At the very centre of Cervantes’ Don Quixote an interpolated story is told to those present at an inn entitled The Novel of the Curious Impertinent (El curioso impertinente). Encompassing three chapters of the novel, it is a misplaced tale, as the author will later acknowledge.1 Not only is it misplaced, but as Thomas Pavel notes, we cannot place, we cannot understand, the central character’s main impetus – his strange and extravagant desires.2 In this essay I will look anew at this story from the point of view of material culture and theatricality. Within material culture, I include objects that circulate, such as cards and paintings. While the first recalls the emblem, with pictures and letters that can be allegorized, the second points to the presence of the ekphrastic in the tale. Both of these elements exist within the theatricality of the text which serves to point to the representational nature of social appearance in the baroque. Although it might be an exaggeration to state that the object makes the man (or woman), objects do impinge on their subjectivity. In an age as theatrical as the Golden Age, it is by exhibiting one’s possessions from clothes, to art, to books, that aspects of a person’s subjectivity become visible to others.3 This was an era of collectionism. As the first collections arose, their curious and diverse nature pointed to the individual’s desires. Their sum may not make the persons, but they may approximate their desires.
But let us return to the tale and its placement. Attempting to come to terms with this apparent narrative intrusion, one critic claims that we can look at it from the point of view of rhetoric. In classical rhetoric, the term ekphrasis was used to describe a pause in the narrative to describe an object. Thus, for Françoise Meltzer, the tale itself is such a pause, one that contains a number of objects for viewing.4 Indeed, the tale is akin to a panting which is framed by the novel itself, much as the shield of Achilles in the Homeric epic is framed by the ocean.5 Of course, the tale contains many objects, and such a collection might tell us something about the “actors” within it.
While the tale is an ekphrastic pause in the narrative that shows off a number of objects and their subjects, there is a second kind of pause, one that places the “collection” in a most unlikely place – it is a pause in Don Quixote’s adventures, for he is not out in the world looking for foes, but resting at the inn. William Hogarth (1697–1764), who did a number of illustrations of Don Quixote, uses the stage-coach as a metaphor for life, and the inn as stopping places in our journey.6 But it is a pause filled with different kinds of activity. Turning to Henry Fielding, an imitator of Cervantes, Hogarth depicts a country inn yard (see fig. 1) where much of the goings on in Cervantes’ inns are replicated, such as in the bill that the rotund innkeeper presents to a well-dressed traveller who thinks it immoderate – recalling Don Quixote’s refusal to pay his bills to the castle keeper. Hogarth also portrays the amorous farewell of traveller and chambermaid in back of the innkeeper and guest. She is not moved by her mistress’s voice or her bell. Again we are reminded of the assignation of Maritornes and the muleteer, disrupted by the amorous Don Quixote, and the chaos that ensues with the arrival of the innkeeper, the law, etc. Indeed, Ronald Paulson defines the inn as one of the “basic metaphors of eighteenth-century fiction” (1984, 200). Cervantes, like Fielding and Hogarth, sees the inn as the gathering place where unfathomable contingencies and coincidences brought about by fortune take place. The wheel in Hogarth’s print is certainly no coincidence – being Fortuna’s device. One of the guests at the Cervantine inn enjoins others to be ready “acomodándoos a esperar mejor fortuna” [to expect better fortune] (1978, 1.29.360; 1998, 245).7 And Cervantes, like his English counterparts, also sees the inn as a metaphor for otium. Paulson goes on to say, “The inn was also a place where inhibitions could be left behind or stripped away, true or new identities revealed” (1984, 200). Indeed, it is a place for solace and solitude, for storytelling and bragging, for coincidence and anagnorisis, for rowdiness and drinking, for gambling, and sexual license.
The inn is a place of revelry and a meeting place for travellers in the journey of life. It collects people, who themselves bring some of their objects of value. But as a stop in the journey of life, it can also become a moralizing scene, a vanitas that shows how all vanishes as the travellers, there for a brief time, soon depart. As such, the tale that is told at the Cervantine inn, with its ekphrastic quality and an ambience of abundance and fleeting pleasures, recalls a number of vanitas paintings in the Netherlands and Spain. Discussing Antonio Pereda’s Allegory of Vanitas, Steven Wagschal shows how it is replete with symbolic objects among which are the “flowers, gold coins, and skulls” (Wagschal 2005, 107).8 (See fig. 2.) Of course, Pereda, in a baroque accumulation, creates a museum of the vanishing that includes not one but seven skulls and adds elements such as “the miniatures of deceased Hapsburg family members as well as a large cameo of Charles V, resting on top of the globe of the world, and a gold medallion of Caesar Augustus [to] attest to the transitory nature of fame and power, and the limits of empire” (Wagschal 2005, 114). One element that Wagschal had no reason to mention, and that has caught my attention, is the use of playing cards. Cards in themselves are a combination of verbal and visual, mixing numbers and letters with designs. As stated above, they can be construed as emblems, each with its own allegorical meaning. Daniel L. Heiple, who has also studied vanitas paintings, has used another of Pereda’s works, The Knight’s Dream (Sueño del caballero), in order to better understand certain references in the Spanish picaresque novel.9 (See fig. 3.) The painting: “shows a sleeping man seated in a chair on the left with an angel behind him, displaying a banner which declares that the arrow of death comes quickly and is fatal. The table is strewn with symbols of transience … In the front middle lies a deck of playing cards, with several individual cards turned face up” (Heiple 1993, 106). The two of coins, for example, shows a change in fortune for each coin is Fortuna’s wheel, one pointing to prosperity and the other to adversity. In Quevedo’s picaresque novel El buscón, the two of clubs is discarded for the two of coins. In other words, a worthless card is replaced by one of more value. Heiple shows a double meaning here – how the two of clubs (the two fingers of a thief or pick-pocket) is used as a metaphor for the pícaro who stealthily extracts a suit of coins from his victims. Benjamin J. Nelson reminds us that in nineteenth-century American literature, the two of clubs can also represent running-out-of-luck and death.10
Figure 1 William Hogarth, Country Inn Yard, 1747. London. Snark / Art Resource, NY.
