View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OpenGrey Repository From Tristan to Don Juan: Romance and courtly love in the fiction of three Spanish American authors. By Rosix E. Rincones Díaz A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham For the degree of DOCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY Department of Hispanic Studies School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham September 2011 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Content listings Abstract Acknowlegements Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: García Márquez’s Florentino: A Reinvented Don Juan. 52 Chapter Three: Álvaro Mutis’s La Última Escala del Tramp Steamer as a development of the courtly romance: The poetry of inner exploration. 125 Chapter four: The two spaces of Pedro Páramo: From the decadent patriarchal order of Comala to the Ideology of Courtly love. 198 Conclusion 248 Bibliography 252 Abstract This thesis is centred on Gabriel García Márquez’s novel El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Álvaro Mutis’ novella La última escala del Tramp Steamer, and Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Páramo. Its aim is to analyse how the works of these Spanish American authors are inscribed within the traditions of Tristan, Don Juan and other related stories. Analysis is rooted in three aspects: 1) the study of the language and style conventions in the initial works of romance and courtly love that are developed in the studied works on fiction. 2) It was crucial to see how the authors in question developed paradigms of gender relations through the traditions they borrowed, and 3) how the medieval and renaissance traditions relate to Spanish American literary discourse through matters of similar religious and social contexts, specific traits of Spanish colonization and the presence of medievalisms in modernity. García Márquez’s reinvention of the Don Juan through the alliance narrator-Florentino, Mutis’ depiction of the steamer as a symbol of love and poetry, Rulfo’s portrayal of the lover’s spiritual failure and Susana San Juan’s statements and redemption through her body, show the complexity with which medieval romances have been rewritten in twentieth century Latin America. This thesis is dedicated to my children Bárbara and León; to my dear mother Sixta Díaz de Rincones, and to the memory of my father, Roberto Rincones. Acknowledgments I wish to thank my sisters Darly, Yurubí and Irina Rincones Díaz for all their support. I wish to thank my thesis supervisor Dr. Conrad James for his invaluable contribution. I also wish to thank Dr. Shelley Godsland, Dr. Marta Simó, Dr. Jules Wicker and the department of Hispanic Studies for their academic advice. Thanks to the Universidad Nacional Experimental de Guayana for its sponsorship. Special thanks to Myrna Parra Rodríguez and Carlos Figueredo for their encouragement during difficult times. I wish to give many thanks to Ana Jorge for helping me with some bits of translation of René Nelli’s book; to Diana Gámez for her advice on the feminist movement in Latin America; to Alfredo Rivas Lairet, and Susanne Meachem for our conversations on García Márquez. I wish to thank the community of Asbury Overseas House and Saint Mary’s Church in Selly Oak for their friendship and spiritual support to me and my children during these years. I will never forget them. 1 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION The three Spanish American novels I am studying in this thesis develop the ideological stance of Romance shown in the Don Juan stories and The Romance of Tristran 1(Béroul). One of my aims is to show how these novels inscribe themselves into the tradition of such stories to express the ideological stances they represent. In this chapter, I will discuss how the stories of Don Juan, The Romance of Tristran and other related works are either supportive or critical of the patriarchal agenda and set up a view or paradigm on gender relationships. Another of my aims is to discuss what the Spanish American novel El Amor en los Tiempos del Cólera (García Márquez A.T.C), the novella La última escala del Tramp Steamer (Mutis U.E.T.S), and Pedro Páramo (Rulfo P.P) have to say on the ideologies of Romance within the Spanish American milieu. Since such developments correspond to a different cultural context, a nuanced reading is necessary to recognize the ideological postures and their variations regarding gender relations. 1.1 The ideological trends in the Tristan and the Don Juan stories. The traditions of Don Juan in El Burlador de Sevilla (Molina), Tristan in The Romance of Tristran, and other related works, have been acknowledged as setting up a style of language, of plot, and a portrayal of Romance known as courtly love, as it was seen particularly in Europe from the 12th century to the Renaissance. The courtly love tradition has been 1 Tristran is the spelling of the hero in Béroul’s version. Tristan corresponds to Von Stassbourg’s version and to the more common spelling of the name. 2 recognized as being of paramount importance since “the most momentous and the most revolutionary elements in it have provided the background of European literature for eight hundred years” (Lewis 4). In regard to the Spanish American context, it has also been said that: Toda la poesía europea, y por ende Americana, nació de la poesía de los trovadores del siglo XII, que no es sino la exaltación del amor desgraciado – único amor que Occidente concibe como tal. Su primer ejemplo histórico es en aquel mismo siglo la relación entre Abelardo y Eloísa. (Pacheco 138) They also are, to a greater or lesser extent, subordinated to ideological trends within gender relations. The Don Juan story has been debated in terms of male identity, individuality, and sexuality in his challenging of rules within the patriarchal system. Discussion of The Romance of Tristran takes place within the wider context, which discusses the nature of courtly love, a concept so far reaching and varied that it still continues on being debated.2 Both stories have been defined as essential myths of love in the West.3 In addition, there are matters of style and language that point to this tradition as one that showcases the importance of women in society. The ennobling of human love and the humanizing of the flesh and the woman’s body combine to create an important trend of criticism of the patriarchal and church ideology prominent within gender relations in medieval times. The Tristan story I will now give a summary of The Romance of Tristran and other related works within the theory of courtly romance, in terms of genre. In my discussion, I will focus on language and style conventions in those works which correspond to specific ideological trends in gender relations. This reading will enable me to relate these works to parallel conventions and 2 On some difficulties of defining courtly love, see: (Benton 44-5), (Karnein 216) and (O'Donoghue 7-8) 3 Both stories are essential themes in Love in the western world (Rougemont Love in the Western World). 3 settings in the three Spanish American novels I study in this thesis, so as to interpret how they were developed within the Latin American milieu. There are several versions of the Tristan and Isolde story in the Middle Ages (Campbell Transformations 234). They were stories that had some central elements which made them well recognized in their time. I am going to refer to Béroul’s The Romance of Tristran and Von Strassbourg’s Tristan. The traditional story of Tristan is a young man who was born in Brittany. Tristan’s parents die, and he is later to be placed under the guardianship of his uncle King Mark. King Mark, who rules Cornwall, is challenged by the Irish King. Tristan decides to go and defend his uncle, and accepts an invitation to fight in a jousting tournament where he gets hurt by Morold, his Irish opponent. Since he was mistakenly injected with a love potion through Morold’s sword, Tristan falls in love with Isolde, the Irish princess who will soon marry his uncle. The conflict is set up to carry the lovers into a madness of love that will turn Isolde into an adulterous wife and Tristan into a traitor. Their love will make them liars and outcasts, and their passion will outlast the potion once it is no longer effective. Their love is genuine and makes them defy death. The Tristan legend presents a version of love that has been understood as a criticism of patriarchy and its impositions of marriage and gender relations. Love is not only outside the marriage vows; it is a madness that brings the lovers to the wilderness, to a state of 4 enchantment close to a sacred ritual. Love, thus, has little to do with the practicalities of marriage contracts. Nevertheless, though people understand Tristan and Isolde’s passion as genuine, their detachment from rules will make them behave as an “infernal couple” (Markale 37), since their complicity will make them lie and put them at the margin of lawful society.