Citizenship, Authorship, and Disability in Cervantes and Scarron By
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Citizenship, Authorship, and Disability in Cervantes and Scarron by Adleen Carlisle Crapo A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Adleen Carlisle Crapo, 2020 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. ii 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. iv 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 v 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 vi 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