Recalling a number of critics who have used cards or gambling metaphors to discuss The Novel of the Curious Impertinent, it seemed to me that the characters in the tale could be portrayed as gamblers: as theatrical gamblers who create new roles to win or accomplish their desires; and as artful gamblers who prize works of Italian Renaissance art concealed within the text and even model themselves after these paintings. Card playing is an apt metaphor for the circulation of objects in society, for merchandise that is bought and sold. As Enrique García Santo-Tomás states: “The cultural resonance of the gambler … is a fascinating way of re-envisioning early modern urban culture in Spain. It is also a very fruitful approach to rethink issues of materiality and visuality in Habsburg Madrid, as this was the time that witnessed the culmination of a long textual genealogy on the topic dating back to Arabic times” (2008, 149).11 The Novel of the Curious Impertinent therefore can be viewed as an interpolated ekphrasis that contains within itself a museum of art. Characters in this museum tragically and playfully wager their life and their possessions in a game of cards – this impetus to gamble helps to explain Anselmo’s strange desires and the other characters’ willingness to enter his world or game.12 Indeed, Cervantes is pointing out that this addictive role was the rule of the times: “everyone from the King on down was addicted” (Kennedy 1952, 296). And this is a tale told at an inn, a place for gambling and other such diversions and gratifications, as well as a location that recalls the fleeting nature of such pleasures and the surprises of Fortuna.
Figure 2 Antonio Pereda, Allegory of Vanitas (Allegory of Fleeting Time). The Angel-Genius Holds a Portrait Cameo of Emperor Charles V. Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.
Figure 3 Antonio Pereda, The Knight’s Dream [Sueño del Caballero], 1655. Real Academia de las Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.
Although Don Quixote was first published by Juan de la Cuesta, the true editor of the work was Francisco de Robles, who signed the contract with Cervantes, paid for the printing, etc. Robles, who became Cervantes’ editor through 1615, was known to have an illegal gambling house in Madrid, and some say it was frequented by Cervantes (Amezúa y Mayo 1951, 347).13 We do know that Cervantes intersperses throughout his works numerous references to card games as well as the very specialized vocabulary of the gambler.14 The Novel of the Curious Impertinent, as noted, is read at an inn, a location that often offered gambling as a form of entertainment.15 In Willian Van Herp’s seventeenth-century painting Interior of an Inn with Card Players, we witness a man winning a game with an ace of spades. While no one is seen playing cards in Cervantes’ inn, they do talk about books. While the innkeeper thinks that a number of fictional works are historical, the priest explains that they are written “para entretener nuestros ociosos pensamientos; y así como se consienten en las repúblicas bien concertadas que haya juegos de ajedrez, de pelota y de trucos, para entretener” [for the amusement of our idle thoughts: and as, in well-instituted commonwealths, the games of chess, tennis, and billiards are permitted for entertainment] (1978, 1.32.397; 1998, 277). Thus, we are invited to read or listen to The Novel of the Curious Impertinent as a game – and I would add, as a card game. In Cervantes’ tale Anselmo seems to shuffle the deck and start the game. David Quint asserts: “Male pride and rivalry have created a game of desire in which Camila is more than a pawn” (2003, 42). And yet, I would like to review all three characters (along with a fourth and seemingly less important figure) in this house of cards, and show that although Anselmo may have activated the game, it is Fortuna who holds all the cards – and let us remember that the figure of Fortuna is at the centre of Pereda’s Vanitas. She is one of the major Arcana in the tarot.
Not only are there three main characters, but Cervantes carefully divides The Novel of the Curious Impertinent into three chapters, thus evoking the three acts of a Spanish Golden Age play. Indeed, it is quite clear that he follows the precepts of Lope de Vega’s New Art of Writing Plays (Arte nuevo de hacer comedias). Chapter 33 presents the caso, the subject matter; the complications of plot reach their climax in chapter 34; and the action swiftly moves to a conclusion in the following chapter, bringing to a tragic end all the agonists in the love triangle.16 The theatrical quality of the tale is further enhanced by metadrama, the play within the play, and there are at least three such doublings. The first play is created by Anselmo’s curiosity, as he directs Lotario to tempt his wife as he becomes the spectator / voyeur. The second is written, directed, and acted by Camila in order to fully deceive her audience (her husband Anselmo).17 These doublings are folded into a third play, that of Fortuna. Let us look, then, at some of the main mnemonic images that hold together this three-act play and the three metadramas in which fortune is figured as a deck of cards which she shuffles, assigning each character his or her suit, role, and image.
Anselmo, although seemingly happily married, asks his best friend Lotario to test Camila’s virtue. Lotario is averse to testing his best friend’s wife and reminds him how Rinaldo, in the Orlando furioso, rejected the test of drinking wine from a magical cup (1978, 1.33, 407; 1998, 282), thus bringing us face to face with the first major model and image – the golden goblet, adorned with precious stones.18 The man asked to test it almost inevitably spills the wine, which shows neither his clumsiness nor his Dionysian debaucheries, but his wife’s infidelity. This test, as Diana de Armas Wilson explains, has a long pedigree from the Bible to Arthurian tales.19 She concludes that “it’s best not to test, since women traditionally fail the cup-test – no matter who’s drinking. That there is no similar drink to expose the men they have lain with seems to have concerned neither the Lord nor Lotario” (1987, 17).
