety about his stories’ validity as improving yet original entertainment: […]I am the first to write novels in Castilian, for the many novels which have appeared in print are all translated from foreign languages, and these are my very own, neither imitated nor stolen; my wit engendered them, my pen gave birth to them, and they are maturing in the arms of print.135 Much as we will see with Scarron, Cervantes’s discussion of his disability leads him to anticipate later disabled writers who argued that deformity “guaranteed [them] a marked and marred originality.”136 For Cervantes, the wit that is dry, uncultivated, and possibly blocked by injury, also forces readers to question and complicate the relationship between disability and trendsetting literary work like Cervantes’.

133 See Neill’s discussion of printer John Stubbs’ amputation in Elizabethan England. 134 Cervantes, Exemplary Novelas, 4; in the original it reads "No hay ninguna de quien no se pueda sacar algún ejemplo provechoso," 79. 135 Cervantes Saavedra, Exemplary Novels, Author’s Preface 6. In the original it says “yo soy el primero que ha novelado en lengua castellana, que las muchas novelas que en ella andan impresas todas son traducidas de lenguas extranjeras, y éstas son mías propias, no imitadas y ni hurtadas; mi ingenio las engendró y las parió mi pluma, y van creciendo en los brazos de la estampa,” 81. 136 Joel Reed, “The Author as Monster: The Case of Dr. Johnson,” in Defects: Engendering the Modern Body, ed. Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 179.

The formulation Cervantes uses, “my pen gave birth,” recalls the Italian artists cited above who figure the hand as the conduit of wit, and the pen as a metonym for the hand. To Cervantes, the hand’s role no longer stops with the birth of the text; the “arms” (or hands) of the printing press will continue to nurture Cervantes’ novelas. The arm/hand is no longer “just” the midwife, but also functions (as part of the printing press) as the caretaker who will sustain the novelas in their future as published texts, and is thus responsible for their success. As texts, and in contrast to the printing press which will nuture them, the novelas: have no feet, head, innards, or anything that resembles them. I mean that the amorous remarks you will find in some of them are so haste and so moderated by reason and Christian discourse that they will not move either the careless or the attentive reader to any ignoble thought.137 Cervantes openly claims for his texts an ambiguous and monstrous shape, that of being without head or tail (or in this case, a framing narrative coherence). As in English, the idiom “no tener ni pies ni cabeza” denotes something nonsensical; however, in the context of Spanish literary theory, by positing the texts as a kind of dismembered animal (or more grimly, as a dismembered human), Cervantes recalls Pinciano’s Filosofía Poetica Antigua, cited above. In Cervantes’ view, the lack of members gestures to both the novelas’ originality as well as moral safety (and exemplarity), as the tales cannot be appropriated to serve baser ends.138 Though El Pinciano is ambivalent in his acceptance of disabled texts (“manco” or “cojo”), Cervantes reframes the text as a body without members to ensure its positive reception by the public.

The links between Cervantes’s portrayals of himself as a disabled Spanish man and a disabled Spanish author are not always the more straightforward, if exaggerated, declarations of patriotic service that serve to guide a reader’s appropriate reaction. Cervantes demonstrates a parallel concern regarding the excess of meaning that derives from disability generally and the hand’s lexical instability more specifically. These excesses raise questions about his injury and the possible parallel excesses of his patriotic sacrifice. Early modern lexicographers noted the

137 Exemplary novels, trans. Grossman, 4-5 ; the original reads “no tienen pies, ni cabeza, ni entrañas, ni cosa que les parezca; quiero decir que los requiebros amorosos que en algunas hallarás, son tan honestos, y tan medidos con la razón y discurso cristiano, que no podrán mover a mal pensamiento al descuidado o cuidadoso que las leyere,” Novelas ejemplares, 79. 138 The Novelas ejemplares served as the model for numerous later short story collections, so in this Cervantes was not successful.

42 numerous uses of mano in idioms, one of which included “I will put my hand in the fire,” or “Yo meteré la mano en el fuego” which Covvarubias defines as “to swear with confidence” or “to swear with guarantees.”139 Castilian idiom seemed to accept the gesture as one of surety, and of reliable masculinity. An examination of a classical figure who became renowned for doing exactly that in defense of his nation demonstrates that not all early modern Spanish men embraced the gesture, however.

Cervantes’ references to Mucius Scaevola indicate an ambivalence in his interpretation of relationship between manual, patriotic sacrifice and glory. Scaevola was a (possibly apocryphal) hero of Rome whose actions were described most famously in Livy’s Histories.140 According to Livy, during a time of war, Gaius Mucius Scaevola had received permission from the Senate to infiltrate the camp of the besieging Etruscan army to commit an act of valour. Once there, Scaevola attempted to kill the Etruscan dictator, Lars Porsena, but accidentally murdered Porsena’s secretary instead. Brought before Porsena to account for his actions, Livy has Scaevola exclaiming: Look […] and learn how lightly those regard their bodies who have some great glory in view.’ Then he plunged his right hand into a fire burning on the altar. Whilst he kept it roasting there as if he were devoid of all sensation, the king, astounded at his preternatural conduct, sprang from his seat and ordered the youth to be removed from the altar.141 According to Livy, the Etruscans decamped shortly thereafter, sufficiently discouraged by Scaevola’s bravery to give up their siege. Gaius Mucius Scaevola is presented as a hero of ancient Rome, willing to sacrifice his right hand—a symbol of agency, bodily sovereignty, right action and of political power—to save his city from invasion. In Livy’s version, Mucius’ words to Porsena focused on “magnam gloriam” that he sought and its opposition to the “vile (cheap)

139 Sebastián de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la langua castellano o espanola Marid Louis Sanchez 1611, 537. 140 Titus Livius, Livy: Books I and II, Trans. B.O. Foster, (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1919), parts 2-13, 259. 141 In the Latin, the original text reads “en tibi,” inquit, “utsentias quam vile corpus sit iis qui magnam gloriam vident,” dextramque accenso adsacrificium foculo inicit. quam cum velut alienato ab sensu torreret animo, propeattonitus miraculo rex cum ab sede sua prosiluisset amoverique ab altaribus iuvenemiussisset," Livy Books I and II, book ii, trans. Foster, 258.

43 corpus” for which the hand is a stand-in. As a symbol of the body, the hand must be destroyed as part of a larger search for virtue.142

Another classical allusion to Scaevola at least partially explains later Spain authors’ ambivalence to him. It occurs in Martial, an influential writer for humanists and Spanish siglo de oro authors. No doubt Martial’s popularity in Spain arose at least partially because Martial hailed from Roman Hispania, and though writing from Rome, repeatedly invoked his provincial Hispanic heritage. In epigram 21, he says: The right hand which, aimed at the king, was cheated by an attendant, laid itself, doomed to perish, upon the sacred hearth. But a prodigy so cruel the kindly foe could not brook, and he bade the warrior go rescued from the flame. The hand which, scorning the fire, Mucius, endured to burn, Porsena could not endure to behold. Greater, because it was cheated, is the fame and glory of that right hand; had it not erred, it had achieved less.143

Though Martial’s account of Mucius largely accords with Livy’s, Martial’s language demonstrates that he understands the strange powers imputed to the hand.144 In the original, Martial uses the verb “errare” [“erraset”], a Latin verb indicating both wandering and error; through this word choice, the epigram implies both that a hand can have a will of its own, and that a hand is indeed an instrument of instruments, the tool for men seeking glory or honour.145

142 The Stoicism in this passage inspired early modern readers such as Montaigne. 143 Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrams, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993) I.21. 54- 55. 144 Elsewhere, Martial’s allusions to Mucius’ valour in war operated satirically, such as in X.25, 340-341. 145 Martial also gave Mucius a more expected, satirical treatment, when he invokes Mucius to describe a legal quarrel involving “[his] three she-goats” in VI.19. 14-15.

For early modern Hispanic sources, aside from Cervantes, the action of Mucius was received as deeply threatening.146 Moreover, by bringing Mucius’ actions down to the level of the everyday, Martial also allowed for the possibility that Mucius’ hand had overreached, earning readers’ laughter. For men of early modern Spain, the importance of constant and right action was paramount and unceasing; but the excessiveness of the hand-sacrificing gesture seems to strike Cervantes as the falling outside the norm, and as a violation of sprezzatura. A contemporary of his argued for a more cynical interpretation for Scaevola’s bravery; in his work Errores celebrados (or Famous Errors), Juan de Zabaleta notes that: I must confess that several bad men have advised good things, but they have not seen a good end in advising them. Vanity or convenience has often spoken well of a bad deed. If Mucius Scaevola had intended to leave behind a model of constancy, he would not have burned his arm, because despair is laziness. He wanted only to achieve fame, as it appeared to him to be an extraordinary thing to do, and put his arm in the brazier.”147

Zabaleta’s assessment gestures to the early modern Spanish preoccupation with the golden mean, and particularly, the importance of moderation in virtuous behaviour.148 Mucius’ self-branding indicated to skeptics that he had an excess of fortaleza, a word that both indicates fortitude and also is a synonym of the osadía (bravery) that the next chapter considers with respect to one of Cervantes’ siege plays. Spain’s medieval and golden age playwrights focused on the daring valour of the Spanish brazo, just as conquistadores attempted to claim the virtue for themselves as part of Spain’s larger imperial project.149

Scaevola’s fortaleza often shades into vice for skeptics. Juan de la Cueva, a contemporary of Cervantes credited with making comedia nueva possible, nuanced his interpretation of Scaevola

146 Though the focus of this chapter is on hands in early modern Spanish culture, it is significant to note that it was not only Spanish men who saw hands as a tool of war—Neill notes that a significant aspect of Titus’ anguish in Titus Andronicus originates in his mistaken sacrifice of his hand ('For hands to do Rome service is but vain,' 3.1.80). 147 “Si Mucio Cévola intentara dejar un modelo para la constancia, no se quemara el brazo, porque la desesperación es flaqueza. Quiso sólo hacer fama, parecióle que bastaba la singularidad y metió el brazo en el brasero,” from Juan de Zabaleta’s Errores celebrados, Madrid : Espasa-Calpe, 1972.

148 Hilaire Kallendorf, Ambiguous Antidotes, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 29 149 Kallendorf, 24.

45 by drawing on both Martial and Zavaleta’s accounts. His depiction encompasses Scaevola’s actions and gestures to the reason for Cervantes’ particular ambivalence about Scaevola. In La libertad de Roma por Mucio Cevola¸ the final scene shows Mucius with his arm in the brazier. He declares in response to Porsena’s questioning that: First know that I am Roman That from Rome I left to kill you And not to your secretary, but this hand Missed its blow…150 Mucius states his nation and his mission with straightforwardly; however, in the some of the final lines he will speak, his crossed syntax and wordplay indicate that much more is happening than a retelling of the story as adapted from the classics. The phrasing “This hand missed its blow” does indicate his familiarity with Martial’s version, but by using herró, Cueva indicates that far from simply erring, Mucius is also using his hand to literally brand himself, an overt act of self-fashioning. Herrar was to brand; errar was to err; audiences would hear either one, depending on their mindset. In the numerous legal cases described below, Cervantes’ family claimed to be castizo and hidalgo; contemporary definitions claimed that such status would be obvious to all because the cavallos castizos chose to brand themselves (herrar) by the iron stirrups they wore on horseback, and the swords they carried. To status-obsessed early modern audiences, Mucio’s hand both erred and branded him; to others his hand acted twice to cement his noble reputation, the first time in erring and the second time in demonstrating his superior will.

Cervantes’s discussions of Scaevola indicate a profound anxiety about the excess in his gesture and the fact that Mucio attempts to self-brand. Mucio wishes to use his hand to achieve recognition but in a way that is too overt, an undermining of the innate gentlemanly qualities a hidalgo should possess. In his interpretation, the gesture shows fortaleza to be a vice. It is also possible that Scaevola reminded Cervantes of himself. The official narrative of Cervantes’s

150 This is my translation of “Lo primero sabras que soy Romano, Que de Roma sali à darte muerte, Y no a tu contador, mas esta mano Pues el golpe herró, goze esta suerte,” from Juan de la Cueva, Libertad de Roma por Mucio Cevola (Seville: Casa de Ioan de Leon, 1588), 300.

46 wounding at Lepanto, which we will see below, has witness Matteo de Santisteban, saying the following: The said Miguel de Cervantes was ill and had a fever, and his aforementioned captain, and this witness, and many other of his friends told him ‘that since he was ill and had a fever, that he should stay below, in the quarters of the galley’ and that the said Miguel de Cervantes replied ‘what would they say of him, and [also] that he would not do what they said but rather that he wanted to die fighting for God, and for his King, and that he wouldn’t go below deck’ and thus this witness saw that he fought like a valiant soldier.151 Cervantes had his own propensity for patriotic sacrifice, perhaps in excess, as Matteo de Santisteban’s testimony indicates. Scaevola’s boldness flies in the face of Cervantes’ delicate attempts at autobiography, both in family legal cases and fiction, and Cervantes’ desire to brand himself as the right kind of man.

That the allusions to Mucius Scaevola appear at intervals throughout Cervantes’s lifetime suggests that Scaevola caused him consistent anxiety. In Book II of the Quixote, Don Quixote says to Sancho: What do you think made Horatius throw himself from the bridge into the depths of the Tiber, clad in all his armor? What drove Mucius to sear his arm and hand? What led Curtius to hurl himself into the deep flaming fissure that appeared in the centre of Rome? What made Julius Caesar cross the Rubicon […] what led the valiant Spaniards commanded by Cortes, to scuttle their ships, thus leaving themselves stranded and cut off?152

151 My translation of "el dicho Miguel de Cervantes estaba malo y con calentura, y el dicho su capitán, y este testigo e otros muchos amigos suyos le dixeron ‘que pues estaba enfermo y con calentura, que se estuviese quedo, abajo en la cámara de la galera’ y que el dicho Miguel de Cervantes respondio, ‘qué dirian dél, ‘que no hacia lo que decía que mas querría morir peleando por dios, e por su Rei, que no meterse so cubierta, … y así vió este testigo que peleó como valiente soldado, from transcription of Pedro Torres Lanzas, Información De Miguel De Cervantes De Lo Que Ha Servido Á S.M. Y De Lo Que Ha Hecho Estando Captivo En Argel, Y Por La Certificación Que Aquí Presenta Del Duque De Sesa Se Vera Como Cuando Le Captivaron Se Le Perdieron Otras Muchas Informacions, Fees Y Recados Que Tenia De Lot Había Servido Á S.M, ed. Josè Esteban (Madrid: J. Esteban 1981), 29. 152 Cervantes, Don Quixote, 45; the original reads “Quiero decir, Sancho, que el deseo de alcanzar fama es activo en gran manera. ¿Quién piensas tú que arrojó a Horacio del puente abajo, armado de todas armas, en la profundidad del Tiber? Quién abrazó el brazo y la mano de Mucio? quién impelió a Curcio a lanzarse en la profunda sima ardiente

The answer: a desire for fame. Cervantes juxtaposes classical precedents, such as Horatius Cocles, whom Livy discusses in the chapter following Mucius Scaevola, and Curtius, and the controversial though oft-praised Cortes, a figure of the recent past. “Fama” as a motivation is sometimes ambiguous, but often carries negative implications: if as Covarrubias says, fama signifies known as “todo aquello que se divulga”153 [all things that are divulged] then it requires becoming a kind of target for individual speculation and gossip. Mucius’s gesture is not too entirely noble, or uncalculating. In the Journey to the Parnassus, Cervantes’s 1614 analysis of the Spanish literary scene, he is even more unequivocal about the actions of Scaevola. The narrator-poet asks: “when Mucius put his arm into the fire, then, who cooled it?”154 The answer:

Vanagloria, or Vainglory, muse of terrible poets, and useless, false acts of ‘patriotism.’155

que apareció en la mitad de Roma? Quién contra todos los agüeros que en contra se le habían mostrado hizo pasar el Rubicón a César? Y, con ejemplos más modernos, quien barrenó los navíos y dejó en seco y aislados los valersoso espanoles guaidos porel cortesísimo Cortés en el Nuevo Mundo,” Don Quijote de la Mancha, 199. 153 Covarrubias, Tesoro, 396. 154 This reads: ¿Cuando Mucio en las llamas abrasaba el atrevido fuerte brazo y fiero, ésta el incendio horrible resfriaba?, Cervantes Saavedra, Viaje del parnaso, Madrid : Alianza, 1997, VI.190-192, 123. 155 “Atrevido” is the dark underside of “osado,” the kind of bravery that originates in impudence, or excess. Some early modern Spanish moralists bemoaned the “atrevido” character of the nation. Cervantes and contemporaries paired “atrevido” with “fortaleza,” or an attitude valuing honour above all else. For some commentators, Mucio demonstrates how easily fortaleza threatens the stability of the valourous masculine social order when it shades into vice. Herrera notes in his Anotaciones that “La fortaleza es una levantada virtud del ánimo, no vencida de algún temor, y constante en las cosas adversas, y en emprender y sufrir generosamente todos los peligros y incitada a las cosas altas y difíciles…Pero no todos los que son prontos a poner las manos en cualquier peligro y sin temor alguno acometen todos los hechos peligrosos se pueden llamar fuertes, a opinión de Aristóteles, porque los que por deseo de alcanzar una pequeña gloria y por esperanza de aquistar riquezas y robar se arrojan a los peligros y combaten sin miedo con los contrarios, no merecen ni gozan esta alabanza,"897; ["Fortitude is an exalted virtue of the spirit, one never vanquished by fear, and constant in adverse events, and generous in undertaking and in suffering danger, and incited to great and difficult tasks, and disdainful of humble and low ones. But not all those who are quick to set their hand to whatever danger, and who commit those dangerous deeds without fear can be called strong, in the opinion of Aristotle, because those who, desiring to gain a little bit of glory and acquire some riches by looting, throw themselves into dangers and fight without fear with the adversary, do not deserve or enjoy such praise" trans. Middlebrook 149-150]. Scaevola’s excessive, self-destructive and warlike action renders him the dark double of Cervantes. The mention of Scaevola in the Parnaso is there alongside Cervantes’s evaluations of contemporary authors and their works. In the Parnassus, Cervantes is addressed by Mercury as “the Adam of poets” 97). In the Trato de Argel, examined in the next chapter, Cervantes foregrounds the bravery of a minor Spanish character who has tried (like Cervantes did) to escape. Brought to the king for punishment, the captive is told of his Spanish identity that “bien lo muestras en ser así atrevido” 97, line 2345, Acto IV. ed. Sevilla Arroyo y Rey Hazas, Madrid: Alianza, 1996; Cervantes’ portrayals of heroism demonstrate a preoccupation with avoiding excess and demonstrating like Herrera that a man’s virtue “lies in self-restraint” as Middlebrook notes on 150.

Frederick de Armas goes so far as to underline the similarities between the actions of Mucius Scaevola and the besieged town of Numancia, in Cervantes’s work The Siege of Numancia, further analysed below. De Armas notes the similarities between the depiction of Scaevola in Vatican frescoes, and the final actions of the city of Numancia: this Roman hero is evincing Roman valor and endurance. His deed serves to convince Etruscan king Lars Porsena to give up his siege of Rome. The besieged Numantia also use fire against the enemy. Both Scaevola and the inhabitants of the Celtiberian city destroy their bodies so that the community may survive. But the Numantians carry Scaevola’s heroic valor to an extreme, burning not only their hands but their whole bodies and all their possessions. In other texts, Cervantes repeatedly reminds the reader that the purpose of Scaevola’s deed was to gain fame.156 This supposed patriotic action by Scaevola is too much; it works against Cervantes’s more delicate attempts at autobiography, where he wishes to portray himself as a valiant soldier and man of letters, but also as one who has mastered sprezzatura and has no need to try too hard. Moreover, the Cervantes family fought numerous legal battles to receive legal acknowledgement of their class; unlike Scaevola they would not want to be seen as ‘self-branding.’157

Scaevola’s excessive, self-destructive and warlike action renders him the dark double of Cervantes. The mention of Scaevola in the Parnaso is there alongside Cervantes’s evaluations of contemporary authors and their works. The dark possibility of being led astray by one’s writing, perhaps to vanity, perhaps to failure, also comes out in the Parnassus. In the first chapter, Cervantes meets Mercury, who calls him “the Adam of poets” and notes approvingly that [A] son of Mars, Veteran and valiant, as is indicated By the hand you carry,

156 Frederick A. de Armas, Cervantes, Raphael and the Classics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 30. 157 Leah Middlebrook, Imperial Lyric: New Poetry and New Subjects in Early Modern Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), (149-150) discusses the fortaleza/vainglory binary and concludes that Herrera argues for turning these traits into metaphysical ones, to avoid vainglory and excessive daring without thought, which isn’t courageous.

crippled still, and maimed. Well do I know that in the naval fight Thou lost the movement of thy valorous left Hand, for greater glory of the right— This superhuman instinct I do know, Thy breast conceals a rare inventor’s prize, Which Father Apollo not in vain imparts…”158 159

Mercury’s address to Cervantes suggests that his valour has been proven by his action in Lepanto and his disability. However, it also suggests that the designation “raro inventor” has not yet been proven or earned; the act of putting oneself out in front of an audience, in this case, as an author, is one of great daring (or foolishness) and could be considered worthy of ridicule as an excessive or overly daring undertaking. Self-promotion undermines the effortless masculinity it is supposed to reinforce. Perhaps as Cervantes’ captatio benevolentiae suggests, his remaining hand does lack ingenio. Instead, Apollo designates him as “inventor,” a sign both of his skill but also his effort, a reminder of the hand’s labour (which gentlemen feared.)

How Should a Hand Be?

The hand’s other ignoble possibilities come out in the first part of the Quijote; a painful episode in which the knight hangs by his hand from a window suggests the dubious idea of the hand’s nobility. As Gaylord notes, “[Don Quixote] raises [his hand] vaingloriously to a position where it can enjoy its superiority over lower members (even over his head!), and over the beast on which

158 Cervantes Saavedra, Voyage to the Parnassus, trans. GWJ Gill. (London: Murry and Son. 1870), 7.

159 In the original, it reads: Que, en fin, has respondido a ser soldado antiguo y valeroso, cula lo muestra a mano de que estás estropeado. "Bien sé que en la naval dura palestr perdiste el movimiento de la mano izquierda, para Gloria de la diestra; y sé que aquel instinto sobrehumano que de raro inventor tu pecho encirre no te le ha dado el padre Apolo en vano," from Viaje del parnaso, (Madrid: Alianza, 1997), I.211-219, 30.

50 he stands” but fails to realise its potential phallic (or lower) potential.160 “It is no accident, therefore, that Don Quixote should proffer that extremity which is symbolically linked to deeds and to their discursive transformation into history, the member responsible for wielding both sword and pen”161 which both foregrounds and calls into question its true role and purpose. The vainglorious hand appears in part II’s discussion of Mucio, and at the end of the novel where anxieties about the hand’s uses re-emerge with a vengeance.

In the final passages of Part II of the Quijote, Cide Hamete Benegeli apostrophises the pen which has enabled his writing. His injunction to the pen is firm: Here you will remain, hanging from this rack on a copper wire, and I do not know if you, my quill pen, are well or badly cut, but there you will live, down through the ages, unless presumptuous and unscrupulous historians take you down to profane you.162

The pen, a stand-in for the hand, itself a symbol of a man’s will to excellence, has acquired powers and a potential of its own. It no longer functions as an extension of a Spanish man, shedding enemy blood and making national history; its will can be usurped. Like the hand, its power exists in both its presence and its absence. It is obvious that the anxieties surrounding its meaning are merited. It can make and immortalise a valiant man or overtake him and lead to his undoing.

160 Mary Malcolm Gaylord, “The Whole Body of Fable with All of Its Members: Cervantes, Pinciano, Freud” in Quixotic Desire: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Cervantes, ed. Ruth A. El Saffar, Diana de Armas Wilson (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1993), 127.

161 Gaylord, “The Body of the Fable and All its Members,”127. 162 Trans. Grossman. 973, The original reads: "Aquí quedarás, colgada de esta espetera y de este hilo de alambre, ni sé si bien cortada o mal tajada péñola mía, adonde vivirás luengos siglos, si presuntuosos y malandrines historiadores no te descuelgan para profanarte," 1336.

Chapter 3 Spanish Arms versus Spanish Blood

The prelude to John Bulwer’s Chirologia notes that the Greeks left few guides on gesture and rhetoric because they were less in need of instruction. They benefitted already from their two Palaestras, or schools, “wherein a double Chironomia was practised, one of Armes, another of Peace and proper to the pacifique temper of Humanitie: a domesticall Theatre, Doctors and Rhetoric professors, and public declamations.”163 Early modern literary theorists feared that in fact, the use of the hand had declined from an even earlier time, long before the Greeks; only in pre-lapsarian Eden had the hand mastered its two most important functions. Afterwards there had occurred “the divorce of lanza and pluma” (or sword and pen).164 As part of this decadence, early modern Spanish literary theorists worried that “poetry ha[d] gone the way of the ‘good old days’ when most poets were also soldiers, when rulers and society at large knew the value of both the military and the fine arts. In the Iron Age of the work present, an effete, emasculated language in converted to hard currency by writers who make a living out of flattery and ladies who prefer doblones to coplas. Even the epic poem has slid into the monstrous corruption of the libros de caballerias.”165

The sense of a manual decline marked sixteenth-century Spanish literary works. On one hand, Spain had undergone a century of rapid change, and was on the ascent. On the other, with the rising and consolidated power of the Hapsburgs, especially under Philip II, Spanish men had to focus on new “criteria for virility.”166 Where once a Spanish man had needed “an excellent sword arm as he fought to serve the Iberian Peninsula for Christianity” he now had to subject himself to the “the process of courtierization,” comprised of “powerful acts of suppression directed…against the self.167 At the same time, thanks to Hapsburg incursions into Italy, Spanish

163 Bulwer, “Praeludem” Chirologia and Chironomia 164 Gaylord, “Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory,” 72. 165 Gaylord, “Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory,” 71. 166 Middlebrook, 2. 167 Middlebrook, 2-3. 51

52 writers had to face the disdain with which they were regarded by Italian intellectuals.168 As Navarrete notes, “the result of appropriating such Italian ideas may be termed displacedness, a geographical sense of national inferiority parallel to the historical sense of belatedness.”169 Early grammarians of the Castilian (Spanish) language such Antonio de Nebrija and Juan del Encina held that “literary history lag[ged] behind Spanish political and military achievements,” and that contact with Italy forced them to “contrast [Spanish] cultural shortcomings to Italian achievements.”170 This became more pronounced under Felipe II, the king was his own chief civil servant and not the fighter his brother was.171

In the earlier half of the sixteenth century, Garcilaso de la Vega had worked to adopt Italian forms to Spanish writing, while gaining his reputation as a “modern crusader” and vital player of the “new empire" who confronted the gap between Spanish achievement and Spanish reputation.172 Spanish fortunes had led quickly to the establishment of a vast empire, and also the consolidation of Hapsburg power and a centralized state. This led to a contradiction—writers had to both contend with “representing the heroic virility of the Spanish men who were radically subjected to Hapsburg political regime and the religious doctrine of the Counter Reformation.”173 Spanish men had to admit that a cautious man like Felipe II, bent on consolidating the gains made under his father’s reign and his brother’s army, would not inspire the same kind of writing.174 At the same time, writers were also questioning “how to frame Castilian heroism in the new era that was celebrated in the wake of the so-called Second Reconquista” at Lepanto.175 Fernando de Herrera’s suggested precepts for new poetry—Spanish

168 For the purposes of this chapter, I will use the term “Italy” for the various city-states and principalities that occupied the Apennine Peninsula. Though the term seems politically anachronistic, it was in fact a favoured one used by Spanish writers. When referring to the language, however, Spanish writers preferred accuracy, noting that it their rivals worked in “toscana” much like the Spanish wrote and spoke “castellano.” 169 Ignacio Navarrete, Orphans of Petrarch: Poetry and Theory in the Spanish Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 16. Navarrete disputes the use of belatedness alone to describe Spanish cultural anxieties. 170 Navarrete. Orphans of Petrarch, 19. 171 Navarrete. Orphans of Petrarch, 136. 172 Navarrete. Orphans of Petrarch, 139. 173 Middlebrook, Imperial Lyric, 12. 174 The refences to Felipe II as the “chief bureaucrat” of his empire are so numerous as to be impossible to cite. 175 Middlebrook, Imperial Lyric, 40.

53 captains celebrated as glorious agents of a heroic modern age in which a modern Catholic king, Felipe II, would secure the hegemony of true religion, across the globe, in a “second Reconquest.”176 “In the wake of the Spanish victory at Lepanto, Spain’s triumphalism no longer associated military valor and honor with the aristocracy”177 which opened a space for more opportunities for bourgeois men or men of the lower nobility.

As Spain had seen a change from the new but powerful kingdom to vast empire, its poet laureates had evolved in a similar fashion from the aristocratic Gacilaso de la Vega (1501- 1536) and Francisco de Aldana (1537-1578) to Fernando de Herrera. While Garcilaso was the exemplar of the Petrarchan knight-poet, by the time of Herrera, the poet was more of a scholar, fighting Italy’s alleged superiority with words alone. With Herrera, Spanish writers pushed back against models of masculine excellence that were too Italian (effeminate and excessive); Herrera’s poetics were a “poetics of masculinity” originating in “persistent cultural ambivalence about masculine agency and the ideal of the Spanish.”178 Because early modern models were too Italian, a “recovery from [the] sprezzatura” that had first inspired Castiglione and later Garcilaso was necessary.179 Theological changes from the period also paralleled poetic ones: “Counter Reformation theology shifts the ‘diestro braço’ as instrument of divine will.”180 Unstable ideals of agency, nobility, and religion meant that some men (such as Cervantes) saw the opportunity to attempt to insert themselves in the national discourse of heroic men both poetically and militarily.181

In both war and poetry, the hand was the instrument with which a Spanish man could prove himself. Cervantes addressed the hand’s two traditional uses as part of his attempt to demonstrate that Spanishness derives more from the right uses of the hand than the makeup of a person’s ancestry. Moreover, the right use of the hand typically involves the sacrificial shedding of blood

176 Navarrete, Orphans of Petrarch, 139. 177 Middlebrook, Imperial Lyric, 142. 178 Middlebrook, Imperial Lyric, 156. 179 Middlebrook, Imperial Lyric, 156, 40. 180 Middlebrook, Imperial Lyric, 139. 181 Middebrook has noted that the metonymic power of the brazo predates even the Siglo de oro, and is present in the medieval Cantar del Mio Cid, where the eponymous hero refers to a comrade as his “diestro braço”. Diestro meant both “right” (as in handedness) and dextrous/morally correct.

54 in the name of Hispanitas, which draws attention to the act and not the blood itself, and whether (or not) it is Old Christian. This version of handed Hispanitas still raised some troubling possibilities: the hand had to be martial, and self-sacrificial, but not excessively so; however, the hand still had to be active, and resist the temptation of passivity that some feared could come from a focus on writing.

The Leisurely Hand versus the Active Hand

During Cervantes’ time in captivity, he struggled with the tension between the possibility that his imprisonment could enable him to write, and the temptations and loss of masculinity that could come from the leisure he had as a captive. The leisure would allow him to write, but it could also tempt him to sin or perhaps change him into a less active version of himself. In what would have been a stark contrast with his life as a soldier and sometime servant to the Duke of Sesa, Cervantes and other Christian captives in Algiers were kept in bagnios, or prison-houses. His left hand already lived in idleness since his injuries at Lepanto, but now his right hand, too, was possibly disabled by the circumstances of his captivity.

The plight of captive Christians, and especially, captive men, had an additional feature. Cautivos were kept in a perverse kind of otium. However, the prison-houses did allow a certain leeway for men like Cervantes who struggled with reconciling the dictates of masculine action with a literary career, or arms and letters. As Antonio de Sosa notes, Cervantes spent his captivity “composing versos in praise of our Lord and his blessed Mother [..] and other holy and devout things, several of which he particularly communicated to me and sent them to me such that I see them.”182 Elsewhere, Garcés notes that writing was the only activity open to captives in Algiers, and in fact also a way for them to work through the trauma of their experience.

Cervantes would grapple with the call of arms and letters for the rest of his career. Mostly notably, he did so in Don Quixote’s monologue in part I of the novel. In chapters 37 and 38, Cervantes opens up the debate on arms and letters by prompting Don Quixote, in the presence of the other characters reunited in the inn, to compare the student and the soldier. Cervantes

182 As Sosa says, "en componer versos en alabanza de Nuestro Señor y du su bendita Madre […] y otras cosas santas y devotas, algunas de las cuales comunicó particularmente conmigo me las envió que las viese” p162-163 quoted in María Antonia Garcés, Cervantes in Algiers (Nashville: Vanderbuilt University Press, 2005), 67.

55 demonstrates that a man may make himself in two ways, and with two visible results. The degree and cap of the student, which affirmed his success, were mirrored in the bandage of the soldier, which was used to "heal a bullet wound, perhaps one that has passed through his temples or will leave him with a ruined arm or leg.”183 Both paths could be part of an essential process of self- development for a man. Cervantes, though a writer, had gone into the army and chosen the soldier’s path, with its physically legible results.

Cervantes had chosen service to the king over scholarship due largely to a lack of opportunities, and thus funds. However, his protagonist argues for the more lucrative life of the writer. As Don Quixote asks rhetorically: How many fewer are rewarded by war than those who have perished in it…although the labor of the soldier is greater, the reward is much less. But you may answer back that it’s easier to reward two thousand men of letters than thirty thousand soldiers, because the former are rewarded by giving them appointments that have to be given to those of their profession, and the latter cannot be rewarded except from the funds of the master whom they serve, but this impossibility only serves to strengthen my argument.184

Cervantes, an impecunious son of an equally impecunious man, knew well that the good life required a source of funds, and that otium and writing required financial ease. The economic realities of the Cervantes life contradict Don Quixote’s argument, and gesture to possible Cervantine irony. If a writer received better rewards, and a soldier lesser ones, but writing required ready access to capital, then the situation was a catch-22. In any case, it certainly worked against the national need for writers, and particularly the writers needed to document the soldiers’ achievements.

183 Cervantes, Don Quixote, 331 ; the original reads “Un día de batalla, que allí le pondrán la borla en la cabeza, hecha de hilas, para curarle algun balazo que quizá le habrá pasado las sienes o dejará estropeado de brazo o pierna,” 488. 184 Cervantes, Don Quixote, 331; the original reads "Así que, aunque es mayor el trabajo del soldado, es mucho menor el premio. Pero a esto se puede responder que es más fácil premiar a dos mil letrados que a treinta mil soldados, porque a aquellos se premian con darles oficios que por fuerza se han de dar a los de su profesión, y a estos no se pueden premiar sino con la mesma hacienda del señor a quien sirven, y esta imposibilidad fortifica más la razón que tengo," 489.

Cervantes lays out the character’s inner dialogue which appears to grow more frenetic the longer it goes on, a good reminder that the protagonist is not to be trusted. The passage below particularly illustrates the character’s instability: Let’s go back to the superiority of arms over letters, a matter that has not yet been resolved, because the arguments advanced on both sides are so good. Letters say that arms cannot exist without them, because war also has its own laws that must be obeyed, and laws are the profession of the man of letters. Arms respond to this saying that letters cannot sustain themselves without arms, because with arms, republics are defended, kingdoms are preserved, cities are protected, highways are made safe, and the seas cleared of corsairs. Finally, if there were no arms, you can bet that republics, kingdoms, monarchies, cities, and highways of the sea and land would all be subject to the ruin and disorder of war.185

The climax of the character’s argument arrives at the point where he is envisioning a worldwide disaster caused by a lack of soldiers, which somehow leads to more war. At the same time, this unbalanced praise for arms over letters arrives in a book, one which displays a constant self- awareness.

However, it is possible that the arms and letters debate is simply another way to come back to Cervantes, and in particular, his almost stand-in, the captive Ruy Perez de Viedma, who is introduced at the same point in the narrative. The similarities between Ruy Pérez de Viedma and Cervantes himself immediately demand the reader’s notice, not only due to the characters’ parallel biographies, but also due to the almost identical rhetoric of the two men regarding

185 Cervantes, Don Quixote, 331; the original reads "Pero dejemos esto aparte, que es laberinto de muy dificultosa salida, sino volvamos a la preeminencia de las armas contra las letras, materia que hasta ahora está por averiguar, según son las razones que cada una de su parte alega. Y, entre las que he dicho, dicen las letras que sin ellas no se podrían sustentar las armas, porque la guerra también tiene sus leyes y está sujeta a ellas, y que las leyes caen debajo de lo que son letras y letrados. A esto responden las armas que las leyes no se podrán sustentar sin ellas, porque con las armas se defienden las repúblicas, se conservan los reinos, se guardan las ciudades, se aseguran los caminos, se despejan los mares de cosarios, y, finalmente, si por ellas no fuese, las repúblicas, los reinos, las monarquías, las ciudades, los caminos de mar y tierra estarían sujetos al rigor y a la confusión que trae consigo la guerra el tiempo que dura y tiene licencia de usar de sus previlegios y de sus fuerzas,"490

Lepanto. Cervantes’ prologue to the Novelas mimics the tone of the captain’s discussion of his own life: And that day, which was so fortunate for Christendom, because that was when the world and all the nations realized their error in thinking that the Turks were invincible at sea, on that day, I say, when Ottoman pride and arrogance were shattered, among all the fortunate men who were there (for the Christians who died there were more fortunate than those left alive and victorious), I alone was unfortunate; for, contrary to what I might have expected in Roman times, instead of a naval crown I found myself on the night following so famous a day with chains on my feet and shackles on my hands.186 Cervantes even reprised the rhetoric of the captive exactly, when, in the literary self-portrait discussed above, he boasted of fighting under “victorious banners of the son of that glorious warrior, Charles V of happy memory,”187 another indication reminding us that Cervantes understood history as having a very close relationship to fiction. The self-plagiarism in his portrait calls attention to the strange relationship of the semi-autobiographical tale of the captive and the discourse of arms and letters given by the mad Don Quixote, bookending the captive’s story. These layers of meaning, which exist in tension with each other, further serve to blur the ability of a reader or audience to privilege one particular version of masculinity over another.

The Captive’s recounting of Lepanto juxtaposed by the ‘mad’ debate arms and letters in fact echoes contemporary Spanish anxieties about Spanish national glory. Its imperial incursions into the Italian peninsula had stoked the fires of Spanish self-doubt. Fernando de Herrera, mentioned

186 Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote, 337 ; the original reads "Digo, en fin, que yo me hallé en aquella felicísima jornada, ya hecho capitán de infantería, a cuyo honroso cargo me subió mi buena suerte, más que mis merecimientos; y aquel día, que fue para la cristiandad tan dichoso, porque en él se desengañó el mundo y todas las naciones del error en que estaban creyendo que los turcos eran invencibles por la mar, en aquel día, digo, donde quedó el orgullo y soberbia otomana quebrantada, entre tantos venturosos como allí hubo (porque más ventura tuvieron los cristianos que allí murieron que los que vivos y vencedores quedaron), yo solo fui el desdichado; pues, en cambio de que pudiera esperar, si fuera en los romanos siglos, alguna naval corona, me vi aquella noche que siguió a tan famoso día con cadenas a los pies y esposas a las manos,” 497. 187 Cervantes Saavedra, Exemplary Novels, 3.

58 earlier in the chapter, expressed these misgivings in his best-selling Anotaciones, in which he glossed the writing of Garcilaso de la Vega. Herrera enjoyed a wide readership in his time, and Cervantes expressed his admiration for the poet often— this is unsurprising, as Herrera wrote both well-reputed poetry and histories of the battle of Lepanto which glorified Spanish valour.188

In one of the most influential passages of his Anotaciones¸ Herrera makes a lengthy, significant, and strange digression to hold forth on Spanish military might:

Don Alfonso de Aguilar, Don Luis Puertocarrero, the Count of Cabra, the Duke Don Enrique and that great and courageous master of Calatrava are so illustrious by their deeds, that they do not deserve oblivion, fatal calamity of human glory. But what captain did Italy raise up from a thousand years up to this time, and the rest of Europe, who was not inferior to the great Captain in prudence, liberality, authority, valor, luck, in grace, in the opinion and in the excellence of soul not beaten and without fear? And who will come to be equal in military discipline and expedited judgement and fortune than Antonio de Leiva? To the industry of Pedro Navarro? To the governance and prudence of Fernando de Alarcon? Who can hope to be compared with the robust and terrible forces and undaunted spirit and constant fearlessness of Garcia de Pardes? Who will dare consider himself equal to Juan de Urbania? To the wondrous valour and daring and prudence of Fernando Cortés who, traversing terrible regions and unclimbable peaks, taking from the Spanish the hope of all human refuge, aside from that which they could hold in the strength of their arms, placed himself in an enormous land filled with unknown peoples, and resolved the forces of the men with his industry and bravery, dominated those powerful regions, and struck fear with the greatness of that deed which was carried out in proportion greater than all of those of the ancients. And he deserves no less glory, though fortune broke the course of his great deeds by the misery of his death, the Count of Alcaudete, the fear and scourge of Africa. But wherefore do I expand so excessively on these examples?189

188 Adrienne Martín makes a case for the authenticity of the following sonnet in memory of Herrera, often attributed to Cervantes. Though there is not the space to reprint it here in its entirety, Cervantes recognizes both the originality of Herrera’s efforts, but also the recognition he rightly received. Cervantes alludes to him as “El que subió por sendas nunca usadas/Del sacro monte a la más alta cumbre” cited in Martín Fernandez de Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1819), 447. Later, Cervantes appropriates an epithet for Herrera, “divino espíritu,” Viaje del parnaso, II.61.

