Cervantes, Poet: Lyric Subjectivity as Practice in the Rise of the Novel in Sixteenth-Century Spain by Gabrielle Piedad Ponce-Hegenauer A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland April 2016 © 2016 (Gabrielle Piedad Ponce-Hegenauer) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Abstract The novel--as a literary genre--is a lyric in prose. It may be differentiated from the allegory, the romance, the epic, the satire, the tragedy, the history, the comedy, etc, by way of its unique form of novelistic character development. Drawn from explorations of individual subjectivity fostered and voiced in lyric art forms during the sixteenth century, the novel's defining literary model is the lyric. Having taken the Don Quijote as a point of reference, this dissertation returns to the first thirty years of Miguel de Cervantes' literary career in order to examine the rise of the novel in sixteenth-century Spain. Through a recovery and analysis of the literary milieu which bore most strongly on this first modern novelist, this dissertation resituates the rise of the novel in the author's own work as primarily--though not exclusively--a lyrical phenomenon. Chapter 1 reconstructs the lyrical and philosophical history in vogue amongst court poets whom Cervantes joined, befriended, and imitated during his first authorial experiences as a young conceptual poet writing in the court of Isabel de Valois (1560-1568). Particular attention is paid to the court poets, Francisco de Figueroa and Pedro Laynez, who exerted a considerable influence on Cervantes, and whom he later included as the exemplary shepherd-poets, Tirsi and Damón, in his first novel, the Galatea (1585). Chapter 2 expands upon this analysis through a close examination of the ways in which Cervantes' friend and fellow poet, Luis Gálvez de Montalvo, pursued a literature of immediacy by drawing directly on personal experience and private histories of court practice in order to explore individual subjectivities within the space of novelistic fiction. This lyrical focus is then brought to bare on a close reading of Cervantes' earliest lyric verse, particularly his 1567 sonnet to Isabel de Valois. Chapter 3 turns to the Italian context with which Cervantes met as a young poet in the service of Giulio Acquaviva in Rome (1569-1571). By examining cultural practices in the private gardens of Roman noblemen, such as Vicino Orsini, this chapter demonstrates how the lyrical and imaginative practices of the court of Isabel de Valois were pervasive in Renaissance Mediterranean culture. It thereby draws a line of continuity between Cervantes' earliest experiences in Madrid and the milieu which he subsequently joined in Rome. Here again explorations of subjectivity are brought to bare on the ways in which literary art forms were conceptualized and cultivated in the author's context. Chapter 4 reconstructs and examines the friendship which Cervantes cultivated with the Sicilian poet, Antonio Veneziano, while the two poets were captive in Algiers. This chapter recovers Veneziano's prominence as a lyric author of the sixteenth century and the formative influence which he exercised over Cervantes' lyrical ii works--both in verse, prose, and dramaturgical formats. This chapter concludes with a close reading of Cervantes' own lyric verse composed at this time. I examine Veneziano's influence, the ways in which these early works appear in Cervantes' later novelistic fiction, and indications of an early and fully developed conceptual and literary outlook. These octaves are, among Cervantes oeuvre, the most explicitly claimed reflections of the author's lyric "I", and therefore are indispensable to treatments of Cervantes' authorial subjectivity. Chapter 5 returns to the literary milieu of Madrid in the 1580s which Cervantes rejoined shortly after his release from Algiers. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which subjectivity was voiced in lyric art forms both in verse and prose formats. This chapter resituates Cervantes' composition of his first novel, the Galatea, amidst this literary milieu, and offers new reading clues and identifications for the novel as a roman à clef deeply grounded in a lyrical literature of immediacy. I also examine the transition from verse to prose formats in the lyrical works of his contemporaries. Chapter 6 undertakes an unprecedented and thorough close reading of the Galatea as an indispensable and heretofore missing component for both studies of the novel and studies of Cervantes' conceptual outlook and narrative theory. This chapter pays special attention to the cosmos in which lyric subjectivity was fostered and voiced towards the realization of novelistic characters. The author's own lyric subjectivity is highlighted and discussed by way of his fictional persona, Lauso. Correlations between the Galatea and the Don Quijote are noted at length. By looking past anachronistic judgment-calls against the pastoral and the Galatea, this chapter provides the first coherent close reading of