The golden goblet signals the presentation of the caso, the subject matter of the tale.20 Needless to say, this goblet foregrounds ekphrasis (its description in Ariosto).21 It is also linked to vanitas.22 As Anselmo metaphorically holds the cup, we envision future spilling, and the entrance of Fortuna into the action. Once Fortuna is activated, she will rule the game. We learn in chapter 33 of “la suerte que las cosas guiaba” [fortune, which directed matters otherwise] (1978, 1.33.415; 1998, 293) and are warned in chapter 34 that “volvió Fortuna su rueda” [fortune turned her wheel] (1978, 1.34.437; 1998, 313). It is hard to ascertain where Fortuna is looking in Pereda’s Vanitas painting. She could indeed be glancing at the cards. Anselmo, as the leading male figure holding a cup, may be envisioned as the king of cups in a card game, thus doubling the visual and prophetic impact of the scene with the symbolic tarot and their cartomancy. Ronald Friis posits that Cervantes learned tarot divination while in the service of Cardinal Acquaviva in Rome.23 Furthermore, there were numerous Spanish works which related card games to divination and allegory.24 Two Golden Age writers, Luque Fajardo and Francisco de la Torre, through their description of the different cards, allow us to glimpse deeper into Anselmo’s actions. Discussing the suit of cups, Torre notes the “conformidad del vino y del amor” [conformity of wine and love] (1654, 85), showing both to be “ardores importunes” [pestering desires] (1654, 85). Thus, the test of the goblet serves to inflame the passions. For Luque Fajardo, cups are “vasos en que se recoge la sangre de los lastimados, y muertos en el juego” [recipients that collect the blood of those wounded and killed in gambling] (1503, 239v). Anselmo will certainly be hurt in his deadly game. Cartomancy predicts passion, blood, and death.25
Soon after the goblet is exhibited, Lotario comes up with a number of similes and metaphors to dissuade his friend from this dangerous endeavour. Using the diamond, the ermine, the mirror of crystal, relics, and the beautiful garden, Lotario’s speech glitters with visual images as it gathers momentum, turning finally to some verses from a play that he happens to remember. This mnemonic feat confirms that we are approaching our second memory image. The last two lines declaimed by Lotario read as follows: “que si hay Dánaes en el mundo, / hay pluvias de oro también” [Wherever Danaes abound / There Golden Showers will make their way] (1978, 1.33.409; 1998, 288). We are now at the second moment in the text, the pointer to complication in the action. Danaë, locked up in an inaccessible tower by her father, is just another way of viewing the relationship between Anselmo and Camila. The father in the myth and husband in Cervantes’ tale keep the woman as precious property, away from others. The world of prophecy and divination is again present: Danaë is supposedly incarcerated because of a prophecy.26 Anselmo, however, wishes to validate the misogynistic prediction that all women will be unfaithful.
It is curious that these lines alluding to Danaë have remained nearly invisible in readings of the Cervantes’ interpolation. The text hints at a possible model by placing them within a play. One of the most famous ekphrastic passages from classical theatre appears in the works of Terence.27 In his Eunouchus, Chaerea after his encounter with Pamphila explains what occurred: “She sits in her room, in the middle of all this bustle inspecting a picture on the wall. A famous subject: Jupiter launching a shower of gold into Danaë’s lap. I began to inspect it myself. It repaid attention. Encouraging: here was a god long ago, who’d played almost the same game … I might be only human, but couldn’t I do the same?” (1992, III.3, vv. 584–8, 591). A painting has transformed the lover’s intentions; it has impelled him to rape Pamphila as she sleeps. While a god can force a mortal in antique mythology, a citizen can enjoy a slave in antique culture.28 This would not only be acceptable practice, but a good omen since, according to Michel Foucault: “the word soma, which designates the body, also refers to riches and possessions; whence the possible equivalence between the ‘possession’ of a body and the possession of wealth” (1986, 3:27). Chaerea’s action, albeit not a dream, turns out to be a good omen. At the play’s denouement, Pamphila is revealed as the long-lost daughter of a citizen of Athens, and thus Chaerea can court her and eventually enjoy her body and her family’s wealth.
Cervantes transforms and problematizes the hierarchical and gender relations found in the classical text. Although Lotario has no right to Camila as a married woman, he still presents her in terms of Danaë and of Pamphila. Although Lotario denies it, he wishes to be Jupiter and Chaerea. These two characters arrive at their enjoyment in opposing ways. While the god’s metamorphosis is based on power, Chaerea’s transformation feigns weakness – he is disguised as an enslaved eunuch. Although Lotario may wish to be Jupiter, he acts as a Chaerea. Anselmo, however, impels him to be Jupiter. The shower of gold is transformed into all the golden coins given to Lotario by Anselmo in order to seduce Camila (1978, 1.33.414–15; 1998, 292). Thus, Lotario, as the bearer of coins can be viewed as the knight of coins in the playing cards, as someone subservient to the king of cups. Indeed the way Anselmo asks his friend to shower these coins upon Camila / Danaë recalls how rich merchants scatter their coins in card games. The image of the gambler as a Jupiter is found, for example, in a poem by Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola. Here, Spanish players so press a Genoese that “en la lluvia de Dánae lo convierte” [in Danaë’s shower he is transformed] (1975, 101; v. 234).29 Lotario as a doubling of Jupiter appears subservient to Anselmo, the provider of coins, while Camila / Danaë is the recipient. But as events unfold, Anselmo will lose his position of power, becoming the dupe in this love triangle. Like Chaerea, Lotario seems to triumph following the example of Terence.
Needless to say, this ekphrastic example, became, for Christian writers, an exemplum of pagan immorality. Augustine often cited the passage from Terence “to demonstrate the evil effects of lascivious pictures” (Ginzburg 1989, 77).30 During the Spanish Golden Age, Juan de Mariana, for example, provides us with a long moralizing discussion of Terence’s play and how modern plays which exhibit such “paintings” can have a deleterious effect on the morality of the audience. He dutifully refers the reader to Augustine (1854, 434). But, by railing against this image, theologians and moralists imbued it with a certain allure and talismanic quality.