189 The original cites "Don Alfonso de Aguilar, don Luis Puertocarrero, el Conde de Cabra, el Duque don Enrique i aquel grande i valeroso maestre de Calatrava son tan escladrecidos por la ecclencia de sus hechos, que no se valdrá d’ellos el olvido, fatal calamidad de la grandeza umana. Mas ¿que capitán crio Italia de mil años a esta parte, i todo el resto de Europa, que no fuesse inferior al Gran Capitan en prudencia, en liberalidad, en autoridad, en valor, en felicidad, en gracia, en opinión i en eccelencia de ánimo no vencido i sin temor? I quién suecedió igual en militar disciplinar i espedido juicio i fortuna a Antonio de Leiva? A la industria de Pedro Navarro? Al gobierno i prudencia

The mere mention of “osado Español” in Garcilaso’s original text provoked several thousand words of explanation, a lengthy catalogue of Spain’s current and past heroes. Spain must not be considered anything less than equal to Italy, and in fact, any arguments to the contrary were bourne of ignorance, which itself came from bad governance. Spain’s main lack lay in its lack of patronage for writers of istorias, or history: We know that Spain has never, in any time, lacked for heroic men; it has lacked sensible and wise writers, who would with immortal style devote them to the eternity of memory! And the princes and the kings of Spain took a large part of the blame, they who did not attend to the glory of this generous nation, and did not look for serious and sufficient men for the difficulty and largeness of history...because there is not amongst the princes any who favours men who know, and who can treat honestly and eloquently with discernment and prudence the things that were done well in peace and in war. And thus the forgetfulness of the Italians seems forgivable.190 Spanish identity and its honour in European politics will rise or fall based more on its writers than its soldiers. Though osadía motivates Spanish men as much as, if not more than it did any other of Europe’s soldiers and knights, without writers, Spain’s martial reputation was threatened. As one critic notes, the daring which inspires this passage (and according to Herrera, his own and Garcilaso’s literary maneuvers) sits uneasily within the text of the Anotaciones: “osadía is a problematic reconciliatory sign whose mutually exclusive significations in arms and

de Fernando de Alarcón? Quién puede esperar comparación con las robustas i terribles fuerças i ánimo nunca espantado, i siempre sin algún temor de Garcí de Paredes? ¿Quién osará igualarse a Juan de Urbina? al maravilloso valor i atrevimiento i prudencia de Fernando Cortés, que atravesando regiones espantosas, i montes insuperables, quitando a los españoles la esperança de todo refugio umano, fuera de la que podían tener en la fortaleza de sus braços; se metió en una tierra grandíssima, llena de gente no conocida, i sobrepujando las fuerças delos ombres con su industria i valentía, domo aquellas poderosas regiones, i espantó con la grandeza de aquel hecho in proporción, mayor que todos los delos antiguos, todo el término delas tierras. I no merece menos gloria, aunque rompió últimamente la fortuna con la miseria de su muerte el curso de sus grandes hechos, aquel fortíssimo i robusto Conde de Alcaudete, temor i estrago de África. ¿Mas para qué me elargo con tanta demasía en estos exemplos…,” from Herrera, Anotaciones a la poesía de Garcilaso, 904. 190 The original reads: “…Pues sabemos que no faltaron a España en algún tiempo varones eroicos. ¡Faltaron escritores cuerdos i sabios, que los dedicassen con inmortal estilo a la eternidad de la memoria ! I tuverion mayor culpa desto los príncipes i los reyes de España, que no atendieron ala gloria d’esta generosa nación, i no buscaron ombres graves i suficientes para la dificultad i grandeza de la historia…porque no ai entre los príncipes quien favoresca a los ombres que saben, i pueden tratar verdadera i eloquentemente con juicio i prudencia, las cosas bien hechas en paz i en guerra. I assí, pareciera excusable el olvido de los italianos…” from Herrera, Anotaciones a la poesía de Garcilaso, 904.

60 letters defy easy coexistence.”191 Osadía poses additional complications for men whose daring lay in their desire to assert their actions as the sign of their honourable Hispanidad.

More precisely, the seemingly enforced male passivity and inactivity that enabled writing and literary creation worked against masculine ideals, and especially an active, martial life. Moreover, for men of Cervantes’ class, who, like Cervantes himself struggled to prove their Old Christian blood (or men who knew that they were not old Christians), active masculine behavior was a way that they could perform and maintain a noble identity. Though this exception ostensibly contradicted discourses of ancestral purity, men with dubious backgrounds required the chances to prove themselves and draw attention to their innate nobility. One exemplar of such thinking was the late medieval writer Diego de Valera, a descendent of converts to Christianity. Even more so than other Spanish men, who debated the merit of armas versus letras, conversos and their descendants posited that action was the answer to many dilemmas of both masculinity and heritage. Significantly, as we will see below, de Valera’s study was inspired by his fear of idleness and an idle life.

Discussions of arms and letters by men like Cervantes and de Valera comprised a small piece of a much larger pan-European debate. One particularly well-known example is Phillip Sidney’s Defense of Poesie, which, despite its title, is as much about martial life as it is about writing. Although the Defense was ostensibly a response to an English debate, and there is nothing to suggest that Cervantes would have read Sidney’s particular text, its arguments gesture to larger currents of European thought. Sidney situates the inspiration for his defense of poetry at an Italian court. Readers would know immediately to contextualise Sidney’s own discussion of poetry (and it is implied, masculinity) by considering Italian fifteenth and sixteenth century manuals on courtly life. In the forefront of readers’ minds would of course be Il cortegiano by Castiglione. These manuals, though Italian, travelled throughout Europe in the period and were extremely influential.

One literary critic, Edward Berry, has documented Sidney’s motivation in his poetic career and the mentality Sidney took into the composition of the Defense. “Although Sidney was in part an adventurer, ready to seize almost any project when his idleness at court became too frustrating,

191 Isabel Torres, Love Poetry in the Spanish Golden Age: Eros, Eris and Empire (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), 69.

61 he sustained throughout his maturity a single, clear goal-to participate as warrior or statesman in aggressive action against Spanish power on the Continent.”192 The well-documentd idleness that Sidney experienced during extensive times of peace meant that he would need to change his mentality: To define himself as a poet, then, would require from Sidney a considerable reorientation of values. It would mean transforming a delightful avocation, one that, like all worthwhile games, called forth an intense but carefully circumscribed commitment, into a real vocation.193 Only Sidney’s frustration as a soldier in peacetime allowed the intensive examination of arms and letters and an assertion of the activity that writing required.

The encounter that opens the Defence calls back to standards in Renaissance European education, and the importance of verbal fluency; in particular, it draws attention to those who, like John Pietro Pugliano, praise the active life and use their verbal ‘wit’ in service of the promotion of warfare, not as an end in and of itself: [Pugliano] exercised his speech in the praise of his faculty. He said soldiers were the noblest estate of mankind, and horsemen the noblest of soldiers. He said they were the masters of war and ornaments of peace, speedy goers and strong abiders, triumphers both in camps and courts.194 Pugliano also classes poetry with the skill of government, which he qualifies as “but a pendanteria.”195 Pugliano’s unflattering comparison of noblemen to horses, a kind of hyperbole, suggests that Sidney undermines the other side of the debate from the beginning. His comparison of horses to people places horses above humans in a reversal of hierarchy since horses were “the only serviceable courtier without flattery, the beast of most beauty, faithfulness, courage, and

192 Edward Berry, “The Poet as Warrior in Sidney's Defence of Poetry,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 29, no.1 (1989), 23. 193 Berry, “The Poet as Warrior in Sidney's Defence of Poetry,” 24. 194 Philip Sidney, Defense of Poesy, ed. Lewis Soens (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1970), 3. 195 Sidney, Defense of Poesy, 3.

62 such more.”196 Pugliano’s own excessive rhetoric underlines the importance of a good rhetorical education, especially in the kinds of discussions necessary in the lives of public men.

Sidney’s Defense, unsurprisingly, relies on an implicitly gendered idea of worthy activity. Sidney uses etymology of the Greek term for poetry to remind readers poetry’s origins in activity, since it derives from the word for ‘maker; in rejecting Plato’s assertion that poetry is a copy of a copy, Sidney instead posits the poet to be superior to other minds: Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things either better than nature brings forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like.197

In Sidney’s vision, not only is poetry an appropriately manly activity, but also a way of creating things which surpass nature, or human understanding of norms, including even bodily norms. Poetry of course, as Sidney’s contemporaries across Europe would have recognized, was the “companion of the camps,” that is, a key aspect of military glory and that “all government of action is to be gotten by knowledge, and knowledge best by gathering many knowledges, which is reading.”198

Though Sidney finds that poetry, and the poet’s vocation, shine especially in comparison with other sciences and arts, which he discusses throughout the piece, it is significant that one of his first arguments in defense of poetry is a defense of makers. This is part of his strategy of rendering poetry the ultimate active and thus masculine activity. Sidney sought to vindicate the role of poet. To do so, he chose not to repudiate his former goal, his devotion to active service, but to convince his audience, and himself, that this goal could be achieved through poetry.199 As Sidney argues: The Greeks called him “a poet,” which name has, as the most excellent, gone through other languages. It comes of this word poiein, which is “to

196 Sidney, Defense of Poesy, 3. 197 Sidney, Defense of Poesy, 38. 198 Sidney, Defense of Poesy, 38. 199 Berry, “The Poet as Warrior in Sidney's Defence of Poetry,” 26.

make”; wherein I know not whether by luck or wisdom we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in calling him “a maker.”200 This renders poetry the most basic and vital masculine activity; instead of pedantería, practiced by men who should be focusing on the arts of war, poetry becomes the way in which the world is made, and the way, later, that nations become great. Should the reader have any remaining doubts, the Defense of Poesy argues that writing poetry is an essentially patriotic activity. To write early modern poetry is to make a nationalist statement, because poetry is something that each nation requires, and that allows each nation to prosper: And therefore, as I said in the beginning, even Turks and Tartars are delighted with poets. Homer, a Greek, flourished before Greece flourished; and if to a slight conjecture a conjecture may be opposed, truly it may seem, that as by him their learned men took almost their first light of knowledge, so their active men received their first motions of courage.201 The “active men” of Greece, Sidney implies, built their civilization and their martial prowess from poetic inspiration. The traditional attack upon poetry is thus deflected upon the effeminacy of the English court. England's problem is not poetry but a social enervation for which poetry is the cure.202

Sidney was Protestant, writing in a Reformed context. For Catholics, the early modern European debate on arms and letters had a theological component which raised the stakes immensely: theology pitted the active versus contemplative life against each other in ways which dovetailed with questions of masculinity, citizenship and authorship. One of the best examples of the terms of the debate comes from a play by the Italian peninsula’s most prolific author, Giovan Maria Cecchi. In the 1580s, he went so far as to stage an allegorical play representing the two poles between which men were pulled, the Duello della vita attiva e contemplativa.203 Counter- Reformation Catholic theology employed the conflict between Martha and Mary [Magdalene] as

200 Sidney, Defense f Poesy, 8. 201 Sidney, Defense of Poesy, 38. 202 Berry, “The Poet as Warrior in Sidney's Defence of Poetry,” 32. 203 Yael Manes, Motherhood and Patriarchal Masculinities in Sixteenth-Century Italian Comedy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 93.

64 a way of discussing the tension between the necessity for both the vita attiva and the vita contemplative. Cecchi’s play was staged for the feast day of Mary Magdalene. Cecchi’s consistent use of stichomythia highlights the intensity of the debate, and the possibility that the answer is far from clear-cut; each side always has a response for the other.

The piece ostensibly privileges Martha’s polemic, as she has the last word in the theatrical debate. However, while the active life seems to win, it presents spiritual dangers. The man who chooses the active life must also strive to avoid its possible pitfalls, including fraud, deception, lasciviousness, enticement,/contempt, vainglory and daring." This kind of life however does not stand up to scrutiny; when illuminated by the "lights of Christ" and reflected in a mirror it is "cowardly and deformed."204 When men choose activity in the world, they risk losing their virtue to vainglory, and even more alarming, succumbing to a kind of deformity.

The leisure required for the making of poetry, or of contemplating the divine, however, would brush up against Catholic converso preferences for action, as well as the constant need for converts and others of suspicious descent to prove themselves worthy. The converso descendent de Valera noted that the civil life has benefits which the contemplative one doesn’t; he characterized leisure using a saying from Seneca: “leisure without letters is the death of the spirit, the tomb of the living man.’”205 However, converso writing reveals an inherent suspicion of even ocio con letras, or a life of leisure with letters. Ocio, of course, comes from the Latin otium and was considered a necessary component of the gentlemanly life of contemplation and writing since the time of Virgil. Although early Christian thinkers such as Augustine viewed otium positively, as the necessary time for a life of Christian contemplation and study, by Cervantes’s time otium (ocio) had become less respected.

204 In the original Italian, it reads "Fraude, inganno, lascivia, allettamento, Disprezzo, vanagloria ed ardimento. Ma non pria fissò il guardo Nelle luci di Cristo, Che quasi in specchio rimirò sè stessa Tutta vile et deforme,” Giovan Maria Cecchi, "Della vita attiva e contemplativa," in Commedie di Giovan Maria Cecchi, ed. Dello Russo (Ferrante: Naples, 1883) 97-120, 106. 205 The original reads “Como yo solo me fallase solo e poco menos arredrado de la vida civil o active, a mi memoria traía aquel dicho de Séneca que a su amigo Lucillo escrevía, diziendo: ‘el occio sin letras, muerte del ánimo es, e sepoltura de onbre bivo” from Diego de Vallera, “Espejo de la Verderera Nobleza,” Biblioteca de Authores Españoles, ed. Mario Penna (Madrid: Rivadeneira 1959), 89.

The most complete nobleman seems in fact to be an active converso. When asked if converts can retain their nobility, Valera replies that “not only do such people retain their nobility after conversion, before I said that they increased it, which is proven by the necessary and authentic authority; it is true that such ones, after coming into the true knowledge, are able to enjoy theological nobility, from which they had been banished or disinherited by being outside the Christian religion.”206 The least idle and most noble is in fact the converso: one’s already- existing nobility is enhanced by removing the impediment that is Judaism and by converting to Christianity. Women have no such option: no positive feminine activity would further ennoble a woman and in fact their marriage choices could only alienate their nobility: “similarly this nobility can be lost: this is seen in the noble woman who if married to a plebeian has made herself a plebeian or in those who by crimes lose the dignities [of their noble status].”207 Thus, the enforced leisure experienced by the captives such as Cervantes and de Sosa to write, and the enforced retirement from military life caused by disability and infirmity provided the circumstances under which Cervantes would begin his literary career; the enforced withdrawal from his service as a soldier foreclosed one noble path to Cervantes, while obliging him to argue for the nobility of the author’s vocation.

The noble use of the aristocratic hand, in the form of the arms and letters debate would appear in two of Cervantes’ dramas, the early Numancia and the later Gallardo español. Cervantes had began his career with a siege play about Celtiberian Spain, the Numancia, which foregrounds the charged relationship between the hand and Spanish identity, in lieu of the Golden Age focus on blood inheritance. At the same time, Cervantes established from the beginning of his career that the link between the hand, its valiant actions, and Spanish identity existed to be weakened, if not broken.

206 In the original, he says “no solamente los tales retienen la nobleza o fidalguía después de convertidos, antes digo que la acrescientan, lo qual se prueva por rasón necessaria e auténtica abtoridad; car cierto es que los tales, después de venidos en el verdadero consociemento, están en potencia de gozar de la theologal nobleza, de la qual eran desterrados o desheredados seyendo fuera de la religión cristianade Vallera, “Espejo de la Verderera Nobleza,” 102. 207 Asimesmo esta noblez puede perderse: esto paresce en la muger noble si casare con plebeo que es fecha plebea o en aquellos que por delictos pierden las dignidades “Espejo de la Verderera Nobleza,” 93.

Numancia and Direct Action

It is perhaps unsurprising that following Cervantes’ release from the Algiers bagnios and return to Spain, his next work considered a more martial conception of masculine identity and belonging. If only decisive, militaristic bodily action that could enable a converso to ennoble himself, Cervantes goes even further in El cerco de Numancia, demonstrating that it was not one’s blood that made one Spanish. Rather, it was how one chose to shed it that made one properly Spanish. Significantly, the hand is omnipresent throughout the work; it is the tool by which valour is performed and Spanish blood is shed.

El cerco de Numancia reprises an episode that all early modern Spaniards would have been familiar with: the siege of the city of Numancia by Scipio Aemilianus Africanus during the Celtiberian wars. From 153 BCE to 133, the Numantines had violently and actively resisted Roman rule sometimes in conjunction with neighbouring Celtiberian cities, and often alone; by 133 BCE, the Roman Senate had grown tired of the rebellious inhabitants and ordered Scipio to take whatever measures were necessary to end the strife. He laid siege to the city, cutting off its access to the historic river Duero, constructing a second wall around the city’s actual walls from which he could shoot at Numantines, and refusing to accept anything other than a full surrender. After eight months, the Numantines who had not died of hunger decided to cannibalize any remaining Roman prisoners remaining in their custody, and to commit suicide, according to both Roman and Spanish imaginings of the siege. By the time the Romans entered the city, very few inhabitants were left to surrender (in Roman accounts – Cervantes has all of the town’s inhabitants dying.) As part of his project to argue for a new kind of Spanishness, Cervantes’ epic re-imagining of the siege does much to divorce blood from inheritance, and blood from Hispanidad, and in so doing, calls into question the idea that blood can be legible, whether in a play or as an indicator of a person’s social status. Cervantes attempts to rewrite early modern Spanish discourses of blood purity and Hispanitas, or Hispanidad, demonstrating that it’s what one does with one’s blood, not one’s blood inheritance that makes a man Spanish. Cervantes shows that bodily sacrifice, and the spilling of one’s blood, is what is needed to become Hispanic.

In Cervantes’s El cerco de Numancia, blood becomes the oversaturating metaphor spreading through both the play as well as the physical representation of the city, appearing in scenes of

Eucharistic self-sacrifice, exchanges between mothers and children, and in the form of an ever- increasing pool in the main square of town, or as Cervantes describes it “un rojo lago” or red lake. Blood is evoked in every act, and nearly every scene, either literal blood or a metaphorical blood connoting heritage. Blood appears both as a symbol – such as in the lake of blood in the town square—and as a metaphor for heritage and sacrifice.

This lake of blood, which spreads throughout the course of the play, foregrounds the topos of blood and inheritance which Cervantes would never finish exploring. The symbol seems to be a moment of the sublime, in which "massive underdetermination…melts all oppositions or distinctions into a perceptional stream…the imagery appropriate to this variety of the sublime is usually characterized by featureless (meaningless) horizontality or extension.”208 At the same time, the lake of blood comes to stand for a kind of absolute metaphor, another kind of sublime:

an overdetermination which in its extreme threatens a state of absolute metaphor, ‘a universe in which everything is potentially identical with everything else.’ We are reading and suddenly we are caught up in a word (or any signifying segment) which seems to ‘contain’ so much that there is nothing we cannot ‘read into it.’209

The interplay of these two kinds of sublime present in the blood lake—both the overwhelm throughout the drama as the lake grows and expands across the centre of the square to the excessive presence of blood in the play in all scenes—suggests an early way that Cervantes called into question the meaning of blood while ensuring that a straightforward interpretation of its symbolism was impossible. The backdrop of the blood lake when juxtaposed with the scenes of Numantine resistance and sacrifice complicates the meaning of blood and calls attention to the actions of the hand. Cervantes also uses the interplay between the different occurrences of blood- as-blood, blood as symbol of Numantine destruction, and blood as the necessary element in both symbolic and real sacrifices to ensure that blood cannot have a single or overarching meaning. In a context where blood is supposed to possess a straightforward and unified meaning, Cervantes prefers to ensure that any attempt at direct interpretation will fail.

208 Thomas Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 26. 209 Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime, 26-27.

In the rest of his oeuvre, Cervantes would continue to sever the connections between inheritance and blood, beginning with his paratexts. Most famously, in the prologue to Don Quixote, he declares “although I appear to be the father, I am the stepfather of Don Quixote.” 210 This line of generation is, as Georgina Dopico Black argues, unnatural.211 Likewise, in his literary self- portrait in the Novelas ejemplares, Cervantes reminds readers he is the dueño of his texts, ie. the master or the owner or guardian, not their father.212

Cervantes’ favourite textual game in Numancia similarly confuses questions of blood and inheritance for early modern Spanish readers. The question becomes, are Cervantes’s contemporary Spanish readers heirs to the Numantines, or to the Romans? Arguments for and against both sides are numerous. Other early modern Spanish authors clearly found the story of Numancia illustrative of typically Spanish virtues and vices: on one hand, there was their (at times) supernatural valour; on the other, the Numantines are fighting the Romans alone, having been abandoned by their allies, while suffering from the repercussions of internal divisions. The idea that the contemporary Spanish are the spiritual, if not bodily heirs to the Numantines is bolstered by the appearance in Cervantes’s play of the allegorical figure of Spain (Castilla), wailing, “You who to the afflicted bring relief/ O favour me in this, my so great-pain/Who am the lonely and unlucky Spain!”213 In Cervantes’s work, Spain is holding a castle, which reinforces the link between the Spanish and the Numantines—the traditional heartland of Spain, where Numantia is located, is called Castilla-La Mancha (so named for its castles). Moreover, the same rhetoric that is used to describe contemporary Spanish valour is used to talk about the Numantines; at one point, two Numantine leaders in conference note that the Numantines must

210 In Spanish, he says "aunque parezco padre, soy padrastro de Don Quijote," Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. F. Rico (Madrid : Real Academica, 2015), 9. 211 Georgina Dopico Black, “Libraries Books and Bodies in Don Quixote,” Cervantes' Don Quixote: A Casebook, edited by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Oford: OUP, 2010, 95-122, 110. 212 See the examination of the literary self-portrait above for this authorial claim. 213 A significant point is that the physical suffering of the Numantines, although intense, is not linked to pain; only the allegorical, feminine figure of España (really Castille) that is allowed to claim the pain that the siege has caused her in Act I, scene 2; in Spanish, she says Spain implores heaven, “Muévate a compasión mi amargo duelo/y pues al afligio favoreces,/favoréceme a mí en ansia tamaña,/ que soy la sola y desdichada España,” 357-360, act I. scene II, 72.

69 somehow subject the Romans “al valor de la espanola mano” [the valour of the Spanish hand].214 As audiences already know, what happens is what is predicted when the Numantines summon a corpse to tell them the future. He warns that The abominable evil …Numancia, I can assure you Will be ended by the very hands Of those who are closest to her.215

That is, Numantine hands will end Numantine lives. The Numantines strike a blow against the Romans by turning their own valourous, Spanish hand upon themselves. (By the third act, significantly, the valourous hands have become “flacas” and “desabridas” or thin and insipid.)216 The use of the hand as a metonymic device to represent a nation’s courage (or lack thereof) is present throughout the drama, when Caravino, a Numantine, condemns the Romans, who destroy the Numantines with “cobardes manos”217 [“cowardly hands”]. In his own discussion of Roman strength, the Roman general Scipio invokes the “loca mano” [“crazed hand”] that he will use to level the Numantines218 but he also condemns the “blancas delicadas manos” ["delicate white hands"] of his troops.219 The siege that lays the Numantines low is not a valorous combat and is a dishonourable use of the hand; it is a passive use of hands grown too delicate to fight.

That Cervantes is writing in the epic mode is confusing since this is drama also suggests that the Numantines, the tragic underdogs of the play, serve an ideological nationalist function. By far the majority of the play’s action takes place in the city itself and focuses on the people inside; on one side, we have Cervantine complexity and sheer narrative weight, as Numantine couples,

214 Cervantes Saavedra, La tragedia de Numancia, ed. Alfredo Baras Escolá, (Zaragoza: U Zaragoza P, 2009), II.1.565, 95. 215 From the original Spanish: "del mal infando, que de Numancia puedo asegurarte, la cual acabará a las mismas manos de los que son a ella más cercanos," La tragedia de Numancia, Act II.1.1070-1072, 117.

216 La tragedia de Numancia, Act III.2.1291, 128. 217 La tragedia de Numancia, Act III.1.1214, 125. 218 La tragedia de Numancia, Act I.1.16, 61. 219 La tragedia de Numancia, Act I.1.69, 65

70 families, leaders, soldiers and priests confer over their strategy, bemoan starvation, and attempt to find a way out of their situation. On the other side, we see only the Roman army. The “española mano,” the symbol of valor in war, is Numantine. However, important doubts remain. How could the Numantines be true ancestors to the early modern Spanish, when in fact they did not survive the siege? (At least, not in Hispanic accounts such as Cervantes’; in fact, Roman accounts indicate several dozen survivors.)

For many early modern Spaniards, it would also have made ideological sense to argue that they were the descendants of the Romans; the Roman occupation of the Iberian Peninsula provided an ideological justification for translatio imperii, and for the early modern Hapsburg imperial occupation of Italy. The River Duero, the other major allegorical figure in the El cerco de Numancia, prophesies that Numantia will lose its liberty to Rome, and it will remain under the Roman yoke for some time. However, the Duero (a symbol of Iberian unity, as it flows through Spain and Portugal) also promises as a consolation to Numantia that the Romans will be forced out by the Goths, and that eventually the tables will turn when the Catholic monarchs exercise “Rule and allegiance on the Gothic throne”220—that is, when the imperial Hapsburgs rule not only the peninsula, but much of Europe. Fuchs notes, that “As Philip II’s monarchy aligned itself with Counter Reformation orthodoxy, the elaboration of a national myth based on a pure Christianity took on a greater urgency […] A new vein of humanist historiography conveniently occluded Spain’s Moorish past and touted an unchanging ‘Gothic’ nation that stretched back to pre-Roman times.”221 This vision of Spain argued for its Europeanness, and left out its Muslim heritage, a national shame, altogether; it also made questions of descent and origin more complicated.

In other words, two kinds of translatio imperii are operating; as a result, one day the Hapsburgs will be able to perform a Roman function, uniting Spain (and much of Europe) under their rule; however, the Hapsburgs will be able to exercise their rule in a more civilized fashion, refusing to inflict upon Rome the same suffering that the Numantines knew. A better, greater Roman empire will be ruled by the blood descendants of those same Romans, even though the Romans will first

220 Translated from "Católicos serán llamados todos,/successión digna delos fuertes godos,” La tragedia de Numancia, “ed Baras Escolá, Madrid: Castalia, 1994, I.2, 503-504, 87. 221 Barbara Fuchs, Passing for Spain (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 3.

71 be forced out by the Goths, the peninsula’s true leaders. However, the blood tie to the Romans is again broken because the in the wake of Goths’ invasions, the ethnic identity of the peninsula’s inhabitants will change, as if miraculously, to Gothic.

Missing from Numancia’s account of Spanish history is the 800-year occupation of the peninsula by the Moors. This strategic omission isn’t necessarily due to a desire to repress that part of Spanish history. Ideologically, as Burk notes in her work on Numancia: The erasure of Muslims and Jews from the narrative of Spanish history as described in the text is a strategic omission. Cervantes is purposefully vague on who constitutes present-day Spaniards, inheritors of Numantia and destined to glory. By omitting the large and politically problematic population from the list of foreigners, the author implicitly opens up the category of the ‘‘native’’ to include Jews and Muslims and their convert descendants.222 However, the erasure of Jews and Muslims, although perhaps a part of a strategy of inclusion, was not enough to guarantee their acceptance. As we have seen, it is never quite enough— Cervantes again falls back on the use of bodily performance in the spilling of blood. By focusing on the spilling of blood, the playwright is able to undermine traditional notions of blood and inheritance as demonstrated at the height of the siege in the exchange between the lovers Lira and Marandro. As the siege intensifies, so do the effects of hunger on the Numantine population; things are so bad that a baby is shown to be sucking the lifeblood out of his mother, who says Suckest thou, thou hapless brood ? Feelst not, that to my unrest Thou from out my withered breast Draw'st not milk, but simple blood?223

222 Rachel Burk, “'La patria consumida': Blood, Nation, and Eucharistin Cervantes's La Numancia,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 13, no.4 (2012): 1-19, 8. 223 81, James Y. Gibson ; in the original it reads, "No sientes que, a mi despecho,/sacas ya del flaco pecho,/por leche, la sangre pura," Numancia, 1709-1711, 147.

Simultaneously, Cervantes brings his focus to the young couple, Marandro and Lira. Marandro, accompanied by his close friend, has made a sally to the Roman camp in order to bring back bread for his beloved; mortally wounded, he returns and declares: Giving to my sweet Lira This bread so bitter: Bread won from enemies: But it was not earned But with the buying blood Of two luckless friends.224 This is a sacrifice made through Spanish valour and manliness; it also demonstrates the Numantine solidarity, one in which even love affairs are not simply carried out between two people, but also supported by the community. Significantly, as Burk notes, at about the same time as the play’s publication, changes in Catholic theology meant that the significance of the Eucharist changed. In fact, the Council of Trent pronounced that the Eucharist created a community of practicing believers. As the Council of Trent declares: [Christ] would fain have all Christians be mentally joined and united together [through celebrating the Eucharist]’. This sanctified bodily state, distinct from pureza de sangre, was attainable by all baptized Christians. By …predicating Spanish subjectivity on the Eucharist, and as spiritual rather than corporeal, the playwright not only argues for an intrinsically inclusive model of Christianity, but also opens the possibility of moderate self-fashioning among believers.225

Thus, the Eucharist becomes “a practice, not a position” of national belonging.226 The shedding of Marandro’s blood, part of his bodily practice of Hispanidad, in this case becomes a very literal re-enactment of the sacrament, while functioning as a very obvious symbol of Christian

224 Translated from: "en dando a mi dulce Lira este tan amargo pan: pan ganado de enemigos: pero no ha sido ganado, sino con sangre comprador de dos sin ventura amigos," Numancia, 1821-1827, 153. 225 Burk, “'La patria consumida,” 13. 226 Burk, “'La patria consumida,” 15.

73 sacrifice—he is both literally giving bloody bread to Lira, sacrificing his life so that she may live. Such heavy symbolism in the face of blood purity, an all-pervasive metaphor, threatens a breakdown in meaning.227 Blood is present as a symbol indicating heritage, but also as part of the Eucharist, as well as a symbol of the Numantines’ fate.

The rhetoric of self-sacrifice culminates in the first Numatine leader’s suicide; Bariato explains that "the perfect and pure love/that I had for my beloved country"228 motivates his suicide. In this text, as the self-sacrificial scenes recur, the reader recognizes the parallel between the suicide of the Bariato as well as the Numantine people, and the death of Jesus on the cross. As Armstrong Roche argues, “Numancia’s body politic dies like Christ on the cross to live again in the spirit associated insistently with courage, the renown for valor won by the Spanish sword from Ferdinand of Aragon.”229 The resulting lake of blood overwhelms the invading Romans, just as the ever-present use of blood as both metaphor and symbol saturates the text.

At the end of his chapter on blood in Five Words, Roland Greene concludes that in the Quijote: The contradictions of early modern blood are brought to crisis here, rendering the concept not only semantically open but— what we have not noticed elsewhere— illegible to the characters themselves, who cannot know how to connect a bloody mouth to the distinctions they maintain in principle or why a largely abstract concept should flow so freely that it makes the room a lake.230 Roland Greene’s conclusion is that by the time of the Quijote’s publication, the concept of blood had lost a great deal of its symbolic significance to become merely "a liquid

227 From this episode forward, the rites reveal increasing power to affect change as they become more like the Catholic Mass. Blood, more so than flesh, is presented as a principal constituent of sacrifice. This is in part because bleeding precedes death, and death looms over Numantia from the start of the siege. But it is also because blood goes beyond its universal role as synecdoche for the life of the body and takes on various metaphorical meanings. As the play progresses, the blood rites intensify, and sacrifice becomes more explicitly linked to auto-sacrifice and spiritual nourishment” in Burk 13. 228 Trans. Gibson, 114; in the original Bariato cites "el amor perfecto y puro / que yo tuve a mi patria tan querida," IV.2, 2398-2399, 180. 229Michael Armstrong-Roche, “The Patria Besieged: Border-Crossing Paradoxes of National Identity in Cervantes’s Numancia,” in Border Interrogations: Questioning Spanish Frontiers, ed. Benita Vizcaya (Oxford: Berghahn, 2008), 228-245, 207. 230 Roland Greene, Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 136.

74 that has a reality apart from the allegories of religion, history and medicine.”231 The seeming lake of blood that appears when Don Quixote attacks the wineskins in the inn is the culmination of Cervantes’s knowing attempts to rendering blood as simply blood. In texts such as the Quijote, it no longer is present as anything other than as itself—not as a symbol, a metaphor, but merely as literal blood.

Cervantes had not yet gotten to that point (if indeed Green’s conclusion is justified) in El cerco of Numancia. Rather, by positing and undermining his representation of the Spanish as the blood and spiritual heirs of both Rome and Numantines, Cervantes severs the supposedly strict and straightforward ties between blood and Hispanidad. Suggesting that it is in fact what one does with blood as opposed to its origins that matters, Cervantes complicates the matter of Spanish national membership such that others may belong. His use of blood as an absolute metaphor and a prevalent symbol acts similarly to the pools of blood that appear in works ranging from Numancia to La fuerza de la sangre, to saturating everything while effacing any legible traces that might otherwise be left behind. I would not argue that blood has primarily a literal significance in the earlier works of Cervantes; rather, I’d argue that Cervantes undermines the importance of blood by allowing it to be hyper-present in a variety of guises. Just as Cervantes does not allow either the Romans or Numantines to be declared the true ancestors of his contemporary Spaniards, he also avoids granting blood a clear-cut significance and function. Only is the heroic shedding of blood portrayed unambiguously.

Exemplary Spanishness: Staging Nationalism in Algiers

An examination of the works Cervantes wrote after Numancia, the captivity plays based on his time in Algiers, further demonstrates that Cervantes focused on behaviour and not blood inheritance as the essential component in national identity. In this section I explore the ways in which Cervantes posits a kind of Spanish national character, distinguishable in Algiers (which was known, if anything, for the fluidity of its inhabitants’ national identities, and for its cosmopolitan character) for its nobility. Cervantes demonstrates that a Spanish national character exists, and moreover, that his own valourous behaviour is exemplary of this Hispanidad.

231 Greene, 105.

Cervantes’s comedias de cautivo, or dramas of captivity— El Trato de Argel and Los Baños de Argel—employ Algiers as a staging ground where characters perform ideal acts of Hispanitas in the face of pressure from both Spanish renegades and Muslim captors. As I have already noted, Cervantes’ years in Algiers proved significant in his literary career. Despite the obscurity of his location, and the difficulty in constructing a reliable narrative of his time in Algiers, these would be the "most fully-documented years in [Cervantes’s] life."232 His time in Algiers had a crucial effect on Cervantes’s development and his portrayal of Spanish identity, both his own and others’. Cervantes’s efforts at articulating this identity would be predicated upon his discussion of past trauma, his reliance upon early Spanish examples of martyrdom, and at times the conflation of national origin with religious convictions. Seemingly at odds with his portrayal of Spanish unity, in these dramas Cervantes also presents counterrenegades, renegades, and other failed Spaniards.

However contradictory this may appear, the Algerian setting, combined with conflicting portraits of Hispanidad, allow Cervantes to foreground his own exemplary Spanish behaviour. His dramatic works’ portrayal of Hispanidad hinges on a contradiction: although he had lost a hand, and thus, a symbol of Spanish masculine and political agency at Lepanto, at the same time Cervantes gained the ability to argue for his ideal Hispanidad, and the right to overcome his obscure and probably suspect (that is, converso) family background.

Being Heroic, Being Spanish: Algiers as Crucible for Hispanitas

As Dominick LaCapra notes in his work on national identity and memory, “all myths of origin include something like a founding trauma, through which the people pass and emerge strengthened; at least they have stood the test of this founding trauma.”233 This kind of early, violent event becomes “the valorized or intensely cathected basis for identity for a group rather than pose the problematic questions of identity.”234

232 Ellen Anderson, “Playing at Moslem and Christian,” Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 13, no. 2 (1993): 37-59, 41. 233 Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 161. 234 LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 23.

As we have already seen, clashes between Christians and Muslims were constantly being revisited by Cervantes (and other early modern contemporaries) in the late 16th century. Defeats of Spanish Christians at unbelievers’ hands surface repeatedly in the captivity dramas. One such reference to traumatic foundations occurs at the beginning of the Baños. Spanish soldiers come upon the ruins of an Iberian town raided by renegades; a soldier declares the only possible reaction: “we can only bear witness that here was Troy;”235 strains of early modern nationalism based much of their rhetoric on the narrative of the Aeneid and its imagining of the Trojan defeat and resettlement. National trauma recurs more precisely and more importantly in Cervantes’s discussions of the failed Armada of 1541. (The Battle of Lepanto, in 1571, in contrast, in both Cervantine and Spanish memorializing, became the basis of heroic self-fashioning as noted above, particularly in the Prologue to the Novelas ejemplares.)

Cervantes’s nostalgic look back at early Spanish martyrs in The Bagnios of Algiers (also called the Prison-Houses of Algiers) serves a similar nationalist purpose to evocations of Troy. The youngest captives in the Baños de Argel, Francisquito and his brother Juanico, are targeted for conversion. Francisquito declares “don’t think that I’ll become a Moor, even if this monster promises me silver and gold, for I am a Spanish Christian.” 236 This is the only moment in the play in which a character specifies that he is both Spanish and Christian—for the rest of the Bagnios, and the Traffic, characters are described as either Christian or Spanish. This is the sole moment in which the possibility that one could be the former but not the latter is raised. The two brothers reappear in the middle of the Bagnios dressed as Janissaries, or young boys in the service of the Ottoman Empire. Dress is one device Cervantes employs throughout the Bagnios to indicate a character’s (often-shifting) identities. Angry Ottoman masters martyr the younger child, Francisquito, who, unlike his brother, refuses conversion. Francisquito in fact demands martyrdom, declaring that holy voices “tell me that I shall be a new Justus, and you a new Pastor,

235 The English is from The Bagnios of Algiers ; and, The Great Sultana, trans. Barbara Fuchs and Aaron J. Ilika, (Philadelphia: U Penn P, 2010), 7; the original from Los baños de Argel, “Sólo habremos llegado a ser testigos/deque Troya fue aquí,” Act I, 27. 236 The English is from The Bagnios of Algiers ; and, The Great Sultana, trans. Barbara Fuchs and Aaron J. Ilika, (Philadelphia: U Penn P, 2010), Bagnios, 61. In the original Spanish, it reads "No pienses que he de ser moro, por más que aqueste inhumano. Me prometa plata y oro. Que soy español cristiano…"Act II, 183.

77 which I like.237 In a twist that underscores the origins of Cervantes himself (much like the presence of a character called Saavedra who periodically appears in the comedias de cautivo to make patriotic utterances), the two martyrs cited by Francisquito are the patrons of Alcalá de Henares, Cervantes’s natal city.238 The two were pre-adolescent boys martyred in the 4th century CE for their faith, and their bones were interred at the Cathedral in Alcalá de Henares in 1568, when Cervantes was twenty.

As the cases of Francisquito and Juanico demonstrate, in the end, the physical becomes the medium through which characters indicate conversion—the boys refuse circumcision, a bodily act that ties religion to nationality. To become circumcised would be to become physically and spiritually marked by Islam, and it would be the inverse of the blood sacrifice that made one Spanish; instead, giving up the foreskin was a sacrifice that rendered one an infidel. Similarly, the conflation between the physical and spiritual body occurs—Francisquito tells his brother that “in this sheath lies a soul that thirsts for God”239 and that his clothing is a “gross outfit, which makes [his] soul beastly”240 and yet the spiritual act of conversion has little to do with the outward and the physical; the edition reminds the reader that the Muslim credo, “ilá ilálá” is “the only marker of conversion”241 —nothing else, save a later circumcision, would indicate a change of belief or subjective state. A Christian witnessing the execution of Francisquito notes that his captors failed to convert him because it’s impossible to “imprint human designs on this sacred heart.”242 The physical act of sacrifice can become a spiritual one that makes someone a member of a nation, as in Numancia. However, it can also allow an individual to renounce his prior identity.

237 The Bagnios of Algiers ; and, The Great Sultana, 62. In the original, it reads In the Spanish original, it reads: “Que he de ser un nuevo Justo y tú otro nuevo Pastor,” Baños de Argel, Act II, lines 1003-1004, 183.

238Baños de Argel, 198n. 239Bagnios, ed. Barbara Fuchs, Act II, 63; In the Spanish, “Que yo encubro en esta funda una alma de Dios sedienta,” Baños, Act II, 1905-6, 99. 240 In the Spanish, he bemoans, “Este vestido grosero/que me vuelve el alma fiera,/y es bien que vaya ligero/quien se atreve a esta carrera,” act II, 1993-1996, 102.

241 Bagnios, Act II, 65. 242 Bagnios, Act II, 76. In the original Baños, Act II, p 118, reads “Su jüicio no ha podido/imprimir humanas trazas/en este pecho divino,” 2366-2368.

As Cervantes creates an image of Spanish nationalism, he simultaneously undermines the unity of his presentation, focusing on Christians who become renegades, renegades whose children convert to Christianity, renegades who recant and become counterrenegades, and Jews targeted unfairly by supposedly respectable Christian characters. "The Captive’s Tale," discussed above for its relationship to the discourses of arms and letters, also raises the question of renegades’ children and their religious identity through the theme of the Muslim daughter of a renegade who converts to Christianity through the influence of her servant and later escapes to Spain with a captive.

The character Juan in the El Trato de Argel also converts, much like Juanico in the Bagnios. His assertion of Moorishness underlines how conversion is often indicated through legible physical changes alone: Is there anything better than being a Moor? Look at this beautiful suit that my master has given to me, and I have another of brocade, more splendid and polished. I eat tasty couscous, I drink sweet cold juice, and I sample the corde that is sweet and pilau that is good.243

The examples Juan gives--clothing, food and dining customs--are ones that Cervantes raises in the Bagnios, when he discusses one of the highest-ranking North Africans, Mulay Maluco, and his cristianesca traditions: he eats sitting in a European-style table and chair, with European food. Again, it is physical or bodily acts which are interpreted to reflect an inner change: the body and its feeding and positioning are signs of one’s nation.

Identity can also come through in another exterior and corporeal sign, which is clothing. The significance of Moorish dress (over Christian or captives’ dress) cannot be overstated. In pre- modern Spanish literature, clothing was held as the decent, acceptable, modest stand-in for the body itself. Encarnación Juarez insists that studying clothing in early modern Spanish texts is crucial as "the analysis of the discourse of clothing offers us additional information as much in

243 Cervantes Saavedra, The Trade of Algiers, trans. Pamela Peek, (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1994), 181-182. In the Spanish, it reads: “Alcuzcuz como sabroso, sorbeta de azúcar bebo, y el corde que es dulce, preubo, y pilao, que es provechoso,” El trato de Argel, Act III, 77, 1847-1850.

79 the individual aspect as in the social aspect of subjects of Golden Age autobiographies.”244 The changeable use of clothing to present a coherent self-reveals a contradiction which Spanish commentators noticed and met with great anxiety. Juárez notes that “the autobiographical subject, in its doubling, from putting on or taking off layers of different clothing—and these layers always are inlaid with the Other—reconciles and creates itself."245

Cervantes makes some of the most effective literary uses of the anxiety-provoking use of clothing and the overreliance of Spanish men on its effects. He knew to make use of clothing and its relationship to the social hierarchies influenced by factors like "age, class status, ethnicity, and gender” as well as the “ambivalence and ambiguities” which clothing made possible for his characters.246 Cervantes’ literary practices paralleled those of his countrymen: considered ligero, or flighty, in matters of dress, Spanish men often changed their preferred style, just as Cervantes’ characters could not stay in one type of dress for long.

In contrast, the Muslim men of North Africa and Turkey rarely changed their regalia (at least, Spanish commenters thought so) over the centuries. In her examination of costuming, Bernis catalogues several hundred pages of changing Spanish wardrobe over a relatively short period of time. Similarly, her analysis posits that depictions of outsiders’ clothing, especially Moorish clothing, rarely changed: In contrast to Christian clothing, which was subject to changing fashions and in continuous transformation since the early Middle Ages, the clothing of Muslims was characterized by its stability. Centuries could pass without changes to clothing. For Muslim clothing, and for the purposes of this book, historical documents that are not exactly contemporaneous to Cervantes are still valid.247

244 My translation; the original reads “El análisis del discurso de la ropa… nos ofrece información adicional tanto en el aspecto individual como social de los sujetos de las autobiografías áureas Encarnación Juárez, El cuerpo vestido y la construcción de la identidad en las narrativas autobiográficas del Siglo de Oro (Tamesis: Woodbridge, 2006), 15.