this eclogue in prose as modern novelistic fiction, and as a phenomenal development in lyric art forms. In the Introduction and Conclusion of this dissertation I situate the present study in relation to discourse on the novel, the Don Quijote, and Cervantes' oeuvre. In the Introduction I offer a new reading of the Don Quijote informed by the present study. In the Conclusion I recapitulate the present study in relation to Cervantes' oeuvre. Primary Advisor: Pr. Harry Sieber Secondary Advisors: Pr. Walter Stephens Pr. Richard Kagan iii Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to the Charles Singleton Center of the The Johns Hopkins University for the numerous study and research fellowships which facilitated much of the work necessary to the completion of this dissertation, as well as the American Academy of Rome for the indispensible advancements which the Millicent Mercer Johnsen Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize fostered in my work. Thank you to Dr. Earle Havens for his generious consultation on all manner of early modern printing, and to Paul Espinosa for his continued and gracioius assistance regarding use of the Peabody Library. I am grateful to Pr. Walter Stephens and Pr. Richard Kagan for their wealth of time, expertise, advice and unwavering enthusiasm for this project, and to Pr. James Coleman for his teachings on Marsilio Ficino. I am deeply indebted to Pr. Harry Sieber, without whose time, patience, guidance and extensive feedback this dissertation--quixotic as it seemed-- would not have been possible, Il miglior fabbro. iv Note on Translation For the ease of the reader I have provided English translations of all citations found within the body of the text. Unless otherwise noted, these translations are my own. I have found a word-for-word translation to be the most appropriate methodological approach in this context. While somewhat clumsy, this approach provides for the reader the most precise access to the ways in which lyric subjectivity was articulated and organized on the page. I beg the reader's patience in those passages which are particularly inelegant or rustic in their syntax. I have left citations in the footnotes in their original language in order not to overburden the page, and I have reserved for the endnotes those citations of lyric verse whose length might otherwise overwhelm the body of the text. The title of the Don Quijote is drawn from the two original Spanish titles: El ingenioso hidalgo, Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) and El ingenioso caballero, Don Quixote de la Mancha (1615). The abbreviation obviously obscures Alonso Quijano's changing status from an hidalgo to a caballero. However, for the sake of concision I have found this to be the most appropriate shorthand for the titles of this work. Additionally, I will refer to all of Cervantes works with the article "the", in keeping with Leo Spitzer's usage, "Linguistic Perspectivism in the Don Quixote" (1962). I have found that his usuage of the article helps to underscore the object of study as a material text. Moreover, because Cervantes frequently titled his works after his protagonists (Galatea, Don Quijote, Persiles y Sigismunda), the use of the article when referring to the text will help to differentiate between references to characters (don Quijote) and references to works (the Don Quijote). v Contents ________________ Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Note on Translation v Introduction: i The Tyranny of Cervantes: Return to a Lost Kingdom 3 ii Cervantes and the Question of Authorship: A New Approach to Reading the Don Quijote 29 1560s 1 The Erotic Mystics: Metaphysics of Pastoral Poetry in the Court of Isabel de Valois 47 2 Primordial Ingenios: Cervantes, Gálvez de Montalvo and Lyric Subjectivity in Court Practice 85 1570s 3 Landscapes of the Interior: Lyric Subjectivity as Manifest Practice in Rome 133 4 Captive Ingenios, Authorial Hands: Cervantes and the Subjectivity of the Disinterested Lover 178 1580s 5 Authoring Immortality: Lyrc Subjectivity as Aesthetic Idealism in the Shepherds of the Galatea 207 6 "Sentido y Forma" of the Galatea 258 Book 1: Structural Symmetry and Mirroring Interpolations 270 Book 2: Narrating Lyric Subjectivity in the Novel 284 Book 3: Poetic Practice in the Pastoral Mode 299 Book 4: Erotic Mysticism as Discourse 311 Book 5: Erotic Mysticism as Practice 329 Book 6: Divine Subjectivities and the Discourse of Poetry 354 Conclusion Cervantes, Poet 382 Extratextual Bibliography 385 Notes 406 vi Cervantes, Poet: Lyric Subjectivity as Practice in the Rise of the Novel in Sixteenth-Century Spain Gabrielle Piedad Ponce-Hegenauer 1 Tú no puedes quererme: You cannot love me: estás alta, ¡qué arriba! you are loftily high! Y para consolarme And to console me me envías sombras, copias, you send me shadows, copies, retratos, simulacros, pictures, simulacra, todos tan parecidos all so alike como si fueses tú. as if they were you. Entre figuraciones I live between live images vivo, de ti, sin ti.