In Spain, it was Titian’s Danaë that became controversial.31 The Italian canvas (see fig. 4) was presented to Philip II while he was still crown prince, and is usually dated 1552–3; this was the first of two Danaës painted by the Venetian artist.32 One may wonder at the artist’s choice – giving the prince the most tantalizing female image from the pagan world.33 During his reign (in 1589), Juan de Pineda would recall the Danaë in Terence and place her painting among Tiberius’s lustful contemplations.34 Pineda would warn of “tan gran pecado de pintores desalmados, y el descuido de los príncipes que no castigan cosa tan prejudicial en el reino” [such a great sin in painters without a soul and the neglect of princes who do not punish a thing so prejudicial to their kingdom] (1964, 66). Was Philip II’s erotic camerino replete with Titian’s mythologies to be equated with that of one of the most detested Roman emperors? It is true that in later years Philip asked for more religious figures. But the fact remains that he, like emperors of old, could view the forbidden.35
Of course, such exhibits can always be rationalized in terms of Platonic allegories or political mandates. Titian’s painting could represent Philip as a new Jupiter, endowing him with a talisman to conquer all – in this sense, woman and empire are but one. After all, Jupiter was often used by the Habsburgs as an image of imperial might. But the political implications certainly recede at the pagan violence unleashed here. Titian easily outdoes his competitors with a “partly open space” that “denies the basis of the story” (incarceration in a tower) and thus, according to Leonard Barkan, “dramatizes the intrusion via metamorphosis of pagan nature into familiar domesticity” (1986, 190). Barkan also emphasizes sexual longing: “The bulk of the golden shower directs itself toward Danaë’s sexual organs” (1986, 190). In many ways, Barkan’s interpretation coincides with Terence’s representation. And it is through Terence’s eunuch that Lotario can appear harmless to Camila. But, instead of the erotic violence of Terence and Titian, Cervantes presents us with a consensual act.36
While Titian has foregrounded the raptus of paganism, he has also provided a Renaissance viewer with a certain demystification since the golden shower can be viewed as “literal wealth for which the hag can compete with Danaë” (Barkan 1986, 193). In this sense, Philip could view his painting as admonition against the lure of new riches and new lands. In Cervantes’ tale, the political undertones are also muted since the hag is transformed into Leonela, who does not seek golden coins but the sexual treasures of a lover she introduces into Camila’s home. It would seem, then, that this second image, in spite of political and moral allegories, enjoins pagan enjoyment in its talismanic and alluring presence.37 If Anselmo is the king of cups, then Camila must be the queen, whose sexual goblet receives the riches of her two lovers. And yet, Fortuna’s wheel, forever present in the tarot, will turn even as the lovers delight in amorous mendacity. After all, Titian’s painting is not all delight. For some, the shower of gold is menacing and the servant’s greed points to unrestrained passions that must be held in check. Long before Barkan, Erwin Panofsky had viewed Titian’s golden shower with “dark foreboding” (1969, 150).
Figure 4 Titian, Danaë, 1553–4. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Scala / Art Resource, NY.
Jealousy menaces with unravelling the game and Camila must intervene to preserve the status quo. Together with Lotario and Leonela, she composes a play that will deceive her husband. As Anselmo, the audience, hides behind a tapestry, she receives Lotario, rejecting his past and present advances and his coins: “Cuando tus muchas promesas y mayores dádivas fueron de mi creídas ni admitidas?” [When were your many promises and greater presents believed or accepted?] (1978, 1.34.433; 1998, 310). Holding a dagger, she seems to want to kill him, but when she feigns and fails, she wounds herself. The play is nothing more than an imitation of the ancient story. As Camila herself admits, it derives from “Lucrecia de quien dicen que se mató sin haber cometido error alguno” [Lucretia of whom it is said that she killed herself without committing any fault] (1978, 1.34.430; 1998, 307).
Her image became commonplace in early modern Europe, as Marcantonio Raimondi disseminated a print of Raphael’s drawing The Death of Lucretia (ca. 1510–11) (see fig. 5). It was imitated by many other artists, including Guido Reni. The popularity of these prints and paintings, according to Richard Spear, had to do with “the iniquitous excitement derived from watching women suffer in extremis” (Spear 1997, 86). But, of course, Camila only pretends to follow Lucretia’s example. Hers is truly a fiction that is meant to deceive her husband as she manages the dagger: “y guiando su punta por parte que pudiese herir no profundamente, se la entró y escondió por más arriba de la islilla del lado izquierdo, junto al hombro, y luego se dejó caer en el suelo, como desmayada” [and directing the point to a part where it might give but a slight wound, she stabbed herself above the breast, near the left shoulder, and presently fell to the ground as in a swoon] (1978, 1.33.434; 1998, 311).
Figure 5 Marcantonio Raimondi, Death of Lucretia. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany / Art Resource, NY.
I would argue then, that this false Lucretia is the third image of the work, the one that reaches the height of complication in the third act. Camila, as a Raphaelesque Lucretia, is not the queen of cups, but the queen of swords. Three problems present themselves with this identification. The first is that Camila is carrying a dagger, not a sword. But, let us reconsider. The four suits of cards were Arabic in origin (coins, cups, swords, and batons), and as they entered Europe they acquired new shapes and even different identifications in different regions.38 Spain and Italy remained closest to the Arabic cards. The Italian swords had curved blades like the scimitars used in Egypt by the Mameluks. In Spain, they turned into smaller blades that seemed like daggers. Thus, Camila’s dagger fits very well with the queen of swords. Newer decks, however, have changed daggers back to swords. When Gustave Doré, in the nineteenth century, drew the scene where Camila stabs herself, he included a sword instead of a dagger. Could he have been influenced by the playing cards of his period?
The second problem, as previously stated, is that the Spanish deck did not have queens. But this is not to say that Spanish writers and players were not keenly aware of this lack, and the possibility of using foreign cards that would include this figure. Lope de Vega, for example, speaks of “Una reina de oros, / carta nueva en la baraja” [A queen of coins / a new card in the game] (cited in Étienvre 1990, 305).
The third would be to ascertain the meaning of this card, which is not explained in Spanish treatises against gambling or other manuals. Asserting that “cartonomancy flourished in the Renaissance and Baroque periods,” Heiple finds that modern readings accord with early ones (1993, 112).39 Thus, the queen of swords is commonly believed to represent the capacity to solve a problem. This is indeed what Camila does in the work, rejecting the patriarchal tower in favour of a freedom that lets her enjoy the favours of her chosen god. And yet, the game will fail and the comic play will turn into tragedy. After all, as a woman, Camila cannot change the Spanish cards or her fortune since woman (the suit of queens) is absent from the game. Second, she uses the sword or dagger in the only way she can, as a trick or lie. Thus, if the card were to exist in Spain, it would be reversed, negating the possibility of solving the problem.
We are still missing the card that signals the denouement, the fall from fortune.40 This fourth card should belong to the one suit we have yet to find in the tale. The suit of clubs is often considered lowly and base. Francisco de la Torre y Sevil, for example, dividing suits into genres, finds clubs to represent the comic or burlesque style. And it should be recalled that it is also associated with pícaros and thieves. Even when an exalted figure is depicted, such as the king of clubs, it tends to acquire a negative connotation.41 In Cervantes’ text, Leonela, the maid, belongs to the lower classes in a hierarchical society, and thus can be equated with clubs. As in countless comedias, she mirrors in a comic key her mistress’s actions. She thinks that she can act with impunity and bring her lover home, imitating Camila. But she does not have Camila’s wits in this case. She thus becomes key to the peripeteia that leads to the fateful end, since she escapes from Camila’s home believing that she will be punished, having been caught by Anselmo in an assignation. Her bad luck brings about the demise of the other characters, and she thus becomes the ominous two of clubs, pointer to ill-luck and death. Once the king of cups (Anselmo) starts the game and provides the initial prophecy, none seem able to change it. Lotario accepts his role as the bearer of coins, Camila as queen of swords cannot reverse the terms of fortune, and Leonela reveals her hand, and exposes her bluff and her malefic card, the two of clubs.