245 In the original Spanish, it reads "el sujeto autobiográfico en sus operaciones de doblaje, de irse poniendo o quitando capas de diferentes ropas – y estas capas incrustan siempre al Otro – adviene y se crea,"Juárez, El cuerpo vestido y la construcción de la identidad en las narrativas autobiográficas del Siglo de Oro, 3. 246 Juárez, El cuerpo vestido y la construcción de la identidad en las narrativas autobiográficas del Siglo de Oro, 17. 247 The original Spanish reads: “En contraste con el traje cristiano, sometido a una moda cambiante y en continua transformación desde la Baja Edad Media, el de los musulmanes se caracteriza por su estabilidad. Podían pasar siglos sin que cambiasen la forma de sus vestidos. Por ello, para los fines de este libro son válidos documentos que

This assertion has been challenged, but its importance lies what Bernis indicates what early modern Spanishmen often feared, namely that their own clothing indicating a flaw in the Spanish male character. Spanish speakers of the Golden Age already used the same lexicon to describe North African Muslims, Spanish New Christians, and sometimes the occasional Ottoman, an indication about their anxiety of an undifferentiated and faceless Other; even more alarming in this context, the Other has more masculine consistency and self-discipline in its clothing. The importance of clothing for men would hold a special significance, as Juarez notes: “The construction of masculinity in patriarchal societies, with strong institutional restrictions, is in keeping with an image in which internal contradictions are hidden or in which weaknesses and personal failures are justified.”248

In a place of solidity and unchanging meaning, clothing remains “an empty sign which refers to its own discourse more than an external reality. It only has meaning through its inscription in the discourse as signifier and signified, which is to say, it takes on its reality through language.”249 Meanwhile, the lowliest character in the Bagnios, the “old Jew,” an object of torment by the Christian sexton Tristan, who extorts him to earn enough ransom money, is only identified, despite his supposed obvious and innate inferiority, by his clothing and appearance. The Sexton says: His tuft gives him away; his wretched slippers, his mean and lowly face. Turks wear only one lock of hair combed upon their head, and Jews wear it over their foreheads, the French behind their ears; and the Spaniards, stubborn as mules, mock everyone and wear their hair—God help me!—all over their bodies.250

no son rigurosamente contemporáneos de Cervantes,” from Carmen Bernis, El traje y los tipos sociales en el Quijote (Madrid: Visor, 2001), 461. 248 This is my translation of the following: "La construcción de la masculinidad en las sociedades patriarcales, con fuertes restricciones institucionales, responde a una imagen en la que se esconden las contradicciones internas o se justifican las debilidades y fracasos personales” from Encarnación Juárez, El cuerpo vestido y la construcción de la identidad en las narrativas autobiográficas del Siglo de Oro, 15. 249Or, “un signo vacío que se refiere a su propio discurso más que a una realidad externa. Sólo tiene sentido a través de la inscripción en el discurso como referente y referido, es decir, asume su realidad a través del lenguaje,” from Juárez, El cuerpo vestido y la construcción de la identidad en las narrativas autobiográficas del Siglo de Oro, 15. 250 From Bagnios 43; the Spanish reads: "So copete lo muestra, sus infames chinelas, su rostro de mezquino y de pobrete. Trae el turco en la corona una guedeja sola

The character’s mention of Jewish slippers also recalls the end of the Trato de Argel, in which escaping Christians are identifiable only by the footprints they leave, as the Moors allegedly wear a different, broader kind of shoe: “the footprints of Arabs are wide and badly formed.” 251 In the above passage, the Turks and French, although not as reviled as the Jewish man, are similarly othered, identified by hairstyle alone; what is significant is that the only national group that are identified by innate traits are the Spanish, who alone are allowed inner, subjective qualities and emotions that Tristán presumes to know and understand. Spanish self-derision is behaviour that demonstrates a feeling of superiority, an implication that Spanish characters alone possess a perspective that allows them to see beyond the ridiculousness of others’ practices and culture. The stubbornness of the Spanish is a defining trait, one which goes along with valour and manly (though animalistic) body hair.

Years before Cervantes, Covvarubias had laid bare Spanish male anxieties about appearance, clothing and national identity: All nations have used their own clothing, using clothing to distinguish themselves from others; and many have kept their mode dress for a long time. The Spanish in this case have been seen as inconstant, because we change clothing and costumes easily. And in this way, a man who had gone crazy, or was crazy, and went about completely undone and wore on his shoulder a piece of a rag, and being asked why he wasn’t dressed,

de peinados cabellos, y el judío los trae sobre la frente; el francés, tras la oreja; y el español, acémila, que es rendajo de todos, le trae ¡válame Dios!, en todo el cuerpo,” Baños, II, 1259-1269, pages 75-76.

251 Trato, trans. Peek, 191; in the original Spanish it reads: "Estas pisadas no son, por cierto, de moro, no; cristiano las estampó, que con la misma intención debe de ir que llevo yo. De alárabes las pisadas son anchas y mal formadas, porque es ancho su calzado; el nuestro más escotado, y ansí son diferenciadas,” (IV.2, 1992-2002), 9-104, 84.

responded that he hoped to see what the clothes ended up becoming.252

Elsewhere, Covarrubias notes “it is not my duty to deal with reform, but the excess of Spain in clothing is notorious, because on a feast day the official and his wife cannot be distinguished from nobles.”253 Dress could inadvertently reveal more than it concealed; more than just one’s nationality, dress could also bare national failings and vulnerabilities. In the case of exiled Spaniards (and in opposition to Cervantes’s self-portrait of noble suffering in Algiers), dress, the metonymic stand-in for the body, could indicate to enemies the excesses of Spanish vanity, and the collapse in legible social structures. Though clothing as a bodily stand-in ostensibly functions to ensure decency and privacy, early modern men feared that Spanish dress instead unwittingly revealed the indecent truth of Spanish effeminacy.

Though clothing can (though sometimes misleadingly) give clues to a man’s origins which are universally legible within the plays and to Spanish audiences, there is significant lexical confusion in Algiers as to how to refer to the Christians’ common homeland. Hazén, the Moorish counterrenegade who is martyred at the beginning of the Bagnios, refers to “my parents in Spain,” 254 but Tristán, the anti-Semitic sexton of the subplot, identifies himself as from “a remote village in Old Castile.”255 Though Tristán is dishonest and often attempts to toy with his captors, the identification rings true: as the most virulently anti-Semitic character in the play, he would prefer to claim the identity that indicated remoteness from non-Christians.

252 In the original, which I translate above, Covarrubias states “Todas las naciones han usado vestiduras propias, distinguiéndose por ellas unas de otras; y muchas han conservado su hábito por gran tiempo. A los Espanoles en este caso nos han notado de livianos, porque mudamos traje y vestido fácilmente. Y assi el otro que se hazia loco, o lo era, andava hecho pedaços, y traya al ombro un pedaço de paño, y preguntadole porque no se hazia de vestir, respondia que esperaba a ver en que paravan los trajes," in Tesoro 1070. 253 This is my translation of Covarrubias’ original rhetoric : “No es instituto mio tratar de reformaciones, pero notorio es el excesso de España en el vestir, porque un día de fiesta el oficial y su muger no se diferencian de la gente noble,” Tesoro, 1002. 254 Bagnios 30; in the original Spanish, it reads "En España lo diréis/a mis padres,” I.867, 60

255Bagnios 26; in the original Spanish, Tristán assures his captors that his village “[n]o está en la mapa. Es mi tierra Mollorido, un lugar muy Escondido, allá en Castilla la Vieja,” in Act I, 727-730, 54.

The allusion to Old Castile functions similarly to the other characters referring to themselves as “Old Christians”—it is an assertion of national and religious purity. In much of Cervantes, the context surrounding any character’s self-identification as an “Old Christian” works to destabilise the implication that being an Old Christian is somehow desirable. Outside of the captivity plays, the Quijote contains several declarations of lineage or blood purity, most notably by Sancho Panza. Chapter 21 of Part I has Sancho reminding his master “I am an Old Christian, and that alone is enough for me to be a count.”256 In the chapter which immediately precedes it, which describes Sancho trying to defecate secretly in front of his master before being made to go on another adventure, the narrator of the Quijote notes that "These tears and Sancho Panza’s honorable decision lead the author of this history to conclude that he must have been wellborn and, at the very least, an Old Christian."257 Though Sancho’s “tears and honourable decision” gesture towards his loyalty to Don Quixote, the context (as well as the reader’s knowledge of Sancho’s shaky courage) indicates how these claims should be subjected to scrutiny if not ridicule. By the end of Part I, even outside of his interactions with Quixote, Sancho holds that " though I’m poor I’m an old Christian and I don’t owe anything to anybody."258 However, Sancho had asserted in the preceding moment that he wasn’t "pregnant by anybody" ["no estoy preñado de nadie”]259 which, though intended as a declaration of intellectual pride, fails to uphold Sancho’s dignity, since he takes up the more literary “empreñado de” and converts it to “preñado" [pregnant]. In this, he demonstrates that though he might be a good Catholic man, he cannot “hablar Christiano,” another way of saying “speak Spanish.” 260 The more Sancho Panza references his Old Christian roots or refers to the language he speaks as Christian, or cristiano,

256 In the Grossman translation, 177; the Rico read “sea por Dios, que yo cristiano viejo soy, y para ser conde esto me basta," Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Francisco Rico, (Madrid: RAE, 2015), 255. 257 Grossman translation, 147; in the original it reads: “destas lágrimas y determinación tan honrada de Sancho Panza saca el autor desta historia que debía de ser bien nacido y por lo menos cristiano viejo,” Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote, 238. 258 In the Grossman edition, 437; the original reads "“aunque pobre, soy cristiano viejo y no debo nada a nadie," Cervantes, Don Quijote, 598. 259 Grossman, 437; in the Rico edition, 598. 260 For example of this common usage elsewhere in Cervantes, a few chapters prior, in I.37, Zoraída is described as unable to "speak Christian," 350; or “hablar Christiano,” on 481 of the Rico edition. Sancho begins I.47 challenging the visions of his master, who has been convinced he’s enchanted, by saying “estas visions que por aquí andan, que no son del todo católicas,” 590.

84 the more the text calls his ancestry and worthiness into question. The Bagnios, like the Quijote, prefers to emphasize Hispanitas, but mostly to undermine it.

The Bagnios also calls into question the subjective inner loyalties of its men abroad using two renegades with very different motivations. At the very beginning of the Bagnios, Yzuf and Hazén’s conflict foregrounds the difficulty of determining the actual patriotism (or loyalty) of the Spanish characters. Yzuf, the cruel renegade whose raid on the Spanish coast leads to the capture of his family, serves as the foil to the character of Hazén, a counterrenegade wishing to return to Spain and to resume his life as Christian and Spaniard.

Hazén’s denunciation of Yzuf foregrounds the impossibility of linking national heritage narrowly to blood inheritance. He decries Yzuf in catalogue of betrayals the latter has committed: “You are not horrified at having sold your uncle and your nephews, and your land, you unbeliever, and yet you’re horrified [by Hazén’s reproaches].”261 The first betrayal involves blood and kin, the key preoccupation of Cervantes’ contemporaries, but in fact, Hazén’s rhetoric, which becomes loftier as he berates Yzuf, suggests that his priorities are more about a nation than a family; instead of focusing on blood ties or soil, Hazén has recourse to ancient Roman rhetorical models of statesmanship. His insults reach the point that he alludes to Cicero in his reproaches; in a series of rhetorical questions, Hazén demands, “What angry Catiline has ever vented his overwhelming cruelty on his own flesh and blood? You raise your sword against your own homeland?”262 Underlying this exchange is the ghost of Cicero’s fiery denunciation of Catiline in the Senate. From the beginning of the play, when Cervantes compares the pillage of coastal villages to the sack of Troy, to the moment in which Hazén confronts Yzuf, interlocutors would have Roman nationalist and literary myths at the forefront of their minds. After all, Rome served as a model in early modern nation-building rhetoric.263 Hazén appears to understate

261 Bagnios 28 ; The Spanish reads “¿No te espanta haber vendido a tu tío y tus sobrinos y a tu patria, descreído, y espántate…,” Los baños de Argel, I.802-805, 57.

262 Bagnios 28; in the original, he asks “¿…que Catilina airado contra su sangre ha querido mostrar su rigor?” Baños, I,794-796, 57.

Yzuf’s religious apostasy, which to the early modern reader remains the most morally bankrupt of Yzuf’s actions. By the end of their confrontation, in which Hazén kills his enemy, the focus moves to Hazén’s looming martyrdom, a way for Cervantes to once again focus on sacrificial valour as the Spanish characteristic.

The heroic martyr bears more than a passing resemblance to the character of Cervantes himself. At the beginning of the Bagnios, Hazén is presented to readers as a renegade who wishes to apostatize, denying his conversion to Islam in order to return to Christianity and to his Spanish homeland. As part of his preparations for departure, he has written a petition, signed by a list of Christian captives, in which he claims that “I have treated Christians very affably, without Turkish cruelty in word or deed; that I have aided many [captives].”264 In this, Hazén recalls Cervantes’ Informaciónes; beyond the court case which his parents launched during his captivity, Cervantes made an additional effort to secure his reputation after his ransom was paid but before he left Algiers. After being ransomed, he spent an additional six weeks in Algiers, compiling testimony about the exemplarity of his life in North Africa. Similarly, he compiled a second Información in Madrid, mere weeks after his return from North Africa and before the end of 1580. Indeed, although Cervantes had (unlike Hazén) maintained his faith and good reputation in Algiers, he held that rumours spread about him required that he gather a group of witnesses and to answer two dozen questions for them to answer regarding Cervantes’ behaviour and reputation. Hazén’s own unsuccessful attempts at self-justification and his confrontation with Yzuf, which causes him to be martyred before he can leave Algiers, complicate preconceived notions about characters’ self-proclaimed identities and their attempts at self-fashioning. His fate is a way for Cervantes to explore an alternative ending for his autobiographical tale, one in which he never escapes captivity; or one in which he dies before establishing his legitimate, Christian identity; or perhaps, an ending in which a person re-affirms their Hispanidad through his death.

263 For more on examples of the Roman model and its use in the period, please see David Lowenstein, “Milton’s Nationalism and the English Revolution: Strains and Contradictions” in Early Modern Nationalism and Milton's England, eds. Lowenstein and Stevens, (Toronto: U Toronto P, 2008), 25-50.

264 Bagnios 14; the Spanish reads: "Aquí va cómo es verdad que he tratado a los cristianos con mucha afabiliadad, sin tener en lengua o manos la turquesca crüeldad,” Act 1, 387-390, 39.

A final analysis of the plays suggests that both demonstrate nationality to be an identity agreed upon and reinforced discursively, by members of the national community (and religious figures) who are considered blessed with a kind of almost miraculous insight. A reading of clothing, bodies, and customs can only occasionally be taken as a sincere indication of an inner, subjective state. In the case of early modern Spanishness, as foregrounded in Cervantes, its definition often fixated on bodily practices in spite of the problems this posed: on one hand, Spanish identity could be constituted negatively, by avoiding the practices of other nations: food, dress, and one’s way of sitting. On the other hand, it could be invoked positively through bodily practices of manly self-sacrifice, and the shedding of one’s blood.

Some beliefs, such as the evocation of past national traumas and association with early Hispanic martyrs can indicate a way forward for those uncertain of their standing. However, in the end true national belonging is, for early modern Spaniards, often shown dependent upon public honor and reputation. In fact, it is only in Algiers that Cervantes can be truly Spanish. Stringent anti- Judaism and reactionary Christianity thwarted Cervantes’s first and only attempt at an official limpieza de sangre, and never won him the acclaim he needed. Although his family’s efforts at establishing a narrative of his wounding were rhetorically successful, they did not lead to the hoped-for lucrative outcome. Cervantes was able to create a portrait of his Spanishness, in a reclaiming of his agency, but he never succeeded in convincing those who had the influence at court of his heroism. The reclaiming of his disability was achieved rhetorically, and literarily, but never financially.

The tension between action, writing, blood inheritance, and nobility which Cervantes finds both inspiring and alarming culminates in his Gallardo español. The play is a hybrid of two earlier genres favoured by Cervantes— the siege play as seen above in Numancia, and a captivity play such as the Trato or Baños of Argel—and its generic hybridity allows the mature Cervantes to bring together the major themes spanning his career. The protagonist of the piece is a Christian hero who is garrisoned in one of the last Spanish strongholds in North Africa. Instead of being captured and sold into slavery, the gallardo of the play’s title chooses to become a renegade in the name of what he believes to be honour, and willingly flees his garrison to fight a duel with a romantic rival. In contrast to the multiple protagonists of Cervantes’ captivity plays, the gallardo eschews the collective for the individual, the self-effacing for the self-aggrandizing, and religious constancy for reputation.

Gallardo joins the other epithets that the early moderns used for Spanish heroes, such as el osado and el valeroso. The term gallardo also recalls Herrera’s fixation, discussed above, on the “osadía” of Spanish men. El gallado español would seem at first blush to accord with Herrera’s argument on the importance of recording history to ensure Spain’s reputation.265 The play’s eponymous hero, the Spanish gallant, possesses the necessary greatness in both amorous and warlike exploits. Both Christians and Muslims in North Africa admire his reputed gallantry. However, Cervantes complicates the presentation of martial heroism, as the eponymous gallardo’s love of glory compels him to betray the Christian side as a siege looms.

El gallardo español also raises questions familiar to anyone who has read Cervantes’ other work: the slipperiness of national identities, the role of male heroism in Hispanitas, and the most useful kinds of national service. By the time of the Gallardo (the early 17th century), Cervantes had read other historical sources, and approached similar themes to those of Numancia but in a less generically conventional siege play. This allowed him to complicate his presentation of nationality, heroism, and identity.266 The Gallardo español foregrounds the heroism of one Spanish man, Francisco de Saavedra, during the siege of Orán in 1563. Saavedra enters the play as the subject of multiple characters’ narrations: we hear of his heroism from his rival in war Alimuzel; from Alimuzel’s fiancée, Arlaxa; from Spanish characters like Dona Margarita and her servant Vozmediano. The title itself almost certainly alludes to the work of Herrera; it implies that the eponymous Gallardo would be a worthy subject of a good Spanish historian.

In reality, the protagonist vigorously undermines readers’ assumptions that he represents the kind of man Herrera would have historians praise; the gallardo fails to understand the role of historians in constructing Hispanitas. He does not recognize his role as a subject who records history, or even more alarmingly, the possibility that he is the object of others’ histories.267

265 Author’s note: All translations from the Gallardo español are mine. 266 Howard Mancing, “Gallardo español,” in Cervantes Encyclopedia (Westport: Greenwood, 2004), 320-321. 267 In the Eloquence of the Body, 99, Herman Roodenburg described early modern honour as a product of two different kinds one of relationships; the first kind, horizontal honour, was based on how people of the same class, rank, and social group saw a person; the second, vertical honour, derived from a person’s superiors and their views. The gallardo threatens both conceptions of honour because he cannot see the distinctions between them; his myopic focus of the idea of honour more generally means he threatens both his reputation among his peers and his superiors.

Cervantes underlines this failing by ensuring that readers come to learn of the gallardo through others’ narration only. The Moorish characters contribute the most to others’ understanding of the protagonist, an alarming prospect for Spanish would-be historians. Arlaxa, a noble Muslim woman, becomes enamored of the gallardo through the stories told to her by her slave, Oropesa. Arlaxa sets the plot in motion by ordering her fiancé, Alimuzel, to bring Saavedra to her, presumably after he manages to best the Spaniard in a challenge or combat. The protagonist is one of the defenders of Orán, a Spanish North African city which is facing a siege by the Ottomans. His commanding officer refuses him permission to leave the city to meet Alimuzel’s challenge, so instead, the protagonist abandons his city for the Moorish encampment nearby. For the protagonist, personal honour dictates that he must not decline any test of valour. Meanwhile, a Spanish woman, Margarita, arrives in the nearby Moorish town as well; she is disguised as a Moorish man. She has left her convent in Spain to find the gallardo, whom she knows by reputation. Characters’ understanding of the Gallardo derive from the servants, who repeat what they have heard. What readers actually see in the play contradicts these second-hand accounts, when, for example, the Gallardo abandons his besieged city in order to follow Alimuzel to a Moorish encampment to duel. Don Fernando is experienced mainly through the narration of others; his actions are rarely self-justified.268

The Moorish and female characters of the play serve as its most adept historians; they demonstrate awareness of literary genres and their conventions. Arlaxa, though an outsider to Spanish culture, still in fact relies on her advanced knowledge of Spanish history to introduce the character. She demands that her lover bring him back in a description of the Gallardo which posits him as the (re)conqueror of North Africa, an avenger of the conquista and the man who would right the wrongs of the failed Armada and the lackluster imperial policies of Felipe II: I want to see the splendor Of he whom I name with fear Of this terror this amazement Of all of Barbary!269

268 Melanie Henry, The Signifying Self, (London: MHRA, 2013), 83

269 The original reads "¡Quiero ver la bizarría/deste que con miedo nombro,/deste espanto, deste asombro/de toda la Berbería," Cervantes Saavedra, El gallardo español, ed. Sevilla Arroyo, (Madrid: Alianza 1997), 25-139, I.1.33-36, 26.

Moreover, though both a woman and Moor, she has an advanced literary education. Arlaxa recognizes and explicitly names the istorias used as models for discussions of the Gallardo as “[Spain’s] new Cid, its Bernardo.”270 Her servant has a similarly broad understanding of Spanish literature, which she demonstrates in the second act, when she declares that “Hercules, Hector, Roldán were made in [the gallardo’s] crucible”271 simultaneously evoking the mythic past while rewriting it with both anachronism and hyperbole. Cervantes has Arlaxa and her servant Oropesa rely on various sources of material used by the early modern writer, from Greek mythology to the Iliad to medieval romance, all cited in consecutive lines. The characters assemble and re- assemble historical knowledge and conflate fiction and non-fiction, as well as historical timelines. This seemingly contradictory use of sources was in fact an orthodox historical praxis, and a further indication that both characters understood the conventions of history and historiography that influenced Cervantes and his contemporaries.

In contrast to the historical narrativizing of the women characters, Don Fernando’s lines show little awareness of his nationalist duty to narrate. Don Fernando’s diction instead underlines an interest in his reputation, though not to the extent that he attempts to tell his own stories. He takes for granted his own honra (or honor), and only in its narrowest sense: That this would be for me a terrible thing is obvious. He is challenging me alone And it would be diminishment for me If someone else fought in my name.272 Don Fernando interprets a personal duel as more pressing than an impending siege of the city surrounded by enemy territory.273 One critic, Gethin Hughes,

270“Su Nuevo Cid, su Bernardo” I.1.42, 26 in the original

271 “Hércules, Héctor, Roldán/se hicieron en su crisol,” II.1, 1206-1207, 69. 272 The original reads: “Que me estará a mí muy mal eso, es cosa manifiesta. Solo a mí me desafía, y gran mengua me sería que otro por mí pelease. Mas si el moro me esperase allí siquiera otro día,” Act I, lines 290-294, 36. 273 Frederick de Armas notes that the play also shows the importance of reconciling sapientia and fortitudo; the two virtues, wisdom and courage, are another way of considering two of the cardinal activities Spanish Renaissance men

90 notes the profound self-obsession indicated by Don Fernando’s excessive and repetitive use of the first person singular pronoun274 which I have italicized above. His use of the yo provides an important contrast with the protagonists of Cervantes’ other siege play, Numancia, where the collective nosotros, or “we” remains the focus of Numantine characters.

By placing the love interest Doña Margarita’s narration after the introduction of the protagonist, Cervantes further underscores Don Fernando’s failures by bookending the words of the Gallardo with the words of women characters who introduce him and dictate how others will receive him; they perform a historian’s function. Doña Margarita alone amongst the noble Spanish characters has mastered the agential and nationalist requirement to tell the story, as well as the literary techniques which it requires. This is evident from the outset of her story, when shows awareness of the captatio benevolentiae and the modesty topos especially suited to her role as a woman narrator: The tongue does not refuse To tell of past problems in present-day glory But if the evil is being suffered The tongue mutes itself.275 Her declaration that “the tongue will mute itself” in discussing present-day problems is both a way of holding back from narration until her listeners implore her; it also recalls Cervantes’ declaration to readers that he would amputate his remaining hand should his writing offend or harm readers of the Novelas. In both cases, the narrators attach themselves metonymically to respectively, the tongue and hand, and wait for readers to implore for them to continue, leaving open the suggestion that this will ensure only worthy things are discussed.

wished to master (sapientia and fortitudo are other names for letras and armas); for more on the attempted reconciliation of arms and letters in the play, please see his article "Los excesos de Venus y Marte en El gallardo español." from Cervantes, su obra y su mundo. Ed. Manuel Criado de Val. Madrid, 1981. 249-260. 274 Gethin Hughes, “El Gallardo españnol, a Case of Misplaced Honour,” in Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 13, no. 1 (1993): 65-75, 69. 275 The orignal states: "Pasadas penas en presente gloria el contarlas la lengua no repugna; mas si el mal está en ser que se padece, al contarle, la lengua se enmudece,” Act III, 2179-2182, 105.

Other metonymic relationships, such as that of Spanish identity and the hand reappear in the Gallardo español. The play highlights anxiety about the hand’s role in guaranteeing and preserving Spanish honour. Even the women of the Orán recognize that during a siege, they must fulfill their duties in supporting the warriors “ as the robust arms of the town fathers defend its walls and lives”276 that is, as a kind of supplement or support to the literal arms of the men. Unsurprisingly, Oropesa evokes Don Fernando, “the victorious sword in his hand”277 in her allusions to him, though his is the singular hand that supports not his nation but himself and his honra. The hand of Don Fernando has failed in its patriotic duty; his hand has also taken on a life of its own, away from its purpose as the historian’s tool. The pendulum has swung in the other direction, and the hand is no longer the driving force of national fame.

Cervantes’ deft uses of history, portrayed in tandem with a gallardo led astray by his honra, suggest that in fact, writing history will not be the salve of the nation. Moreover, Cervantes’ condemnation of the acts of the hand, and their potential for both excess and investment in vainglory, suggests that the Spanish search for reputation has no easy solution. Though the Gallardo explores Cervantes’ favourite themes of history, nation, honour, and glory in North Africa, his late play rejects a more obvious resolution, and merely demonstrates the danger in failing to write your own history.

The next section will consider ways in which families could attempt to re-write or narrate their own histories using a mix of fact and fiction in legal documents. Early modern court proceedings allowed litigants leeway in setting the questions and witnesses whom they called. Through a common genre, declarations of limpieza, the Cervantes family attempted to link their history of noble actions to their blood inheritance, a reversal of Miguel de Cervantes’ typical strategy. The court records provide an important context and examples of concrete discussions of blood, nationalism, and nobility. At the same time, they demonstrate that though the family attempted vigorously to literally dictate their own limpieza, they were never able to entirely re- fashion the genre to meet their needs; instead, as the family attempted to claim nobility, their narrative techniques called into question declarations of blood, inheritance, and behaviour. Yet

276 “En tanto que los robustos brazos de sus padres defiendan sus murallas y sus vidas,” El Gallardo español, I. 588- 589, 46. 277 “…la mano/a la espada vitoriosa,” El Gallardo español, II. 1185-1186, 68.

92 again, the Cervantes’ discussions of identity and his missing hand, when viewed against the backdrop of debates on blood and inheritance, serve mainly to confuse the issue. Cervantes guarantees that a sustained focus on of his literary strategies will lead readers to conclude the best course of action is to try to use the hand well, in spite of everything, but never to trust excessively in its abilities.

Chapter 4 Cervantes’ Legal Lives

In the Retablo des las maravillas, one of Cervantes’ intremeses, two con artists arrive at a rural village. As part of the swindlers’ charade, they convince the Governor that they will put on a play to celebrate his goddaughter’s nuptials, but that the performance will only be visible to Old Christians and legitimate children, conceived and born to married parents. The entire village feigns seeing the action onstage, until they are so caught up in their own performance as spectators that when a quartermaster interrupts the performance to order the village prepare to billet soldiers, they do not understand he is part of a reality which exists outside the tale. After refusing his command, the villagers are all killed. The interlude’s messaging is quite clear: limpieza de sangre, or blood purity, began as a fiction in which everyone had a part to play, motivated mainly by doubt and fear. Eventually, the fiction became destructive collective delusion. The legal documents of the following chapter examine the ways in which the Cervantes family attempted to establish their blood purity by bringing others into the performance, beginning in the early 1550s, and ending in the late 1590s. The family’s overall lack of resources can be traced not only to Rodrigo Cervantes’ fecklessness, but also to the family’s lack of recognized social standing, itself a sign of possible impurity.

The Cervantes family spent years litigating different cases to retain or obtain some of the privileges that “pure” Spanish gentry typically enjoyed or felt entitled to. Below are several of the most significant cases the family took to court beginning in the year 1552, when Rodrigo was jailed for non-payment of debts. Over the years Leonor de Cortinas (the author’s mother) and Miguel himself would continue similar arguments in front of various magistrates and in various publications. In the 1552 case, Rodrigo claimed hidalgo status, and argued that he could not be imprisoned for debt. Several important themes for the family’s legal dealings and their son Miguel’s literary concerns surface throughout thes case below. The Cervantes family underline the purity of their lineage, which they claim their standing and others’ social perceptions prove. At the same time, the Cervantes family call attention to Lepanto and especially Miguel’s captivity to underscore his noble and pure behaviour. The corruption and suffering of Algiers exist as a foil to Miguel’s Christian patience and bravery.

Juan Sánchez de Lugo, neighbour to Cervantes’ father, testifies when Rodrigo is jailed by creditors in 1552 that Rodrigo is a gentleman. Sánchez de Lugo supports his opinion by stating that he has known Rodrigo (and Rodrigo’s father and paternal grandfather) as “dealing in the city of Alcalá and being and held by all to be a gentleman and always kept horses and jousted and played the game of canes in the said city of Alcalá.”278 As we have seen elsewhere, it the perception of nobility that is important, whatever the reality may be. This is evinced by Juan’s rhetoric which focuses mainly on both what he has seen and what he has (and has not) heard: “he has seen them” “he has never heard anything else”;279 he would have known “if things were otherwise” or “would have heard tell.”280 The court rewards circular reasoning, in which a family must avoid gossip and appear noble; by being considered noble, a family can see this recognized in the courts, which will increase their appearance of nobility in their town.

More significantly, Spanish identity relies on the proper adoption of Moorish dress: the or “jousting and playing [the game of] canes” that Sanchez de Lugo mentions required formal Moorish costume.281 At key moments, Spanish men would demonstrate their high rank through the paradoxical relinquishment of Hispanidad and embrace of Maurophilia, dressing in expensive (often rented) Moorish regalia as part of a larger joust.282 Those lacking the means to temporarily pass as Moors would in fact reveal themselves as being of a lower social class.283 The fact that Rodrigo and his father had been seen to dress as Moors at socially appropriate occasions served as paradoxical proof of their noble and Christian heritage.

As we have seen in Cervantes’ captivity plays, clothing was simultaneously an empty sign and a weighty indicator of identity for Spanish men of standing. Moreover, a man’s dress could be

278 Translation from the Spanish “tratar en la villa de Alcalá e entre todos ser abidos e tenydos por tales hijos dalgo e caballeros, e sienpre tener caballos e justar y jugar cañas en la dicha villa de Alcalá Francisco Rodríguez Marín, Nuevo documentos cervantinos (Madrid: Revista de archivos, bibliotecas y museos, 1914), 87-88. 279 In Spanish “los a visto” and “nunca oyó dezir otra cosa,” Rodríguez Marín, 87. 280 In Spanish, “si otra cosa fuera, este testigo lo supiera o oyera decir,” Rodríguez Marín, 87. 281 Javier Irigoyen-Garcia notes other examples in which “the assumption that the candidate’s ancestors might have participated in the game of canes can be used as proof of nobility for the entire lineage,” in Moors Dressed as Moors (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 258. 282 Irigoyen-Garcia, Moors Dressed as Moors, 58. 283 Irigoyen-Garcia, Moors Dressed as Moors, 60.

95 submitted as evidence in a judicial proceeding, particularly if that proceeding required a proof of the subject’s social class. As in the captivity plays, noble Spanish men perceived themselves as too changeable in their costuming; this fear seems justified when juxtaposed alongside the frequent costume changes required for hidalgos. Spanish sartorial flightiness had reached its height by Rodrigo’s discussion of his heritage. One of the important rituals belonging to noblemen with limpieza de sangre required dressing in “Moorish” clothing while performing feats of arms such as jousting.284 The strategic adoption of Moorish drag served as a status symbol, since the costumes were elaborate, made of expensive fabric, and an expected part of festivities for men. These costumes hearkened back to ideals of romantic Moorishness past that came into vogue in the sixteenth century, a phenomenon known as “maurophilia.” By performing the role of ideal medieval Moors (Moors whom, it should be noted, were in no way considered blood ancestors of the present-day Spanish gentry), Cervantes and his father could argue, paradoxically, for the purity and non-Moorishness of their family’s bloodline. The importance of broken (blood) ties to the past appears again from Cervantes’ works, demonstrating the confused role that blood played in discourses of national inheritance.

Limpieza for Miguel

Cervantes would continue his father’s efforts to document the family’s racial purity and class identity. In 1569, Cervantes attempted to secure a limpieza de sangre, or a declaration of blood purity, to allow him to achieve a respectable position while abroad in Italy. Ellen Lokos describes the result as being compiled without a proper notary, consisting of no actual genealogical records of any kind, and having only testimony in favour of the Cervantes family and witnesses found by Rodrigo de Cervantes;285 an actual hearing to determine one’s genealogical purity with the power to issue a certificate or declaration of limpieza would have been done very differently, Lokos asserts. Lokos goes so far to describe the family’s efforts as “a daring move” in which “the Cervanteses subvert the system and manipulate this socio- inquisitorial phenomenon to Miguel’s advantage.”286 She asserts that the witnesses “declare in

284 Irigoyen-Garcia, Moors Dressed as Moors, 36. 285 Ellen Lokos, “Cervantine Genealogy” in Cervantes and His Postmodern Constituencies, ed. Anne J. Cruz and Carroll B. Johnson (New York: Garland 1998), 116.

286 Lokos, “Cervantine Genealogy,” 120.

96 his favor basing their statements on nothing more than reputation, hearsay, and other intangibles. Those who scrutinize the document closely will be sorely disappointed, for in the end, they are confronted with a vacuous, purely formulaic verbal construction which tells absolutely nothing substantive about Miguel de Cervantes’s pedigree.”287

In sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain, establishing a person’s blood status could in fact take place in two ways: in the positive method, a person could obtain an expediente de legitimidad y limpieza de sangre, in which witnesses could be called to attest to the claimant’s lineage and her parents’ legitimate marriage, or, in under prosecution, a person’s behaviour or heritage could cause her to become an object of scrutiny, called before the Inquisitorial court where neighbours and acquaintances would testify to her disreputable or suspicious behaviour. Even more common were controversies in which two public figures would slander each other, accusing their nemesis of having converso heritage. Sometimes, the result of a public quarrel would be that it was impossible for the combatants to prove their blood purity.288

By the standards of the more thorough or successful limpiezas, Cervantes’ Información de limpieza is clearly lacking; it comprises a mere four pages of testimony, all of which describe his parents and his relationship with them; nowhere is his more distant ancestry evoked, and nowhere does anyone mention having known the family for more than a generation. As described by historian María del Val González de la Peña, who examined the processing of such expedientes in monasteries, where they were required for those who wished to take holy orders, the genre of the limpieza had several component parts. “Generally, within expedientes we find the following documentation: family trees, baptismal certificates, information on blood purity, accounts of kinship and official appointments.”289

287 Lokos, “Cervantine Genealogy,” 120. 288 Dominick Finello discusses the effects of such a feud on Lope de Vega in Cervantes: Essays on Social and Literary Polemics, (London: Tamesis, 1998). 289 This is my translation of the following text: “Generalmente, dentro de los expedientes hallamos la siguiente documentación: - Árboles genealógicos. - Partidas de bautismo. - Información de limpieza de sangre. - Relaciones de parentesco y nombramientos oficiales ” in María Val González de la Peña. " Signo: revista de historia de la cultura escrita, 1998, n.5, 187-196. 190-191.

In comparison with those offered by monastic hopefuls Cervantes’ own four-page document is extremely short, although the number of pages is similar to some pruebas held by the University of Seville’s archives. As González de la Peña further notes, “the expedientes typically occupy between 5 and 32 pages. The difference in thickness amongst them is determined by how high or lower the candidates’ lineage is. Thus, lower orders have expedientes that are smaller, while those of higher order nuns (in the choir) are more complete.”290 The shorter the work, the more likely a candidate’s social class was lesser.

Generically, Cervantes’s 1569 Información resembles if anything the beginning part of an Inquisition expediente de limpieza de sangre, which often contained pruebas de legitimidad (or “proofs of legitimacy”), as a prelude to the further examination of a candidate’s background. The Información de limpieza in Cervantes’s case is cursory and repetitive: a succession of witnesses found by Rodrigo de Cervantes affirms the family’s legal status, denies being a relative of any of those people involved in the case, and states that Rodrigo and his wife Leonor were known to be married, and that Miguel de Cervantes was one of their legitimate offspring. Not only, then, is the document short, but it also fails to cover questions of the family’s origin, instead dwelling on the marriage and lifestyle of Cervantes’ parents. The marriage and lifestyle of Rodrigo de Cervantes and Leonor de Cortinas would be an important subject to a court, but legitimate marriage was the most basic requirement for limpieza; demonstrating one’s legitimacy was merely the first step in proving one’s limpieza. Francisco Mucaquí’s testimony is emblematic of the witnesses’ statements: Rodrigo de Cervantes […] presents as a witness Francisco Mucaqui, involved in the court of his majesty, of whose testimony was taken and received in the form of a legal oath and being questioned said that he is of the age of 32 years, or thereabouts, and is not related to any of the parties And that he is not affected by ay of the conditions, and being questioned about the content in this petition he said that this witness knows the aforementioned Rodrigo de Cervantes as well as Leonor de Cortinas, his wife, and he knows them as husband and wife and [he knows them to be]

290 This is my translation of the following: “Los expedientes suelen ocupar entre 5 y 32 páginas. Las diferencias de grosor entre ellos vienen determinadas por el mayor o menor linaje de las candidatas. Así, las freilas poseen expedientes más pequeños, mientras que los de las monjas de coro son más completos” in González del Peña, 189.

legitimately married and they are recognized thus in this city of Madrid.291 Significantly, there is only one moment in which a witness discusses what is known of the Cervantes’s religious and ethnic background. Pirro Boquí, an acquaintance of the family, states that: […] Rodrigo de Cervantes has not been nor is he convict nor dishonoured by the Holy Office of the Inquisition, neither have the abovementioned’s parents, nor is he of the caste or Moors nor Jews, nor does he have any of their race, but rather they are held to be pure in grandparents, old Christians, as are the ones of the family of Dona Leonor de Cortinas and they are have always been this way, as this witness holds them to be, and it is the truth due to the oath that he made and signed in his name.292 His use of the word raça is interesting. The word raça held great significance in the early modern period. In the Tesoro de la lengua castellana, it is defined as being: The caste of pure nobles (knights), which signal or show it with an iron brand such that they are recognized. Race in cloth, is the thread that differentiates itself from the other threads of the weave [author’s note: such a loose thread in a sweater]. It seems that this has been pronounced also like Reaza; because aza in the Tuscan language means thread and the race in a cloth overlaid is equal. Race in lineages can be taken negatively, like when one has some Moorish or Jewish race.293

291 Rodrigo de Cervantes [….] presentó por testigo a Francisco Mucaqui, andante en corte de su magestad, del qual fue tomado e recibido juramento en forma de derecho e siendo preguntado dixo que es de edad de treinta e dos años, poco más o menos, e que no es pariente de ninguna de las partes ni le tocan las generales, y siendo preguntado por lo contenido en este pedimiento dixo que este testigo conoce al dicho Rodrigo de Cerbantes e asimismo conoce a la dicha Doña Leonor de Cortinas, su muger, e por tal marido e muger casados e velados este testigo los tiene e son habidos e tenidos en esta villa de Madrid […] from Documentos Cervantinos Ineditos Cristóbal Pérez Pastor, vol 2, Valladolid : Junta de Castilla y León., 1902),15. 292 Above is my translation of the following text : "Rodrigo de Cerbantes no ha sido ni es penitenciado ni afrentado por el sancto oficio de la inquisición ni menos sus padres de los susodichos lo han sido, ni es de casta de moros ni de judios ni tiene raça ninguna de ellos, antes los tiene por cristianos viejos, limpios de todos sus aguelos ansí de parte de la dicha Doña Leonor de Cortinas y por tales siempre este testigo los tiene, y esta es la verdad por el juramento que hizo e firmólo de su nombre" in Pérez Pastor, vol 2, 14. 293This is my translation of his original description, "La casta de cavallos castizos, a los quales señalan con hierro para que sean conocidos. Raza en el paño, la hilaza que diferencia de los demás hilos de la trama. Parece averse dicho quasi Reaza: porque aza en lengua Toscana vale hilo, y la raza en el paño sobrepuesto desigual. Raza en los linages se toma en mala parte, como tener alguna raza de Moro, o Iudio," Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellaña o española, (Madrid : Luis Sanchez, 1611), 1003.

Just as the textiles or clothing a man wore supposedly announced (but also influenced) his national identity, the nation was a cloth comprised of threads and raça was the thread that could give away or reveal one’s ancestry. In the tapestry of the Spanish nation, the wrong kind of thread stood out like an eyesore or even a structural flaw, disrupting the careful weave of the rest of the cloth. What is significant is that just as Spanish Christians exist and are defined in opposition to what they are not (that is, Jewish or Moorish inhabitants of Spain), the idea of a thread or part of a weave that stands out from the rest of the pattern calls into question the strength of Spanish society—if one person of the wrong background could weaken the structure of the whole cloth, then surely national cohesion is fragile.

Other lexical choices by the witness underscore the link between identity and behaviour, one which the Cervantes family would insist on. The relationship of the former and the latter is especially obvious in a term like casta, used above in Covarrubias’ description of the aristocratic class. “Casta” describes a person’s background even more comprehensively as it refers to both ethnic heritage and parental behaviour. As Covarrubias has it Casta means a lineage [that is] noble and pure, he who is of a good line and descendance; notwithstanding that we say, of good caste and bad caste. It is said “caste” from castus a.m. because “for the generation and procreation of children, it is not befitting that men be either dissolute nor unrestrained in the procreative act; for this aforementioned reason the distracted person cannot engender children, but the inhibited, and those who have little to do with women, have more children. Castizos is what we call those who are of a good lineage and caste.294 People of good casta reveal themselves through their sexual behaviour, which can have what today would be called an epigenetic effect on offspring; as we saw in above in Cervantes’ Retablo de las maravillas, a lack of familial chastity would have the same effect on viewers of the spectacle as would having Jewish or Moorish blood. Unchasteness could cause someone to

294The original Spanish, which is translated above, is "Casta, vale lineage noble y castizo, el que es de buena linea y decendencia; no embargante que dezimos, es de buena casta y mala casta. Dixose casta, de castus a.m. porque ‘para la generación y procreación de los hijos, conviene no ser los hombres viciosos ni desenfrenados en el acto venéreo; por cuya causa los distraídos no engendran, y los recogidos, y que tratan poco con mujeres, tienen muchos hijos. Castizos llamamos a los que son de buen linaje y casta" in Covarrubias’ Tesoro¸ 209.

