Fighting from the Margins: Discourse, Subversion, and Realism

FIGHTING FROM THE MARGINS: DISCOURSE, SUBVERSION, AND REALISM IN EARLY MODERN SPANISH NARRATIVE By G. Cory Duclos Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Spanish August, 2013 Nashville, TN Approved: Professor Edward H. Friedman Professor Andrés Zamora Professor Victoria Burrus Professor Earl Fitz To Alisha, for her unending support. And to Noel, Eleanor, and Valencia. May you each be subversive in your own way. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful for the support received throughout the development of this project. Research funds were provided by the Vanderbilt Center for Latin American Studies, the Vanderbilt Graduate School, and the Newberry Library. I am also deeply indebted to the generosity of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities for having provided me with the fantastic opportunity to work with an impressive group of scholars over the last year. I cannot say enough about how grateful I am to have interacted with each of them. I feel lucky to have been a member of a department with such outstanding scholars. The solidarity I felt among my graduate student comrades improved my experience in the classroom and on the soccer field. I am also grateful for the various forms of support provided by Todd Hughes and the Center for Second Language Studies. I would also like to thank the members of my dissertation committee: Andrés Zamora, whose family life is a model I strive to emulate; Victoria Burrus, who has been one of the most careful and helpful readers of this work; and Earl Fitz, who has always helped me find connections between my passion for sports and literary studies. I cannot say enough about my advisor Edward Friedman. He has been an exemplary teacher, mentor, and friend. My growth as a scholar is directly correlated to his willingness to teach me and to provide countless opportunities to engage with the academic community. His scholarly contributions, as outstanding as they are, pale in comparison to his warmth and kindness. Above all I would like to thank my family. Many of them have provided support from across the country. Mike Frost stands out as someone that I consider a friend, a brother, and a colleague who has improved my research. I have often been asked how I iii managed the pressures of writing a dissertation with the demands of young children; I truly cannot imagine life without my daughters. Noel, Eleanor, and Valencia have provided me with an important escape from the high-minded rigors of academia. And to the extent that my brain has dried up from too much reading and too little sleep, my loving wife Alisha has been my most important source of support. This work would be impossible without her. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION.................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii Chapter 1. FIGHTING WORDS: MARGINAL REPRESENTATION AND RESISTANCE IN THE DISCOURSE OF THE AMERICAN CONQUEST...............................1 2. PICARESQUE PERSUASIONS: THE MARGINS OF EARLY MODERN SPANISH GLOBALIZATION ..........................................................................64 3. STUDENT REBELLION: THE EDUCATION OF SANCHO PANZA.........121 4. “AO VENCEDOR, AS BATATAS”: NARRATIVE FICTION AND GLOBAL CAPITALIST IMPERIALISM.........................................................................171 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................227 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................231 CHAPTER 1 FIGHTING WORDS: MARGINAL REPRESENTATION AND RESISTANCE IN THE DISCOURSE OF THE AMERICAN CONQUEST The contemporary understanding of the modern novel still depends, in large part, upon the development of early modern Spanish prose. Writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries advanced narrative as an artistic expression, elevating the novel to its preeminence as a literary genre. While most critics recognize the individual achievement of authors such as Miguel de Cervantes and Mateo Alemán, many continue to exclude Spanish works from discussions about the evolution of narrative fiction on a global scale. The first novels of early modern Spain are often considered to be individually brilliant anomalies that contribute little, if anything, to a larger literary tradition.1 One way to counteract such claims is to first analyze how early modern Spanish novels differ from their narrative predecessors in order to show how the literary techniques pioneered during the Renaissance are an essential part of subsequent works. Unlike chivalric romances, the picaresque novels and Don Quixote develop a particular type of realism through the use of socially and economically marginalized characters. The prominence of these characters reflects concerns with the Spanish social order— concerns that have a broader presence in early modern society. One approach to explaining what spurred this narrative evolution is by analyzing the important parallels between cultural and literary developments during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Renaissance brought with it advances in politics, military 1 See, as a prominent example, Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel. 1 expansion, and world exploration. This was especially true in Spain. After over seven hundred years of regional warfare, Spain, although it was only just beginning to gain a sense of identity as a unified state, was already gaining ground as a European power and seeking to expand its borders. The imperial desire to colonize the world had a profound impact on all social ranks. The lower classes, in particular, saw the New World as a land of opportunities in which they could escape the rigid Spanish hierarchy and gain a lasting prosperity. The early modern period marks a unique historical moment in which the entire Western concept of the world was evolving, and, as a result, the social makeup within individual countries began to shift. Because of the impact that global changes had on local cultures, the connection between the Old and New Worlds has been an important topic of literary studies. Many critics have explored how the intercontinental encounter and subsequent interactions influenced Spanish cultural production. While academic institutions have traditionally divided Hispanic texts between Peninsular and Latin American works, many critics have seen a growing need to move beyond these distinctions. As Rolena Adorno has stated, “Through a process of atomization, we have bracketed off certain authors and certain works, isolating them somewhat arbitrarily from one another as well as from the negative moral judgments that we make so easily of some” (“Discourses” 255). The common distinction between Latin American colonial writers and Peninsular authors is a convention of more recent years. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, those living in Spain and the American colonies all considered themselves to be subjects of the Spanish Crown, yet critical analyses often approach the early modern period using cultural distinctions that only appear in later centuries. Adorno 2 affirms that “Bernal Díaz was neither a colonial nor a creole but a Castilian” (“Reconsidering” 142). The same can be said of other important figures of the Spanish conquest. Bridging this oceanic gap opens the door for new approaches to the cultural developments of the early modern period. Critics have found a variety of approximations to this topic, perhaps the most common being to consider how medieval literature from Spain influenced the conquest of the New World and how other European works continued to influence Latin American authors of later centuries. In his Books of the Brave (1949), Irving Leonard was one of the first to propose the connection between chivalric romances and the mindset of conquistadors. Leonard attempts to explain why the Spanish, as opposed to other Europeans, conquered America in the way they did. He believes that an analysis of literature can explain some of the psychological influences that led conquistadors to act the way they did. After explaining the popularity that the chivalric romances had gained in Spain, Leonard notes, “As the energetic and adventurous element of Spanish society, the Conquistador could hardly escape the incitement of these fictional narratives, whether he was literate or not” (26). These books, he goes on to explain, inspired conquistadors to live out their chivalric fantasies in the New World. Adorno explains that other critics have continued investigating this “most seductive topic,” but she is not convinced about the historical accuracy of such claims (“Literary” 15). In fairness, Leonard himself admits that although he believes there to be strong corollary proof, his conclusions are “not demonstrable by documentary evidence” (26). Leonard and other critics find it important, for example, that conquistadors make 3 specific mention of the chivalric romances in their writings. Yet Adorno argues that such a reading is both selective and subjective. Speaking of an oft-cited passage from Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, in which the soldier compares his brothers in arms to literary knights, Adorno contends that the

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