Barry Ife describes the approaching end metaphorically: “The house of cards will come down, blown apart by social pressures beyond the control of the protagonists” (2005, 680). For me, it is more than a metaphor since cards in the tale (the king of cups, the knight of coins, the queen of swords, and the two of clubs) are representations of characters who have become extreme gamblers, who have bet everything they have, even their life, in a losing game. It may be no coincidence that the simulated play of daggers ends in the tragic play of swords, as Lotario dies battling those responsible for the sack of Rome in 1527.42 During the sack, the imperial troops of Charles V and their cohorts raped and pillaged, and stole many of the artistic monuments of the city.43 They then moved to Naples where the army faced the French, headed by Lautrec. Lotario would then have died in a losing battle against Charles V’s forces, but a battle that held the high moral ground, if there was such a thing in the Italian wars.
As for the king of cups, Anselmo, he perishes while he writes of his poisonous draught, having long ago prepared the conclusion of his story. His admonitions vie with the play of fortune, attempting to grasp for authorship and also a moral high ground as legacy. The invisible queen of swords (she does not belong in the Spanish deck) remains just that, cloistered and dying of melancholy – but this humour belongs to the visionary and we might view her invisibility as a vision of future deliverance for her gender. This tragic museum, then, is filled with objects that are desired, admired, used, misused, circulated, and discarded. These objects belong to those who would defend art, who would write in search of fame, and who would gamble with their very existence. The Novel of the Curious Impertinent is a game ruled by art and fortune where we discover the false eunuch, the enraptured Danaë, the theatrical Lucretia, the metamorphic Jupiter, the king as voyeur, the bluffing maid, and Fortuna with her roulette or wheel. The power of these images beckons readers to view, play, and gamble at deciphering them again and again.
1 In part 2, Sansón Carrasco claims that readers criticize it “por no ser de aquel lugar” [for having no relation to that place] (1978, 2.3.63; 1998, 488). I use the Jarvis translation of Don Quixote. Translations of other texts are my own.
2 Thomas Pavel emphasizes that Anselmo’s desires are vague and useless. They go against his own interests and he does not understand them (2003, 123). Thus, Pavel compares them to the strange desires of the Princess of Cleves in Madame de La Fayette’s novel (2003, 129).
3 On baroque theatricality, see Orozco Díaz.
4 Françoise Meltzer has argued that “ecphrasis may be seen as an earlier version of the intercalated story’ (1987, 22).
5 I have labelled this specific device as an interpolated ekphrasis (2005b, 22).
6 The poet’s adage, All the world’s a stage,
Has stood the test of each revolving age;
Another simile perhaps will bear,
‘Tis a Stage Coach, where all must pay the fare;
Where each his entrance and his exit makes,
And o’er life’s rugged road his journey takes.’
(83)
From Times of the Day. In The Works of William Hogarth in a Series of Engravings: With Descriptions, and a Comment on their Moral Tendency by the Rev. John Trusler. See The Gutenberg Project at www.gutenberg.org/files/22500/22500-h/22500-h.htm.
7 It is Cardenio who makes this statement. After all, he has emerged from the verge of madness in Sierra Morena and is now closer to seeing his wishes fulfilled.
8 Wagschal foregrounds the study of Norbert Schneider in the analysis of vanitas (2005, 76–87).
9 Heiple describes the painting thus: “It shows a sleeping man seated in a chair on the left with an angel behind him, displaying a banner which declares that the arrow of death comes quickly and is fatal. The table is strewn with symbols of transience: books, a skull, flowers, a carnival mask, jewels, coins, and a small clock. In the front middle lies a deck of playing cards, with several individual cards turned face up, showing the two of coins on top” (1993, 112).
10 See, for example, Bret Harte’s The Outcasts of Poker Flat.
11 In another essay published the following year, Enrique García Santo-Tomás has pointed out that card games have not received the attention they should: “No se ha llevado a cabo tampoco una reflexión a fondo sobre el efecto que pudo tener la representación de los juegos de naipes en la percepción de lo geográfico … o lo genérico” [There has not been a thoughtful and in-depth consideration of the effect of the representation of card games in the perception of geography and gender] (2009, 13).
12 As García Santo-Tomás reminds us, the gambling houses of the times “were frequently associated with violence and death” (2008, 150).
13 This and other factors have led Jean-Pierre Étienvre to ask the question: “¿Era él tahúr de vocablos … jugador de naipes continuo y desenfrenado?’ [Was the master at wordplay … a constant and unrestrainable gambler?] (1990, 34). Robles was born in Madrid around 1564 and died in 1623. He bought the rights of Las novelas ejemplares and Don Quixote.
14 Cervantes’ bookseller, Francisco de Robles, who printed the Quixote and the Novelas ejemplares, had a gaming house in Madrid. Cervantes lists a number of card games in Rinconete y Cortadillo and in Pedro de Urdemalas. There are also numerous of references to cards in El coloquio de los perros and El rufián dichoso. Étienvre also notes their presence in the Viaje del Parnaso and in Persiles y Sigismunda “aunque a nivel estrictamente metafórico” [even though only at a metaphorical level] (1990, 37). There are a number of references to cards in Don Quixote, but mainly in Part Two. For example Altisidora curses the knight as he departs the palace of the duke and the duchess, wishing him bad luck in cards:
Si jugares al reinado,
Los cientos, o la primera,
Los reyes huyan de ti;
Ases ni sietes no veas
(1978, 2.57.468)
Jarvis’s translation deviates somewhat from the original, but preserves an allusion to a card game:
If, brisk and gay,
Thu sitt’st to play
At Ombre or at Chess,
May ne’er Spadill
Attend thy will,
Nor luck thy movements bless
(1998, 837)
15 Within the Curioso we have a number of games, including the four “s” of lovers as well as the alphabet of love as told by Leonela (1978, 1.34.424–5, 1998, 302).