100 squander the good blood of a noble family line. In asserting that the Cervantes family are of the right raza, Rodrigo’s witness simultaneously affirms that the Cervantes family is ethnically pure, religiously pure, and virtuous and honourable in its sexual behaviour (not unhindered, or desenfrenado, in sexual activity). The Cervantes’ have not dishonoured or corrupted their family bloodlines through their behaviour: hence the witness Mucaqui’s insistence on the parents’ legitimate marriage.

Boquí’s testimony above is the only witness statement in any way adequate for the demands of a limpieza. It’s easy to see that although Ellen Lokos’ dismissal of the 1569 limpieza is excessively critical, Cervantes’s document is lacking fundamental, generic aspects of a limpieza. It elides the Cervantes/Cortinas family origins, ancestors, and religious beliefs. It is easy to see why the family would be obliged to continue fighting to establish their respectability.

Información de 1578

The family’s legal efforts to gain recognition privileges accruing to the nobility peaked in 1578, after Lepanto. Cervantes’s hand injury and his wounding are the main subjects of his 1578 Información. The events described in court testimony had occurred three years prior, in 1575. Cervantes was on his way back to Spain from his military adventures in the Mediterranean with his elder brother, Rodrigo de Cervantes. Miguel was carrying letters from Duke of Sesa in recognition of his prior military service (which included the injury to his hand) when, in a truly Cervantine twist, he was captured by pirates and taken to Algiers. The Turks who enslaved Cervantes mistakenly assumed that his connections to the Duke of Sesa indicated that the Cervantes family had the standing and the means to pay a significant ransom.

Instead, as we have seen, Cervantes remained in North Africa for five years as a captive, a period in his life which served both as his inspiration and crucial time to practice writing. His captivity created the circumstances in which both Miguel and his parents would be simultaneously and separately forced to author their own narratives of his time as a soldier and captive. The Cervantes family had to use witnesses with knowledge of Miguel’s behaviour at Lepanto to create their own official narrative of his worthiness. As the family had to raise the money to free two sons, they turned to the Duke of Sesa and the crown. The stakes surrounding the discussion of Cervantes’s wounded hand were extremely high; the fortunes of the Cervantes family rested on the fates of their imprisoned children. The family needed ransom money and hoped for

101 compensation for Miguel’s injury. To convince the Duke to ransom him the Cervantes family had to aggressively represent Cervantes’ disability and his soldierly heroism. In this, the Cervanteses’ efforts to have Miguel’s disability officially recognized and compensated form part of the earliest modern bureaucratic wave to have impairments acknowledged by the nascent state as part of a pension for ailing soldiers.

Setting the terms of a Disability Narrative

Scholars of disability have argued that the disabled body is significant insofar as it is considered a call to interpretation;295 it is claimed that disability “inaugurates the act of interpretation.” 296 This call to interpretation was something that Cervantes’s mother Leonor de Cortinas, instinctively grasped; instead of waiting for others to attribute meaning to her son’s injuries, she proactively foregrounded his disabled body in order to draw attention to pressing questions for her family’s survival and well-being. In the family’s official, legal narrative of Lepanto, the family answers the call to interpretation and adds an answer to the era’s unspoken anxiety: “who is truly a Spanish man and how can we know?”

As the Cervantes family had had frequent recourse to civil and criminal suits, they had cultivated the rhetorical skills needed to set out and affirm a legal argument.297 Some of Miguel’s literary skill no doubt originated in the amount of preparation and practice he would have seen his parents put into their legal suits during his childhood. As the testimonies below demonstrate, Spanish legal practices of the period privileged a claimant’s narrative skills. Both legal practice (such as allowing Cervantes or his family to set the questions) and legal language (such as the long and repetitive syntax preferred by courts everywhere) enabled if not encouraged a plaintiff to establish a detailed account which witnesses would end up reiterating in their affirmations.

Rodrigo and Leonor litigated diligently, ensuring that they established detailed questions which their witnesses would repeat verbatim, phrase by phrase, in any testimony. In the initial hearings

295 Ato Quayson, Aesthetic Nervousness, 4. 296 Mitchell and Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis, 6. 297 Records complied by Sliwa show that the family’s litigiousness dated back to the early 1520s; Juan de Cervantes, the author’s grandfather, ended up the plaintiff or defendant of dozens of cases before he was 30. For more information, please see Krzysztof Sliwa, El licenciado Juan de Cervantes, abuelo de Miguel de Cervantes (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2001).

102 organized by Rodrigo to secure a ransom, the family provides witnesses with six questions. The initial and final questions are the simplest and most factual; in the first question, all the witness has to answer is “si conocen al dicho Rodrigo de Cervantes y al dicho Miguel de Cervantes su hijo cautivo” ["if they know the aforementioned Rodrigo de Cervantes and the aforementioned Miguel de Cervantes, his captive son"]298 that is, the witnesses have only to affirm their relationship with the two men. The questions, however, increase in their length and complicity as the court recorder continues. By the third question, the witnesses are asked to evaluate a mixture of both objective statements and more subjective ones, such that they are asked: if they know whether the said Miguel de Cervantes is around thirty years of age, and for ten years has been serving His Majesty Our Lord Don Felipe as a good soldier in the wars in Italy, and La Goleta, and Tunisia, and in the naval battle which Don Juan de Austria had with the Turkish Armada, whence [Cervantes] left injured by two harquebuses in the chest, and another in the left hand, in which he remains maimed.299

The above question begins by asking if a witness can confirm a fact, Miguel’s age. It is immediately followed, however, by a question about an opinion: if Miguel has indeed served “as a very good soldier” followed by five phrases asking to confirm facts about service, injuries, and general conduct. The Cervantes family clearly understood how to use Spanish legal syntax to ensure that witnesses could confirm exactly what is necessary, namely the impression of Miguel’s bravery. As phrases tumble forth, the witness could easily end up confirming details that they wouldn’t necessarily know (since several met Miguel at different points in his military service). The impression is of overwhelm, a situation in which a listener or reader would conclude that Miguel’s career was too extensive and notable to remember all its details. (The Cervanteses’ later and more involved legal suits were less consistent; instead of having witnesses repeat an overabundance of detail, in later cases the family would oscillate between the long questions analysed above and puzzling silences regarding the family background.)

298 Información de Miguel de Cervantes de…Argel, transcribed Pedro Torres Lanzas, 24. 299 Translated from the Spanish “Si saben quel dicho Miguel de cervantes es de hedad de treinta años poco más o menos, y de diez años esta parte a servido como muy bien soldado a su majestad don phelipe nuestro senor en las guerras que a tenido en ytalia, y la Goleta, y en tunez, y en la batalla nabal que el senor don Juan de Austria tubo con el armada del turco, donde salió herido de dos arcabuzazos en el pecho, y otro en la mano hizquierda, que quedó estropeado della,” 25.

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In the fourth question in the petition to obtain Miguel’s ransom, the Cervantes parents continued their strategy of forming a coherent narrative through overload; this time they were asking about the specifics of the Battle of Lepanto. This question was probably the most important in his own life, as the impression resulting from it would follow Miguel for years; if successful, the family would be able to secure a ransom, but also possibly Miguel’s reputation and future pension or earnings as compensation for his injuries:

It was suggested he go below the deck of the galley, as he was not healthy enough to fight; but the said Miguel de Cervantes responded that he would not do his duty in being covered, and that it was better to die as a good soldier, in the service of God and the king, and this he fought as a valiant soldier in the skiff, as his captain ordered; and that after the battle, Don Juan of Austria knowing how well he had served raised his pay by four ducados.300

Witnesses’ answers to question four would also determine the ways in which Cervantes’ disability would become a shorthand for his valour; his reputation would be based on his willingness to paradoxically sacrifice the organ which symbolised his valour and thus, his Hispanidad. He was not merely a maimed person with a non-functional hand (mano estropeada), but rather a soldier whose valour led him to fight while already battling an infirmity; significantly, the question above that emphasizes Miguel’s fever at the time of the battle could demonstrate that Cervantes was neither a coward nor a hypochondriac, and that barring extremely serious impairments, he would fulfill his martial duties. However, the question also implies a troubling excess in Cervantes’ response—his bravery bordered on the fortaleza of Mucius Scaevola, whom his contemporaries often found alarming rather than laudable.

Earlier in this chapter, the first witness, Santiesteban, stated that as a result of Cervantes’ participation in Lepanto “he came out of the battle wounded by two harquebusiers, in the chest,

300 From the Spanish “que se metiese debaxo de la cubierta de la galera, pues no estaba sano para pelear ; y el dicho miguel de cerbantes, respondió, que no haría lo que debía, metiéndose so cubierta, sino que mejor hera morrir como buen soldado, en servicio de dios y del rrei ; y asi peleó como valiente soldado en el lugar del esquife, como su capitan [sic] le mandó ; y después de la batalla, savido por el senor don juan de austria, quan bien le abia servido, le acresentó quatro ducados más de su paga,” Información de Miguel de Cervantes de…Argel, transcribed Pedro Torres Lanzas, 29-30.

104 and in a hand, left or right, and he remained maimed in the aforementioned hand.”301 The injured hand, so significant in later discussions of Cervantes, at this early moment cannot even be identified—it is a site of uncertainty, which the witness cannot remember. By the time the final witness, Don Beltrán del Saltón, is able to testify, he is more definitive in his statements, testifying that Cervantes could not “mandar” or manage his wounded hand, and it is recorded that “this witness has seen that he is deprived of the use of his left hand.”302

Saltón knows which hand is the wounded one, and in his desire to state the matter clearly, he unwittingly makes one of the puns that Rowe has demonstrated often appear in discussions of hands and agency, often without obvious forethought. The hand that cannot “mandar” is manco and thus it cannot be used to “do [Cervantes’s] bidding.” The Spanish term allows for a great deal of ambiguity: manco, although implying lack, does not necessarily mean that one is missing a hand as such, but rather that the hand is useless. Thus, the certainty of de Saltón is interesting, and when contrasted with the uncertainty of Santisteban, underlines an important facet of being a manco: those who are manco traditionally have a visible disability, but (paradoxically) it is a disability the consequences of which are not certain. At the same time, the Spanish term lends itself to a fair amount of textual ambiguity, as discussed above—the missing/maimed limb becomes a kind of absent presence in the documents such as the Información.303 This contradiction is a key part of Cervantes’s self-fashioning—the wounded or missing hand reappears as a way for Cervantes to demonstrate his patriotism, then as a point of contact between himself and the reader, but also as a way of displacing his literary anxieties, such as when in the Novelas ejemplares, he refers to his maimed hand and promises to use it to remove

301 "Salió herido de dos arcabugazacos, en el pecho, y en una mano, yzquierda o derecha, de que quedó estropeado de la dicha mano ; y este dicho testigo bió que el dicho M. De C. servió en la batalla a su magestad, como buen soldado, " from Información de Miguel de Cervantes de…Argel, transcribed Pedro Torres Lanzas, 29. 302 Or, “Or, “el dicho Miguel de Cerbantes salió herido de una mano, de tal manera questa manco de ella y que esta testigo le ha bisto que de la dicha mano hisquierda esta manco, de tal manera que no la puede mandar" from Información de Miguel de Cervantes de…Argel, transcribed Pedro Torres Lanzas, 40. 303 Jonathan Goldberg notes that manuals and instructors that taught handwriting emphasized the absent-presence that writing by hand would enable; an aristocratic man who wrote his own letters (instead of employing a secretary) would thus impart the letter with a physical reminder of his person (that is, his handwriting) despite his absence. Writing Matter: From the Hands of the English Renaissance, (Stanford: Stanford UP. 1990). 46; The loss of a hand also troubled the dichotomy of absence/presence in English literature of the period. As ML Fawcett notes, after Titus of Titus Andronicus is tricked into amputating his own hand, “the bloody lines are at once written out of [Titus’] body and on his body. He has made himself into a text, exemplifying both absence and presence: ‘Witness this wretched stump, witness these crimson lines’” (V, ii, 22), from “Arms/Words/Tears: Language and the Body in Titus Andronicus," ELH, 50, no. 2 (1983), 261-277, 270.

105 his functional one! By the time a reader understood the impossibility of the gesture, he or she would have been distracted from an assessment of Cervantes’ skill and virtues. Most importantly, the hand injury allows Cervantes to make an argument that he had been (unsuccessfully) attempting to make for years: that he was an hidalgo, with a linaje that was pure and Christian.

Up until the end of his captivity, Cervantes’ attempts at arguing for his limpieza had not been successful. Faced with the evidence of Cervantes’s unsuccessful attempts at establishing his family’s limpieza, in the 1580 Información he took advantage of an enemy’s slanderous remarks, as well as the Algerian location as a setting to stage a second sort of trial of racial purity. Cervantes claimed he needed to clear his reputation due to lies spread repeated by Juan Blanco de Paz, another Spanish captive in Algiers and a priest known (again, according to Cervantes) for his open hypocrisy and his lack of Christian devotion. Blanco was a convenient enemy whose slanders provided the pretext for Cervantes’ two Informaciones (for he produced a second one upon his return to Spain); Blanco also served as the counterrexample of Spanish heroism.

As Carroll Johnson notes: We are at a point now to see that the entire Información de Argel is a reply, a counter-text, to the reports taken by Dr. Blanco de Paz. It should be noted that Blanco comes out as an antagonist until the end of the discourse, from the point where Cervantes had left behind the material for the construction of ‘Serbantes’: his clean and gentlemantly lineage, his good habits, his closest friends, his heroic deeds, and his incredible spirit of sacrifice. At the end of the questions a kind of moral portrait is offered of Dr. Blanca, which is opposed point by point to that portrait which is offered regarding ‘Serbantes,’ Blanco ‘has been a rebellious man and an enemy of all.’ He never said mass; he never recited the canonical hours; he never confessed or gave communion to any Christian; he never visited or consoled sick people. He gave a slap to one religious monk. And he kicked another.304

304 In the original Spanish, it reads "Estamos ahora en condiciones de ver que toda la Información de Argel es una réplica, una contra-información a las informaciones tomadas por el Dr. Blanco de Paz. Es de notar que Blanco surge como antagonista sólo hacia el final del discurso, después que Cervantes ha dejado los materiales para la

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Cervantes could easily claim racial and moral purity (although based solely on his behaviour), in contrast to his foil. Blanco’s failures of Hispanitas included both actions (such as assaulting the clergy), as well as omissions—failure to fulfil his duties and to ensure the religious practice of a population vulnerable to coercion and conversion.

At the same time, because he was not in Spain, Cervantes benefitted from a lack of skeptical witnesses and the expectation that he have access to genealogical records or proof of ancestry. Instead, Cervantes could foreground his respectability, especially compared to that of other captives who had “gone native” and become renegades, counterrenegades, or had indulged in illicit homosexual practices. Using the techniques gleaned from his parents, Cervantes managed to compile almost ninety pages of testimony from other captives, describing his conduct while a prisoner, his relationship to the most respectable and noblest Christian captives in Algiers, and his leadership in the general Christian community. As in the family’s other legal documents, the rhetoric in these pages also demonstrates a similar preoccupation with the appearance or legibility of Hispanitas. In the sheaf of testimony, one of Cervantes’s friends from Algiers says “[Cervantes] lived with much cleanness and honesty of his person, and [no one] ever saw any vices in his person or costumes; that he had lived as was stated, as a good and Catholic Christian” and that “he had been taken as his reputation held” (that is, as a respectable Christian).305 As Carroll Johnson notes, the narrative of Cervantes’s time in Algiers “is recounted, or is divided into subcategories of the discourse. It appears first in the questions originally formulated by Cervantes, which contain narrative or descriptive fragments. Later, each witness answers the whole series of questions, by number, at times simply affirming the truth of the content of the question, at times repeating fragments of the text of the question, and at times adding details or supplying entire episodes.”306

construcción de “Serbantes”: su linaje limpio e hidalgo, sus buenas costumbres, sus amigos principales, sus hazañas heroicas y su increíble espíritu de sacrificio. Al final de las preguntas se ofrece una especie de retrato moral del Dr. Blanco, que se opone punto por punto al ofrecido antes a propósito de ‘Serbantes.’ Blanco “ha sido un hombre revoltoso y enemistado con todos.” Nunca decía misa; nunca rezaba las horas canónicas; nunca confesaba ni comulgaba a ningún cristiano; nunca visitaba ni consolaba a los enfermos. Dio un bofetón a un religioso y dio de coces a otro" from Carroll Johnson, “La construcción del personaje en Cervantes,” in Cervantes 15 (1995): 8-31, 30. 305 Información de Miguel de Cervantes de…Argel, transcribed Pedro Torres Lanzas, 64. 306 The original Spanish says “se cuenta, o está dividida entre dos subcategorías del discurso. Aparece primero en las preguntas originalmente formuladas por Cervantes, que contienen fragmentos narrativos o descriptivos. Luego, cada testigo contesta a toda la serie de preguntas, por su número, a veces simplemente afirmando la verdad de lo contenido en la pregunta, a veces repitiendo fragmentos del texto de la pregunta, y a veces añadiendo detalles o

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The importance of testimony and witnesses to good conduct by captives, an idea held by both by the fictional character Hazén and Cervantes, himself indicates an awareness that national identity was often created both discursively and as a matter of collective consensus, based on other Spaniards’ assessments of one’s conduct, reputation, and standing. It was then of course reinforced by the legal system, which as we’ve seen validated or denied claims of blood purity, which themselves were based at least partially on the testimony of witnesses. In his collection of testimony from October 1580, it is noted that Diego de Benevidas declares Cervantes “acted with all virtue, cleanness, and goodness” ["usaba de toda virtud, limpieza, y bondad"].307 The Lieutenant Luis de Pedrosa also found that Cervantes, because of his valour in organising an unsuccessful escape attempt for other captives, “garnered great fame, praise and honour” ["cobró gran fama, loa y honra"] ;308 in the original early modern Castilian, the word used is honra as opposed to honor; this choice is significant, as honra indicates a kind of honour that is a negative honour, based on maintaining the good opinion and respect of others as opposed to earning honour through one’s actions.

As Fuchs notes, normative, aristocratic male subjects in Counter-Reform Spain staked their identity on two basic tenets: honra, as above, and limpieza de sangre (blood purity). The former depended largely on male valor and female chastity, as well as on stringent distinctions among social classes. The latter was based on equally trenchant distinctions between Old Christians and New Christians—conversos who had recently converted to Christianity. Significantly, notions of gender and national identity were interconnected: through the sustained equation of the East with effeminacy and of Semitic peoples with women, masculinity was erected into a crucial aspect of Spanish identity.309 Honour did not simply accrue to men who had earned it through the appropriate deeds; as the anxiety in Herrera’s remarks above indicated, gestures of bravery could derive from recklessness or temerity. Cervantes and his relatives also understood a key facet of early modern male honour: it could also be best understood as an abstract quality created and maintained through one’s use language. As Thomas Cohen notes, “Honor is often best

supliendo episodios enteros” from Carroll Johnson, “La construcción del personaje en Cervantes,” Cervantes 15 (1995) : 8-31, 26. 307 Información de Miguel de Cervantes de…Argel, transcribed Pedro Torres Lanzas, 135. 308 Información de Miguel de Cervantes de…Argel, transcribed Pedro Torres Lanzas, 142. 309 Barbara Fuchs, Passing for Spain, (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 3.

108 understood not as a code, a quality, or an intangible commodity, though it has aspects of all three, but rather as a rhetorical process, one of several ploys for credit in a skeptical, dangerous world.”310 His discussion of honour considers Spanish-controlled Italy; the same code applied even more stringently within Spain itself. What appears counterintuitive to a 21st century reader— that those on either end of “social extremes” would call on honour the most—was obviously also something that Cervantes and his family recognized. Since they teetered between noble aspirations and actual poverty, the Cervanteses’ future depended on their understanding of the unwritten tenets of the honour code. Vulnerable members of Spanish society capitalized on the discourses of honour particularly if they felt their claims might not withstand scrutiny.311 Cervantes as an astute writer and member of a family in decline capitalized on the opportunity Algiers provided him to construct his honourable past. Cervantes used his missing hand as a way of re-creating himself.

Fray Juan Gil, responsible for ransoming Cervantes, describes “the principal personages and most trustworthy Christians that are in Algiers, people of honor (honra) and truth” who attested to Cervantes’s qualities.312 As Gil says, “I knew him to be very respected because he had served his Majesty for many years, and especially in this captivity he had done things where it was merited that his Majesty show him much favour" [or honour/grace].313 Elsewhere, Hernando de Vega notes that “I know how Miguel de Cervantes was taken captive to Algiers, and his master held him in great esteem and reputation [as the question says] and thus he was taken in fetters, weighted down by chains, and with guards, being humiliated and bother that he might be ransomed, and that be given a good ransom in exchange a good release in exchange for having a bad and confined existence, as the Moors and Turks typically give people of his quality.”314 The

310 Thomas V. Cohen, “Three Forms of Jeopardy: Honor, Pain, and Truth-Telling in a Sixteenth-Century Italian Courtroom,” Sixteenth Century Journal 29, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 975-998, 987. 311 Thomas V. Cohen, 987. 312 In the original, Fray Juan Gil discusses "los principales y mas calificados cristianos que hay en este Argel, personas de honra y de verdad," Información de Miguel de Cervantes de…Argel, transcribed Pedro Torres Lanzas, 154. 313 In the original, it reads “Le conozco por muy onrado que a servido muchos años a su Magestad ; y particularmente en este su captiverio a hecho cosas por donde meresce su Maguesta le haga mucha merced” Información de Miguel de Cervantes de…Argel, transcribed Pedro Torres Lanzas, 154. 314 “ […]y saue que luego como el dicho Miguel de Cervantes fué traido cautivo para Argel, su amo lo tubo en mucha cuenta y rreputación como la pregunta dize y así de hordinario lo traxo aherrojado y cargado de hierros, y con guardias, siendo vejado y molestado todo a fin de que se rrescatase y le diese buen rrescate por salir de thener y

109 treatment meted out to Cervantes would allow doubly for him to prove his masculinity: it was both an indication that outsiders could easily read his worth, and it created the difficult conditions under which he could best demonstrate his heroism and stoic acceptance of his situation. Thus, he could turn his inactivity (that is, imprisonment) to yet another proof of his superior masculine behaviour.

Although his family’s efforts at establishing a narrative of his wounding were rhetorically successful, they did not lead to the hoped-for lucrative outcome. Cervantes was able to create a portrait of his Spanishness, in a reclaiming of his agency, but he never succeeded in convincing those who had the influence at court of his heroism. The reclaiming of his disability was achieved rhetorically, and literarily, but never legally or financially.

The final legal document of note, and the most explicit, is Cervantes’ Memorial to Philip II from 6 June 1590.315 It concisely lays out what Cervantes had been arguing for almost twenty years. Cervantes begins with his twenty-two years of services by drawing Philip’s attention to:

The Naval Battle where he received many wounds from which he lost a hand from an arquebuss—the next year he went to Navarino and after to the Tunis campaign and La Goleta; and in returning to this court with letters from Don Juan and the Duke of Sesa that your Majesty have mercy, he and his brother who had also served your Majesty in the same battles were captured and they were both taken to Algiers, where his parents spent all the patrimony they had to rescue them, and all their parents estate and the dowries of the unmarried daughters, who remain poor for having rescued their brothers, and after they were freed they went to serve Your Majesty in Portugal.”316

pasar mala y estrecha uida, como la suelen y acostumbran dar los moros y turcos à las semajantes personas quel dicho miguel de serbantes ; y en lo demas conthendio en la dicha pregunta, este testigo lo saue, entendió y vido, como en ella se declara por hallarse presente por ser de un patron como dicho tiene, y rresponde á esta pregunta,” Información de Miguel de Cervantes de…Argel, transcribed Pedro Torres Lanzas, 95. 315 The Tesoro notes that a memorial is "A petition given to a judge or lord as a reminder of some business," or "Memorial: la petición que se da al juez, o al senor para recuerdo de algun negocio," 545. 316 Originally: “la Batalla Naval, donde le dieron muchas heridas, de las quales perdió una mano de un arcabucaco— y el año siguiente fue a Navarino y después a la campana de Túnez y a la goleta; y viniendo a esta corte con cartas del señor Don Juan y del Duque de Ceca para que V.M. le hiciese merced, fue cautivo en la galera del Sol él y un hermano suyo, que también ha servido a VM en las mismas jornadas, y fueron llevados a argel, Donde gastaron todo el patrimonio que tenían en rascatarse y toda la hazienda de sus padres y los dotes de dos hermanas doncellas que tenia, las cuales quedaron pobres por rescatar a sus hermanos, y después de libertados fueron a servir a V.M. en el reino de Portugal,” in Sliwa, Documentos cervantinos, 225-226.

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The Cervantes family has suffered much for the crown; significantly, in contrast with other depositions, the Memorial explicitly mentions the women’s sacrifices, instead of considering only the men’s military glory. The dowry-less women [“gastaron..los dotes de dos hermanas doncellas”] of the Cervantes family would cause anxiety in an early modern reader. Women without any inheritance would have been a serious weak point for the family honour, since they were often unable to marry or join convents. The avenues open to such women included becoming a professional mistress. Cervantes leaves unsaid what today’s readers would know and early modern readers would fear: the family’s sacrifice led to a series of “pragmatic” or extramarital relationships for the women, as Ellen Lokos documents.317 The conclusion is significant, as it declares "His desire is to continue always in the service of Your Majesty, and to end his life as Ancestors, to receive [in your service] great good and mercy. He looks for you to do favour to him.318

This catalogue of a life in service to the King repeats the major points that Cervantes emphasized for years, namely: his wounding and subsequent disability, his and his brother’s captivity and its disastrous effect on the family finances, and the brothers’ continuing commitment to the crown. Cervantes would always insist that his service, though exemplary, was part of a larger family tradition. If his gestures were exceedingly valorous and courageous, it was merely an indication of his ancestry, and more (implied) proof of his limpieza. Cervantes had capitalized on the valourous use of his hand, and its sacrifice, to demonstrate his exemplary service. When read against the backdrop of Cervantes’ calling into question of national identity in Algiers and Numancia, the discussions of his hand also lay bare the social fissures underlying concepts like Hispanitas, masculinity, wit, and origin.

317 Lokos, “Enigma of Cervantine Genealogy,” 122. 318 Or, in Spanish “su deseo es continuar siempre en el servicio de VM, y acabar su vida como lo han hecho sus antepasados, que en ello recibirá muy gran bien y merced. Busque por aca en que se la haga merced” in Sliwa, 226.

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Chapter 5 Paul Scarron: Deformed Origins, Deformed Muse From School-boy’s tongue no Rhet’ric we expect, Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings, Nor perfect beauty where’s a main defect. My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings, And this to mend, alas, no Art is able, ‘Cause Nature made it so irreparable.319

--Anne Bradstreet

One of the ways in which Miguel de Cervantes and his contemporaries gained a wider public in France was through the translations, adaptations, and plagiarisms of authors such as César Oudin (1614), and François de Rosset (1618). Paul Scarron contributed to the vogue in Cervantes translations and adaptations later in the century. He relied in large part on earlier texts from Cervantes, María de Zayas, and Tirso de Molina when he wrote his prose Nouvelles and his Roman comique. Because Scarron died before the canon wars of the late seventeenth century, his works never figured in the debate, which also meant that Scarron never gained the fame that later authors did.320

Paul Scarron’s path demonstrates how a disabled author could immortalise him or herself by taking the lower road. Instead of writing a national epic, pioneering a new genre of prose fiction, or introducing a literary form to suit his language, Scarron preferred to employ humour. By writing burlesque parodies, Scarron presented himself as an author who deformed classics like the Aeneid. Scarron lived more than a century before the English authors Alexandre Pope and Samuel Johnson, though his work was already influential in England during his own period.321 His work and his life anticipated “the marked and marred originality” that the later authors, inspired by him, claimed as a result of their deformities.322

319Anne Bradstreet, Works of Anne Bradstreet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 15. 320 Joan DeJean, Ancients Against Moderns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 22. 321 For a nuanced understanding of the French burlesque and its relationship to English burlesque, see Timothy Raylor, Cavaliers, Clubs, and Literary Culture: Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and the Order of the Fancy (Newark: U Delaware P, 1994), 196. 322 Helen Deutsch, Loving Dr. Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) 73.

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Scarron’s preferred mode, the burlesque, serves as an example of another possible path for disabled authors, particularly ones who were not injured heroes and could not claim injured masculinity. In the burlesque, an epic text which had in many cases foregrounded the heroic actions of its characters would undergo a dramatic shift. In it “the transposition of an epic text could consist of a regular stylistic modification that would, for example, transfer it from its noble register to a more familiar, even vulgar one.”323 If a writer wanted to render the Aeneid burlesque, it would require “transporting the consistently noble (gravis) style of its narrative and of the characters’ speeches into a familiar, indeed, vulgar style” while also “substituting the Virgilian thematic details with other, more familiar details, both more vulgar and more modern” while finally “embellishing Virgil’s text with amplifications or additions.”324 Scarron’s focus on Virgil and other classical authors makes sense in a context where the classical epic served as a cornerstone of the curriculum for many of his contemporaries.

Much of Scarron’s writing grew from his need for money. He had known a life of relative financial security until approximately 1642, when his stepmother seized his inheritance and estate, following the death of his father. By this point, Scarron had already been disabled for four years, and unlike Cervantes, he could not claim that his disability originated in heroism and patriotic sacrifice.325 Although today we have difficulty understanding the exact nature of Scarron’s malady and its etiology, it appears that he suffered some sort of rheumatic fever that damaged his spine, leaving him both disabled—unable to walk easily, to move freely, and in very delicate health—and deformed, with a back shaped like the letter “Z.” In the years before Scarron started writing professionally, he had gone from misfortune to misfortune: after being beset by illness, he was obliged to fight for an ecclesiastical post to support himself, then his father lost his own post and pension. Despite the son’s efforts on the father’s behalf, Paul Scarron, Sr. died before he could be restored to office; his second wife promptly took control of his estate, effectively disinheriting the children of the first marriage, including Paul Scarron Jr.

323 Genette, 11. 324 Genette, 58. 325 See note 4 on pages 88-89 of the Fournel edition Virgile travesti for further discussion of the dating of and etiology of Scarron’s illness. Contemporaries such as Cyrano de Bergerac (whose invective against Scarron, “Contre Ronscar” is discussed below) and the early modern historian Gédéon Tallement des Réaux suggested that he suffered from syphilis.

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The loss of his patrimony proved a key moment in Scarron’s literary career: in order to survive, he would have to depend on income from writing, since his clerical salary was modest.

Scarron was fortunate in that the seventeenth-century French literary scene had, by his time, come to be dominated by littérateurs, or professionals who depended on their writing for income; many were members of lesser noble families, if not of the haute bourgeoisie. The literary salons became a place for them to develop their skills, forge connections across class lines, and make their names as arbiters of taste.326 As Scarron could not leave his house with any regularity, and as he was too poor to receive more than a few guests, writing allowed him to figuratively bring the world to his fabled yellow room. When he was no longer able to draw income from his clerical living, he turned from writing occasional verses or controversial pamphlets to a full-time career as a writer of burlesque works. In his public letters and poems for patrons, he relied on self-portraits that emphasized his pain, his deformity, and the paradox inherent in his situation: the climate that had made him sick also made him a writer; the illness that inspired him to write humour would allow him to cure others of their maladies, but not himself.

Scarron’s prose fixated on bodily and textual imperfection, and his imperfect and contorted body mirrored his interest in the burlesque, a genre that emphasized the incongruity of classical plots in a seventeenth-century context. Because Scarron was one of the best-known burlesque writers of his time, he convincingly linked his disability to his mastery of the most important French Ancien Régime attributes—wit, or le bel esprit. Scarron capitalized on the aesthetic tensions that existed in mid-seventeenth century France: the strictures of aristocratic propriety lent the body, and especially the visibly disabled body, great significance. As well, the popularity of neo- classicism in early modern France lent additional inspiration to Scarron and significance to irregular bodies. As we will see below, just as Aristotle’s Poetics, an influential text for Europeans, propounded a theory of humour which depended on deformity, Scarron positioned himself as someone whose talents derived from his supposed ugliness.327 Above Aristotle,

326 The description of the littérateur is taken from Alain Viala’s Naissance de l’écrivain, sociologie de la littérature à l’âge classique, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1985, 29. 327 For more detail in the ways in which neo-classicism functioned in seventeenth-century France, see Ann T. Delehanty’s Literary Knowing in Neoclassical France: From Poetics to Aesthetics (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. 2012).

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Horace had a long reception history in Western Europe, and his discussions of genre and versification provided the major codes which the burlesque writers worked to flout.328 Scarron often went further than many: the laughter that he mastered as a sick and deformed man possessed the power to heal everyone else.

By the late 1640s, when Scarron was considering his move abroad. Despite his established literary career, Scarron decided to leave France for the Caribbean, believing that it was France that had made him so ill. In proclaiming his desire to leave, he also called attention to a tension in contemporary bodily and literary theories; because of Scarron’s interest in climate theory, he recognized that France’s climate was the source of his creativity.

Parisian literary circles, including members of other salons, publishers of burlesque letters, and courtiers shared their dismay widely. To Scarron, however, quality of life was impossible in France due to the influence on its climate on his health. As Scarron wrote to his contemporary in the provinces: My terrible destiny takes me to the West Indies in a month…Good-bye, France! Good-bye, Paris! Good-bye, tigresses disguised as angels! Good- bye, Ménage, Sarrazin and Marigny! I renounce burlesque verse, comical novels, and comedies to go to a country where there are neither hypocrites, nor fundamentalists, nor Inquisition, nor murderous winters, nor fluxions that lay me low, nor wars that kill me with hunger.329 Scarron’s relationship to France’s climate was paradoxical. On one hand, its climate had (to his mind) directly worked on his health, causing him to develop an auto-immune inflammatory disease. His illness caused him to develop a spinal curvature so severe that he could neither leave his home nor move his limbs. On the other hand, it created the circumstances that made French

328 In the Ars Poetica, Horace provides a key precept which the burlesque always worked against, when he suggests that “the subject matter of comedy does not wish to find expression in tragic verse…let each genre keep to the appropriate place allotted to it,” trans. Hardison and Golden, (Gainesville: U Florida P, 1995), 10. This was precisely the kind of statement that writers such as Scarron defied. 329 This is a translation of "Je renonce aux vers burlesques, aux romans comiques et aux comédies, pour aller dans un pays où il n'y aura ni faux béats, ni filous de dévotion, ni inquisition, ni hiver qui m'assassine, ni de fluxions que m’estropie, ni de guerre qui me fasse mourir de faim," Paul Scarron, "Réflexions politiques et morales tant sur la France que sur L’Amérique par un pauvre diable," in Œuvres, vol.II (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 47-48.

115 wit, and thus French literary production possible. In his circles, the French climate was considered both potentially injurious and potentially curative.

Jean de Segrais, a prose writer and member of Scarron’s salon, considered joining Scarron as the director of the colonial company they had hoped to form. In his memoirs, he espouses the idea of the West Indies as a paradise with miraculous curative powers by noting the case of the Commander de Poincy:

What gave Scarron the idea to go to the American islands was the hope of being cured of his infirmities much like the Commander de Poincy, who had gone to Martinique very gouty; he was cured in no time. He was restored to such a perfect health that he played tennis, he rode a horse, and went hunting on horseback every day as if he’d never been ill.330 Poincy’s resumption of horseback riding and tennis serves as an example of his reacquired status. Segrais’ portrait of this miracle suggests a resumption of perfect masculine aristocracy as a matter of course.

Objections to Scarron’s trip to the New World also focused on euro-colonial considerations and the importance of able-bodied men in the colonial project. Antoine Furetière, a renowned lexicographer and contemporary, of Scarron’s was astonished and decried the plan thusly: So this famous paralytic Who could only walk with pain Will go travelling to America Like Vespucci and Magellan! He wants to discover Seas and deserted plains, And people new ports With merchants, beggars, manual labourers? I die, if he is not

330 This is my translation of "Ce qui avait donné lieu à Scarron d’aller aux Iles de l’Amérique, était l’espérance d’en guérir de ses infirmités de même que le commandeur de Poincy, lequel étant allé à la Martinique tout gouteux ; il y guérit en moins de rien. Et recouvra une santé si parfaite qu’il jouait à la paume, qu’il montait à cheval et allait tous les jours à la chasse à cheval comme s’il n’eût jamais été incommodé," Jean de Segrais, Mémoires et anecdotes, Œuvres de M. Segrais, vol 1., Amsterdam : Changuion, 1723, 125.

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The most burlesque of his works.331 The contrast with colonizers Furetière names, such as Vespucci and Magellan, stalwart and determined, could not have been more pronounced. Scarron would not even be capable of less arduous tasks required of later settlers, such as creating new French subjects (“peupler” les ports). His illness remained ungenerative for himself and for France’s colonial mission. Furetière’s cruel irony, which relies on the contrast between the able-bodied idealized explorers and discoverers and his chronically ill colleague, underlines again the gap between real and ideal from which the concept of deformity stems.

Jean Loret, a publisher of a La Gazette burlesque, shared Scarron’s political involvement in the Fronde, and addressed his gazette to like-minded nobility outside of Paris. Like Furtière, Loret employed irony to address rumours about Scarron’s proposed trip. Loret undermined Scarron’s geo-humouralism. He also undercut the reason Scarron gave for his creativity, namely, his disability. Though Loret acknowledges Scarron’s disability, and in particular, “son corps maigret, faible et menu” he allows for only the possibility of a full and miraculous cure as a legitimate motivation for the trip: If he carries out this plan, Because of the evil that persecutes him, And that if in going paralysed to these places He comes back and no longer is….332

331 This is my translation from Donc ce fameux paralytique, Qui ne marchait qu'avec anhan, Va voyager en l'Amérique, Comme Vespuce et Magellan ! Il veut faire des découvertes De mers et de plaines désertes ? Et va peupler de nouveaux ports Avec marchands, gueux et manœuvres ? Je meure, s'il ne fait alors La plus burlesque de ses œuvres, Antoine Furetière, The Poésies Diverses of Antoine Furetière (Baltimore: Furst, 1908), 110. 332My translation of: Si ce dessein il exécute Pour le mal qui le persécute, Et qu’en ces lieux allant perclus Il revienne et ne le soit plus…,"Jean Loret, La Muse historique : ou recueil des lettres, vol.1., Gallica, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 194-195

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Loret’s response indicates his familiarity with the same ideas of climate and wholeness, even though his skepticism is more pronounced than Scarron’s. He also understands immediately that illness has a generative purpose in Scarron’s life, and that it has inspired his work thus far. Loret’s regret is that he, unlike Scarron, is ill in a particularly uninspiring way; even though illness is the source of wit, it does not share its gifts equally. In this Scarron was exceptional. Loret acknowledges this: God gave this gift Only to this arch-humourous wit, Who, for being a joyous cripple Has neither equal nor comrade.333

Elsewhere, Loret proclaims that Scarron is “going to a faraway land/Called America/Where, he claims, they say,/Will help elevate his chin.” Most importantly, Loret noted that “his poetic person [goes] Hoping to find a cure He claims that this horizon Whose mild temperature Makes all rejoice Will have the force and virtue To pull up his twisted neck.”334 In his description of Scarron’s plans, Loret employs Scarron’s favourite term for his impairment, “col tortu,” which derives from Rabelais’ “torticollis,” no doubt because of its secondary meaning from humous literature; the word could also indicate a hypocrite, and in particular, someone who feigned religious devotion, indicating that the early modern association between twisted spines and twisted words was present not only in Richard III but in French culture as well. The Académie française’s dictionary made a note of this usage.

Scarron’s stated intention to his friends like Loret and Furetière that "I renounce burlesque verse, comical novels, and comedies to go to a country where there are no…fluxions that lay me

333 Jean Loret, La Muse historique : ou recueil des lettres, vol.1., Gallica, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 194- 195. 334 Loret, La Muse Historique : ou recueil des lettres, vol.1 Gazette burlesque, 195.

118 low”335 calls back to the important early modern ideas about place and the creation of disability. The fluxions described the changes in humour, due in part to weather, which were believed to be the cause of spinal curvatures and deformities, such as Scarron’s. Medical theory since Hippocrates (ca. 460 BCE) onward held that a person’s physiology and psychology, as well as their gender, were created through an interplay of four bodily fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.336 The humours were also responsible for gender identity, and, later in the early modern period, they were thought to determine a person’s race. The critic Mary Floyd- Wilson described early modern theories of climate and identity as “geohumoralism.” In geohumoralism, shared characterological traits emerge from the experience of a common climate, food, and topography… the theory that different environments produce and explain differences in regional character derived from the ancient medical conception of the self as a porous entity subject to a variety of external influences.337 The fear of fluxions was real, and cited by Scarron’s literary contemporaries from Madame de Sévigné to Jean Loret, who is quoted above. The influence of an environment on a person’s physical and mental health is called "passibility" and it was a source of anxiety for early modern people who struggle to reconcile their health with their environment.338 In Scarron’s verse above, the proximity of “burlesque” and “fluxions” is no coincidence: the former is the product of the latter, and acts as a reminder of his possibility and illness. The wistfulness when Scarron describes his new world locus amoenus, in which he would live “without cold, without war, with taxes” and where “land, with naked men/would be fruitful without cultivation” would have involved a serious literary sacrifice.339

335 Paul Scarron, "Épître à Sarrasin" Œuvres vol 1. (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 160.

336 337 Michael Schoenfeldt, “English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama,” Shakespeare Studies, 33 (2005): 236. 338 Bearden, 16. 339 The original, which continues in the paragraph below, reads :"sans froid, sans guerre, sans impôts,” where: [L]a terre, à des hommes nus Sans culture y donne la grappe. La mer est tranquille et ses meilleurs poissons N’y coutent que les hameçons." Adieu cour, adieu Tuileries Jardin des simples, Luxembourg

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He would need to leave the social and cultural sites of his home country: Goodbye court, goodbye Tuileries Medicinal garden, Luxembourg Beautiful places where the city and the court Go for their flirtations. I am going to court the daughters of the Incas And sleep in hammocks.340 More importantly, he would be forfeiting his literary work. France’s climate had its own potential, but mostly in literary inspiration. As seen above, early modern Europeans widely believed in the confluence of climate in creating the body and the culture. In this, Scarron was not uniquely French. Montaigne, cited above, also believed that climate could cure or aggravate bodily woes, and he explains this in his Journal de Voyage, in which he crosses Europe to find a cure for his terminal kidney disease: not only is Rome the site of knowledge, culture, and wisdom, but also a source of excellent air. I do not know how other people find Rome’s air, he notes, "I found it very agreeable and healthy. Lord Vialard describes having lost his tendency to migraines there.”341

The body- and mind-shaping possibilities of climate placed disabled people in an impossible situation: how did they fit into an idealized national discourse about body and climate? What if they didn’t possess the body they should, or their body gestured to deeper problems in their climate, and thus country? Since Glacken’s 1967 Traces on the Rhodian Shore, critics have described the anxiety felt by Europeans who worried that climate was all too influential. In Glacken’s essential work, “the short sentences of Aristotle’s Politics were continuing reminders that certain physical environments might be favorable to the existence of the high civilization;

Beaux lieux où la ville et la Cour Vont faire leurs galanteries. Je vais galantiser les filles des Incas Et dormir en des amacas," , "Réflexions politiques et morales tant sur la France que sur L’Amérique par un pauvre diable," 47-48.