16 Lope conceives of the third act as having two parts – the extreme complication represented in the first half and a rapid denouement in the second.
17 On Cervantes’ theatricality, see Jill Syverson-Stork. David Quint asserts: “Camila playacts before the hidden Anselmo, but she is also an unwitting actress in a play that is not of her devising and whose author remains hidden from her to the very end” (2003, 40).
18 Thomas Greene has explained that the myths of origins provided by authors for their texts represent but one obvious reading, while the “unconfessed genealogical line may prove to be as nourishing as the visible” (1982, 19). Greene is slightly uncomfortable with this insight, arguing that “this proliferation does not obscure the special status of that root work the work privileges by its self-constructed myth of origins” (1982, 19). Perhaps because it is too visible, the first image or model is often set aside.
19 “The father of all these secular cup-tests, as it turns out, is Moses. As spokesman for the Lord in the Old Testament, Moses articulates the so-called law of jealousies in Numbers 5:11–31” (de Armas Wilson 1987, 17).
20 Comparing Ariosto’s text with Cervantes’, Barry W. Ife asserts that “the overall impression is one of difference” (2005, 674). On the other hand, see the very thoughtful analysis of Cervantes and Ariosto in Marina Scordilis Brownlee (1985, 220–37).
21 This is a metadescriptive ekphrasis, “based on a textual description of a work of art which may or may not exist” (de Armas 2006, 22).
22 In Ariosto, the sorceress Melissa tries to tempt her host with the cup. When this fails, she has him disguise himself and court his own wife. He now offers Melissa’s magic cup to Rinaldo.
23 “The first instance is in 1569 during his visits to the Vatican as envoy to Cardinal Acquaviva; ironically, during this time, the Vatican’s libraries, frescoes, and vaults represented the world’s premiere forum for Hermeneutic texts. One account mentions a strong resemblance between tarot images and frescoes in palaces such as Schifanoia in Ferrara” (Friis 1998, 47).
24 In the fifteenth century Fernando de la Torre creates a poem with 48 stanzas which correspond to the 48 cards in the Spanish deck. Each tells its allegorical significance: “El poeta imagina unas rigurosas correspondencias entre los amores, los colores, y los palos de la baraja” [The poet imagines a rigorous correspondence between love, colours and the suits in the deck of cards] (Étienvre 1990, 17). This work may have appealed to Cervantes since it portrays a crazed gambler who runs away from learning, but imagines books everywhere he attempts to escape, even in the water and in the air. His castles in the air are not far removed from Don Quixote’s (or Anselmo’s) imagination. In Francisco de la Torre y Sevil’s Entretenimiento de las musas en esta baraja nueva de versos (1654), the four suits are related to genres: “A los oros corresponden los asuntos sacros; a las espadas, los asuntos heroicos; a las copas, los asuntos líricos; a los bastos, los asuntos burlescos” [Coins corresponds to sacred matters; swords to heroic subjects; cups to lyric topics; and wands to the comic] (Étienvre 1990, 17). Each section contains poems on the subject. We discover Charles V under swords (Torre 1654, 49) and Celestina under wands (Torre 1654, 123). A moral reading is found in Diego del Castillo’s Tratado muy útil en reprobación de los juegos (1528) (Étienvre 1990, 320). To these, Heiple adds numerous references to foretelling in works by Marcelino da Forli and Matteo Boiardo (Heiple 1993, 108–9).
25 In Lope de Vega’s La desdichada Estefanía the “rey de copas’ [king of cups] is mentioned in Act 3, in a conversation between Mudarra and Isabel, but it serves only as a pun on drinking, and does not seem to have allegorical / prophetic significance (1975, vv. 2372–6).
26 The oracle foretells that Acrisius would be killed by his grandson. To prevent this from happening (and from having a grandson), Acrisius incarcerates his only daughter. However, when she has a son, Perseus, Acrisius sets them adrift upon the waters.
27 While this writer of comedies survived the Middle Ages through textbooks for learning Latin, during the Renaissance he became a worthy subject of imitation by playwrights. His popularity continued during the Spanish Golden Age, where he again was used as a manual for learning Latin and as a writer worthy of imitation. The 1577 translation into Spanish by Simón Abril “is printed in double face with the Latin original … to serve as an aid to learning Latin” (Beardsley 1970, 54, #96). Lope de Vega, Cervantes’ rival, at times spoke against him. Together with Plautus, he places him under lock and key in his Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, and in Lo fingido verdadero, he has the emperor Diocletian reject both Plautus and Terence as being too old and worn. This may be an ironic passage since the text cited by the Roman emperor, the Andria, was the first ever produced during the Renaissance, in Florence in 1476. It was so prized by Italian playwrights that it was also translated by both Ariosto and Machiavelli.
28 In his History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault explains how even in dreams the sexual actor must play his role as social actor. Thus, a favourable dream would show, for example, a citizen sexually penetrating a slave (1986, 3.32–3).
29 On the image of Danaë in Argensola, see de Armas (2000, 190–2).
30 “Hence the young profligate in Terence … accepts this as authoritative precedent for his own licentiousness, and boasts that he is an imitator of God” (Augustine 1950, 46). The example continued to be used in the Renaissance, from the Dominican Catarino Politi to Johannes Molanus. Ginzburg explains how Molanus used the example in 1570 to warn against images that incite lust, while Politi in 1542 was more interested in the efficacy of images – they could arouse religious fervour or erotic desire (1989, 77).
31 Before Titian, Correggio executed a Danaë in Rome (1530–2). There were copies made of Titian’s Danaë. In the Casos prodigiosos y cueva encantada by Juan de Piña, there is a description of Don Antonio de Sotomayor’s house in El Espinar. There one finds “una galería tan rica y adornadas de pinturas del Tiziano y de los más excelentes pinceles” [a rich and adorned gallery of paintings by Titian and by the most excellent of painters] (cited in Vosters 1990, 154). Piña describes Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia and the Danaë. Vosters surmises: “Quizá poseyese copias de dichas pinturas” [Perhaps he owned copies of said paintings] (1990, 154).