340 Paul Scarron, "Réflexions politiques et morales tant sur la France que sur L’Amérique par un pauvre diable," 47- 48. Though the above "Réflexions" were unsigned, their attribution has been confirmed by generations of critics, most recently Hubert Carrier in Un Vent de Fronde S’est Levé Ce Matin (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2012). 341 “Je ne sais comment les autres trouvent de l’air de Rome," he notes, "moi je le trouvais très plaisant et sain. Le sieur de Vialard décrit y avoir perdu sa sujétion à la migraine…" Michel de Montaigne, Journal de Voyage (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 229.

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Aristotle said that they were, that they were temperate in nature, and Greece was his example.”342

Though geohumoralism was pan-European in its reach, French thinkers of the early modern period had a particularly deep interest in climate theory. In Glacken’s Traces, he describes one such French thinker of climate and politics, Jean Bodin’s work as “a masterly summary of about how thousands yeas of speculation regarding the influence of the environment on man.”343 Bodin’s climate theory proposed that a series of circumstances which emerged in an area (or nation) like systems of government, or language, derived greatly from its topography, weather, flora and fauna. The humours were a crucial part of this symbiotic relationship between body and environment. His description of the differences between peoples of different regions also allows for insight into the relationship between bodies, capabilities, and environment: The men of the North have a more robust body and are taller; but if the Meridional peoples have more feeble bodies, they make up for it with their wit: this point has been known for a long time, so easy it is to see.344 The trade-off between wit and body is one that French thinkers would not openly entertain for their nation, but it is one that Scarron’s discussion of his issues foregrounds. Glacken notes that early modern theorists found each nation to be distinguished by particular physical ailments; for Bodin, who already found in climate’s impact on human bodies an example of corruption, disability would serve as an alarming example of what each climate did wrong. Scarron’s physicality meant that he was viewed as "torticollis," not a noble form of illness. When considered with his calling into question of French climate, it is clear that Scarron was never going to be a writer of a nationalist epic as other disabled writers of his time. Rather, the best literary opportunities for him would lie in humour.

342 Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, (Berkeley: U California P, 1967), 435. 343 Glacken, 443. 344 In the original, it reads "les hommes du Nord ont le corps plus robuste et de plus haute taille ; mais si les Méridionaux ont le corps plus faibles, ils l’emportent par l’esprit : ce point est depuis longtemps connu par expérience, tant il est facile de s’en apercevoir." Jean Bodin, La Méthode de L’Histoire, trans. Pierre Mesnard, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1941), 69.

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Contrary to writers of epic, who figured their disabilities as parts of larger, patriotic narratives, Scarron used similar models in order to parody them.345 In so doing, he drew a strange benefit from his spinal deformity: because early modern prejudices included superstitions that held the deformed possessed a talent with words and were unusually clever, he repeatedly hearkened back to these traditions in his writing; if anything, Scarron would posit that disability had made him a more successful burlesque writer. The classical precedent of Aesop, known to the early modern period for both his wit and his deformity, laid the groundwork for Scarron as someone with particular access to wit and humour. Though Scarron did not make overt allusions to Aesop, the culture around him others to make them.

At the same, Scarron’s cultural context posed particular challenges to a writer wishing to focus on the body. Aesthetic norms governed mentions of the body, while the fraught political climate of the Fronde made any bodily irregularity a target for propaganda. Scarron worked actively to undermine the reputation of the unofficial regent, Cardinal Mazarin, and he directed much of his venom at Mazarin’s perceived irregularities, physical and otherwise from “Un Vent de Fronde S’est Levé Ce Matin” to the eponymous “La Mazarinade.” Scarron’s enemies, as well as opportunistic pamphleteers, would also take a cue from his works and attempt to capitalize on his deformity in order to discredit him.

As we will see, Scarron’s attempts to displace disability on to others - and especially on to failed writers, comedians, or wits - began in Don Japhet, and extended to Le Virgile travesti and Le Roman comique. In Don Japhet, Scarron would foreground both the convoluted language and lack of wit that marked the true disabled - those who lacked wit; in Le roman comique, Scarron would displace anxieties about physical and literary disability on to a character who embodied all that Scarron wished not to be; finally, in the Virgile travesti, his burlesque re-writing of The Aeneid, Scarron would foreground literary techniques that made the burlesque (and his burlesque in particular) both successful and alienating for his readers. The Virgile travesti enjoyed the most

345 This chapter will primarily consider Scarron’s work as belonging to the burlesque vogue in early modern France. For more on the genre, see critics such as Francis Assaf, who has argued that Scarron’s work is part of the baroque or grotesque traditions. See Francis Assaf, "Scarron: la représentation du burlesque," in L'âge de la représentation: l'art du spectacle au XVIIe siècle, ed. Rainier Zaiser (Türbingen: Narr, 2007), 39-64. According to H. Gaston Hall, Scarron’s cohort of writers relied on the term ‘burlesque’ to replace “a number of synonyms, such as grotesque, narquois, familier, goguenard, enjoué, badin, and bouffon.” H Gaston Hall, Comedy in Context: Essays on Molière (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1984) 133. Although his contemporaries’ work often differed from that of Scarron, they continued to employ the term for various kinds of humorous or satirical genres.

122 success of his works, and linguistically it is the most innovative; Scarron employs a diseased lexicon that had previously been purged from the French language in order to create a deformed work that could counterintuitively heal readers.

Scarron’s use of humour and his reliance on the classical and Renaissance aesthetic concept of deformity allowed him to demonstrate that his art originated in the interstitial space between the way things were and the way things should be, which was the literal and literary definition of deformity. At the same time, Scarron died before the Académie française established the canon, which could easily have limited the influence of his work and legacy. Molière would take up the challenge of producing writing whose humour, in contrast to medicine, had true curative potential.

Bienséance and the Literary Limits of Propriety

The rules of propriety influenced dictated the acceptable topics of representation and conversation. Critics like Mitchell Greenberg and Bernadette Hofer most notably have revealed the tensions and interplay of absence and excessive presence of the body in late seventeenth century literature. The attempted repression of the body was a particularly seventeenth-century phenomenon due to increasingly codified rules of civility (bienséance or honnêté). Greenberg notes that, “Banished from the realm of acceptable representation, the body returns, both the represented body—in and as text—and, more insidiously, the actual bodies of the 17th century reading public.”346 This was not the case for Scarron. It would be more accurate to say that attempts to repress the body in courtly and high culture led to the body’s resurgence in unexpected ways. Attempts at ignoring or erasing the imperfect body in favour of aesthetic and social perfection enabled exactly the kind of bodily humour that stemmed from imperfection or ugliness.

Treatises on civility best exemplify this courtly propriety to the body. In Les règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chrétienne, Jean Baptiste La Salle recommends strongly that “when one is standing, it is necessary to keep the body straight, without leaning to one side nor to another, and not to lean forward like an old man…it is also quite indecent…to contort the body,

346 Mitchell Greenberg, Baroque Bodies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 67.

123 and to stretch out with indecency.”347 La Salle later reiterates this point for emphasis: “it is very indecent to stoop, and to pretend as if one had a heavy weight on the shoulders"348 If, like Scarron, a person’s illness had caused bodily contortion or distress, it was doubly indecent to, as La Salle notes, discuss illness:

It is never decent to discuss body parts that must always be hidden, nor of certain bodily necessities to which nature has subjected men, or even to name them, and if sometimes one cannot help but mention them with respect to a sick person or a person who is unwell, one must do so in so honest a manner that the terms one uses cannot shock propriety.349

Scarron’s visible deformity meant that his body was inherently never séant, as readers would understand. He could not keep from attracting people’s attention, and his spinal curvature meant that he was always leaning. Scarron’s bodily indecorum was precisely what would allow Scarron to present himself as author who also embodied indecent humour.

Seventeenth-century mores of literary decency were fraught with a tension between “the existence of two competing trends from virtually the beginning of the seventeenth century, a movement towards purism, discipline, and control that was already underway…and an inherited aesthetic that valued invention and inspiration over clarity and technical precision.”350 The governing noble trend remained that of bienséance and its associated lexical bon usage. As one of the most influential Francophone lexicographers of the seventeenth century, Claude Favre de Vaugelas claimed that “le bon Usage" was largely "the way of speaking that belongs to the

347 From "Lorsqu’on est debout, il faut tenir le corps droit, sans se pencher ni d’un coté ni d’un autre, & ne pas se courber en devant come un vieillard…il est aussi très indécent…..de faire des contortions de corps, & de s’allonger avec indécence," Jean Baptiste La Salle, Les règles de la bienséance (Paris: Rivière, 1718), 5. 348 This is translated from "il est très-indécent de baisser le dos, et de faire comme si on avoit un pesant fardeau sur les épaules,” 5. 349 From "Il n’est jamais séant de parler des parties du corps qui doivent toujours être cachées, ni de certaines nécessités du corps auquel la nature a assujetti les hommes, ni même de les nommer; & si quelquefois on ne peut pas s’en dispenser à l’égard d’un malade ou d’une personne incommodée, on doit le faire d’une manière si honnête, que les termes dont on se servira ne puissent en rien choquer la bienséance," La Salle, Les règles de la bienséance, 47- 48. 350 Freeman G. Henry, Language, Culture, and Hegemony in Modern France: 1539 to the Millennium (Birmingham: Summa, 2008), 24.

124 healthiest part of the court, in accordance with the way of writing of the healthiest part of writers of the time”351

Scarron would situate himself in opposition to the vogue of healthy or saine language; he could not locate the origins of his creativity in his deformed and inherently indecent body while also advocating a “pure” classical style and was not interested in doing so. Scarron additionally understood the prejudices that surrounded spinal disability and deformity, and in particular, the fear that spinal deformity indicated both facility with words and crookedness of speech. Moreover, in the mid-17th century the French language had undergone a series of radical changes, which were later codified by the Académie Française. Lexicographers of the time figured the reform of the French language as a necessary bloodletting, a purgation of someone who was gravely ill.352Academicians were not optimistic that they had acted swiftly enough to save their patient.353

Instead of taking the subject position of the good doctor, working out of the Académie to save the language, Scarron made other writers and social figures go to him. He made deformed space both literary and literal—because he could not travel easily, Scarron turned two rooms on the first floor of his home into his famous literary salon, where he wrote and received other writers. Illness and disability so infused Scarron’s work as a writer that he portrayed his Muse as also deformed. To highlight the paradoxical abilities that came with deformity, Scarron created

351 This is the translation of "la façon de Parler de la plus saine partie de la cour, conformément à la façon d’écrire de la plus saine partie des auteurs du temps," Claude Favre de Vaugelas, Remarques de M Vaugelas sur la Langue Française (Paris: Didot, 1718), 20. 352 Freeman Henry, Language, Culture, and Hegemony in Modern France, 25. 353 The fear of the French language being ill or stagnant with bad humours had lessened by 1696, when Daniel Leclerc produced the first official history of medicine, which he chose, as he explains, to write in French: “Je dois enfin dire un mot sur la langue en laquelle j’ai écrit. Il semble que cet Ouvrage auroit été mieux en Latin; il auroit eu plus de Lecteurs ‚ et les fautes que j’aurois faites auroient été moins sensibles, ou on m’auroit aussi bien рагdonné qu’a tant d’autres Auteurs qui écrivent aujourdhui en cette Langue quoi qu’ils ne la possèdent que fort médiocrement. C’est par un pur caprice que j’ai écrit en François. Si mon livre en vaut la peine il se trouvera assez de traducteurs qui le rendront utile aux étrangers. Et pour ce qui est des François il mе suffit qu’ils puissent m’entendre, sans me picquer d’une pureté ou d’une politesse qui ‘n’est guère le partage de ceux qui ne sont que sur les frontières du Royaume “ found in the “Avertissement," in Histoire de la medecine (Geneva: Chouët et Ritter, 1696). By this point, the language had become a tool of healing in the eyes of many Francophones. For more on the fear of linguistic contagion, see the introduction to Guy Miège’s Dictionary of Barbarous French (London: Basset, 1679).

125 numerous foils, characters were often deformed, and always incapable of mastering rhetoric and creation.

The ways in which Scarron describes and stages his disabilities in his prose are rooted in anxieties and literary circumstances that were particular to not just the literary but also the political climate in which he was writing. Scarron, known after the 1640s as le malade de la reine, or the Queen’s invalid, was politically suspect: he was known to his contemporaries as an author of satirical pamphlets against Louis XIV’s advisor, Cardinal Mazarin, and as a frondeur opposed to the consolidation of royal power. As a result of his political verse, Scarron became, “Ronscar” in Cyrano de Bergerac’s satirical letters, one of which attacked Scarron primarily on the basis on his grotesque and supposedly syphilitic body. More generally, Scarron’s political opponents had capitalized on disability as a way of alerting a larger public to both his political and literary failings. In response, the author chose a related rhetorical strategy: the foregrounding of his disabilities, turning disability into a kind of performance of almost-failed authorship as a displacement of literary anxiety.

Scarron’s Deformed Muse

Writing from his deformed, interstitial space, Scarron’s preferred fixations could be described as sick man, sick genre, sick muse, sick language. Scarron adopted a lexicon of French words that the Académie and lexicographers had rejected as “ailing.”354 Indeed, illness and disability so infused Scarron’s discussions of himself and his work that he portrayed his Muse as herself deformed. To highlight the paradoxical abilities that came with deformity, Scarron created numerous foils, characters who were themselves deformed, and who excelled at the mis-use of language.

Scarron adhered to (his own) convention when he began his anti-Mazarin pamphlet with an invocation of a deformed muse, “who pinches, and makes people laugh/Come to me and please, inspire me/the spirit that inspired Catullus” 355 Scarron’s invocation of Catullus serves as an explicit reminder of what a burlesque poet should be: interested in more vulgar depictions of sex,

354 See note 217 of the prior chapter for discussions of French as a language in need of purgation. 355 "Qui pinces, & fais rire,/Viens à moi, de grâce, & m’inspire/L’esprit qui Catule inspira […]," Paul Scarron, Virgile travesti, Book VII.

126 interested in but slightly removed from politics, and known for his blistering satires. Scarron implies the object of his scorn will parallel that of Catullus; in this case, Murmura, an outsider in the Republic whom Catullus accused of profiting from an alleged affair with Caesar. The classical allusion also reinforces the validity of the burlesque mode; though the burlesque was a feature of seventeenth-century French literature, by hearkening to the Muse of Catullus, Scarron also underscores the legitimacy of his own work.

In his other attacks, Scarron relies on more contemporary tropes and allusions when he refers to the monstrosity of his enemies, a feature not of Catullus but of his contemporaries’ reliance on extreme physical deformity in their attacks on character. Cardinal Mazarin, a foreigner who functioned as the scapegoat advisor for the Queen Regent was especially vulnerable to allegations of his monstrosity.356 Scarron also forces the arbiters of the French language into a strawman position; as one critic notes, the Académie Française had, by 1637, begun to compile burlesque turns of phrase.357

In a Mazarinade attributed to Scarron by both his contemporaries and present-day scholarship, the speaker’s stated desire is to ensure that “[..] each verse have its characteristic/To best finish the portrait/Of this prodigy of Fortune."358 The burlesque portrait, a genre which Scarron preferred in his own self-representations, served more aggressive political ends. 359 Scarron indicates those ends when specifically invokes the desire to represent a “prodige,” a term used equally in ephemera describing strange occurrences, as well as satires of political political figures.360 The satirical portrait is a genre in keeping with Scarron’s times, one which he used to

356 The number of mazarinades and other ephemera produced during the Fronde is the subject of much critical discussion. In the 19th century, Célestin Moreau estimated the number of publications 10,000 or more; more recently, Hubert Carrier has halved that figure. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., has one of the largest North American collections of mazarinades, many of which are bound into tomes by an unknown early modern French collector. For more on the role of the pamphlets and their bibliographic history, see Thomas C. Sosnowski, “The Cult of France and its King: Political Theory in the Mazarinades During the Fronde,” Journal for the Western Society for French History, vol 42, 2014, 1—10 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0642292.0042.002 357Paul Scarron, Virgile travesti, ed. Fournel (Paris: Delahays,1858), 167, note 5. 358 The original describes the author’s desire that "chaque vers ait son trait,/Pour bien achever le portrait/De ce prodige de Fortune,” Paul Scarron, Oeuvres, vol 1. (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970). 2 359 Scarron, Oeuvres, vol 1, 2. 360 David Cressy, "Lamentable, Strange, and Wonderful,’’ Monstrous Bodies and Political Monstrosities, Knoppers and Landes, (Cornell: Cornell UP 2004), 40-66. 40.

127 forestall readers’ criticism of his appearance while also asserting his own writerly bona fides. As in other early modern pamphlets, the target of Scarron’s political satire, in this case, Mazarin, was subjected to a kind of anti-blazon.

Scarron’s burlesque physical descriptions even surface in his invocations of the Muse. Joan DeJean has noted that Scarron’s muse is deformed, particularly in the Virgile travesty: “His muse is a physical perfect match for the burlesque poet and the characters he describes; the pure form of the classical tradition is as deformed as her nose.”361 when Scarron begs her presence: “come to me, my Muse/come, my little snub-nosed one,/whose nose isn’t aquiline.362 She is also presented in a 1650 Rogatum as needing to be “des-affamée,” [relieved of her hunger], presumably because Scarron’s pension has not yet been disbursed, leaving them both in want. His muse is moreover extremely cruel, who “rit au nez” in the face of Scarron’s obvious pain, as Boisrobert tells Scarron directly.

The intrusive voice of “Scarron” also appears in tandem with invocations to his Muse throughout the Virgile travesti and not simply at the beginning of each book;363 rather, Scarron reminds readers of the disability-creativity relationship by interspersing allusions to her with narration of well-known events from the Aeneid, and in particular, Aeneas’ arrival on the Italian peninsula: Erato, my dear Muse For my idiot wit Inspire me well, I beg, With a fine joke.364

361 Joan DeJean, Scarron’s Roman Comique: A Novel of Comedy, a Comedy of the Novel (Berlin: Peter Lang, 1977), 27.

362 Translated from: "Venez donc à moy, ma Muse, Venez, ma petite Camuse Dont le nez n’est pas aquilin,” from Paul Scarron, "A la Reine," Œuvres, vol.1 (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 249. 363 One particularly important study by Jean Leclerc underlines the importance of parenthetical asides in the VT’s narratorial intrusions. He notes both that "between its functions of interpolating and of usurping, parentheses serve to make an artificial work through their ability to amplify, to fill in, to comment" ["entre sa fonction d’intercaler et d’usurper, elle sert à façonner une oeuvre artificielle par sa capacité à l’amplification, au remplissage, au commentaire"] and that "the author is thus not just in the interstice of the text[…]he is the foundation of the entire narrative structure." ["L’auteur n’est donc pas seulement dans l’interstice du texte, il est le fondement de toute la structure narrative"] from "Scarron dans l’interstice ? Pour une pratique de la parenthèse dans le Virgile travesti," Cahiers de l'Association internationale des études francaises, (2011)63, 181-198, 197.

364 Translated from:

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Boisrobert, a writer and sometimes rival of Scarron’s who was very familiar with the latter’s work, greeted the 1651 publication of the first book of the Virgile travesti by similarly focusing on the divide between Scarron’s physicality and the divine work he was capable of. Boisrobert contrasts the idea of reading the work versus reading the person’s work, and because in colloquial French, to read someone’s work is phrased the same way as reading someone. This linguistic overlap renders it even harder to separate an author from their work. "One can not, in seeing you, keep oneself from crying/In reading you without seeing you, one is choked with laughter."365 The idea of literature, of writing, as curative, is expressed quite originally, as Boisrobert’s verse blaming Scarron’s muse for his suffering, or souffrance: “How can you be so assiduous with your Muse/she laughs in your face when pain knocks you flat."366 Why is this portrayal of the muse deployed? It implies that the Muse makes a choice, which is to inspire Scarron to write, but seems to refuse to ease his pain. Present in this couplet is also the assumption, typical of the period, which is that words should also be capable of curing, and thus, the Muse herself should also have this ability. In this case, however, Boisrobert establishes the link between illness and creation, while seeming to explain why healing words could not touch their author. The Muse is responsible for Scarron’s inspiration, in this case, the illness that brings on the burlesque. Conversely, she should be responsible for healing, but she is not. The implication, highlighted by Scarron and his contemporaries, is that there is no such thing as painless inspiration.

"Dame Erato, ma chère Muse, à mon esprit de buse [...] Inspire-moi bien, je te prie, De la fine plaisanterie Scarron," Virgile travesti, VII.

365 This is a translation from "On ne peut, te voyant, s’empêcher de pleure Te lisant sans te voir, on s’étouffe de rire," Boisrobert, "Stances," Œuvres de Scarron, vol 4, (Geneva : Slatkine, 1970), xi-xii, xi.

366 Translated from "Peux-tu bien à ta Muse être si complaisant ?/Elle te rit au nez quand la douleur t’accable," from Boisrobert, "Stances," xii.

Chapter 6 Scarron’s Classicism

In which Scarron negotiates the French interest in neo-classicism versus his classical models; includes definition of both deformity and its existence in the classical period, leading up to the present-day

Deformity as an Aesthetic Concept

Deformity has been at the origin of theories of humour since at least Aristotle’s Poetics. According to the Poetics, a key feature of humour lay in underlining the idea of disproportion between object and language, event and thing. In the Poetics, Aristotle’s discussion of comedy and specifically satyr plays argues that a well-calibrated relationship between to geloion (the ridiculous), the shameful (aischros), and harmatema (error) lead to appropriate humour, which results from a ridiculous but painless error or fault.367 That which is laughable falls under the larger category of that which is ugly.

In Latin translations of Poetics, the translation emphasizes turpitudo and the deformitas that allow for laughter. In one of the most widespread early modern Latin translations of the Poetics, the Italian humanist Alessandro Pazzi holds that turpitudo and deformitas are acceptable sources of humour: Comedy is, as we have said, a representation of people who are rather inferior—not, however, with respect of every [kind of] vice, but the laughable is [only] a part of what is ugly. For the laughable is a sort of error and ugliness that is not painful and destructive, just as, evidently, a laughable mask is something ugly and distorted without pain.368

367 Leon Golden, "Aristotle on the Pleasure of Comedy." In Essays on Aristotle's Poetics, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, Princeton: Princeton UP 1992. 379-386. 379.

368 This excerpt is from Poetics, trans. Janko, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 5; in the In the Latin translation of the Poetics by Alessandro de’ Pazzi, the passage reads as “Comeodia autem est ut diximus peiorum quidem imitatio, non tamen secundum omne vitii genus ; quanquam ridiculum a turpi proficiscitur. Ridiculum enim aliquo pacto peccatum est & turpitudo sine dolore, minimeque noxia; perinde ac ridicula statim appareat deformis facies, distorta sine dolore,” 10. 129

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The historian Carlin A. Barton defines deformitas simply as “the absence of proper form” which “is attacked with impunity” in culture and festivals of the late Republic.369 In De Oratore, Cicero employs deformity in two fashions:

As to the exertion and exercise of the voice, of the breath, of the whole body, and of the tongue itself; they do not so much require art as labour; but in those matters we ought to be particularly careful whom we imitate and whom we would wish to resemble. Not only orators are to be observed by us, but even actors, lest by vicious habits we contract any awkwardness or ungracefulness.370

The term Cicero uses for the awkwardness that derives from bad habits, turpitudo, recurs later in the treatise as a way of signaling a kind of literary deformity. In the next book, he underlies that the efficacy of laughter “lies in a certain offensiveness and deformity; for those sayings are laughed at solely or chiefly which point out or designate something offensive in an inoffensive manner.371 In the Latin, Cicero uses deformitas and turpitudo respectively, much as the Latin translations of Aristotle’s Poetics rely on the terms as a way to locate in deformity a site of humour and creation.

By the time of the seventeenth century, turpitudo had acquired its current moral valences, though it also retained its earlier aesthetic ones as well. In French, “turpitude” turns up in both Nicot’s Thresor de la langue Française as a synonym for “se deshonorer" ["to dishonor oneself"] as a way of describing someone who is "full of dishonesty, villainy, or insults," ("villainy" in this case meaning both filth and slander) as well as the classical aesthetic term "difformité."372 The drift from its older meaning to its more current one was largely done by the end of the century when the Académie Française defined it as "infamie, bassesse” ["infamy, baseness"] giving as a usage example “cela fait voir sa turpitude” [this makes his turpitude visible"]

369 Barton A Carlin, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans, (Princeton; Princeton UP, 1993), 165. 370Cicero, De Oratore, trans. J.S. Watson, (New York : Harper, 1860), I.156. 371 Cicero, De Oratore, II.150. 372 This is translated from "plein de deshonnesteté et vilenie, ou d'injure," on the ARTFL Project.

131 or “to discover the turpitude of someone….to say, discover something that should make someone ashamed."373 At the end of the seventeenth century, turpitude still indicated an ugly truth, a gap between a situation and its ideal. Instead of indicating a physical or aesthetic gap, however, turpitude indicated the division between a person’s stated morals and their actual character. In French, people began to attribute the meaning to deformity that today’s speakers do in French and English.

Both Greek and Roman sources concurred that the deformity that makes humour possible should be an ugly but painless distortion or twisting. Though Scarron’s allusions to pain indicate that his deformity was far from painless, his reliance on his body as a source of wit indicates he was nonetheless writing from the interstitial space created by deformity: the chasm between the ideal and the real. Deformity moreover relied on the gap between the ruling and lower classes of society, as a source of humor and an outlet for otherwise inappropriate emotions. As in Scarron’s Ancien Regime France, the last years of the Roman Republic saw increased social stratification and autocratic power. In Rome, the deformed person, a subject of laughter, was necessary to navigate the tense social conditions created by the rising inequality. Without a deformed scapegoat to mock, the political and social orders would have instead fissured. As one critic notes, The more and finer the distinctions…the greater the gap falling between difference and sameness, the more extreme will seem the bridging of that gap, the fiercer, the more obvious, the more brutally self-conscious, the more ludicrous and obscene the play that will be necessary to preserve the world.374

The preservation of Scarron’s world similarly benefited from burlesque works such as his own, particularly as the burlesque both foregrounded the author’s disability while turning a cultural lodestar, The Aeneid, into an object of humour.

Cicero also calls into question many of the rhetorical rules about the use of humour and that held rhetors should not risk appearing foolish, unsophisticated, or unserious. Neo-classicism and in

373 This is a translation from "découvrir la turpitude de quelqu' un…pour dire, découvrir quelque chose qui doit faire honte," "Turpitude," Dictionnaire de l’Academie française de 1694, ARTFL project, https://artfl- project.uchicago.edu/, accessed 1 Nov. 2019. 374 Carlin, 175.

132 particular, neo-Aristotelian rhetorical guides reinforced classical prejudices about the body. Much like their predecessors, early modern Europeans upheld strictures about propriety, strictures which figured deviations, both rhetorical and corporeal, as deformities.

Presentations of humour stemming from deformity continued into the early modern period. In 1550, Vincenzo Maggi, a humanist from Brescia, published a commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics. In his interpretation, Maggi (or Maddius, as he was known), explicitly cited hunchbackedness as a source of humour. Otherwise, his claims follow Aristotle closely:

Comedy however, as we’ve said, is indeed the imitation of worse things, not however in accordance with every kind of vice, although the ridiculous does originate from the shameful. For the ridiculous is in some way a sin, and an ugliness without pain, and by no means harmful: just as a deformed face seems immediately ridiculous, distorted without pain.375

The painless deformity humourists like Maggi espoused in no way reflected the lived reality of someone like Scarron, whose illness caused debilitating chronic pain that only opiates could keep at bay. Neither would Scarron adhere to Maddius’ strictures against pity; provided the deformity did not cause onlookers to feel pity, Maddius argued that deformity could still constitute a basis for humour. As one critic notes, “Maddius frames [deformities] in explicitly Platonic terms. They are declinations from natura and therefore from the full dignity of created perfection only conceivable above the sublunary sphere, not here below in the fallen world; Maddius unflinchingly lists hunchbacks as laughable for this reason, not because he delights in cruelty.”376

In France, Laurent Joubert, a physician, followed Maddius’ work with his own discussion of humour, one which was partially inspired by Poetics, though Joubert was in fact a Platonist.377

375 The original passage reads : "Comœdia autem est (ut diximus) peiorum quidem imitatio, non tamen secundum omni vitii genus, quamquam ridiculum à turpi profiascitur. Ridiculum enim aliquo pacto peccatum еst, & turpitudo sine dolore, minimque noxia: perinde ac ridicula statim appareat deformis facies, distorta sine dolore," from Vincenzo Maggi, De Ridiculis (Venice: Valgrisi 1550), 88. 376 Daniel Derrin, “Self-Referring Deformities: Humour in Early Modern Sermon Literature,” Literature and Theology 32, no. 3 (2018). 255-269, 263. 377 In the article “Le Rire au Temps de la Renaissance,” by Gregory David de Rocher, the author traces some of the obstacles for Neoplantonists in examining laughter. Joubert typically followed Neoplatonist thought, but managed to

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In 1579, he published a medical treatise on laughter and its causes, called the Traité du Ris. Ménager notes that for Renaissance doctors, it was perfectly natural to be interested in laughter. "During the Renaissance, doctors are also often humanists. That is to say that a reflection on laughter for them isn’t separate from a more holistic reflection [on the body]."378 Moreover, doctors in the larger European tradition "in fact extended the old interest of medicine in laughter, and this interest, which symbolised, to themselves alone, the names of Hippocrates and Galen as well as the entire tradition deriving from Aristotle."379

In Jourbert’s treatise, he notes that "what we see that is ugly, deformed, improper, indecent, unfitting, and indecorous excites laughter in us, provided we are not moved to compassion.”380 Joubert’s treaty explicitly mentions deformity and malséance, the antonym to early modern bienséance, or impropriety, as important components of humour. Scarron was of course difforme. Moreover, Scarron’s discussion of illness was itself malséant, as it required him to discuss an embarrassing or ignoble illness openly.

As Joubert notes not everyone will appreciate bodily humour, particularly when it appears to come from a humiliating accident: …Not everyone laughs upon seeing the shameful parts: in fact the most severe will reprehend sharply anyone who unabashedly and knowingly exposes them. It must happen unexpectedly, such as seeing them through an open seam in the breeches. After this type of laughable matter comes the other, done with full consciousness and purpose, which is also

reconcile both Neoplatonism and his physician’s analytical tools in his treatise. For more on the subject, see the Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 56, fasc. 3, 1978, 629-640, 638. 378 My tranlsation of "À la Renaissance, les médecins sont aussi bien souvent des humanistes. C’est dire que la réflexion sur le rire n’est pas séparée chez eux d’une réflexion plus globale," from Daniel Ménager, La Renaissance et le rire, (Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1995), 9. 379 My translation of "Prolongent en fait l’antique intérêt de la médecine pour le rire, et cet intérêt que symbolisent, à eux seuls, les noms d’Hippocrate et de Galien ainsi que toute la tradition issue d’Aristote," Ménager 9. 380 Laurent Joubert, Treaty on Laughter, trans. Gregory David de Rocher, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama P, 1980), 20; in the original "Ce que nous voyons de laid, difforme, déshonnête, indécent, mal-séant, & peu convenable, excite en nous le ris, pourvu que nous n'an soyons meus à compassion,” from Laurent Joubert, Traité du Ris (Paris: Cheneau 1579), 18.

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unbecoming and makes us laugh over novelties that are pleasant as well as improper and unworthy of pity.381

Joubert refers to the members that are “shameful”; as the seventeenth century progressed, the rules on bienséance had expanded to cover ever more territory; it is hardly surprising that in reaction, the burlesque would have become so popular. By embodying deformity, and by discussing his deformity through the burlesque mode, Scarron would have been triply deformed.

When it came to what materials readers could find funny, there was some divergence between theorists. Maddius’ notion of the laughable hesitates at the idea that laughter involves a total superiority over the "deformed’….There would seem to be no position, he implies, from which you could legitimately laugh with total superiority, or without at least the potential for self- reference."382 Joubert’s Traité Du Ris speaks of “laughable matter” as something that “gives us pleasure and sadness: pleasure in that we find it unworthy of pity, and that there is no harm done” but “sadness, because all laughable matter comes from ugliness and impropriety.” Such ideas, taken together, complicate the typical modelling of laughter theory across pre-modernity to the eighteenth century as a kind of ‘superiority.’”383

Scarron would situate himself in the interstitial space labelled as “deformity,” the area between the ideal and the real for his own literary career. In creating his burlesque epics and novels, he drew attention to the fact that he not only wrote deformed and humour prose, but also that he embodied humorous deformity. By the end of Scarron’s century, the 1694 Dictionnaire de l’Academie française would use “difformité” in the definition of “bossu,” or "hunchbacked." As the definition notes, “When we want to describe a man who has this deformity in the front, we say ‘[Hunched] in the front. And, ‘hunched in the front and back, when some is in the front and back."384

381 The original reads: "Aussi chacun ne rit pas de voir les parties honteuses mêmes les plus sures reprendront aigrement celui, qui déhonté les découvre à son escient. Il faut que cela avienne sans y panser : comme si on les voit par quelque décousure des chausses. Après cette espèce de ridicule, vient l’autre, de ce qu’on fait sciammant, & de pensée expresse, qui est mal séant, & de la nouvelleté recreant nous fait rire, tout ainsi qu’indécent et indigne de pitié," Joubert, Traité du Ris, 21. 382 Derrin, “Self-Referring Deformities,” 255-269, 261. 383 Derrin, “Self-Referring Deformities,” 262. 384 My translation of "Quand on veut dire un homme qui a cette difformité au-devant, on dit, Bossu par devant. Et, Bossu devant & derrière, Quand il l'est & par-devant & par derrière,” ARTFL Project, “Bossu, bossue” in

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In earlier chapters, when this dissertation considered disability, it considered the idea separately from deformity, as present-day scholars often do. Insofar as early modern people could recognize “disabled” as an identity category (which, as we have seen, was not common since each disability constituted its own category), many did work to separate deformity and its implied moral failings from what we would term disabilities. However, not all thinkers did this—one such example, Pierre Boaistuau, writing in the context of France’s Wars of Religion, often collapsed the two. Boaistuau also saw deformity as deriving from the gap between the ideal and the real. In his case, his works worked to a larger moral goal, which was to underline the space between the fallen world in which postlapsarian men lived, and the prelapsarian state that God originally intended for all to enjoy.

Boaistuau highlights his theologically driven vision of deformity in the Theatre du Monde, his treatise written in the tradition of the de miseria hominis. This work received wide acclaim, to the extent to that was known as one of the works which influenced Montaigne. Boaistuau’s invective made clear that: If we wish to consider man in the state in which God first made him, he is the masterpiece of God in the creation of the universe….But if we look at man in the state of general corruption, spread out over all of Adam’s progeny, we will see him soiled, monstrous hideous, deformed, subjected to thousands of illnesses, kept from grace, rendered powerless, ignorant, variable, a hypocrite. In short, instead of being the Lord of all creatures, he has become the slave of sin, where he is born and conceived. But if we want to later consider him as remade, by the immortal seminal words of god we will see him restored not only to his first honours and goods but much more.385

Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, accessed Feb 2018, https://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/content/dictionnaires- dautrefois. 385 From "Si nous voulons considérer l’homme en l’état auquel Dieu l’avait premièrement créé, c’est le chef d’œuvre de Dieu en la création de l’univers…Mais si nous le considérons en l’état de la générale corruption, épandue sur toute la postériorité d’Adam, nous le verrons souillé, ord, monstrueux, hideux, difforme, sujet à mille incommodités, forbanni de béatitude, rendu impuissant, ignorant, variable, hypocrite. Bref, au lieu d’être Seigneur de toutes créatures, il a été rendu esclave du péché, auquel il est né & conçu. Mais si nous le voulons après considérer comme refait tout de neuf, par la semence immortelle de la parole de dieu on le verra restitué non seulement en tous ses premiers honneurs & biens: mais beaucoup plus grand," Pierre Boaistuau, Theatre du Monde (Geveva: Jacob Stoer, 1621), 235.

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Boaistuau collapses disability into deformity; what mattered from his particular Christian perspective was that both were consequences of the fall, and proof of man’s ignoble postlapsarian condition. His theology lists difformité as one of the kinds of ailment that indicates a state of sin, but more importantly, it also serves to highlight the contrasting option open to those who hear the “parole” of God—those who do will not only be cured, but also become “beaucoup plus grand” than their prelapsarian ancestors.386 Difformité’s theological function is to constantly remind humans not merely of the gap between God’s intentions and the state of sin, but to point more optimistically to the gap between how humans are and how unthinkably perfect humans could be. This perfection, however, will only be possible in Jerusalem, where

We will be free of hunger, cold, heat, thirst, and generally all infirmities and tears to which this poor body (which is only the chariot to which our soul is chained) is subject to while we were in the prison of the world. Et then being impassible, immortal, in eternal rest, filled with all the glory, we will enjoy our first degree of dignity, from which the devil, a jealous enemy, chased us out and had us forbidden.387

This vision is more expected—humans restored to their original glory—than Boaistuau’s hopes of surpassing Eden. Moralistic texts emphasized that difformité’s link to language and the possible implications of that relationship.

In contrast, other early modern commentators preferred to consider only the earthly possibilities of deformity, and namely, its link to diseased language. In stark opposition to the “parole de Dieu” which Baoistuau claimed existed in Jerusalem was the earthly language that stood for and even spread illness and deformity.388 Boaistuau’s explanation is the most explicitly Christian, but other commenters of his time expressed the same fear of diseased words. Moreover, it was

386 Boaistuau’s exact confessional leanings are beyond the scope of this project, but it’s worthwhile to note that recently, the critic Stephen Bamforth argued that Boaistuau was a Huguenot in his edition of the Histoires prodigieuses, (Geneva: Droz, 2010). 387 In the original, it reads: "Nous serons exempts de faim, froid, chaud, soif, & généralement de toutes infirmités & larmes, auxquelles ce pauvre corps (qui n’est que le chariot, auquel nôtre âme est traînée) est sujet pendant qu’il est en la prison du monde. Et lors étant impassibles, immortels, en éternel repos, comblez de toute gloire, nous jouions de nôtre premier degré de dignité, duquel le diable ennemi & jaloux nous avait chassés et bannis," Boaistuau, Théâtre du Monde, 236. 388 There is a long tradition in Christian apologetics in which writers consider the corruption of language resulting from the Fall. St. Augustine of Hippo discusses the effects of the Fall on language in both his De Doctrina and his Confessions.

137 often difficult to distinguish diseased words from the diseased humans who produced them. This was the case even in texts which attempted to greet the burlesque favorably, or more neutrally. Vaugelas, the lexicographer whom we’ve seen above, reminded readers when considering good usage, was that "you will make an exception for the satiric, the comic, in its rightful and ancient meaning, and the burlesque, which are of such a scope that few people dedicate themselves to writing them."389 In his history of the French Academy, Pellisson-Fontanier bemoaned "this furor of the burlesque, which we are finally starting to heal from,” an illness which infected the publishing industry itself : "booksellers wanted nothing except the books with this name; either through ignorance, or to better sell their merchandise, they gave it to the most serious things in the world."390 Decades later, the editor of Scarron’s 1737 collected works agreed: "Pellisson was very right to complain about the outbreak of the burlesque, and the strange ravages it made.”391 He reiterated this later in the same treatise on the burlesque, to ensure his agreement was clear: “We have just seen the contempt with which Pellisson speaks [of the burlesque]; as far as considering it as an epidemic, whose decline he congratulates himself on seeing.”392 Even Scarron’s most avid consumers and defenders as above had troubles justifying the popularity of the burlesque:

I have said it before and cannot keep myself from repeating it. When Scarron’s works could not be as amusing as they are, we should pardon a sick man who tried to outwit the problems of his solitude, and the sadness of his state by this ingenious amusement. But I do not see anything that can justify the poets who from gaiety threw themselves, wildly,

389 Translated from "vous en exceptez le satyrique, le comique, en sa propre et ancienne signiﬁcation, & le burlesque, qui sont d’aussi peu d’étendue que peu de gens s’y adonnent," Vaugelas, 20. 390 Translated from "Cette fureur du burlesque, dont à la fin nous commençons à guérir était venu si en avant que les libraires ne voulaient rien qui ne portât ce nom; que par ignorance, ou pour mieux débiter leur marchandise, ils le donnaient aux choses les plus sérieuses du monde, " Paul Pellisson-Fontanier, Histoire de L’Académie française, vol 1. (Paris : Didier, 1858), 80. 391 Translated from ""Pellisson au reste a très grande raison de se plaindre du débordement du burlesque et des étranges ravages qu’il fit," Antoine Augustin Bruzen de La Martinière, "Discours sur le style burlesque en général, et celui de M Scarron en particulier," Œuvres de M. de Scarron Nouvelle Edition, vol 9 (Amsterdam : Wetstein and G. Smith), 1737, 99-156, 112. 392Translated from "On vient de voir avec quel mépris Pellisson en parle; jusqu’à le regarder comme une maladie épidémique, dont il s’applaudit de voir déjà le déclin," Bruzen de la Martinière, 119.

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into a literary genre that was Scarron’s own and strange to them…Scarron in his element is likeable, but the air does not suit his copiers.393

As we have seen in the introduction, disabled people often employed the word as a kind of technology, or prosthesis which in some way compensated for disability. Another possible relationship to language for disabled people remained the specter of those disabled or deformed people who had made themselves ill through an inappropriate use of words, especially in literary texts. In a French context, discussions of prose and prose styling raised fears of contagious and deformed prose.

Anxiety about the health of prose derived largely from the dominance of neo-classical aesthetic strictures. The prevalence of neo-classicism in French courtly culture led many writers to favour proportion, harmony, and order, and thus, all that Scarron and his prose were not. Mitchell Greenberg notes of the grand siècle that, “…the movement that we have come to define as the refining so essential to a contemporary view of French culture, this finesse that is the quintessence of abstract sophistication, that marks French classicism off from the excesses of seventeenth century English or Spanish culture … is the product of a long politicoesthetic struggle to impose order on a threatening chaos.”394 Scarron’s engagement with politicoesthetic struggle, and in particular, the pamphlet skirmishes of the Fronde, is documented above. Burlesque authors on the side of the rebels represented the possibility of an epidemic of chaos in which classical forms served merely as fodder for parodic best-sellers and in which the state lacked a strong, central organizing power. Conservatives often took exception to the burlesque even after the Fronde had ended. As many burlesque writers were part of the courtly milieu that their writings mocked, their conservative peers found them especially baffling.

In a slightly later example of a conservative and neoclassical response to the burlesque writers, Boileau’s L’Art poétique (1674) reversed the tropes that Scarron employs in order to demonstrate

393 Translated from "Je l’ai dit, et ne puis me dispenser de le répéter. Quand les ouvrages de Scarron ne seraient pas aussi réjouissants qu’ils le sont, on devrait le pardonner à un malade qui a chercher à tromper les ennuis de sa solitude, et les chagrins de son état par cet ingénieux amusement. Mais je ne vois rien qui puisse justifier les poètes qui de gaieté de cœur se sont jetés, à corps perdu, dans un genre d’écrire qui lui était propre et qui était étrange pour eux…Scarron dans son naturel est aimable, mais l’air de Scarron ne convient point à ses copistes," Bruzen de La Martinière, 130. 394 Greenberg, Baroque Bodies, 35.

139 their potential harm: monstrous verses, good prose as a synecdoche for the muse’s body (including her clothing), and the excesses of both stylistic austerity and stylistic verbosity.

For the latter problem, Boileau notes that an austere style, “…one is not too made up, but its muse is too naked” while “the other is afraid to crawl, so he goes lost in the clouds”395 Both of the above result from a verse that is “faible,” or feeble, which carries both a physical and an intellectual connotation: Most writers mounted on a resty muse, Extravagant and senseless objects choose; They think they err, if in their verse they fall On any thought that’s plain or natural.396 Boileau presents rhetorical monstrosity as resulting from the divorce of “le droit sens” and the right from subject matter. In the original French, Boileau determines that an interest in the burlesque stems from a “fougue insensée, ["a mindless ardour"], which is a pessimistic version of the “enthousiasme” that Scarron claimed had inspired his burlesque.397 On one hand, as Boileau notes: There’s not a monster bred beneath the sky, But, well-disposed by art, may please the eye; A curious workman by his skill divine, From an ill object makes a good design.398

395 Exceptionally, this is my own translation of these two lines: "L’un n’est point trop fardé, mais sa Muse est trop nue" while “…l’autre a peur de ramper, il se perd dans la nue,” Chant I, 158. 396 "Boileau’s Art of Poetry,"161. 397 This reads in the original: La plupart, emportés d’une fougue insensée, Toujours loin du droit sens vont chercher leur pensée Ils croiraient s’abaisser, dans leurs vers monstrueux, S’ils pensaient ce qu’un autre a pu penser comme eux,Boileau-Despréaux, L’Art Poétique, Chant I, 158.

398 Boileau-Despréaux, “Boileau’s Art of Poetry," The Art of Poetry: the Poetical Treatises of Horace, Vida and Boileau, ed. Albert S. Cook, (New York : Stechert 1926), 159-224, 185; the original reads: Il n'est point de serpent, ni de monstre odieux, Qui, par l'art imité, ne puisse plaire aux yeux ; D'un pinceau délicat l'artifice agréable Du plus affreux objet fait un objet aimable.

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A genre like tragedy, despite its preferred subject matter, such as incest (Boileau was discussing Oedipus Rex in this excerpt) still retains its potential for beauty—beauty lies entirely in the poetics, not in a poem’s subject matter. The contradiction in Boileau’s literary theory implies that poetry (that is, with appropriately noble verse) can change the very nature of what it is describing. Boileau finds this possibility desirable. One the other hand, the difference between the “objet aimable” [likable object] an author can create of a “monstre odieux” [odious monster] makes the author’s “artifice agréable [agreeable artifice]”399 seem sinister. Boileau’s embodied prose implies a rhetorical body that is easily dressed up or transmuted into something desirable using a writer’s style, but this rhetorical body also relies on deformity: though the burlesque humour of Scarron works the opposite transformation, making epic appear foolish, both authors depend on the chasm between the real world and the ideal world in their writing. This chasm or interstitial space is still a kind of literary deformity, whether Boileau wishes to recognize it as such or not.400 Instead of the bon sens, burlesque poetry acts like a virus, infecting other prose. Boileau’s condemnation of the burlesque notes that: Boundless and mad, disordered rime was seen; Disguised Apollo changed to Harlequin. This plague, which first in country towns began, Cities and kingdoms quickly overran401 The problems Boileau enumerates--that cheapening of the Parnassus due to lower-class language, the transformation of Apollo into a street entertainer (the “Harlequin” or “Tabarin” of Boileau’s verse) 402--pale in comparison to the real threat of the burlesque, that “plague which first in country towns began.”

399 Boileau-Despréaux, L’Art Poétique, Chant III, 169.

400 Ironically, when Boileau advocates for “le bon sens” he himself falls into the trap of lexical double meanings, in which “le bon sens” can indicate either the rightness of a person’s faculties, or the proper meaning of a verse. (In addition to the double meaning, ‘sens’ always alludes also to the physical senses.) Boileau relies on the reader to identify “bon sense” but in advocating for such an idea, Boileau implicitly calls up the possibility of both meanings, and the distance between them. In so doing, he illustrates the difficulty of avoiding deformity even in serious works.

401 "Boileau’s Art of Poetry," 164.

402 The original reads : "On ne vit plus en vers que pointes triviales; Le Parnasse parla le langage des halles; La licence à rimer alors n’eut plus de frein,

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Though Boileau choses to demonstrate the perils of the burlesque by evoking the language of the urban lower classes, the spectre of provincial contagion poses a serious problem; as a plague, the burlesque is effective because its approach is two-pronged, conquering urban and rural plebeians. Of course, the real threat is something that Boileau does not note, which is that many of the most ardent consumers of the burlesque were in fact members of his own elite caste.

Boileau was echoing concerns that Scarron had already raised, in his foreword to book II of the Virgile travesti, though Scarron had done so somewhat facetiously. Scarron inhabited the stereotypical burlesque con artist, in the tradition of depictions of hunchbacks who wielded language as a weapon or a technology of deceit; similarly, burlesque prose is both dangerously witty and dangerously appealing, but a kind of trick. Scarron’s denunciation of poor burlesque is ironic if only because he employs the meter and rhyme typical of the burlesque: They have for ordinary discourse Low and popular terms Badly applied proverbs Badly explained quolibets Words turned to ridicule That their foolish wit accumulates Without judgment or reason.403 In the same passage, a preface to book II of the Virgile travesti, Scarron echoes academicians and lexicographers such as Vaugelas above when he states that the French language needs to be "saine et nette" or "clean and healthy"; the idea of burlesque inspiration as paralleling an illness or as a cloud or storm (like climate); and also, he refers to friends’ patience, which is alluded to in the prefaces as well. He deflects social blame for his writing by positing that he is infected by burlesque inspiration (perhaps by his sick muse). Scarron also forces the arbiters of the French language into a strawman position; as one critic notes, the Académie Française had, by 1637,

Apollon travesti devint un Tabarin," from Chant I, page 159.

403 This is my translation of the original: "Ils ont pour discours ordinaires Des termes bas et populaires, Des proverbes mal appliqués, Des quolibets mal expliqués, Des mots tournés en ridicule., Que leur sot esprit accumule, sans jugement et sans raison," Virgile travesti, ed. Fournel Paris: Delahays, 1858) note 5,167.

142 begun to accept the burlesque.404 Most of the opposition to the burlesque did even not originate from the institution but individual members. As well, Scarron does not divert much from his countrymen who mocked the burlesque or use of uncouth language. In his dedicatory epistle to Book V of the Virgile travesti, he acknowledges the need for healthy language: Perhaps the wits who are tasked with keeping our language healthy and clean with put it into order, and that the punishment of the first joker who will be charged and convicted of being a burlesque recidivist, and as such, condemned to work the rest of his life on the Pont Neuf, will dissipate the vexing cloud which menaces Apollo’s empire. I am ready to abjure a style that has spoiled much of fashion, and without the express command of a person of condition, who has all sorts of power over me, I would leave the Virgile to those who so want it, and I will keep to my unfruitful task of sick man, which is something a whole man can also practice. It’s my regret that enthusiasm got to me at the same time as rheumatism and that I have to write verses for lack of ability to do something else in the state I’m in.405 Scarron’s parting words in the dedicatory preface of Book II of the Virgile Travesti serve not only to falsely paint his condition of burlesque poet as a lowly one, reviled by the Académie, but also to hide an important claim to (disabled) wit. He portrays himself as struck down by rheumatism and enthusiasm at the same moment. Although modern readers recognize his use of rheumatism, enthusiasm had an important secondary meaning in the early modern period. The Académie defined it as an “extraordinary movement of spirit, through which a poet, an orator, or a man who works from genius lifts himself in some way above himself.”406 That is to say, enthusiasm could be a synonym for today’s ‘inspiration,’ a concept which once again directly

404Paul Scarron, "A M. Deslandes Payen,” Virgile travesti, ed. Fournel (Paris : Garnier 1876), 189, note 89-90. 405This is my translation of the following: "Peut-être que les beaux esprits qui sont gages pour tenir notre langue saine et nette y donneront ordre, et que la punition du premier mauvais plaisant qui sera atteint et convaincu d’être burlesque relaps, et comme tel, condamné à travailler le reste de sa vie pour le Pont Neuf, dissipera le fâcheux orage burlesque qui menace l’empire d’Apollon….je suis tout prêt d’abjurer un style qui a gâté tant de mode, et, sans le commandement exprès, d’une personne de condition, qui a toute sorte de pouvoir sur moi, je laisserais le Virgile à ceux qui en ont tant d’envie, et me tiendrais à mon infructueuse charge de malade, qui n’est que trop capable exercer un homme entier…C’est à mon grand regret que l’enthousiasme m’a pris en même temps que le rhumatisme, que je suis réduit à faire des vers pour n’être pas capable d’autre chose en l’état ou je suis," Scarron, "A M. Deslandes Payen,” 189. 406 Translated from "Mouvement extraordinaire d'esprit, par lequel un Poète, un Orateur, ou un homme qui travaille de génie s'élève en quelque sorte au-dessus de lui-même," ARTFL Project, “Enthousisame” in Dictionnaire de 1964, accessed Feb 2018, https://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/

143 links Scarron’s literary creations with his illness, disability, and deformity. Although subtler than “docte migraine” or “learned migraine” that his contemporaries used to describe his illness and its role in his literary creation, “enthousiasme” functioned to remind the audience of Scarron’s strangely inspiring body.

At the same time, Scarron displaces some of the responsibility for this inspiration directly onto the noble class itself: “une personne de condition” ["a person of noble condition"] is the only sort of person who could make him take up the work again, which calls back to noble support that he relied on. Much like Scarron’s honourific “le Malade de la Reine,” which links illness to the patronage of the Queen Regent, Scarron’s preface divides the responsibility for his writing between the most important members of his social hierarchy and his illness, which struck him down as if at random. In both situations, Scarron lays claim to an extraordinary wit, recognized by France’s Queen, and his rare illness-enthusiasm-rheumatism. He will not hold himself directly responsible for his literary production.

The Fronde reinforced what many already knew, that classical culture could be co-opted for contemporary political and scurrilous popular press. It also reminded participants of the limits of bienséance. “Factional politics and sycophancy were running rampant, so obscenity served as a measure of truth.”407 Representationally, “the inversion of etiquette [was] understood as a promise of directness.”408 More importantly, in the mazarinades, “…antiquity was neither securely assigned to its task as ballast for a state nor innocent of temporal contingencies. The cultural strategies of the frondeurs intimately linked the Greco-Roman past with a political expediency that helped define the peculiar character of seventeenth-century revolution.”409 Moreover, as can be seen in the examples of Scarron and Boileau, “…simple reversals of hierarchies rendered antique referents unstable during the Fronde. If a classical repertory conventionally legitimated power, it could also undermine it by deploying the strategy of inversion.”410 For Scarron, classical culture allowed him to both take aim at Mazarin and

407 Todd Olson, Poussin and France: Painting, Humanism, and the Politics of Style (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 137. 408 Olson, Poussin and France, 138. 409 Olson, Poussin and France, 104. 410 Olson, Poussin and France, 104.

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Mazarin’s greed, while making space for himself as a disabled author. Classical culture allowed Scarron even further legitimacy because it provided Scarron with a predecessor whose disability enabled a similarly generative wit.

Scarron and his contemporaries found Aesop’s writings and biography of great interest. French writers like La Fontaine even commonly compared themselves to Aesop. However, none of the Ancien Régime writers to whom Aesop was compared also possessed Aesop’s spinal curvature. Scarron’s contemporaries noticed—they often identified him with Aesop (some positively, some negatively). By linking Scarron and Aesop, writers enabled Scarron to make an even stronger case for his own ideal wit, as wit was one of the characteristics strongly associated with Aesop. The original biography of Aesop, written in the twelfth century by Planudes, was extremely popular in Scarron’s time; eventually, adapted by La Fontaine and affixed to the front of his own Fables. Also influential in the revival of Aesop was the 1610 Mythologia aesopica by Isaac Nicolas Nevelet, which was reprinted in 1660. By the end of the century, Edmé Boursault produced a play based on Aesop’s life (1690) and then a sequel (1701). These publications were all after Scarron’s death, but translations of Planudes in the vernacular had been circulating since 1499. In the 1689 satirical work Le cochon mitré by Chavigny de la Bretonnière, he goes so far stages an encounter between Scarron and the recently deceased Abbé Furetière in which the Abbé even calls Scarron “Aesop” as an insult.

In this dialogue, Scarron inquires after his widow, Mme de Maintenon, surprised at the lack of news. Of course, as the reader knows, she had become the mistress of Louis XIV. The Abbé’s shocked response reiterates how clearly the two ideas, wit and deformity, were so bound up together in early modern France: To listen to you, it seems that down here you’ve lost the force of wit you had up there; do you not know that [your wife] has shaded your head with deer horns? Could you have avoided being cuckholded, having a witty wife, pretty and flirtatious, with your face like Aesop and your lameness? 411

411 This is my translation from the original "À vous ouïr, il semble que vous avez perdu ici-bas cette force d’esprit que vous aviez là-haut ; est-ce que vous ne savez pas qu’elle vous avait ombragé la tête d’un pennache de Cerf ? Pouviez-vous éviter le cocuage, ayant une Femme d’esprit, jolie et galante, avec votre mine d’Esope et votre cul de jatte," Chavigny de La Bretonnière, La religieuse en chemise et Le cochon mitré (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Etienne, 2009), 190.

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Similar insults Aesopian comparisons occurred within Scarron’s lifetime. Cyrano de Bergerac compared the two in his widely circulated satirical letter “Contre Ronscar” when he says I realize that I am treating you a bit too familiarly to talk to you about such a low subject. For the rest, I counsel you to pass on the comedy that you would be giving yourself in showing him my letter, or rather learn the language Aesop understood to explain French to him.”412 Bergerac’s attack, dubbed a “Scarronade” by one critic, performs several functions. Firstly, he is assuming the supposed confidentiality of his letter which is of course meant to be circulated for maximum humiliation, as was the practice. The “langue qu’entendait Ésope” [language that Aesop understood] that he alludes to is not Greek, but the language of a pseudo-sage type, the lowly slave, and the ugly scapegoat. Of course, that Scarron (unlike his enemies, good loyal Frenchmen who want only France’s glory) doesn’t understand French places him in an alien position as well. His failures of language and wit (and perhaps taste) have made him foreign and wrong. Scarron’s writings demonstrate that he is a misappropriator of both the present and classical literary traditions.413

The pejorative allusions of Cyrano de Bergerac and Chavigny to Aesop stand out from the other early modern discussions of Aesop which made him a sage with a talent for bodily humour and wordplay. The translation of Planude’s biography which La Fontaine appended to his Fables begins with the following statement:

412 Translated from , “…je m’aperçois que je vous traite un peu trop familièrement de vous entretenir d’un sujet si bas; Au reste je vous conseille de vous passer de l’aimable Comédie que vous vous donneriez en lui montrant ma lettre, ou bien faites-vous instruire de la langue qu’entendait Ésope pour lui expliquer le François," Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, "Contre Ronscar," Œuvres, vol II. ed. Erba (Paris: Champion, 2001), 167-174, 173. 413"After the failure of the ‘First Fronde,’ Cyrano lost his princely protectors, and he disapproves the politics of the aristocrats, around Condé, who lead the second Fronde. He rallies to Mazarin’s side and publishes a letter against the frondeurs. In it, he refutes the reproaches he had addressed to the cardinal, or silently passes over them, pretending as if his earlier Mazarinades did not exist. And above all, he accuses Scarron of being the promoter of injurious pamphlets against the minister; he avoids [negative] attention for his own turnaround and his duplicity by projecting duplicity onto a rival and fellow writer…” translation from "Après l’échec de la ‘Première Fonde’ Cyrano a perdu ses protecteurs princiers, et il désapprouve la politique des aristocrates qui, autour de Condé, mènent la Seconde Fronde. Il se rallie alors à Mazarin et lance une lettre contre les frondeurs. Dans celle-ci, il réfute les reproches qu’il avait adressées au cardinal, ou les passe sous silence, faisant comme si ses premières Mazarinades n’existaient pas. Et surtout, il accuse Scarron d’être le promoteur des pamphlets injurieux contre le ministre ; il détourne ainsi l’attention de son propre revirement et de sa duplicité en taxant de duplicité un confrère et rival…," Sociologie de l’écrivain,(Paris : Minuit, 1986) 58.

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On the birth of Homer and Aesop we have no certain knowledge, and hardly any of the chief events in their lives. This is surprising, seeing how much information of a less pleasurable and necessary kind History has thought fit to preserve […] we have nothing of the most important facts in those of Homer and Aesop, the two men who have deserved best of succeeding ages. For Homer is not only the father of the Gods but of all poets also. As for Aesop, it seems to me that he ought to have been enrolled among the sages who were the toast of Greece.414 La Fontaine, like Planudes, links these two disabled classical models, Homer and Aesop, placing the latter on the same footing as the former despite the nobility of the epic genre, a nobility which fables wouldn’t share.415 Despite the lowliness of his disability, and the fact that he was less renowned than Homer, Aesop becomes, in an act of promotion, one of Greece’s top sages from his origins as a possibly Ethiopian slave. The subject of his disability, implied in the ranking of Aesop with Homer, known to have been blind, is broached directly.416 when La Fontaine says: It is an open question whether he had more reason to be thankful to Nature or to reproach her; for while endowing him with excellent gifts of mind, she sent him into the world with a deformed body, a face so ugly as to be scarcely human and almost without the power of speech.417 Planude establishes Aesop as ugly, deformed, and racialized. The periphrasis in “almost entirely denied the power speech” puts much more emphasis on disability using the synonym “muet” would have. As a slave, and possibly African man, his social status would function as an additional disability in the minds of late 17th century readers.

414 Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, trans. Edward Marsh, (London: Heinemann, 1933), xliii. 415 The reference to Homer and Aesop together recalls Jay Dolmage’s argument above which explicitly links rhetoric and creation to disability in Greek culture. In La Fontaine’s original text : Nous n’avons rien d’assuré touchant la naissance d’Homère et D’Esope : à peine sait-on ce que leur est arrivé de plus remarquable […] nous ignorons les plus importantes de celles d’Esope et d’Homère, ‘c’est-à-dire deux personnages qui ont le mieux mérité des siècles suivants ; car Homère n’est pas seulement le père des Dieux, c’est aussi celui des bons poètes. Quant à Ésope, il me semble qu’on le devait mettre au nombre des Sages dont la Grèce s’est tant vantée… 416 "On se saurait dire s’il eut sujet de remercier la nature, ou bien de se plaindre d’elle; car, en le douant d’un très- bel esprit, elle le fit naitre difforme et laid de visage, ayant à peine figure d’homme, jusqu’à lui refuser presque entièrement l’usage de la parole. Avec ces défauts, quand il n’aurait pas été de condition à être esclave, il ne pouvait manquer de le devenir. Au reste, son âme se maintint toujours libre et indépendante de la fortune," La Fontaine, “Fables choisies,” 457-458. 417 Trans. Sir Edward Howard Marsh, (London: Heinemann, 1933), xliv.

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Unlike the other authors in this dissertation, Aesop was not born able-bodied; in fact, he became less disabled as he aged. In the beginning of the semi-fictional biography of Aesop, a kind of bildungsroman, his appearance means he must be isolated in the fields, working far away from his master whom, we are told, wanted, “to banish so unpleasing an object form his sight.”418 Aesop is only able to face his master directly after a group of his fellow slaves steal the master’s figs and eat them, blaming Aesop for the theft.”419 The other slaves make an assumption that would appear obvious to both classical and early modern readers: those who could not speak in particular were deprived of their legal rights and even the assumption of humanity and had been since the Code of Justinian, in approximately 565 CE.420

Aesop’s response to the assumption that he is foolish as well as deformed indicates why Scarron would find him interesting; his humour is clever but based in the body. It also takes the form of a series of puns, which were poorly regarded in the early modern period and often only permitted in the burlesque mode. Through gesture alone, Aesop "managed to make [his master] understand that the only boon he asked was a few moments’ reprieve. This favour being granted, he fetched some warm water, drank it in his owner’s presence, then put his fingers in his mouth, and….well, nothing came out by the water…he indicated that the others should be made to do likewise.421 In Planudes’s narrative, Aesop, much like a biblical figure, is given the ability to speak as a compensation for a good deed that Jupiter smiles on. We are told that: “Next day, when the master had gone away again and the Phrygian was at his usual work, some travellers who had lost their way (some say they were priests of Diana) begged him in the name of Jupiter Hospitalist to tell them the way to the town. Aesop first made them rest in the shade while he got them something to eat, and then insisted on guiding them himself, only leaving when he had put them on the straight road. The good folk lifted

418 Marsh translation, xliv; in the original French, it reads : “…s’ôter de devant les yeux un objet si désagréable La Fontaine, “Fables choisies,” 458. 419 Marsh translation, xlv; in the original it reads the other slave“ne croyans pas qu’il se put jamais justifier; tant il était bègue et paraissait idiot” La Fontaine, “Fables choises,” 458. 420 Martha L. Edwards, “Deaf and Dumb in Ancient Greece,” The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis, New York: Routledge, 1997, 29-51. 421 Marsh translation, xlv; in the original French, it reads "Esope se jeta aux pieds de son maitre ; et, se faisant entendre du mieux qu’il put, il témoigna qu’il demandait pour toute grâce qu’on sursit de quelques moments sa punition. Cette grâce lui ayant été accordée, il alla querir de l’eau tiède, là but en présence de son seigneur, se mit les doigts dans la bouche, et ce qui s’ensuit, sans rendre autre chose que cette eau seule," 458.

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their hands to heaven and prayed Jupiter not to let this charitable action go unrewarded. Aesop had scarcely parted from them when he fell asleep from heat and fatigue, and dreamt that Fortune came to him and loosened his tongue, bestowing on him by the same means the art of which he was the first exponent. Delighted with such good luck, he woke with a start exclaiming, ‘what has happened to me why, my voice has been set free, I can say rake and plough and anything I like!422 The miraculous cure of Aesop allows him to demonstrate his “bon sens et […] raisonnement” to his next owner, Xantus, even when the man’s uncomprehending wife calls him a “monster.”423

The Aseop story as told by La Fontaine has been altered; two cruder episodes have been excised, while there is emphasis on the importance of language. One episode in particular highlights the focus on verbal wit and fluency: Aesop’s master asks him to bring the best food possible for his friends. Aesop brings them tongue (“langue,” which in French also means “language”) and the biography says: he bought nothing but tongues and had them dressed in every possible way—tongue for entrée, tongue for second course, tongue for entremets, and so forth. At its first appearance the guests applauded the choice of fare, but in the end they wearied of it.

Aesop’s choice of meal reminds readers once more that he is a burlesque kind of figure, one who literally serves his guests a pun, which was not considered a desirable kind of wit in courtly circles. Aesop’s argument in favour of tongue as the best possible meal recalls high-culture revindications of language and exchange; he posits that it "it is the bond of civil life, the key of the sciences, the organ of truth and reason: by its means cities are built and governed, and the

422 Marsh translation xlv-xlvi ; In the original French it reads, "Le lendemain, après que leur maître fut parti, et le Phrygien étant à son travail ordinaire, quelques voyageurs égarés (aucuns disent que c'étaient des prêtres de Diane) le prièrent, au nom de Jupiter hospitalier, qu'il leur enseignât le chemin qui conduisait à la ville. Ésope les obligea premièrement de se reposer à l'ombre: puis, leur ayant présenté une légère collation, il voulut être leur guide, et ne les quitta qu'après qu'il les eut remis dans leur chemin. Les bonnes gens levèrent les mains au ciel, et prièrent Jupiter de ne pas laisser cette action sans récompense. À peine Ésope les eut quittés, que le chaud et la lassitude le contraignirent de s'endormir. Pendant son sommeil, il s'imagina que la Fortune était debout devant lui, qui lui déliait la langue, et par même moyen lui faisait présent de cet art dont on peut dire qu'il est l'auteur. Réjoui de cette aventure, il s'éveilla en sursaut, et en s'éveillant: ‘Qu’est ceci? dit-il ; ma voix est devenue libre: je prononce bien un râteau, une charrue, tout ce que je veux,’" 458-459.

423 La Fontaine, “Fables choisies,” 460.

149 people swayed in their assemblies : it is the instrument of instruction and persuasion, and of the fulfillment of our highest duty, which is to praise the Gods.’424 When Aesop restages the same meal later in the text, he explains that tongue was also the worst of things: it is the mother of all disputes,’ he said, ‘the nurse of lawsuits, the source of faction and of war. If it is the organ of truth, it is also that of error, and what is worse, calumny. By its means cities are destroyed, and men led into evil courses. If on the one hand it praises the Gods, on the other it puts forth blasphemies against their authority."425 Aesop insists on clumsily embodying the pun again, not to call into question his rhetorical ability, but rather, I argue, to better embody the figure of the disfigured sage. Aesop’s joke, a kind of pun made literal, is amusing and problematic for the early modern reader, since puns were received with ambivalence, as a lowly form of wit. These parable-like tales underscore the connection between wit, baseness, and the body. It would have been impossible to dissociate the three elements. Aesop’s deformity draws readers to gaze on his body, but to be sure of their attention, Aesop insists on his deformity again with a discredited form of humour.

The figure of the deformed and witty slave, known for his frequent ‘bodily’ misadventures (such as aforementioned anecdote, in which Aesop induces vomiting to show he has not eaten his master’s figs) would be the ideal role model for Scarron. La Fontaine notes, before the Life of Aesop, that at moments his biography resembles a fable: The common supposition is that this author set out to intent for his hero a character and adventures in harmony with his fables.”426 If that is the case, the should be, as Aesop says at nearly the end of his life, that “Aesop told [the crowd] that the important consideration was not the shape of the vessel, but the liquor which it contained.”427 In fact, the moral is probably a kind of corruption of this ideal, that the vase holding a liquor can indicate its trustworthiness-especially if it is ugly.

424From English translation Liii "Qu’il y aurait de meilleur ? Eh ! qu’y a-t-il de meilleur que la langue reprit Esope. C’est le lien de la vie civile, la clef des sciences, l’organe de la vérité de la raison par elle on bâtit les villes et on les police ; on instruit, on persuade, on règne dans les assemblées ; on s’acquitte de tous les devoirs, qui est des Dieux," 458.

425 In the English translation Liii-liv La Fontaine, “Fables choises,” 462. 426Heinemann xli-xliii or "On s'imagine que [Planudes] a voulu donner à son héros un caractère et des aventures qui répondissent à ses fables," 455.

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In this case, the “liqueur” in the vase is the facility with language and discernment Aesop shows; to reinforce this, the La Fontaine version of Planudes:

substitutes for the ordinary, pseudo-cynical image of Aesop, the portrait of one who made discover that the quiet word is a way of acting. This emblematic biography defines and announces what all other fables will be: the fragments of a double speak, whose meaning is superabundant, which does not mean what it says, and which the reader will always have to interpret.428

What La Fontaine keeps in the main text, “…serves to underline the usefulness of fables, and to portray their importance.”429 The revived interest in Aesop and the fable meant a renewed appreciation and awareness of how deftly the deformed slave employed wit, and how carefully (although crudely) chose his words.

427 Heinemann lx ; in the original, it reads “…il ne fallait pas considérer la forme du vase, mais la liqueur qui y était renfermée,” 465.

428 This is my translation of "substitue à l'image ordinaire, pseudo-cynique d'Esope, le portrait de celui qui fit découvrir que la parole tranquille est une façon d'agir. Cette biographie emblématique définit et annonce ce que seront toutes les autres fables : les fragments d'un discours duplice, dont le sens surabonde, qui ne veut pas dire ce qu'il dit, et que le lecteur devra toujours interpréter," Marie-Christine Bellosta, "’La Vie d'Esope le Phrygien’ de La Fontaine, ou les ruses de la vérité," Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 79(1) 3-13. 13.

429 This is my translation of "sert à souligner le sérieux de la parole, à décrire l'utilité des fables, et à définir leur statut," Bellosta, “La Vie d’Esope le Phrygien,"9.

Chapter 7 Wit and Its Underside

As we have seen in the case of Aesop just above, there was an underside to claims that “esprit” that originated in spinal disability and authorized the use of rhetoric. The linkage of wit and the body also opened up the possibility of many different forms of disability than the visible bodily ones. In fact, the opposite of wit was galimatias, the confused and overwrought language of the misguided, or truly deformed, which Scarron explores throughout his work and especially in Don Japhet. As the Académie Française defined it in 1694, galimatias comprised a “speech that is confused and unclear and that seems to say something while saying nothing."430 Académie Française members condemned bad writing in various examples of galimatias, and noted its links to both verbal and written speech: “his speech is just galimatias. Everything he says, everything he writes is just galimatias. It is pure galimatias, a real galimatias. It’s one of the most subtle galimatias."431 As the burlesque developed in the mid seventeenth century, and especially during its heyday in the 1650s, galimatias could be used describe much of the writing coming out of the Fronde.

Writers like Scarron feared the narrow distance between wit, humour, and the pretentious nonsense of galimatias. As Guez de Balzac, a contemporary and correspondent of Scarron noted, “nothing is so close to high style than galimatias.”432 The higher an author’s intentions, the more likely it was that he would mistake galimatias for wit. Guez de Balzac even implies that some people knew galimatias as if it were Latin, when he noted that a particular writer could “speak and write galimatias perfectly.”433 Fénelon had Aristotle declare to Plato, in a vindication of his work that “I did not take on a poetic style, in looking for the sublime; I didn’t fall into galimatias.” 434

430 This is a translation of "Discours embrouillé & confus qui semble dire quelque chose & ne dit rien," ARTFL Project, “Galimatias.” From the 1694 Dictionnaire de l’Academie Française, accessed July 8, 2017. 431 "Galimatias," Ibid 432 Translation of "rien n'est si voisin du haut style que le galimatias," Balzac, Discours X, "Socrate Chrétien," Socrate chrétien et autres œuvres, (Amsterdam : Pluymer, 1662), 113. 433 Translation of “parle et écrit galimatias en perfection,” Balzac à Conrart, "Lettre du 28 avril 1653," Lettres de feu monsieur de Balzac à Monsieur Conrart, (Paris: Chez Augustin Courbé, 1659) 434 Translated from "je n'ai point pris le style poétique, en cherchant le sublime; je ne suis point tombé dans le galimatias," François Fénelon, “Dialogue des morts,” Œuvres vol I, (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 355. 151

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A lack of wit and style in a courtly society like that of the pre-Fronde Regency and later Versailles was a fatal flaw. La Bruyère condemns a contemporary courtier in his Caracteres for the man’s galimatias by noting: There is one thing, Acis, which you, and men like you, who speak in riddles lack very much; you have not the smallest suspicion of it, and I know I am going to surprise you. Do you know what that thing is? It is wit. But that is not all. There is too much of something else in you, which is the opinion that you have more intelligence than other men; this is the cause of all your pompous nonsense, of your mixed-up phraseology, and all of those grand words without any meaning.435

In La Bruyère’s telling, he recognizes that the person who has no wit attempts to add to his rhetoric by using bigger and more convoluted words and phrases; La Bruyère’s virulence in his framing makes it obvious that a lack of wit is a kind of disability in the courtly settings he works on. What is significant is that the usage of wit is situated between two different disabilities: a lack of wit which puts a person at a severe disadvantage in aristocratic social settings, and the visible disability which a person must supplement with language. In the case of the person he critiques, La Bruyère suggests a reversal of the crooked wit of someone like Richard III, discussed above. Whereas Richard completes his body using language as a technology to remake himself as a disabled protagonist, the man cited here is disabling himself through his failures of rhetoric.

Scarron demonstrates his own focus on the failures of rhetoric, and of characters’ failed uses of language. For him, too, disability consisted not in writing burlesque texts but in misusing language, a characteristic that marks notably the protagonist of Scarron’s play Don Japhet. As one observer notes of Don Japhet’s servant, “But his galimatias gives us enough information/To know that his mind is as sick as his Master’s."436 Scarron renders galimatias a contagious condition that can cross social and class lines.

435 Jean de La Bruyère, Characters, trans. Henri van Laun. (London: Routledge, 1929) 64 ; the original reads: une chose vous manque, c’est l’esprit. Ce n’est pas tout: il y a en vous une chose de trop, qui est l’opinion d’en avoir plus que les autres; voilà la source de votre pompeux galimatias, de vos phrases embrouillées, et de vos grands mots qui ne signifient rien," Caractères (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1998), 205.

436 Translated from "Mais son galimatias donne assez à connaître /Qu'il a l'esprit malade aussi bien que son Maître,” Paul Scarron, Don Japhet D’Arménie (Paris: Didier, 1967), II.3.565-566, 47.

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In Don Japhet, the titular character, a former fool/jester who has been ennobled by Charles V, seems to enact the kind of disability discussed in rhetoric studies, in which a person is denied the ability to speak and be believed; this is a kind of rhetorical disability.437 Scarron creates a main character who believes himself to be a well-spoken poet and lover in the context of a community that sees him as a self-deluded outsider. Eventually, the members of that community convince him that he is disabled as part of a cruel prank. In creating such a character, Scarron develops the themes of disability as a social construct, of the importance of wit over pretension, and of disability’s distinctive language. As part of a cruel joke to discourage Japhet’s attentions to a well-born young woman with a more age-appropriate lover, a group of townspeople conspire to make Don Japhet think he has lost his hearing. The character’s foolishness as a would-be poet and lover becomes embodied in his “sublime langage”438 and his misplaced desire to be a protagonist in a romance, when in a counterplot representing “reality,” Don Alphonse successfully woos the heroine Léonore. As others who mistakenly place themselves in the position of author/protagonist (a collapse of these two categories is common in Scarron), Japhet becomes the target of cruel humour. In this case, the characters’ conspiracy to make Don Japhet feel disabled serves as an illustration of the social model of disability, or the idea that disability is sustained by social structures that favour able-bodiedness over impairment. Don Japhet’s predicament also serves as an example of one Scarron’s preferred rhetorical maneuvers, the displacement of disability onto those who, although able-bodied, lack wit. Don Japhet deserves to be the target of ridicule because he is initially interested in marrying Léonore but regrets that he cannot because “her birth is too low” ["sa naissance est trop basse"] and instead proposes an illicit relationship, "if you wish to possess a body like ours.”439 As a result, later in the play he becomes the object of humiliation when his fellow characters decide to make him think he’s deaf. After a gun is shot off near his ear, Don Japhet bemoans his deafness as a form of betrayal

437 Jennell Johnson notes describes rhetorical disability not as “the property of an individual rhetor;” instead, it occurs through “a failure of the rhetorical environment, a product of the conditions that grant or deny rhetors…rhetoricability,” from "The Skeleton on the Couch: The Eagleton Affair, Rhetorical Disability, and the Stigma of Mental Illness," Rhetoric Society Quarterly 2010, 40 (5), 459-478,461.

438 Scarron, Don Japhet D’Arménie, I.2.74, 11.

439 Translated from the lines “À simple concubine, il faut s’humaniser,/Si tu veux posséder un corps comme le nôtre," Scarron, Don Japhet D’Arménie, II.1.415-416, 37.

154 enacted by a group--"is it not a great pity/to have made me deaf under the cover of friendship"440 while the others "verify a bit his deafness."441 The sight of others speaking while he cannot hear them is what is maddening: "I would also like to lose my sight/In order to no longer see this foolish group."442 Japhet’s temporary deafness, which comes on suddenly, is the perfect illustration that disability is socially constructed, a result of others’ perceptions and reactions to another’s body, and sometimes without accompanying impairments.

Don Japhet is also one of Scarron’s many failed author/poets; in the opening scene of the work, talking to a bailiff who cannot understand Don Japhet’s florid language, (which he has boasted of as “sublime”), Japhet says: You don’t understand me? I love you as much when deaf As it’s rare that I humanize my discourse; But for you today I will demetaphorize, [To demetaphorize is to speak vulgarly] If my discourse is for you just German, You will have with me a lack of speech.443 Don Japhet indicates here a way of communicating, a way of using language that is pitched to and addressed to the unworthy: a language “demetaphorisé,” suitable to the deaf and those who are intellectually impaired (like many of his time, Scarron’s character collapses these impairments.) One trope in particular appears often (both in Don Japhet d’Armenie and other works mocking the faux-learned): periphrasis. Critics have long noted the various uses of periphrasis in Don Japhet; one example includes Don Japhet’s pretentious declarations that he is

440 In the original, it reads: “[…] n’est-ce pas grand’pitié,/De m’avoir rendu sourd sous ombre d’amitié" II.4, 759- 760. 441 This is my translation of "vérifions un peu [sa] surdité d’oreille," II.4,762. 442 The original reads: “je voudrais aussi perdre la vue,/Afin de ne point voir cette sotte cohue," II.4,773-774. 443This is my translation of: "Vous ne m'entendez pas ? Je vous aime autant sourd ; Mais pour vous aujourd'hui je démétaphorise Car assez rarement mon discours s'humanise. (Démétaphoriser, c’est parler bassement) Si mon discours pour vous n’est que de l’allemand, Vous aurez avec moi disette de loquèle…," Paul Scarron, Don Japhet D’Arménie, I.2.76-80, 11.

155 going for a walk, or that he will “exercer [s]a vertu caminante” [literally, to "practice his walking virtue"].444

Although the authors in this dissertation felt that disability itself called for explanation, interpretation, and discussion, the link between spinal deformity and language troubles the idea the disability and deformity could be entirely collapsed. The fact is that although disability in the early modern period was, as the introduction has demonstrated, rhetorical in nature—that is, intensifying an individual’s need to explain himself while paradoxically foreclosing being taken seriously by his contemporaries, spinal deformity dictated a sufferer’s relationship with language, necessitating an impaired person’s linguistic mastery. As noted above, Katherine S. Williams demonstrates that in Richard III, Richard’s spinal deformity renders him a dismodern subject, one who uses the technology of words to complete himself.445 What this thesis notes is that the idea of words as the technology of someone with a “crook-back” has existed at least since the early modern period.

Language suited to disabled people (to appeal to them) has its metaphors stripped away and is “basely” spoken. Troping is, etymologically speaking, a distortion, and pre-modern writers would have recognized that metaphors (or tropes), and language more generally, were bodies. Quintilian and Horace condemned hypermetaphorical language as contorted or unnatural. In Scarron’s actual practice, disabled language was in fact not demetaphorised but rather overly metaphorised, and deformed language even more so. In his portrait discussed below, Scarron portrays his body as a contorted and obscene page,(“mon dos est plus propre à recevoir une inscription”); the language of his foolish characters is a similarly obscene contortion. By embracing his deformity as a source of inspiration, however, Scarron took a rhetorical risk. As Quintilian warns, the misuse of tropes or troping could affect “not merely individual words, but also our thoughts and the structure of our sentences.”446 That is to say, by relying on a kind of overly metaphorical language, an author could deform his or her own mind.

444Paul Scarron, Don Japhet D’Arménie, I.3.189-190, 21.

445Katherine Williams, “Enabling Richard: The Rhetoric of Disability in Richard III,” Disability Studies Quarlerly 29, no. 4 (2009). 446 Quintilian, Orator’s Education, trans. H.E. Butler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1922), 301-3.

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The Roman Comique and the Writer Without Words

Four years after the première of Don Japhet, Scarron released the first installment of his Roman Comic, the story of an errant theatre company similar to the kinds Scarron often collaborated with. The narrative of the actors from Le Mans introduced several particularly significant characters, and developed the themes of Don Japhet to ridicule and undermine those who fail to use language well. Aside from Ragotin, the egotistical straggler and non-actor of the troupe discussed below, even characters who are considered less pretentious are rendered as ridiculous. The narrator introduces La Rappinière, a minor law enforcement officer, as:

laugher of the city of Le Mans. There is no small city that doesn’t have one. Paris doesn’t have just one, it has one in each neighbourhood, and I who I am speaking to you, I would have been the one from my city had I wished; but it’s been a long time since I renounced the vanities of the world.447

La Rappinière’s reputation as the town’s rieur indicates his lack of seriousness and lack of judgement, two qualities which his position should require; instead, he is the petty, corrupt stereotype of a lawman. More significantly, the narrator’s intrusive intervention at this point in the Roman to underline the character’s undesirable traits draws readers’ attention to the author behind the scenes, pulling strings, and in no way retired from the vanities of the world.

At the same time that the intrusive authorial voice disavowed the foolish rieurs, it also worked to distance Scarron from Ragotin, the novel’s deformed and failed creator. The Ancient Régime terminology of disability that Scarron used to discuss Ragotin made the parallels between two clear. In an epitaph describing another portrait of Scarron, the author claims it portraits an “avorton” whose “parfait esprit” was formed by nature’s efforts at the expense of his body.448 “Avorton” and “nabot” and “ragot” (the root of Ragotin’s name) were all synonyms indicated someone with a visible deformity, whether because of their body shape or small size, and were used for both in Scarron’s self-description and the narrator’s discussions of Ragotin. The

447 This is my translation of “le rieur de la ville du Mans. Il n’y a point de petite ville qui n’ait son rieur. La ville de Paris n’en a pas pour un, elle en a dans chaque quartier, et moi-même qui vous parle, je l’aurais été du mien si j’avais voulu ; mais il y en a longtemps, comme tout le monde sait, que j’ai renoncé à toutes les vanités du monde," Le Roman comique, ed. Nédélec, Paris: Garnier, 2010. 67. 448 Paul Scarron, "Sur le portrait dudit Scarron," Œuvres vol 1., (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 141, 141

157 character’s name denotes a small, grotesque, ill-formed man (and also, a whiner) and establishes him as a person who is both deformed (much like Scarron) and a complainer, someone who contributes little to society. The importance of Ragotin’s stature in the text is reinforced by the frequent use of autonomasia to replace his name, and in particular, descriptions of him as “the little man.”449

The narrative overtly establishes a link between Scarron and Ragotin by way of additional textual devices, including the comments of the intrusive narrator, who appears most in episodes involving Ragotin, the various incidents in which Ragotin is shown to try his hand at—and fail at—literary creation, and the character’s own bodily abjection; not coincidentally, Ragotin is the only character whose physical existence approaches anything like that of “Scarron” in his portrait littéraire. It is apparent that, even more so than Don Japhet, the character of Ragotin serves as a displacement for the author’s anxieties about both literary creation and visible disability. This is obvious from the first scene in which he appears, when he volunteers to tell the troupe of actors a story. Ragotin, we already know, is very familiar with the world of letters, and extremely untalented. The narrator notes in introducing him that:

he was the craziest little man to exist since the time of Orlando. He had studied all his life, and despite the fact that study leads to knowledge of the truth, he lied like a knave, was as presumptuous and opinionated as a pedant, and a bad enough poet to have been strangled, if only there had been police in the region.450

Ragotin has creative pretentions but no ability to fulfill his ambitions. His appearance and name anticipate what Goffman describe as the effects of stigma. Stigma deriving from one’s personal appearance can lead to someone being discredited, a fact which can be “known to us before we normals contact him, or to be quite evident when he presents himself before us.”451 His small stature and ugliness make him someone to whom others should not listen; he is thus discredited

449 DeJean, 43. 450 This is my translation of "C’était le plus grand petit fou qui ait couru les champs depuis Roland. Il avait étudié toute sa vie; et, quoique l’étude aille à la connaissance de la vérité il était menteur comme un valet, présomptueux et opiniâtre comme un Pédant et assez mauvais poète pour être étouffe s’il y avait de la police dans le Royaume," 70 451 Goffman, 41.