32 For the date of the first Danaë, see Pedrocco (2000, 222). The second was painted in Rome for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1545–6), where the model for Danaë is the cardinal’s mistress (Talvacchia 1999, 46). Some critics claim that the mistress was named Angela and is “a relative of Signora Camilla” (Robertson 1992, 72); others claim it was Camilla Pisana, a brothel keeper and famed courtesan (Santore 1991, 415). If the latter is true and Cervantes was aware of it, then the link Camilla / Camila may be quite significant.
33 Phillip also inherited Titian’s Tantalus – but this was not initially given to him.
34 “tenía su aposento lleno de pinturas carnalísimas para con su vista y contemplación se provocar a lujurias” [he had his chamber filled with highly erotic paintings for him to see and contemplate which causes lust] (1964, 65).
35 “But it seems that Philip’s ‘camerino,’ the reconstruction of which has been much discussed … was never realized, since when they arrived in Spain the canvases were placed in different locations, to be brought together only early in the seventeenth century” (Pedrocco 2000, 222).
36 Indeed, Camila’s newly awakened desire may derive in part from Terence, where Pamphila looks with longing at the painting of Jupiter and Danaë.
37 Even Giulio Camillo, in his magical L’Idea del theatro at least twice points to Jupiter’s golden shower as “buona fortuna” [good fortune] (1991, 29, 80).
38 The French, for example, developed diamonds (coins), clubs (batons), hearts (cups), and spades (swords).
39 Heiple shows that “the meanings of the cards must have been somewhat common, for there are two seventeenth-century paintings that feature a pack of cards as an element of their iconology” (1993, 112). As noted, he discusses Antonio de Pereda’s El sueño del caballero (1640) “with several individual cards turned face up, showing the two of coins on top” (1993, 112). He also points to Juan Valdés de Leal’s Allegory of Vanity (1660) with another two of coins on top of a deck of cards. This card always represents change. Pereda also shows the ace of wands, which also appears in Velázquez’s Riña ante la embajada de España. Heiple does not mention the earlier Pereda painting.
40 Before drawing the card, the tale is suddenly interrupted at the beginning of chapter 35 when Sancho bursts in claiming that Don Quixote is battling with the giant Pandafilando (1978, 1.35.437; 1998, 313). It turns out that the knight has mistaken some wineskins for giants. Their blood is nothing but wine, something that the innkeeper is not too happy about. What we have here is a comic interlude (entremés). Indeed Cervantes was the author of a number of such short comic works performed in the theatres between acts. Although they often have nothing to do with the play, at times they parallel its subject matter. The spilling of the wine here recalls Ariosto’s test which becomes in the story the testing of Camila’s faithfulness. It is an anticipatory spill, coming shortly before Anselmo will find out that he has failed the test, that he has indeed spilled the wine from the cup before drinking it. The interlude also parallels the main action in that Don Quixote now assumes the role of a playing card; fighting with his sword he can be seen as the knight of swords. The spilling of wine may save Princess Micomicona, but it serves as prelude to the fall of the queen of swords, Camila.
41 See Moreto’s play, El lindo don Diego. Here, the maid Beatriz consults the cards to learn the future and discovers “o mentirá el rey de bastos / o no ha de querer casarse” [the king of clubs will eitheir lie / or will not want to get married] (vv. 2581–2). The mock-hero, Don Diego thus becomes a king of clubs.
42 “en una batalla que en aquel tiempo dio monsieur de Lautrec al Gran Capitán Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba en el reino” [in a battle fought about that time between Monsieur de Lautrec, and the Great Captain Goncalo Hernandez of Cordova, in the Kingdom of Naples] (1978, 1.35.446; 1998, 321). For some critics the battle mentioned in Cervantes’ tale is that of Ceriñola in 1503, when Lautrec was just beginning his career. However, Diego Clemencín believed that Cervantes is referring to 1527 when Lautrec became the French commander at the time that the Prince of Orange led Charles V’s forces (Cervantes 1833, 2:89). In February of 1528, the force, “laden with gold and loot, descended on Naples” (Chastel 1983, 35). Even though Lotario died in battle, the imperial army prevailed and the French were defeated. If the historical circumstance of Lotario’s death is correct, then the mention of the Gran Capitán is an anachronism, which points once again to the mutability of fortune, since he came to be shunned by Charles V, who feared his fame. Given the historical references, the tale takes place either around 1502 or around 1527. In either case, there are inconsistencies. If the Danaë painting points to Titian, then there is anachronism since it was done in 1552–3; and, if the tale refers to Pineda’s attack on Philip’s erotic camerino, then the tale must be placed in the 1580s.
43 “The most astonishing piece of fraudulence was the theft of the papal tapestries. Woven ten years before from Raphael’s cartoons, they were intended to be used on state occasions in the Sistine Chapel” (Chastel 1983, 97).
Amezúa y Mayo, Agustín G. de. 1951. “Cómo se hacía un libro en nuestro Siglo de Oro.” In Opúsculos histórico-literarios, 1:331–73. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Argensola, Bartolomé Leonardo de. 1975. Rimas. Edited by José Manuel Blecua. Vol. 1. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Ariosto, Ludovico. 1983. Orlando furioso. Translated by Guido Waltman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Augustine, Saint. 1950. The City of God. Translated by Marcus Dods. Introduction by Thomas Merton. New York: The Modern Library.
Barkan, Leonard. 1986. The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Beardsley, Theodore S. 1970. Hispano-Classical Translations Printed between 1482 and 1699. Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press.
Brownlee, Marina Scordilis. 1985. “Cervantes as Reader of Ariosto.” In Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes, edited by Kevin Brownlee and Marina Scordilis Brownlee, 220–37. Hanover and London: University Press of New England.
Camillo, Giulio. 1991. L’Idea del teatro. Parlemo: Sellerio.
Cervantes, Miguel de. 1833. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Edited and introduction by Diego Clemencin. 3 vols. Madrid: E. Aguado.
Cervantes, Miguel de. 1978. El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. 2 vols. Edited by Luis Murillo. Madrid: Castalia.
Cervantes, Miguel de. 1998. Don Quixote. Translated by Charles Jarvis. Introduction by E.C. Riley. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Civil, Pierre. 1990. “Erotismo y pintura mitológica en la España del Siglo de Oro.” Edad de Oro 9: 39–49.