158 as an author, both by his appearance and by his lack of wit, from his introduction onwards. The other characters to receive his attempts at (plagiarised) storytelling with violence and derision.

Scarron uses this stigma to render the character rhetorically disabled, as described by Jennell Johnson above. The conditions of the novel and of Ragotin’s life and lack of wit deprive him of the means to be a rhetor. Throughout the Roman comique, Ragotin suffers a series of misfortunes, more so than any other character, each one linked either to his literary pretensions and/or his physical smallness; he is beaten, imprisoned in his own hat, ends up with a chamber pot attached to his foot, and is accosted and mauled by a group of strangers for his effrontery.

In Ragotin’s first attempt at storytelling, the narrator counterintuitively moves to confuse the relationship between the character, the author, and the authorial stand-in/narrator. The narrator introduces Ragotin’s short story, the "Invisible Mistress" saying, “you are going to hear this story in the following chapter, not as Ragotin told it, but as I will, according to what his interlocutors heard. Thus, it’s not Ragotin speaking, but me.”452 As in this opening, the authorial/narrative voice is strongest in scenes featuring Ragotin being denied the right to speak, the authorial voice is most intrusive wherever Ragotin is present, and yet all of Ragotin’s adventures and speech are recounted using le discours indirect. The discours indirect enacts the final separation of Scarron/the narrator from Ragotin, and reminds us that because of Ragotin’s failures, we never hear from him directly. Only Scarron is allowed to tell the tale.

This is the beginning of Ragotin’s failed attempts at creativity—serenading a woman, boring La Rancune with his satirical verse, and reciting a narrative that he is accused of plagiarizing, all of which end in violence and physical humiliation. Chapter XI, in which Ragotin again begins an unsuccessful attempt at literary creation, is called “That which contains what you will see, if you take the time to actually read it” ["Qui contient ce que vous verrez si vous prenez la peine de le lire"]. In it, Ragotin attempts to convince another character, La Rancune, that the company would benefit from an additional actor and that his background would lend itself to being adapted for a drama. Ragotin is already discredited in the mind of La Rancune when he begins talking, but Ragotin’s breadth of poetic malpractice makes his lack of talent clear:

452 This is my translation of "Vous allez voir cette histoire dans le suivant chapitre, non telle que la conta Ragotin, mais comme je la pourrait conter d’après un des auditeurs qui me l’a apprise. Ce n’est donc pas Ragotin qui parle, c’est moi,"Roman Comique, 70-71.

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[La Rancune] prepared to hear another extravagance of Ragotin, who did not immediately reveal what he had in his soul and continued to speak of his history. He recited numerous satirical verses that he had made against the majority of his neighbours, against cuckholds that he didn’t name and against women; he sang drinking songs and showed the other several anagrams: because normally, poetasters, through similar productions start to annoy respectable people.453

The opposition between the author, who takes pains to discuss his disability and authorship, and Ragotin, the pseudo-author, the faker, and the object of ridicule, demonstrates a kind of displacement of anxiety. Ragotin suffers because he is an authorial stand-in and as a way of reinforcing the respectability of other characters. From being a stigmatized, discredited person because he is small, malformed, and ugly, Ragotin becomes a discreditable person; in this he is similar also to those whom Goffman deemed discreditable people, whose stigmatized features are not visible; in this case, it is through his lack of wit and writerly ability. Ragotin must “manag[e] information about his failing. To display or not display; to tell or not to tell; to let on or not to let on; to lie or not to lie; and in each case, to whom, how, when, and where."454 Instead of carefully controlling his image, however, he rushes into opportunities to discredit himself, which is what is supposed to contrast him to Scarron.

Scarron allows readers to have it both ways: they can find Ragotin pathetic due to his physical failings, while also laughing at him for his failures of wit. Scarron ensures that the reader both laughs at disability while also distracting attention from the question of his own deformity and its relationship to intellect. Surely a self-aware and self-referential author-narrator would be the foil of a Ragotin; this kind of author would be a person whose successful works derived from disability.

453 My translation of "Il se prépara donc à ouïr quelque nouvelle extravagance de Ragotin, qui ne découvrit pas d'abord ce qu'il avait dans l'âme, et continua à parler de son histoire. Il recita force vers satiriques qu'il avait faits contre la plupart de ses voisins, contre des cocus qu'il ne nommait point et contre des femmes; il chanta des chansons à boire et lui montra quantité d'anagrammes: car d'ordinaire les rimailleurs, par de semblables productions commencent à incommoder les honnêtes gens," Roman comique, 91 454 Goffman, 42.

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Scarron’s Deforming Mode Critics have noted that the character of Ragotin, discussed above, is a key means by which Scarron establishes the burlesque qualities of his novel.455 The real burlesque, a critic declares, is "Ragotin."456 As a comical romance, and part of the burgeoning tradition of the novel, the Roman Comique, like all of Scarron’s literary productions, was in dialogue with the literary trends of his time. Because the rules governing novels themselves were unfixed and thus not particular open to being deformed, Scarron deformed a character to influence the reception and register of his prose. The rules of poetry and respect for classical culture meant that it was much easier to deform the epic. As we will see below, Scarron’s Virgile travesty demonstrated his particular mastery of the burlesque mode, and the many ways open to authors who wished to parody high culture.

One definition of the burlesque of the seventeenth century could be that it deformed the figures of classical culture, ensuring that their concerns, language, and setting would render the classical epic ridiculous. Early modern French did not yet employ consistent literary terminology, so readers often classified Scarron’s verses as satire, as well as “comique.” Additionally, readers and critics often re-used terminology for very different kinds of humourous works, which means that today, identifying which Ancien Régime writings qualify as “burlesque” versus “grotesque” versus “baroque” remains difficult.457 In the 19th century, Morillot and his contemporaries identified several terms that were common in Scarron’s era to denote works which could also be known as burlesque: The word, if not the thing itself, was fairly new; taken from Italian (burla, joke, burlesco, amusing), it had been introduced into the language, at the beginning of the century, not by Sarrasin, as Ménage and Péllisson, claimed, but by the elderly d’Aubigné or the authors of the Menippean Satire. In 1637, the word was still barely used; it was supplemented by other terms that served as synonyms for a long time: grotesque, narquois, goguenard, bouffon, comique, naif, enjoué.”

455 Nevena Dikranian, "Ragotin, ou le personnage burlesque," Burlesque et formes parodiques dans la littérature et les arts, eds Landy-Houillon and Ménard, (Biblio 17: Tubingen, 1987), 203-21, 204. 456 Dikranian, 208. 457 Morillot, 126.

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The above are words Scarron himself frequently employed, though he eventually ended up popularising the use of the term "burlesque." (Despite the lack of consistent terminology, Scarron still believed his expertise extended, he argued, to distinguishing between good and bad burlesque.) One thing that remained constant was also that Scarron preferred to avoid mock- heroic treatments of contemporary French life, as opposed to some of his more conservative contemporaries like Boileau, seen below.

Unlike the mock-heroic, Scarron’s work, composed primarily of octosyllabic verse, aimed at “deflating majesty.”458 In this, Scarron considers the advice of Horace on composing humour: A comic subject will not be handled in tragic verse: in like manner the banquet of Thyestes will not bear to be held in familiar verses, and such as almost suit the sock. Let each peculiar species [of writing] fill with decorum its proper place. Nevertheless sometimes even comedy exalts her voice, and passionate Chremes rails in a tumid strain: and a tragic writer generally expresses grief in a prosaic style.459

Scarron’s preferred octosyllables (and not mock-heroic hexameters) follow Horace’s suggestions of appropriate versification. At the same time, the burlesque does take on popular high culture as a target, going against Horace’s command that: none who shall be exhibited as a god, none who is introduced as a hero lately conspicuous in regal purple and gold, may deviate into the low style of obscure, mechanical shops; or, [on the contrary,] while he avoids the ground, affect cloudy mist and empty jargon.460 The “cloudy mist and empty jargon” are some of Scarron’s favourite literary techniques. The language his characters used Boileau qualified as speech like that of “des harangères et des crocheteurs” ["fishwives and street porters]."461

458 Olson, Poussin and France, 15.

459 Horace, Ars Poetica, trans. W.F. Masom and A.F. Watt (London: Clyve, 1905), 51,

460 Ed. William Harmon, Classic Writings on Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 69.

461 Though no doubt unconscious, Boileau’s denunciation of burlesque “crocheteur” language brings up associations with bent spines, since crocheteurs were the “bailus dossuarius” or street porters, carriers of other people’s burdens

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In contrast to his characters Don Japhet and later Ragotin, Scarron modeled wit through his intentional use of sick, deformed language. Scarron purposefully relied on out-of-date language and terminology which recur frequently in the Virgile travesti. Outdated language was not simply a source of comic relief; in fact, words like these provoked great anxiety about the French language. As the lexicographer Guy Miège explained in 1677: As to the French, 'tis not very long since it was in a decaying condition, and wanted something to purge it from those ill humours it had contracted a great while. Therefore it was provided by Cardinal Richelieu, That an Academy of acute and judicious persons should be set up to correct and improve it.462

Miège’s embodied language represented mid-century French as simultaneously dead (a decaying body) and alive (a living being that desperately required the purgation of its ill-balanced humours); in any case, the physical decay of the language could only be mended by the work of lexical doctors, the wise French academy, who will enact a purgation that saves.

Miège also employed a metaphor with another physical form, that of a garbage collector/builder: Wherein I imitate such as raise up a Building from its Ruins. They remove all the Rubbish, and lay aside what-ever they find cumbersom and unserviceable. And what are those Antiquated and Cramp't Words which make up a great part of Cotgrave, Words that offend the eyes and grate the ears, but the Rubbish of the French Tongue?463

The decaying, ill, broken-down French words which were rejected by the Académie after Richelieu’s reforms comprise Scarron’s favourite sources of inspiration. To ascertain how out- of-date Scarron’s language was, I compared Lexique de la langue burlesque de Scarron, compiled in 1930 by Leonard T. Richardson with Miège’s Dictionary of Barbarous French, compiled by the lexicographer to update the 1611 Cotgrave Dictionary of the French and

on their backs. “Préface pour la première édition du Lutrin,” Oeuvres complètes, vol 2 (Paris: Société des belles lettres, 1952), 169. 462 LEME. “To the Reader” from Miège’s A New Dictionary French and English, with another English and French. (London: Dawks, 1677) URL: https://leme.library.utoronto.ca/lexicons/560/details#details accessed 10 July 2017 463 LEME, “Preface” in A New Dictionary, French and English by Guy Miège, (London: Dawks, 1677), July 10, 2017, https://leme.library.utoronto.ca/lexicons/560/details#details.

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English Tongues and as a continuation of his own lexicographical work, A New Dictionary French and English, with another English and French.

It becomes even more evident why skeptics met the burlesque, and Scarron’s efforts in particular, as a dangerous infection. Not only was the burlesque popular, but also a source of rot and ill humour. The properly balanced humour (and humeur) of a healthy body would rely on healthy language, originating in a heathy country and obviously, a healthy body. Miège’s bilingual definitions of barbaric are consistent with the term’s origins (referring back to a language that is strange or foreign) but in this case the barbarous is distinguished by its improper datedness, and its rude humour. Barbarism could be used “À l’égard du language ["as regards language"], the uncouthness of one’s speech” or temperament: “d’une humeur barbare” ["of a barbaric temperament"].464 Another lexicographer defined barbarism as "a word from another language, culture" or possibly "what is not of our language, culture."465

Even worse, his use of barbarisms produced an effect of linguistic and temporal alienation which only added to the humour of Scarron’s reimagined Aeneid. When added to the temporal and linguistic alienation described above, Scarron’s spatial alienation forced his characters into a deformed or interstitial space. Joe Carson has noted that Scarron (and later, influenced by Scarron, Molière) makes “interlocationality," or a deliberate confusion of geographic boundaries, a feature of their drama.466 Though Carson does not discuss this particular text, interlocationality applies to Scarron’s Virgile, which juxtaposes events from Aeneas’ journey to current recent political and historical events in France, especially the Fronde. The discours direct that Scarron preferred only emphasized the use of “sick” or “barbaric” terms, especially when spoken by heroic characters like Aeneas. The exceptionally old and respected plot, contrasted with the ignoble fighting of contemporary politics ensured that his readers could not easily situation themselves in a moment in time or place—bewildered, they were caught between worlds. As we have seen above, early modern definitions of comedy relied on the interstitial space between how

464 LEME, “Barbare” in A New Dictionary, French and English by Guy Miège, (London: Dawks, 1677), July 10 2017, https://leme.library.utoronto.ca/lexicons/560/details#details. 465 This is my translation of "Barbarisme, ce mot d’une autre nation et culture" or "ce qui n’est point de notre langue, culture," from "Barbare" in Claude Hollyband’s Dictionary of French and English, 1593, Lexicons of Early Modern English, https://leme.library.utoronto.ca/lexicon/entry/205/1926 466 Joe Carson, “When is an Alien not an Alien? Or Frenchmen Abroad?,” Seventeenth-Century French Studies 17, no. 1 (1995), 169-80, 179.

164 things were and how things should be to explain what made certain ideas funny, and the term the used was deformitas.

Scarron’s sick, barbaric, and displaced language reveals that his burlesque diction centred mainly on war and the body. We have seen above “torticollis” used as an indicator of his spinal deformity, and it was by his era a barbaric term. However, my further lexical analysis revealed a significant number of Scarron’s favourite barbaric diction related to the physical. Scarron used posteres [for the posterior], caboche [for head], potelée [for plumpness], carnassier [for plumpness], dondon [for a short and plump woman] mostly to describe Dido. Old age and infirmity saw him employing words like vieillot, chassieuseté [bleary-eyed], chenu [grey haired], penard [sad old man], radot (é) [elderly/senile], especially for Anchises; The words camuse [snub-nose]and its variants appear in Scarron’s prefatory material as well as his invocations to the Muse, where he cites the Muse’s non-Roman nose. Otherwise, for physical disabilities, his barbaric language consists of words like nabot/nabotte [a small or insignificant person], obéré [poor, lacking], and pestifère [pestilent]; Some people are podagre [gouty]. What is additionally interesting is that Scarron could be flexible—he and his burlesque contemporaries also turned to classical languages to find their own ridiculous words. The example Borralho gives is "monoculist" for the Cyclops.467

Scarron’s use of barbaric diction isn’t simply for characters—it is present in self-description throughout his entire literary career. Scarron uses this barbaric diction in conjunction with himself just as often as he used it for Ragotin or descriptions of characters from classical epic. At one point he proclaims originally, that he is a "pauvre corps obéré,”468 using of an outmoded word for “debt” and “restriction” to convey his own physical lack. Later, he deems himself to be of “gent corps” [small or lacking body]; he converts the term for dwarf, “nabot” into an adjective; significantly, “nabot” is also a synonym of “ragot,” the root of the name Ragotin in the Roman comique.

467 Translated from "l’écrivain français fidèle à cette norme classique cherche ses ‘beaux mots’ dans le latin. Et que le poète burlesque semble suivre ses pas quand, par exemple, il veut faire référence aux monstres cyclopes : Lors on vit les monoculistes/Venir par différentes pistes,’" Maria Luísa Borralho, "Scarron et Scarron II: une seule rhétorique de la parodie?," Linguas e Literaturas: Revista da faculdade de letras do porto, vol. VII (1991), 159-240, 211. 468 Paul Scarron, "Épître à Monseigneur le duc d’Enghien après son retour d’Allemagne," in Œuvres, vol. VII (Geneva: Slatkine 1970), 70-71, 70.

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Barbaric bodily diction is also obvious in Scarron’s refiguring of the love of Dido and Aeneas. Dido is introduced entirely through barbarous terms used to describe corporeality: Didon, for example was a “dondon” which in Cotgave is used to mean “a short, fat, and grosse woman; a female bundle of farts.”469 She is also “fat, vigorous, healthy”470 and possesses “une face de dondon” [the face of a plump woman"] when Aeneas leaves her. The appeal to the reader’s amusement at Dido’s body is underscored by the barbarism and the alliteration of the two words, “Didon” and “dondon."

Dido’s overwhelming physicality is matched only by Aeneas’ focus on his health and his insignificant bodily failures; at the destined meeting between the two, Aeneas claims that he is well, unless Dido insists on knowing how he is: “I at least have a migraine/if you must find me to be unhealthy.”471 The complaints of Aeneas work to humanize but also feminize him, while Dido appears simultaneously de-sexualized and oversexed.

The elevated characters, who have both physical and linguistic illnesses, end up at the same level as the ailing, impoverished poet. Their descent from high to low not only serves as a way for Scarron to bring the deified down to his earthly level, to make them his equals. More importantly, the humour in his deformed and barbarous diction allows Scarron to perform an essential function of early modern literature. Through inducing the appropriate amount of laughter, Scarron makes possible the healing of his readers. The next chapter details the curative potential of his humour, derived from disability. Though Scarron would not be restored to his former health, paradoxically his deformity could enable others’ wholeness.

469 "Dondon" in Cotgrave’s A Dictionary of the French and English Tongues, Lexicons of Early Modern English, https://leme.library.utoronto.ca/lexicon/entry/298/15213 470 Translation from "Grasse, vigoureuse, bien saine” Virgile travesti, I.273 471 Translated from “et j’ai pour le moins la migraine/S’il faut que vous soyez mal-saine," cited by.Maria Luísa Borralho, "Scarron I et II," 202.

Chapter 8 Doctor, Heal Thyself: Scarron Heals the Reader

The abjectness with which Scarron describes himself above suggests that self-deprecation was at least partially a means of self-defense. By relying on such lowly genres as the burlesque, on lowly modes like satire, and literary devices such as irony, Scarron aims for the most abject self- portrayal possible. Scarron’s use of bodily paratexts continued for the rest of his literary career and were appended by authors to his works long after his death. Like the portrait mondain, his paratexts emphasized Scarron’s physical pain, his status as a man in a wheelchair, as being in pain, as being disabled, and as having a mind that was extremely developed at the expense of his body. Scarron’s portrait coincides with an additional and older literary tradition, which Simon Dickie describes as the tradition of the “extended deformed portrait, another set piece that both reached back to Rabelais, Cervantes and Scarron and continued to attract modern authors."472 It’s also important to note that Scarron’s portrait would also have served to parry attacks by anti- Frondeurs; by taking portraits into his own hands, he proactively fashions himself as an author uniquely positioned to heal others. He makes use of his disability to show its potential for literary cure, as opposed to Mazarin, for example, the butt of Scarron’s satirical portraits.

There was an overlap between doctors and satirists; Rabelais, a doctor, declares in the letter to Odet de Châtillon before the Quart Livre that he writes as a healer. Rabelais had this letter inserted in the 1552 edition of the Quart Livre. The letter deserves attention due to both its content and its addressee; Rabelais extends his discussions from earlier prefaces in earlier books—he is the healer who puts himself in front of a laughing audience in paratexts. Moreover, Rabelais’ addressee, Odet de Châtillon would shortly thereafter abjure Catholicism to become a Calvinist, which earned him the ire of his former co-religionists. The letter demands readers scrutinize its possible heresy, and when Rabelais died the next week, his works would be added to the Index of forbidden books.

Rabelais’ libertine humour arises from his training as a doctor: […]On the grounds that many languishing, ill, or otherwise vexed and heart-sick people had, in the reading thereof, beguiled their troubles,

472 Simon Dickie, Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century, Chicago: U Chicago P, 2011, 56 166

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passed time joyously, and received new blitheness and consolation. To whom it is my custom to reply that, in composing these for sport, I aspired to no glory or praise; I had intended and had regard only to give in writing what little relief I could to the absent sufferers and sick, which gladly when there is need, I give to those who take help from my craft and service.473 The Italian originator of the burlesque genre, Burchiello, mentioned above, also had a medical background; he worked as a barber or “lesser medical practitioner who would provide routine treatments” and a person who was “knowledgeable in the properties of herbs in order to prepare them for ointments and plasters” according to Alfie and Feng. As someone who finished his short life “too sick to write,” he was also disabled, and had frequent recourse to “the Tuscan baths.”

One of the adjectives Rabelais uses to describe patients’ maladies, “langoureux” has a particular secondary meaning in the early modern period. Those who languished in the early modern French medical lexicon, were those whose malady, perhaps somatoform (or psychosomatic), also made them hunch over, whose psychological state had broken their backs.474 The Estienne (1549) and Miège (1677) dictionaries help cast more light on its numerous valences. Miège indicates the use of “langoureux” had gone out of style by the late 17th century, which makes this a purely “barbaric” word.475 The original French suggests again the link between the mind and body which is common to humoural theory. In fact, "langoureux" could suggest a spinal

473 On the grounds that many languishing, ill, or otherwise vexed and heart-sick people had, in the reading thereof, beguiled their troubles, passed time joyously, and received new blitheness and consolation. To whom it is my custom to reply that, in composing these for sport, I aspired to no glory or praise; I had intended and had regard only to give in writing what little relief I could to the absent sufferers and sick, which gladly when there is need, I give to those who take help from my craft and service,’ in Liminary Epistle, The Complete Works of François Rabelais, trans. Donald Frame, Berkeley: U California Press, 1991, 421-424, 421 474 In Rabelais there is a 'joyful use' of the figure called 'prosopography,' but it revives especially the practices of the medieval parodists: his sibyl is "badly off, poorly dressed, malnourished, toothless, hungry, hunched over, snot- nosed, infirme.["A Rabelais y fait un ‘emploi joyeux’ de la figure appelée ‘prosopographie,’ mais il renoue surtout avec les pratiques des parodistes médiévaux : sa sibylle est "mal en poinct, mal vestue, mal nourrie, edentée, chassieuse, courbassée, roupieuse, langoureuse"], Julien Le Breton, "‘Je suys guay comme un papeguay... ‘Rabelais poète," Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, 2012/1 (Vol. 112), 133-154, 146

475 "Langoureux," from Miège, A Dictionary of Barbarous French, 1679,

168 deformity which lay not in humour, but in sadness; in fact, however, it was also a barbaric word which exemplified a kind of deformed humour.

Over a century and a half later, Guez de Balzac’s discussion of Scarron’s work indicated that he had similar expectations of healing:

First, it worked as a remedy for me, and consoled me from a pressure on the spleen that was going to suffocate me, and then without the help in this regard. I hope it will henceforth do the same if I use it more often. It is possible that I will learn to rhyme requests and legends, and that I will become gay by comparison.476

Balzac insists on the idea that Scarron’s writing can heal, can relieve pain, and might eventually cure him of his “triste philosophie.”477 By the end of this paragraph, the writer-as-healer convention has evolved to accommodate a newer metaphor, one in which the “contagion” of Scarron’s comedy cures the reader. Conventional associations between books and contagions were negative, as seen in Boileau’s condemnation of the burlesque, seen below; bad books spread disease (whether moral or spiritual). The disability of Scarron, often portrayed as an "illness" in the time’s vocabulary (whether in the French or the Latin), became displaced onto his book, and a way of spreading joy, a positive contagion.

Laurent Joubert, the Protestant physician who above discussed humour as originating in deformity, understood the importance of healing through laughter, as well as its risks. "The dignity and excellence of laughter is, therefore, very great inasmuch as it reinforces the spirit so much that it can suddenly change the state of a patient, and from being deathbound render him curable. But it is said that some have died of laughter, and I know some who have become ill

476 My translation of "D’abord il m’a servi de remède, et m’a soulagé d’une oppression de rate qui allait m’étouffer, sans ce secours venu à propos. J’espère qu’il fera davantage si j’en use plus souvent. Il se peut qu’il me guérira de mon chagrin sérieux et de ma triste philosophie : Peut-être que j’y apprendrai à rimer des requêtes et des légendes, et que je deviendrai gay par contagion," Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, "Lettre de M de Balzac à M. Costar, sur les Œuvres de Scarron,",in Œuvres vol 1 (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), ix-xiii. ix 477 Though Guez de Balzac’s support of Scarron might appear incongruous in light of his commitment to linguistic purism, in their epoch, "l’habitude du clientélisme et les nécessités de la renommée (un sens de la mémoire collective) engagent chacun, au XVIIe siècle, à échanger des bribes de gloire et des échantillons d’estime," in Éric Méchoulan’s Le livre avalé, Presses Universitaires de Montréal, 2018), 115

169 because of it. So laughter is not always healthy, as it is neither of itself unhealthy, but among the things which in medicine are called not natural."478

Though scholar Indira Ghose’s analysis of Joubert and humour makes categorical assertions about laughter that other critics have disproven, her discussion of the Traité highlights the importance of the healing laugh, in regulating the humours. As she notes, “Laughing weakens the body through the great dissipation of humours it effects — which in its turn produces the diminishing of natural heat. Those who are weak are further weakened by laughter…” which means, of course, that some will not benefit from the humoural changes it provokes.”479 In the end, Joubert also seems anxious about the power of laughter, for good or ill. Ghose notes, “For Joubert, laughter is both an involuntary and voluntary phenomenon. Like all constituent factors in Galenic physiology, it is susceptible to human control."480

What is additionally complicating for those in Joubert’s period is "the wider backdrop to Joubert's work on laughter" which was "the emergence of a culture of civility in the early modern period.”481 As we have seen above, bienséance policed expression stringently. Laughter could be acceptable to the those the arbiters of good taste--Ménager described them as "the theoricians of ‘civility’, this new science of good manners."482

The well-mannered could resort to laughter, despite its link to ugliness, in the appropriate context. In an interaction with her doctor, the experience of a patient’s illness :

Allows the doctor to better understand the relationship between the soul and body to act more efficiently on the latter. The essential remains the health of the soul whose signs are on visible on the person of the healer. There is no ‘doctor’s laugh’ only because there

478 From Joubert, Treatise on Laughter, trans. De Rocher, 156 ; in the original, it reads "Donc la dignité & excellence du Ris est fort grande, puis qu’il renforce tellement l'esprit, qu'il peut soudain changer l'état d'un malade, et de mortel le rendre guérissable," Joubert, Traité du Ris, 335. 479 Indira Ghose, Shakespeare and Laughter: A Cultural History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 26.

480 Ghose 26

481 Ghose, 27.

482 Translated from "les théoriciens de la ‘civilité,’ cette science toute nouvelle des bonnes manières," from Daniel Ménager, La Renaissance et le Rire, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995) 10

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exists a force of [the doctor’s] soul. The idea found support in the philosophy of the Renaissance, but it’s so audacious that Rabelais gave it a comical mask, as he did every time he ventured out to the limits of wit.483

Since a writer couldn’t physically occupy the space in front of his readers, his alternative was the self-portrait, a static version of the humourous and healing interaction between doctor and patient. Scarron’s self-deprecating portraits served that and an additional healing function, aside from provoking laughter: per Hippocrates, the exemplary authorial portrait was part of the author-doctor’s duty and is a generic convention of all medical texts. Hippocrates says that a physician must be “dignified without affectation, austere in their encounters, ever ready to make rejoinder, hard to contradict[…] silent in time of trouble…he further must “remember the way to take his seat, his self-possession, his dress, grave demeanour, brevity of speech, unshakable serenity, diligence in the patient’s presence, care, response to objections.”484 This portrait of a healer underlined his gravitas. Rabelais makes reference to this ideal in the later epistle:

Hippocrates, in many places, especially in the sixth book of his Epidemics, describing the training of his doctor disciple, and how Soranus of Ephesus, Oribasius, Cl. Galen, Hali Abbas, likewise other subsequent authors, have composed him in gestures, bearing, glance, touch, look, grace, decency, neatness of face, clothes, beard, hair, hands, mouth, even going into detail about the fingernails, as if he were about to play the part of some lover or suitor in some notable comedy, or go down to an enclosed tiltyard to fight some powerful enemy. Indeed, the practice of medicine is quite aptly compared by Hippocrates to a combat and farce played by three personae; the patient, the doctor, and the illness.485

483 Translated from "elle permet au médecin de mieux connaitre la relation entre l’âme et le corps et d’agir plus efficacement sur celui-ci. L’essentiel reste bien la santé de l’âme dont les signes sont visibles sur la personne du thérapeute. Il n’y a de ‘rire médecin’ que parce qu’il existe une force de l’âme. Cette idée trouve un appui dans la philosophie de la Renaissance, mais elle est si audacieuse que Rabelais lui prête un masque comique, comme chaque fois qu’il s’aventure aux limites de l’esprit," Ménager, 73

484 On Decorum and On the Physician quoted in P. Lain Entralgo, The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity (New Haven and London, 1970), 159

485 Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. Frame, 421

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The translation above maintains the diction and structure of the original almost exactly.486 The catalogue of medical experts and the detailed breakdown of a doctor’s appearance and demeanour are both a sign of extensive contemporary medical knowledge and Rabelais’ desire to send-up that the same knowledge. In this way, his medical background is an indirect or inadvertent kind of relief for sufferers, if only because his description of medical practice provokes humour-balancing laughter.

Rabelais had established the portrait of the writer as healer, one which necessitates both a physical and psychological description. The authorial portrait was, as we have seen, already a popular genre in the 17th century. However, it was not without its flaws and inherent contradictions. Renaissance and Ancien Régime writers struggled with questions of representation, physiognomy and accuracy. Scarron’s self-portrait demonstrates the way he made the authorial portrait evolve to fit both his time and his own medical issues. Readers are repeatedly invited to mediate on the author’s body and more specifically, on the ways in which disabled authorship seemingly dooms Scarron’s literary performances to failure. At the same time, however, the onus of properly experiencing the text devolves entirely to the reader, leaving the author free of charges of literary failure should the text be found lacking in some way.487

486 François Rabelais, "Quelques fois je leurs expose par long discours, comment Hippocrates en plusieurs lieux, mêmement en sixième livre des Épidémies, décrivant l'institution du médecin son disciple: Soranus Ephesien, Oribasius, Cl. Galen, Hali Abbas, autres auteurs conséquents pareillement, l'ont composé en gestes, maintien, regard, touchement, contenance, grâce, honnêteté, netteté de face, vêtements, barbe, cheveux, mains, bouche, voire jusques à particulariser les ongles, comme s'il deust jouer le rôle de quelque Amoureux ou Poursuivant en quelque insigne comédie, ou descendre en camp clos pour combattre quelque puissant ennemi. De fait la pratique de Médicine bien proprement est par Hippocrates comparée à un combat, & farce jouée à trois personnages: le malade, le médecin, la maladie," from "À M. Odet, Cardinal de Chastillon," Œuvres complètes, ed. Boulenger (Paris : Gallimard, 1955), 517-522, 517

487 Literary criticism, literary history and historicism have examined in great detail the ways in which the rise of the author in the early modern period was linked to a series of changes in publishing practices, the ways in which censorship and state control evolved, and the changing ideas of subjectivity and interiority. What also fascinates me is the rise of neo-classicism, which influenced erudite humanists and Renaissance authors. Garland-Thomson’s discussion of disability and gender in Extraordinary Bodies contains an insight which is productive in examinations of early modern literature. Garland states that “[f]or the plot to be unified, which is Aristotle’s essential requirement, anomalies must be excluded, Extraordinary Bodies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 33. Although Garland-Thomson is summarizing Aristotle’s thoughts on tragedy, the highest genre, an educated author of the early modern period would be highly aware of the tenets of neoclassicism, in general, including the importance of unity of time, action, place, even if only to subvert them.

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Scarron is thus able to employ deformity on several levels simultaneously: he entertains; he heals through laughter; he forces the reader to grapple with his or her responsibility; he displaces ableist prejudice onto a safe impairment that is in many ways the opposite of his own.As in Don Japhet, through authorial sleight-of-hand, disability becomes displaced onto those who do not possess wit. Above we have considered Cyrano de Bergerac’s Contre Ronscar, in the context of writing on the Fronde. One crucial theme remains to be discussed, namely his figuring of disability as punishment: One mistook [Scarron’s] body for a gallows where the Devil had hanged a poor soul, and could even convince himself that Heaven, in an act of love for this infected, rotten cadaver, had punished him in advance for sins that he had not yet committed, and tossed his soul to a refuse pile.488 Bergerac here plays on the ambiguity of Scarron’s deformity, while also drawing readers’ attention away from his own political and literary failings; as Alain Viala noted above, Bergerac had begun the Fronde on the same side as Scarron, and likely attacked Scarron due to literary rather than political disagreements.

Bergerac insists that Scarron’s body is both “un cadaver infecte et pourri” [an infected rotting cadaver], and also a soulless piece of refuse. The verbal violence of his attack, and particularly the use of the term “cadavre” speaks to the abjection which the author associates with disability. In her examination of disability, Kristeva links the cadaver to the loss of identity one suffers when faced with the abject: “I am at the border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border.”489 This attempt at separating, and clinging to existence in the face of non-existence, ends at death, when “nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit—cadere, cadaver.”490 The abjectness that Cyrano de Bergerac sees in Scarron’s deformity places Scarron in a category entirely apart—he is worse than the monsters the mazarinades describe, and more pestilent than the syphilis patient that Bergerac implies

488 This is my translation. The original text reads "Il avait pris son corps pour un gibet ou le Diable avait pendu une âme, et se persuada même qu’il pouvait être arrivé, que le Ciel aimant ce cadavre infecte et pourri, avait voulu, pour le punir des crimes qu’il n’avait pas commis encore, jeter par avance son âme à la voirie" Cyrano de Bergerac, Œuvres complètes, volume II, ed. Luciano Erba (Paris: Champion, 2001), 171-172. 489 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 3. 490 Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 3

173 elsewhere that he must be. Scarron’s deformity represents his total moral collapse, and, worse than other visible disabilities, implies a moral gangrene that has entirely overcome him.

Scarron’s paratexts anticipated this kind of criticism, as well as the curious staring of his readers. In a disability studies context, the stare is “a more forceful form of looking than glancing, glimpsing, scanning, and other forms of casual looking. Starting is profligate interest, stunned wonder, obsessive ocularity” that often greets the visibly disabled person.491 Scarron’s portrait littéraire, published before La Relation veritable… sur la mort de Voiture, establishes a relationship with readers entirely on his own terms.492 As a characteristic of his register, Scarron relies on irony and on burlesque figurings of the body in order to direct what readers see in the frontispieces of their books. Since the crookedness of his back came, in his enemies’ eyes, to represent the crookedness of his thoughts and morals, Scarron had to establish an alternative reputation by means of his body. It was thus the subject of his literary portrait—and not his character, achievements, or writing. As Joan DeJean notes, on Scarron’s use of portraiture: […]in a comparison with a better-known example of the genre, such as La Rochefoucauld’s [portrait], Scarron’s deformation of an established tradition becomes obvious. La Rochefoucald’s self-portrait begins with a detailed physical description, as though he were closely examining himself in a mirror, avoiding any attempt to cover up his physical imperfections, obviously proud of his honesty. Scarron begins in a similarly open way, but he so exaggerates his every feature that it becomes a deformity …493

DeJean’s reading of the self-portrait underlines Scarron’s effective use of hyperbole and underscores the importance of his authorial project. Her argument does not go far enough to demonstrate why Scarron widens this gap between his actual body and the ideal male body; in so doing, makes more space for himself and his creative project. This additional interstitial space permits Scarron to open his publications in a burlesque mode, and thus direct readers’ responses to him, and thus to his works. As DeJean notes, La Rochefoucauld "devotes only about one-

491 Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Staring: How We Look (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 13. 492 Wilhelm Graeber, "Aspects idéologiques du comique corporel dans l'œuvre de Paul Scarron," in Le comique corporel: mouvement et comique dans l'espace théâtral du XVIIe siècle, eds. Erdmann and Schoell (Tünbingen: Narr, 2006), 69-84. 493 Joan DeJean, Scarron’s Roman Comique, 50-51.

174 sixth of his text to a description of his facial features;’ the focus instead is on the "‘moral’ self- portrait, obviously a more difficult and, for him, more important matter."494 Scarron does not share the moral focus of La Rochefoucauld; Scarron’s desire to start his publications by eliding any kind of implied didact purpose instead enables another kind of instrumentalism, one in which the author’s humour, which partially inheres in his laughable, deformed body, becomes the reader-patient’s cure.

Scarron’s portrait, though seeming more superficial than his contemporaries’ morally-inflected self-portraits, reveals his reliance on another kind of deformed literary genre, the satirical portrait chargé. With the portrait chargé, Scarron’s focus on his (imperfect) body remained both generically and literarily appropriate to his preferred register. The Fronde had seen the rise of the genre of the portrait mondain, the literary answer to the vogue in visual portraiture.495 It became popular through its use in the novels of Scudéry, where portraits functioned almost separately from the narrative that enclosed them. Eventually, the literary portrait became a genre apart, with Jean de Segrais' Portraits and those in Mademoiselle de Montpensier's Divers portraits. Scarron authored numerous self-portraits beginning at least as early in 1642, and his prose writings are marked by his acknowledgement of portraiture and its associations with his fellow frondeurs, both in the Roman comique and his Nouvelles tragi-comiques.

Much as other idealized "noble" genres, the portrait attracted parodic and burlesque re-writings from its inception. In 1680, Richelet described the portrait chargé as “satirique” and functioning largely to “représente tellement les défaux d’une personne qu’il les augmente” ["represent the

494 Joan DeJean, Scarron’s Roman Comique, 50-51. 495 The courtly culture that produced some of the best 17th century writers, from Scarron to Saint-Simon, propounded contradictory ideas about physiognomy, the pseudo-science of inferring personality and other traits from the face. La Bruyère, for one, was violently opposed, and in his Caractères warns that "it is necessary not to judge men as one would judge a painting or statue, on a sole and first view: there is an interior and a heart that must be delved into. The veil of modesty covers merit…" [“Il ne faut pas juger les hommes comme d’un tableau ou d’une figure, sur une seule et première vue: il y a un intérieur et un cœur qu’il faut approfondir. Le voile de la modestie couvre le mérite … ](383, Paris : Imprimerie Nationale, 1998). Of course, without the vogue in literary portraits, which did contain a physical element, sketches like his Caractères would not have been possible. Similarly, his contemporary and chronicler of the court, Saint-Simon, works against physiognomy by demonstrating that physical traits often deceive. That said, La Bruyère seems to make an exception to his rule when social class or fortune is involved: as he notes "the features may indicate the natural disposition, habits, and morals of a man, but it is the expression of the whole countenance that discovers his wealth; it is written in a man’s face whether he has more or less than a thousand livres a year” 95,; facial characteristics show the complexion and morals but the expression indicates the fruits of fortune: the addition or subtraction of more than ten thousand livres of income are inscribed on faces" [“Les traits découvrent la complexion et les mœurs mais la mine désigne les biens de fortune : le plus ou le moins de milles livres de rente se trouve écrit sur les visages,"] 239.

175 faults of a person to the extent that it augments them."] 496 By Antoine Furetière’s time, the portrait chargé’s definition made its links to Scarron even more explicit; Furetière, the member of Scarron’s literary circle quoted above regarding Scarron’s trip to the Americas, defined it as a “a burlesque portrait that a painter makes to divert himself in keeping several traits of a person, that he makes appear deformed, or monstrous.”497

The ironic literary portrait above, part of the portrait chargé that introduced editions of the Roman comique, privileges the author’s body as an essential part of the reader’s experience. Moreover, the ironic tone of the portrait would provoke a double-take and indicate to readers that much like Scarron preferred to take a noble epic and render it ridiculous, so too would he turn from the aristocratic portrait to the portrait chargé.

In the case of Scarron, the portrait chargé suited his preferred mode, the burlesque, and also his body. Unlike many of Scarron’s frondeurs, his survival depended on literary success more than military appointments, or royal favour. The more mainstream noble portrait, beloved by others who shared Scarron’s political but not aesthetic beliefs, existed as “the reflection of a collectivity that finds its identity in the sum of its individualities.”498 Absolutism threatened nobles who were faced with an omnipresent and divine King.”499 Though it is too polemical to claim as some do, that the literary portrait allowed only for perfection in which "each member is a model of physical, behavioural, and spiritual values."500 The political stakes of his literary portrait required a different kind of representation. Much like other genres that were widespread in the Fronde, the propaganda value of the perfectly embodied writer drove interpretations of popular ephemeral

496"Portrait chargé," Dictionnaire de la Langue Française, Ancienne et Moderne, de Pierre Richelet, paris : Duplain, 1759, 216

497 This is my translation of "portrait burlesque que fait un peintre pour se divertir en conservant quelques traits d’une personne, qu’il fait pourtant paraitre difforme, ou monstrueuse," from in Karl Cogard, "Le portrait mondain, "un nouveau genre d'escrire," Dix-septième siècle. no 232 (2006) "p. 411-432.

498Translation from "le reflet d’une collectivité qui retrouve son identité par la somme des individualités Lydia Vázquez, "Le portrait mondain ou l'art de la description á l'âge de la Fronde," Estudios de lengua y literatura francesas, no. 5 (1991) : 245.

499 Translation of "face à un Roi omniprésent et divin," Vázquez, “Le portrait mondain ou l’art de la description," 245.

500 Translation from “chaque membre est un modèle de valeurs physiques, de comportement et spirtuelles [sic]," Vázquez, “Le portrait mondain ou l’art de la description," 246.

176 literature. As a lower-ranking and deformed noble, Scarron’s focus on his portrait enabled him to enact a double bodily self-assertion, marking himself out as especially unique and especially qualified in burlesque writing. He had to assert more than merely his identity in the face of royal erasure; he also had to underline his awareness of his unusual body.

Scarron makes sure to address his readers directly and in so doing makes the boundaries between the author and the reader increasingly fluid. Scarron uses a pretext that permits him to address his looks: “several facetious wits rejoice at the expense of the miserable, and depict me in a way that’s different to the way I am made.”501 Instead of winning the reader over through over calls for sympathy, Scarron prefers to challenge his imagined audience, and to overcome readerly hesitations by underlining his off-putting portrait. Scarron's speaking also allows him to briefly fall back on his schooling as a clergyman who wants to prevent readers and gossips from spreading lies: "I believe to be obligated in good conscience to keep them from lying even longer, and it’s for that reason I had the woodcut made that you see here."502

501 Translation from "quelques beaux esprits facétieux se réjouissent aux dépens du misérable, and me dépeignent d'une autre façon que je ne suis fait," Scarron, "Portrait de Scarron Fait par Lui-Même," in Œuvres, vol 1 (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 129. 502 Translation from “Je pense être obligé en conscience de les empêcher de mentir plus long-temps, et c'est pour cela que j'ai fait faire la planche que tu vois.” Scarron, "Portrait de Scarron Fait par Lui-Même," in Œuvres, vol 1 (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 130.