Chastel, André. 1983. The Sack of Rome, 1527. Translated by Beth Archer. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
de Armas, Frederick A. 1992. “Interpolation and Invisibility: From Herodotus to Cervantes’s Don Quixote.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 4: 8–28.
de Armas, Frederick A. 2000. “Painting Danae, Diana, Europa and Venus: Titian and Argensola’s A Nuño de Mendoza.” Calíope 6: 181–97.
de Armas, Frederick A. 2005a. “Cervantes and Della Porta: The Art of Memory in La Numancia, El retablo de las maravillas, El licenciado Vidriera and Don Quijote.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 82 (5): 633–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/bhs.82.5.6.
de Armas, Frederick A. 2005b. “Simple Magic: Ekphrasis from Antiquity to the Age of Cervantes.” In Ekphrasis in the Age of Cervantes, edited by Frederick A. de Armas, 13–31. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.
de Armas, Frederick A. 2006. Quixotic Frescoes: Cervantes and Italian Renaissance Art. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
de Armas Wilson, Diana. 1987. “‘Passing the Love of Women’: The Intertextuality of El curioso impertinente.” Cervantes 7: 9–28.
Étienvre, Jean Pierre. 1990. Márgenes literarios del juego: Una poética del naipe siglos XVI–XVII. London: Tamesis.
Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House.
Foucault, Michel. 1986. The History of Sexuality. 3 vols. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Random House.
Friis, Ronald. 1998. “The Devil, the Tower and the Hanged Man: The Hermetic Tarot of the Numancia.” In A Star-Crossed Golden Age: Myth and the Spanish Comedia, edited by Frederick A. de Armas, 46–61. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.
García Santo-Tomás, Enrique. 2008. “Outside Bets: Disciplining Gamblers in Early Modern Spain.” Hispanic Review 77 (1): 147–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hir.0.0039.
García Santo-Tomás, Enrique. 2009. “Barroco material / material barroco.” In Materia crítica: formas de ocio y de consumo el la cultura áurea, edited by Enrique García Santo-Tomás, 11–31. Madrid: Iberoamericana.
Ginsburg, Carlo. 1989. Clues, Myths and the Historical Method. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Greene, Thomas M. 1982. The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Hahn, Juergen. 1972. “El curioso impertinente and Don Quijote’s Symbolic Struggle against Curiositas.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 49 (2): 128–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1475382722000349128.
Hart, Bret. 1996. The Outcasts of Poker Flat. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing.
Heiple, Daniel L. 1993. “The Two of Coins: An Unheeded Omen in El buscón.” Crítica hispánica 15 (1): 105–15.
Ife, B.W. 2005. “Cervantes, Herodotus and the Eternal Triangle: Another Look at the Sources of El curioso impertinente.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 82 (5): 671–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/bhs.82.5.8.
Kennedy, Ruth Lee. 1952. “The Madrid of 1617–1625: Certain Aspects of Social, Moral, and Educational Reform.” In Estudios hispánicos: homenaje a Archer M. Huntington, 275–309. Wellesley, MA: Department of Spanish, Wellesley College.
Lope de Vega Carpio, Félix. 1975. La desdichada Estefanía. Edited by Hugh W. Kennedy. University, MS: Romance Monographs.
Luque Fajardo, Francisco. 1503. Desengaño contra la ociosidad, y los juegos, utilísimo a los confesores, y penitentes, justicias, y los demas, a cuyo cargo está limpiar de vagabundos, tahures, y fulleros la Republica Cristiana. Madrid: Miguel Serrano de Vargas.
Mariana, Juan de. 1854. Tratado contra los juegos públicos: Obras del padre Juan de Mariana. Biblioteca de autores españoles 31. Madrid: Rivadeneyra.
Meltzer, Francois. 1987. Salome and the Dance of Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moreto, Augustín. 1987. El lindo don Diego. Edited by Frank P. Casa and Breislav Promorac. Madrid: Cátedra.
Orozco Díaz, Emilio. 1969. El teatro y la teatralidad del barroco. Barcelona: Planeta.
Panofsky, Erwin. 1969. Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographic. New York: New York University Press.
Paulson, Ronald. 1984. “Hogarth’s Country Inn Yard at Election Time: A Problem in Interpretation.” In English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, edited by C.J. Rawson, 196–208. Oxford: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3508310.
Pavel, Thomas. 2003. La pensée du roman. Paris: Gallimard.
Pedrocco, Filippo. 2000. Titian. New York: Rizzoli.
Pineda, Juan de. 1964. Diálogos familiares de la agricultura cristiana. Biblioteca de autores españoles 169. Madrid: Atlas.
Quint, David. 2003. Cervantes’s Novel of Modern Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Robertson, Clare. 1992. “Il gran Cardinale.” Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Santore, Cathy. 1991. “Danae: The Renaissance Courtesan’s Alter Ego.” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 54 (3): 412–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1482582.
Schneider, Norbert. 1994. The Art of Still Life: Still Life Painting in the Early Modern Period. Cologne: Taschen.
Spear, Richard E. 1997. The “Divine” Guido: Religion, Sex, Money and Art in the World of Guido Reni. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Suida Manning, Bertina Suida, and William Suida. 1958. Luca Cambiaso: La vita e le opere. Milan: Casa Editrice Ceschina.
Syverson-Stork, Jill. 1986. Theatrical Aspects of the Novel: A Study of Don Quixote. Valencia: Albatross.
Talvacchia, Bette. 1999. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Terence. 1992. The Comedies. Edited by Palmer Bovie. Translated by Palmer Bovie, Constance Carrier, and Douglass Parker. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Torre, Feniso de la. [Francisco de la Torre y Sevil] 1654. Entretenimiento de las Musas en esta baraxa nueva de versos dividida en cuatro manjares de asuntos sacros, heroicos, líricos y burlescos. Zaragoza: Juan de Ybar.
Vosters, Simon A. 1990. Rubens y España. Estudio artístico-literario sobre la estética del Barroco. Madrid: Cátedra.
Wagschal, Steven. 2005. “From Parmigianino to Pereda: Luis de Góngora’s Beautiful Women and Vanitas.” In Ekphrasis in the Age of Cervantes, edited by Frederick A. de Armas, 102–23. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.
Yates, Frances A. 1966. The Art of Memory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