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In the same introduction, however, his acknowledgement that "you will mutter no doubt, because all leaders utter, and I mutter like the others when I am a reader"503 places Scarron in the position of the reader, evoking the possibility of reader and writer changing places. This fluid relationship with the reader becomes more complex as the portrait continues; the visual portrait above, which, placed before the literary one, becomes the focus of the author’s description. Scarron evokes his unusual pose in the visual portrait by Stefano della Bella. His back is turned to inform the reader “the convex surface of my back is more suited to receiving an inscription than the concave of my stomach.”504 Scarron offers his back, challenging the reader make his or her mark; his wish hints at a possible obscenity inherent in his deformity, while his spinal curvature compels him to sit with his face to the left, only partially visible to the reader. He still makes the pose a basis for his interaction with the reader.

By the mid-point of his literary portrait, past his description of the frontispiece, Scarron intensifies the way he plays with language. When he talks about the he is making a pun on the state of his back; the Latin term for hunchback, “gibbus,” was also used to mean “convexe”. Puns, even on Latin words, were not well-regarded, and considered a low form of wit, typical in burlesque writing. Even the word often used for them, “quolibets” was considered barbaric, and listed in Miège’s Dictionary of Barbarous French. The third possible meaning for Scarron’s description of his pose lies in its implied obscenity. Scarron’s play on the many meanings

503 Translation from “tu murmureras sans doute, car tout lecteur murmure, et je murmure comme les autres quand je suis lecteur” Scarron, "Portrait de Scarron Fait par Lui-Même,” 130. 504 Translation from "le convexe de mon dos est plus propre à recevoir une inscription, que le concave de mon estomac" Scarron, "Portrait de Scarron Fait par Lui-Même,” 129-131.

178 intensify and underscore the close relationship between his irregular and visually disconcerting body, and his literary output.

These linguistic games in Scarron’s self-portrait also highlight the changing images that Scarron uses—he first figures his body as a text, then a geometrical form “convexe,” then finally a single letter: “my legs and my thighs first made an obtuse angle, then an equal angle, and then an acute angle. My legs and my body make another angle, and with my head leaning on my stomach, I look kind of like a Z.”505 By representing his body as a single letter, the smallest unit of written language, Scarron reduces it to the ultimate source of meaning making. Elsewhere, Scarron went so far as to liken his body to a typographical mark, smaller than a letter when he claims “finally, I am a circumflex.”506 Scarron likewise compared his skin to a dried-out piece of parchment.507 By repeating that his preferred personal symbol was either the typographical mark, or the letter Z, Scarron reiterates the relationship between language and units of meaning and his embodiment. In relying on the letter Z, the circumflex, and the wrinkled parchment, Scarron insists that twistedness is in fact the key, basic component his language. As the letter Z is the last letter of the alphabet, Scarron also forecloses further attempts at meaning-making by his readers, ensuring that his burlesque writing both originates in and ends with him.

We have seen above the ways in which the forerunners of literary theory have used deformity as the source of humour. Spinal deformity was thought to endow people with special powers of wit, as we saw with Aesop. As the introduction noted, critic Jay Dolmage persuasively links the Haephaestus’ deformity to rhetorical creativity.508 The associations between bodily crookedness and rhetoric, present in the sixteenth century, continued into seventeenth century French culture.

The following section examines the several key literary depictions of deformed but witty creators. Deformed individuals, particularly individuals with spinal deformities, complete their

505 From "mes jambes et mes cuisses ont fait premièrement un angle obtus, et puis un angle égal, et enfin un aigu. Mes cuisses et mon corps en font un autre, et ma tête se penchant sur mon estomac, je ne ressemble pas mal à un Z," Scarron, "Portrait de Scarron Fait par Lui-Même,” 130. 506 From "enfin, je suis tout circonflexe”, "Réponse à Monsieur le Comte de Saint Aignan," Œuvres, volume vii, Geneva : Slatkine, 1970). 96-98, 97. 507 He refers to "Un sec parchemin", "Adieu au Marais et la Place Royale," in Œuvres, vol VII (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 26. 508 Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric, 167.

179 imperfect bodies using language. The earliest example of this depiction of the hunchbacked is the character of Dossenus, found in Atellan farces. He represents the earliest known incarnation of the trope of the clever, hunchbacked slave (a stock character who will resurface both in the Commedia dell’Arte, as Pantalone, and in biographies of Aesop, as discussed elsewhere).509510 A particularly arresting example is Richard III; as Katherine Williams notes above, Richard knows how to use language as a kind of compensation or prosthesis; This is part of a trend in early modern French and English literature, where hunchbacked characters use their bodies to their advantage, as part of a larger mastery of rhetoric. Williams uses the example of Richard’s rhetoric which “emphasizes or diminishes his physical distinctiveness according to how usefully his body can be displayed” to show that he is dismodern, or that he uses the technology of words to complete his physical person.511 “His rhetoric about his body inevitably leads to performing the kind of body he deems useful. In other words, although characters in the play repeatedly anatomize his form, the materiality of his form remains unclear until Richard highlights his shape — positively or negatively — with his rhetoric for specific purposes.”512 This is the inverse of his numerous political opponents, whose opprobrium of Richard links his dastardly deeds to his body—for example, when Margaret deems him “this poisonous bunch-back'd toad.”513

Schaap Williams notes that “as in his initial speech about his bodily unfitness for a time of peace and the sociability it requires, Richard describes himself as corporeally motivated to break the bounds of decorum in order to speak the truth” and that his disability “indexes the stakes of a

509 Terry Hodgson, The Drama Dictionary (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1998), 28. 510 An exception to early modern European portrayals of spinal deformity as ignoble is Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, who led a contingent of rebel troops in the Fronde. "Il avait la tête fort belle, tant pour le visage que pour les cheveux, & c’était un très grand dommage qu’il eut la taille gâtée ; car à cela près c’était un Prince accompli…il avoit l’esprit vif, net, gai, enclin à la raillerie" in Bussy-Rabutin, Mémoires, Paris : Ludovic Lalanne, 1857, 358

511 Katherine Williams, “Enabling Richard,” 512 Katherine Williams, “Enabling Richard,” 513 In Act I.iii.244--the comparison of Richard to a toad again links his bad character to his embodiment. In the early modern period, toads were thought to be uglier frogs whose mouths oozed a poisonous slime. We are to infer that Richard’s venom and use of language are linked to his toad-like shape. Early modern French sources indicate a similar association was seen between toads, verbal poison, dishonesty, and sometimes, inflated pride. A person with a spinal deformity was probably also thought akin to a toad, because the word for hunchback derived from the Latin word for bump (see the note above regarding "gibbus"); toads were essentially thought to be bumpy frogs. Medieval and pre-modern Christianity associated frogs and toads with the Satanic. For examples, see Cantos 9 and 23 of Dante’s Inferno, in which epic similes compare sinners to frogs.

180 person's ability to harness rhetorical and symbolic power.”514 Richard demonstrates that his verbal fluency more than compensates for his perceived lack. Much as classical authors feared, Richard’s body is not only a crooked body, but also a body he uses crookedly (and not correctly) to lead his interlocutors to inaccurate, dangerous conclusions. Above I have made extensive reference to Aesop, the original classical model of a hunchbacked and witty man. It now suffices to reiterate the sheer volume of examples in European culture in which wit and verbal fluency necessarily complete the crooked spine.

Scarron’s own self-identification and terminology of disability demonstrates his awareness of the stereotype. In his epistle to the Count of Saint-Aignan, he declares: But if my spine is badly done, My mind is also badly done; My poor body is shortened, And my head rests on my ear; But that suits me perfectly, And among the hunchbacked I pass for one of the most beautiful.515

Scarron’s claim that he is torticolis is evocative; as we’ve seen above, in Jean Loret’s discussion of Scarron’s planned New World trip, "torticolis" was a humourous term which indicated a kind of spinal torsion caused by rheumatism and misbalanced humours, an etiology of his illness to which Scarron alludes frequently. From its origins in Rabelais, "torticolis" had rapidly become used to indicate both spinal deformity, and, as Greimas and Keane note in their Dictionnaire du français de la Renaissance, hypocrisy. This kind of hypocrisy implies twisted words and is used particularly in reference to the “false believer” [faux dévot] such as Molière’s Tartuffe.

514 Katherine Williams, "Enabling Richard," 515 This is my translation from : Mais si mal faite est mon échine, Mal fait est mon esprit aussi; Mon pauvre corps est raccourci, Et j'ai la tête sur l'oreille ; Mais cela me sied à merveille , Et parmi les torticolis Je passe pour des plus jolis[…] Paul Scarron,"Réponse à M. le Conte d’Aignan," in Œuvres vol 7 (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970) 95-97, 95.

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Significantly, this is yet another example of a term that was already going out of use in French, and it was classified by Miège as barbaric.

A synonym used in tandem with “torticollis” is the term “contrefait,” used, as we’ve also seen above, by biographers of Armand de Bourbon-Conti, the French soldier and military commander immortalized by Bussy-Rabutin. By the eighteenth century, the term indicated deformity but also a kind of social falseness; however, the more pejorative sense existed since the 16th century, and was burgeoning by the 17th, though it was milder. In Huguet’s lexicon, the definition of “contrefait” is linked with “imitation” and mimicry. In middle French, the La Roche translation of Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles contains the term used to indicate deformity and ugliness. Montaigne uses it to mean hypocrisy, while by 1761 the official Académie Française definition is that of disability.

Writing burlesque fiction entailed mastery of contrefaire; La Bruyère warns readers that “There is some danger in making fun of people. Lise, who is already old, in trying to render a young woman ridiculous, has changed so much as to become frightful. She made so many grimaces and contortions in imitating her, and now has grown so ugly, that the person she mimicked cannot have a better foil.”516 LaBruyère’s scenario focuses on the perils of distortion in comedy, which can cause an artist to resemble the distortion, instead of merely representing it; his warning implies that a comic begins from a place of normativity that’s easy threatened by the wrong kind of imitation. Even more alarming, as the above examples indicate, is that “contrefait” is both a bodily state and a series of actions. To contrefaire, one imagines, to possess few scruples and much rhetorical ease and moreover, to take advantage of others using rhetoric is an action that can lead to becoming contrefait. In both situations the link between disability and moral failings is circular and trap for those with spinal deformities.517 Anecdote accused Scarron of something

516 Trans. Henri van Laun, 46 ; in the original French it reads, "Il y a du péril à contrefaire. Lise, déjà vieille, veut rendre une jeune femme ridicule, et elle-même devient difforme ; elle me fait peur. Elle use pour l’imiter de grimaces et de contorsions : la voilà aussi laide qu’il faut pour embellir celle dont elle se moque," "Des Femmes," in Les Caractères (Paris: L’Imperie Nationale, 1998), 185.

517 In her article "Performing Disability and Theorizing Deformity," Katherine S. Williams notes that English has a cognate for contrefaire, one which is applicable to the rhetoric of Richard III, which is "deforming,"; she notes it refers to "the act of playing, one of the early modern terms for dramatic performance" and "a characteristic of Vice… from medieval morality plays," 767

182 similar, that is, developing the illness that led to his deformity through a prank.518 Scarron’s body could be read as a sign of his aptitude for comedy, and as an indication he no longer had anything to fear from humour.

The association between crooked spines and crooked words or acts extended from literature to the visual arts. This connection is foregrounded in Les Gobbi, a series of 21 engraving of hunchbacked figures from the lower classes of Ancien Régime France by printmaker Jacques Callot. 519 The collection is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.520 The subjects (called the Gobbi) are often mendicants or travelling musicians. The prints show a series of figures, all of whom are described as “bossu” ["hunchbacked"] “estropié,” “an gros ventre/dos”[having a large belly/back"] or “au ventre pendant” [having a hanging belly]. Their travelling musician/beggar status indicates, already, that these men are social outsiders; their portrayal as beggars or musicians and as hunchbacked serves as a simpler, visual code indicating what other sources also do: that hunchbackedness is a deformity that is linked both to dishonesty and performativity and creativity. Beggars live from the combination of the pity their status (and in this case, their body) inspires and their wits, their ability to weave a narrative that engenders compassion and leads to alms. Unlike the blind beggars, the hunchbacked beggars in Callot and

518 The early 18th century Protestant writer Laurent Angliviel de la Beaumelle claims that during carnival Scarron covered himself in feathers and went out in the streets, “At this spectacle, the people get together, are indignant, cry scandal. Scarron emerges from the crowd. Pursued, dripping with honey and water, everywhere revived, at bay, he finds a bridge, jumps heroically and goes to hide in the reeds. His fires are extinguished. An icy cold penetrates his veins and puts in his blood the source of the evils which have since overwhelmed him. An acrid lymph threw itself upon his nerves, and played on all the doctors' knowledge. Sciatica, gout, rheumatism arrived sometimes successively, sometimes together, and made the young abbot a shortcut of human misery" taken from “Il s’enduit de miel toutes les parties du corps, ouvre un lit de plume, s’y jette et s’y retourne, jusqu’à ce que le sauvage soit bien empenné. Il va courir la foire et en attire toute l’attention…Scarron se dégage de la foule. Poursuivi, dégoûtant de miel et d’eau, partout relancé, aux abois, il trouve un pont, le saute héroïquement et va se cacher dans les roseaux. Ses feux s’amortissent. Un froid glaçant pénètre ses veines et met dans son sang le principe des maux qui l’accablèrent depuis. Une lymphe âcre se jeta sur ses nerfs, et se joua de tout le savoir des médecins. La sciatique, la goutte, le rhumatisme arrivèrent tantôt successivement, tantôt ensemble, et firent du jeune abbé un raccourci de la misère humaine,” Mémoires pour servir l’histoire de Madame de Maintenon, vol. 12, Maastricht : Chez Jean-Edmé Dufour & Phil Roux, 1778, 126-127.

519 The term “gobbi,” and the Italian “gobbo,” derive from the Latin term “gibbus,” meaning bumpy or hunchback. Jacques Callot spent much of his life in Florence, where he probably learned the term. His Gobbi series, now housed at the Biblithèque Nationale de France, were printed by Israel Henriet between 1620-1622 and are accessible via the catalogue Gallica. 520 It is Henri-Jacques Stiker who highlights the importance of these visual depictions in his essay, “Quand les peintres mettent l’infirmité en scène,” in Art et handicap (Namur: Presses Universitaires, 2008), 25-56. 33.

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Lagniet display their bodies proudly, making their visible disability impossible to ignore.521 Scarron ensured that readers of his work would immediately make this connection, because the artist responsible for his famous 1648 portrait, which figures on the frontispiece of “Relation veritable…sur la mort de Voiture” was made by an artist, Stefano della Bella, who was deeply influenced by Callot and worked in the same visual tradition. Della Bella’s portrait, shown above in the section discussing Scarron’s literary portraits, calls to mind the depictions of deformed people earlier in the century.

In etchings by Callot and Lagniet, the posture of their subjects is inclined forward in abject supplication. Supplication is a posture with which Scarron was very familiar, as he spent large swathes of his career pleading for his pension, its disbursement, or its restoration. His requests for moment show him mimicking a similar position to the stooped beggars of his contemporaries’ engravings. Scarron’s 1646 letter to the Queen Regent plays most noticeably on depictions of hunchbacked beggars, especially when he implores her to pay his pension, promising to: To serve Your Majesty, I do what I can do be ill; I will eat pepper and salad, If you find that I still have my health. I look no further than down; I am torticollis, I have a hanging head My face is so amusing That if people laugh at it, I wouldn’t complain.522

521 Stiker, “Quand les peintres mettent l’infirmité en scène,” 34. The ways in which artists like Callot portray disabled beggars recalls the stare in Rosemarie Garland Thomson, discussed in note 369 above. Garland-Thomson reminds us that starees, that is, disabled or deformed people often stared at can also meet the stare and “take charge of the situation” in numerous ways. One of these is the portrait. Portraits “allow us to consider how stares can use comportment, expression, and even costuming to stare back. In other words, these portraits…deliberately stage a staree’s self-presentation,” Staring: How We Look, (New York : Columbia Universuty Press, 2009) 83-84. 522 Translation from: Pour servir Vôtre Majesté, Je fais ce que je puis pour être bien Malade; Je mangerai poivre & salade, Si vous trouvez encore que j'aye trop de santé. Je ne regarde plus qu'en bas; Je suis Torticolis, j’ai la tête penchante; Ma mine devient si plaisante, Que quand on en rirait, je ne m'en plaindrais pas.

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In Scarron’s refiguring of his hunchback as a natural posture of supplication, he wisely plays into the political changes of the mid to late 1600s that made artists, and especially writers, servants of the crown. As Helen Harrison noted in 1996, Richelieu had been glad through the advice of Boisrobert to ensure Scarron a pension, but by the era of Mazarin, writers’ positions had grown increasingly precarious and eventually, subject to the crown.523Scarron’s declaration acknowledges this vulnerability. He also plays on the possible dual meaning of his disability: his illness drives his need for money, but also gives him the posture of a beggar. It makes him already the ideal supplicant, having “la tête penchant [a hanging head]" in the 1646 Ode à la Reine.

The later 17th century artist Jacques Lagniet also frequently depicted hunchbacked people in his three volume Recueil des illustres proverbes. The third volume, La vie des gueux (Life of the Beggars) features dozens of disabled, deformed, and socially outcast beggars. In the second volume a plate featuring two hunchbacks conferring contains the economically phrased proverb “Il ne faut pas de se fier d’eux”: [“Do not trust them”]. The distrust of the hunchbacked men derives from the overall reputation of hunchbacks as being untrustworthy, often to the detriment of the able-bodied, reflected again in the adjectives “torticollis” and “contrefait.”

The dramatic arts and particularly the commedia dell’arte also occasionally turned to stereotypes about untrustworthy hunchbacks; critics find that the character of Pantalone, the Commedia dell’arte character, a depiction of untrustworthy (perhaps trickster) hunchbacks. As one critic notes: Among Romanesque characters one could find the Hunchback, ancestor of the character known as Pantalone. The hunch, signifying the dominance of the flesh over the soul, has its equivalent in Pantalone’s decrepitude. In some of the scenarios he even bears a hunch or this will be formed on his body in the meantime. The rules of theatrical representation require in this case a comic contrast, so Pantalone, an old avaricious man, seeks love. In fact here the comic feature of the mask emerges from the harsh contrast between senile misery and adolescent passion. On the other hand, these

523 Helen Harrison, Paroles et Pistoles: Money and Language in Seventeenth-century French Comedy (Charlottesville: Rookwood, 1996), 31.

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comic contrasts co –exist with Pantalone’s features as a wise and honest adviser, which makes him a likeable and even moving character when he is not leaning towards being licentious, towards uncontrolled lust. This is the third side of his character, the serious one.524

The character whom Penciac describes contains the contrasting images of a lusty, fleshy disabled person and someone of surpassing wisdom, two images synthesized in Scarron’s reputation as a libertine and as a man who is unusually skilled with words.525

524 Traian Penciuc, "Torna, Torna, Fratre," Mircea Eliade Once Again, (Iasi: Lumen, 2011), 45-60, 54 525 The depiction of Pantalone as hunchbacked appears in Callot’s illustrations of Commedia dell’arte characters. In fact, the type of garb required by the commedia and the masks probably forced 16th and 17th century actors playing Pantalone to assume a hunched posture. For more of his commedia dell’arte illustrations, see the Warburg Institute’s image collection, consultable online at https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/search/node

Chapter 9 Legacies

Above, in the chapters about Cervantes, this dissertation showed how the author negotiates the tensions between nationalism, disability, and masculinity in order to call into question the overreliance of Spain on blood as an indicator of true Hispanitas. At the same time, Cervantes is all too aware of the limits of masculine achievement; whether military or literary, men’s actions contain in them the possibility of undoing through excess. A disabled hand like Cervantes’ shows the way in which men can undermine the ultimate signifier of Hispanitas—though Cervantes has staged and navigated (or attempt to navigate) activity, contemplativity, blood inheritance and sacrifice, the best any man can hope for is a fleeting equilibrium; masculine Hispanitas is in fact based on failure, if not impossibility. Scarron’s disability is itself a seeming avowal of failure, a visible sign of dishonesty and uncourtly uncouthness.

Both Scarron and Cervantes use disability as a jumping off point to arrive at dangerous destinations: for Scarron, it is the libertine rejection of medicine, and more largely, disembodied knowledge. For Cervantes, he comes to the impossibility of Hispanitas, and the overcompensation which, when used to achieve Hispanitas, instead lays bare the fissures inherent in any identity. Though both men experienced disability in significantly different ways, an analysis of their works demonstrates the un-doing (of knowledge, of accepted identity constructions) that disability enables.

This study of the early modern period has also demonstrated both the ways in which disability had a significant impact on a writer’s self-fashioning as well as the ways in which disability and illness are necessary to signification. What conclusions can a reader draw about the influence of disability representations in the period? How did disabled authors set the stage for later works? In the next few pages, I want to underline a few salient aspects of Molière’s plays in order to demonstrate how some of the disability discourses we saw earlier could be further developed into to discuss not only disability and impairment, but also treatments of illness.

The links between Molière and Scarron have been noted by generations of critics. Molière demonstrates the latent potential of Scarron’s discussions of disability. The natural progression of Scarron’s disabled form of language is shown in the plays of Molière, whose works

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187 demonstrate the potential of disability to call into question received knowledge. Molière began his career slightly after that of Scarron, but after the latter’s death in 1660, Molière continued Scarron’s burlesque tradition, though by other means.

Critics have long traced the ways in which Molière borrowed directly from his recent predecessor. Le livre du plagiat, a 1930s work, foregrounded Molière’s numerous influences, and was careful to note the most egregious ‘borrowings’; more recently, Natalie Fournier characterizes Molière’s transformation of Scarron’s Précaution inutile to L’École des femmes as one that rewrites the former as a "pièce à thèse" or problem play. Because neo-classicism was by the late 17th century expected, Molière operates within the strictures of the three unities, which places additional constraints on his work. He removes the unique narrative voice of Scarron, and instead makes the ideological stakes apparent using dialogue between the main characters Arnolphe and Agnès, Arnolphe’s young ward and intended wife. A reader will take from Molière a vindication of the power of language: what the female protagonist learns in Molière is "une apologie des pouvoirs du langage [an apologia for the powers of language]."526 Another contemporary critic, Jonathan Carson, notes that the Scarron play that most influenced Molière was the Jodelet duelliste, about a servant with aspirations greater than his rank allows, much as in Molière’s Cocu imaginaire Carson argues that in contrast with other critics who consider the plots and and characters that Molière owes Scarron "the most fruitful analysis is one which acknowledges the similarity in subject matter but focuses more on the evolution of similar ideas."527

The key takeaway for Carson was the "burlesque dissonance" with which Scarron imbues his least noble characters; they usually see themselves in ways that far outstrip their low rank and actual talents; this is something Molière continues. 528 Carson argues that the evolution from Scarron to Molière shows that from a focus on the "verbalization of the physical" Molière moved to focus on "the word as representative of the movement of the mind."529 A third and final critic, Roger Guichemerre, begins his comparison of the two writers by considering Molière’s more

526 Nathalie Fournier, 59 527 Jonathan Carson, 546 528Jonathan Carson, 553 529Jonathan Carson, 546

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‘obscure’ sources; he argues that "if Molière knew generally how to transfigure his [literary] models in giving them a human depth or a comic intensity that they lacked," in fact these models "are not always unworthy of their genius imitator."530 He notes that for Scarron "There is a system of relations more complex than the typical relationship between the gentleman and the gracioso [fool] from the comedia, and the imitation doesn’t appear doubtful. It is true nonetheless that Moliere gives to his great nobleman a petty man and to his inseparable valet a foil and comic flavour that are far from approaching the characters of Scarron." Molière tightened his plots and borrowings and focused on "unifying the action" and on "the depth of his psychological analysis." 531

Below I will briefly look at another kind of burlesque dissonance, one which occurs because of the distance between medical truth and medical practice; in this, Molière isn’t inspired by Scarron’s plots. Instead, he focuses on two themes: one being the habile homme, or the lack thereof in current medical praxis, the second being the kind of knowledge that derives from disability. By projecting an intellectual credulousness and foolishness onto doctors and those who believed in their methods, Molière accomplished several things at once. The comic scenarios he depicted were in themselves a kind of cure for illness, which is in keeping with the earlier trend, explored in Scarron’s works, that held literature and humour to be a healing force. In approaching topics like the gap between accepted truths and knowledge by mocking medicine, Molière had space to make more subversive points than he did in plays like Tartuffe, where the focus on religious performativity and hypocrisy ensured that the piece was not performed for years.

Scarron demonstrates that his wit, essential to his status, is caught up in his disability and gives him authority; Molière goes further and presents us with a lack of wit which ultimately undermines authority. When servants slip into doctors’ clothing to usurp their jobs, and real doctors are shown to be spouting nonsense, Molière calls into question identity, and his

530 Translated from "si Molière a su généralement transfigurer ses modèles en leur donnant une profondeur humaine ou une intensité comique qu'ils n'avaient pas," in fact his models "ne sont pas toujours indignes de leur génial imitateur," Guichemerre 1007 531 Translated from "Il y a là un système de relations plus complexe que les rapports habituels entre le gentilhomme et le gracioso de la comedia, et l'imitation ne semble pas douteuse. Il est vrai toutefois que Molière donnera à son grand seigneur méchant homme et à son inséparable valet un relief et une saveur comique que sont loin d'approcher les personnages de Scarron" and on "unifier l'action et la profondeur de l'analyse psychologique,"Guichemerre 1023

189 characters’ ability to understand social relationships. Most importantly, doctors’ supposed knowledge became an important stand-in for truths more generally. By undermining medical cant using wit, which literally derived from deformity or illness, Molière could underline the ways in which the disabled or imperfect body made new or better knowledge possible. His work laid the foundations for an embodied libertinage, or tradition of free-thinking.

This free-thinking extended as far as questioning the supposed foundations of French literary culture, and in particular the work of the ancient thinkers of Greece and Rome. Sganarelle’s is one such example; the soliloquy at the beginning of Dom Juan highlights the foolishness of early modern medical practices and discourses. By means of patent incongruities his allusion to Aristotle calls into question those who unquestioningly follow ancient ideas of medicine:

Whatever Aristotle, and Philosophy itself, may say, there’s nothing like tobacco: it’s the passion of all gentlemen, and he who lives without tobacco is unworthy to live. Not only does it delight and clear the human brain, but also it trains the soul for virtue, and with it one learns how to become a gentleman. Don’t you always see, as soon as a man takes it, how obliging his manner becomes with everyone, and how delighted he is to offer it right and left, wherever he may be? He doesn’t even wait to be asked, but anticipates people’s wishes; so true it is that tobacco inspires sentiments of honor and virtue in all those who take it.532

Of course Aristotle, an ancient, did not know about tobacco just as his contemporaries did not know about the Americas. As Walter Mignolo noted, "The emergence of a ‘new world’ in the European consciousness forced its intellectuals to reconsider their own conception of knowledge"; Europeans had to adapt quickly to the "move from a concept of knowledge based

532 The English is from "Dom Juan" in Tartuffe and Other Plays, trans. D. Frame, (New York: Penguin Group, 2015), I.1, 318. The original reads: "Quoi que puisse dire Aristote et toute la Philosophie, il n’est rien d’égal au tabac. C’est la passion des honnêtes gens, et qui vit sans tabac n’est pas digne de vivre. Non seulement il réjouit et purge les cerveaux humains, mais encore il instruit les âmes à la vertu, et l’on apprend avec lui à devenir honnête homme. Ne voyez-vous pas bien, des qu’on en prend, de quelle manière obligeante on en use avec tout le monde, et comme on est ravi d’en donner à droit et à gauche, partout où l’on se trouve? On n’attend pas même qu’on en demande, et l’on court au-devant du souhait des gens : tant il est vrai que le tabac inspire des sentiments d’honneur et de vertu a tous ceux qui en prennent," Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière, "Dom Juan," in Théâtre Complet, vol 3, ed. Pierre Malandain (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1997), 16-87, 17

190 on books to a concept of knowledge based on experience."533 The allusion to Aristotle reminds audiences of something they struggled to acknowledge, which was gaps in Ancient understandings of the world. Eventually, as Molière presents it, early modern academic medicine comes to represent all that is contrary to wit and true learning. Instead, medicine enables counterfeit, and fraud; something about the unsavoury nature of wit, and its origin in deformity, also makes wit make more trustworthy.

The idea of wit as the counterbalance to fraudulent medicine comes out most strongly in Dom Juan. Despite the fact that Sganarelle understands nothing of medicine, he ends up passing as a doctor, prescribing “à l’aventure” [randomly] since medicine is “pure grimace” [pretense].534 Doctors also "all they do is take the credit for the fortunate results, and you can profit as they do from the patient’s good luck, and see attributed to your remedies all that may come from the favors of chance and the forces of nature."535 Both Sgnaraelle and Dom Juan are, it turns out, "impious in medicine,"536 Sganarelle because he believes medical practice can be easily imitated as a series of ritual gestures and spells, and Dom Juan because he finds it a superstition based on outmoded thought.

Molière not only practices the healing wit that Scarron preached, but also goes beyond Scarron in creating humour rooted in the rejection of fruitless debates. Molière’s wit becomes literally curative and a supplement, if not replacement, for contemporary medical praxis. The failures of medicine elicit laughter, the one reliable cure for illness; though Dom Juan is shown to be skeptical to medicine, Molière ensures that what initially appears to be the character’s skepticism to medicine is eventually revealed as a cynicism that overwhelms his morality. Dom Juan is guided merely by disregard for things others hold dear, not a true intellectual skepticism. While the play shows its protagonist being punished for his lack of piety, medicine is part of a similar system of beliefs which he scandalously rejects.

533 Walter D. Mignolo, "Commentary by Walter D. Mignolo," José Acosta’s Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, Durham: Duke UP 2002, 451-518, 462 534 Molière, “Dom Juan,” 49. 535 The English is from Frame, III.1, 345; The French reads "[ils] profit[ent] … du bonheur du malade, et attribu[ent] a [s]es remèdes tout ce que peut venir des faveurs du hasard, et des forces de la nature." Molière, “Dom Juan,” 49. 536 In the Frame edition, this is from III.1, 346; in the original, Sganarelle, categorizes his master as "impie en medicine," 49.

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In Molière’s medical satire written the year after Dom Juan, Le medecin malgré lui, he explores the fate of a peasant who, mistaken for a doctor, takes on the role of curing a bourgeois woman. Sganarelle, the peasant in question, is found by two servants, who explain:

We’re trying to find some able man, some special doctor, who might give some relief to our master’s daughter, ill with a disease that has suddenly taken away the use of her tongue. Several doctors have already exhausted all their learning on her; but you sometimes find people with wonderful secrets, with certain special remedies, who can very often do what the others couldn’t; and that’s what we’re looking for.537

Sganarelle not only poses as a doctor but also shows the young Léandre how to pass as a doctor in order to slip into his mistress’ house without her father realising who he is. Léandre demands to know "five or six big medical terms to adorn [his] speech and make [him] seem like a learned man” which causes Sganarelle to confess his real identity.538 Any doctor, false or real, as Moliere demonstrates, need only employ language to appear to be an “habile homme,” much as Scarron deploys wit with a similar purpose. The failures of the real doctors to pass as “habile homme” will lead the way to medically libertine conclusions.

The false doctor and the hypocrite is a scenario that Molière would take up again several times over before his death in 1673. Sgaranelle, the uneducated but very convincing peasant turns out to be the ideal “habile homme” to restore the use of language to his patient. Significantly, much like the word “fit” with respect to English,” “habile” in French has a polysemous history, significantly used with disability. Much as Scarron had demonstrated the importance of “habilité” in his discussions of Virgil, whom he deems “habile,” he is once referred to using its antonym, "debilis" which carried an intellectually pejorative meaning.

537 From The Misanthrope and Other Plays, trans. Frame, (New York: Penguin, 2005) 77; In the original French, the passage reads: "tâchons de rencontrer quelque homme, quelque médecin particulier, qui pût donner quelque soulagement à la fille de notre maître, attaquée d’une maladie qui lui a ôté, tout d’un coup, l’usage de la langue. Plusieurs médecins ont déjà épuisé toute leur science après elle : mais on trouve, parfois, des gens avec des secrets admirables, de certains remèdes particuliers, qui font le plus souvent, ce que les autres n’ont su faire, et c’est là, ce que nous cherchons," from Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière, "Le Médecin Malgré Lui" in Théâtre Complet, vol 3 (Paris: Imperimerie National, 1997), 254, I. 4, 246-292. 538From "The Doctor In Spite of Himself," trans. Frame, 98 ; in the original it reads “…cinq ou six mots de medicine….pour me donner l’aire d’un habile homme," "Le Medecin Malgré Lui," III.1, 279.

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Jean Nicot notes in his Thresor de la language francoyse, that habile, coming from “Habilis, Gnauus, Strenuus” is used in “Habile du corps" [in the body] another way of saying “Agilis.”539 By 1694, the Académie’s dictionary defines “habile” as "suited to something. In this sense there is no other use than in this phrase... One also uses it figuratively for a man who is very alert, and aware of his interests... It means more ordinarily capable, intelligent, adroit, learned…also sometimes means efficient, diligent.”540 The Lexicons of Early Modern English go further, providing many examples of habile as a phenomenon that is both intellectual and embodied; Cotgrave says "able; strong, lusty, powerful, hardy; quick, nimble, active, ready, cunning, expert; sufficient; fit for, handsome in, apt unto, any thing he undertakes, or it put unto.541 Its antonym débile (whose root word, debilis, Scarron’s friends used to describe him) carries a similar double connotation, again indicating the difficulty in separating physical disability from the threat it posed to the intellect.

When early modern medical practice fails because doctors are not in fact habile, but rather the contrary, wit becomes the only medicine. This is clear in Molière’s last work, Le malade imaginaire. In it, Molière returns to his habitual bugbears: greed, medicine and credulous stupidity. The protagonist Argan’s reliance on quack doctors and remedies reaches its peak when he devises a scheme to cut his medical fees by marrying his daughter, Angélique, to a very foolish medical student, Thomas Diafoirus. Argan suffers from no real impairment (according to the play), save the illusion that he is ill, and his fervent belief in the medicine of his time, despite its obvious lack of efficacy.

Thomas Diafoirus, Argan’s would-be son-in-law, embodies all that Molière finds lacking in contemporary medicine and its practice, notably doctors’ ignorance and overreliance on ancient critics. The senior Diafoirus says of his son that "He has never had a very lively imagination,

539 ARTFL Project Dictionnaires d’autrefois, "Habile" in Jean Nicot’s Trésor de la langue française, 15 March 2018, https://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/content/dictionnaires-dautrefois 540 Translation of "Propre à quelque chose. En ce sens il n'a guere d'usage qu'en cette phrase. Habile a succeder. On dit aussi fig. d'Un homme fort alerte, & fort éveillé pour ses interests, qu'Il est habile à succeder. Il signifie plus ordinairement, Capable, intelligent, adroit, sçavant. C'est un homme extremement habile. habile homme. habile femme. il est habile dans les affaires. habile dans son mestier. il est habile à tout. Il signifie aussi quelquefois, Expeditif, "from ARTFL Project Dictionnaires d’autrefois, “Habile” in 1694 Dictionnaire de l’académie française, 20 March 2018. https://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/content/dictionnaires-dautrefois.

541 From Randle Cotgrave’s Dictionary of French and English Tongues, 1611.

193 nor that sparkling wit that you notice in some; but it’s by this that I have always augured well of his judgment, a quality required for the exercise of our art." 542 Thomas’ lack of wit drives him, it seems, to argue his point with more ferocity than necessary: "I may say without vanity that in the two years he’s been on the benches there is no candidate that has made more noise than he in all the disputations in our school."543 High-ranking patients in medicine prove to be the most difficult. As M. Diafoirus, Sr. observes:

The public is easy to deal with. You don’t have to answer to anyone for your actions; and provided you follow the current of the rules of our art, you don’t have to worry about anything that can happen. But what is annoying with the great is that when they fall ill, they absolutely insist that their doctors cure them.544

Though Molière doesn’t portray medicine as entirely fraudulent (as he did in earlier works), he demonstrates that it is mostly empty spectacle. This becomes apparent when Thomas Diafoirus invites Angélique to attend a dissection "on which [he is] to make a dissertation."545 Argan’s witty maid, Toinette, responds to say: “That will be a delightful entertainment. There are some who put on a play for their sweethearts; but to put on a dissection is a much more gallant thing."546 His overreliance on Macaronic Latin and the works of the ancients underlines the nonsensical nature of accepted medical practice. “Language complements what is the most apparent sign of identity for the spectator: the costume. As an external expression of identity, it carries important symbolic meaning for the wearer.”547 Molière goes even further when Thomas Diafoirus suggests that the accepted consummation of an engagement should be kidnapping:

542 From Donald Frame translation, 438 ; In the original French it reads, “Il n’a jamais eu l’imagination bien vive, ni ce feu d’esprit qu’on remarque dans quelques-uns mais c’est par là que j’ai toujours bien auguré de sa judiciaire, qualité requise pour l’exercice de notre art,"from "Le Malade Imaginaire," in Théâtre Complet, vol 5, ed. Pierre Malandain (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1998), 242- 350, II.5, 295. 543 From Frame 348; in the original French it reads: "“il n’y a point de candidat qui ait fait plus d bruit que lui dans toutes les disputes de notre École," Molière, "Le Malade Imaginaire," II.5, 295.

544 From the Frame translation, 439; In the original, it reads "Le public est commode. Vous n’avez à répondre de vos actions à personne; et pourvu que l’on suive le courant des règles de l’art on ne se met point en peine de tout ce qui peut arriver. Mais ce qu’il y a de fâcheux auprès des grands, c’est que, quand ils viennent à être malades, ils veulent absolument que leurs médecins les guérisse," Molière, "Le Malade Imaginaire," II.5, 297.

545 From the Frame translation, 439 ; in the original it reads “sur quoi [il] doi[t] raisonner,” Molière, "Le Malade Imaginaire," II.5, 296.

546 From Frame translation, 439 ; in the original it reads: "Il y en a qui donnent la comédie à leurs maitresses; mais donner une dissection est quelque chose de plus galant,” Moliere, "Le Malade Imaginaire," II.5, 296.

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We read of the ancients, Mademoiselle, that it was their custom to carry off by force from the fathers’ house the daughters they were taking to marry, so that it should not seem that it was by their own consent that they flew off in a man’s arms.548 Angélique and Toinette remark on the unfeasibility of the plan by telling Diafoirus that: The ancients, sir, are the ancients, and we are the people of today. Pretenses are not necessary in our time; and when we are pleased with a marriage, we are perfectly capable of going to it without being dragged. Have patience: if you love me, sir, you should want everything I want.549 Though Toinette has little formal education, she is obviously clever in the way that members of her class are permitted to be, through trickery. She and her mistress show easily that customs have changed too much since the Ancients to continue unquestioningly with Ancient traditions.

Le malade imaginaire again stages a servant in disguise of a doctor, while the actual doctors are shown to be credulous fools, little different from servants who become doctors through a "cérémonie burlesque” [burlesque ceremony.] 550 As Mak notes, “For the modern-day spectator, the antics of Molière’s doctors appear even more outlandish than when they were first staged. The physicians faithfully observe entertainingly inappropriate medical practices such as pulse analysis, bloodletting, and purging, making them appear hopelessly clueless and incompetent.”551 The professionalization of medicine seems to have arrived in France with La Framboisière (1599-1634) but without a parallel advancement in medical knowledge. Those whom medicine most interests are “sans esprit” [witless],552 as Argan’s wife appraises him. Toinette the maid again highlights medicine’s spectacular elements by dressing as a doctor herself in an attempt to influence Argan to change his mind against his “dessein burlesque" [ludicrous plan].553

547 Nicole Mak, “Physician Culture and Identity: The Portrait of Medicine in Molière,” Intima, Spring (2015): 1-12, 7. 548 From the Frame translation, 444 ; in the original,it reads: "Nous lisons des anciens, mademoiselle, que leur coutume était d’enlever par force de la maison des pères les filles qu’on menant marier, afin qu’il ne semblait pas que ce fût de leur consentement qu’elles convolaient dans les bras d’un homme," Molière, "Le Malade Imaginaire," II.6, 303-304.

549 Trans. Frame, 444 ; the original reads "“Les anciens, Monsieur, sont les anciens, et nous sommes les gens de maintenant. Les grimaces ne sont point nécessaires dans notre siècle,” from, "Le Malade Imaginaire," II.6, 304.

550 Frame translation, 476; Molière, "Le Malade Imaginaire," III.2.

551 Mak, “Physician Culture and Identity,” 9. 552 Molière, "Le Malade Imaginaire," III.12, 337. 553 Molière, "Le Malade Imaginaire," I.v, 262.

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As Béralde reminds his brother, in a moment of metatheatrical staging: “Dans les discours et dans les choses, ce sont deux sortes de personnes que vos grands médecins. Entendez-les parler : les plus habiles gens du monde; voyez-les faire : les plus ignorants de tous les hommes.”554 When Argan protests, Béralde attempts to pacify him by noting he’s not against medicine: Brother, I don’t take it upon myself to combat medicine; and everyone, at his own risk and peril, may believe all he likes. What I’m saying about it is just between us, and I would have liked to be able to bring you a little way out of the error you’re in, and, to amuse you, take you to see one of Molière’s comedies on the subject.555 Molière’s references to his own work are of course tongue-in-cheek; however, they model and allude to another possible approach to healing. Without recourse to the ‘barbaric’ vocabulary of Scarron, Molière relies not on style, but on "all the styles of all his characters."556 Molière, unlike Scarron, does not have to rely on a particular diction or use of barbarisms. Because earlier disabled writers showed the way, disability was less bound up in a particular style. Instead, Molière launches a direct attack on the medical and other norms to which Scarron would only occasionally allude, and does so with a kind of stylistic freedom that Scarron did not have. His plays can work their cures because Scarron has already set the stage for curative laughter and medical disbelief. At the same time, because they more clearly stage both illness and medical failures, Molière’s works suggest a kind of free-thinking alternative to medical cant, and an attack on the identities which had previously allowed some people to usurp a respect they did not deserve.

554 Mak, “Physician Culture and Identity,” 3.

555 From the Frame translation, 457 ; in the original it reads: "Moi, mon frère, je ne prends point à tâche de combattre la médecine; et chacun…peut croire tout ce qu'il lui plaît. Ce que j'en dis n'est qu'entre nous; et j'aurais souhaité de pouvoir un peu vous tirer de l'erreur où vous êtes et, pour vous divertir, vous mener voir, sur ce chapitre, quelqu'une des comédies de Molière " Molière, "Le Malade Imaginaire," III.3, 322.

556 Donald M. Frame, "Introduction," Tartuffe and Other Plays, New York: Signet, 2015, vii-xv,xiv

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