De islas y buen gobierno. Nuevos espejos clásicos y bizantinos en la Ínsula Barataria

RESUMEN: Este artículo ofrece una nueva aproximación a los capítulos relacionados con la Ínsula Barataria del Quijote a partir de la relación tradicional entre el tema de las islas y los tratados de buen gobierno. Cervantes tuvo acceso a los espejos de príncipes clásicos y bizantinos a través de las traducciones de Diego Gracián y sobre todo del Comentario en breve de su amigo Cristóbal Mosquera de Figueroa. Pero además conoció de primera mano el uso legal ordinario de los consejos de Agapeto y de las leyes del emperador Justiniano, que él adaptó more novelístico al gobierno de Sancho Panza con agudeza de ingenio. ABSTRACT: This article offers a new approach to the Ínsula Barataria´s episode in Don Quixote, by stablishing the traditional relationship between the island´s theme ant the treaties of good government. Cervantes had access to the classics and bizantines specula principum through the translations of Diego Gracián and, above all, the Comentario en breve of his friend Cristóbal Mosquera de Figueroa. But he new also the ordinary legal use of Agapeto´s advices and the emperor Justiniano´s laws in his time, which he adapted, in a novelistic way and with sharp wit, to the Sancho Panza´s government.

Nikos Kazantzakis’ Unshot Adaptations of Don Quixote and Decameron

This article examines two of Nikos Kazantzakis’ unshot screenplays of the early 1930s: his adaptations of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Boccaccio’s Decameron, kept in typed manuscripts at the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum Foundation in Iraklion, Crete. The article analyses Kazantzakis’ Don Quixote and Decameron in the contexts of early talking cinema and his ideas of the image-language relationship. Written at a time when the artistic value of talking cinema was still debated, Kazantzakis’ adaptations demonstrate that he sought to express ideas with images rather than dialogue (Don Quixote) and use sound as a creative element (Decameron) in ways alluding to Eisenstein’s 1928-1929 writings, with which, as evidence suggests, the Greek author was familiar. Thus, Kazantzakis’ Don Quixote and Decameron show how a technological development in film history – the coming of sound – and the Soviet film theory influenced this author’s adaptation techniques, while also enhancing our understanding of his creative career as well as the worldwide resonance of Cervantes’ and Boccaccio’s literary milestones.

„Hiszpania! Jakież czarodziejskie słowo, jakże uroczo brzmi ten wyraz!" Obraz Hiszpanii na przełomie XIX i XX wieku w polskich listach z podróży

Modern Polish ideas about the Iberian Peninsula can often be summarised in slogans: azure sky, beautiful women, bullfighting, Don Quixote from La Mancha. Has this image of Spain been with us for centuries, or has it been “produced” by modern mass tourism? The aim of this article is to analyse travel texts from the 19th and 20th centuries describing journeys around the Iberian Peninsula and an attempt to answer the question of what Spain looks like in the eyes of Poles deprived of their own statehood. Is it terra incognita, an exotic country with a rich history, in which travellers find a reflection in architecture and customs, fascinated by Madrid, Barcelona, and Salamanca? Or maybe it evokes disappointment? The article compares travel letters by four Polish travellers and historians: Aleksander Hirschberg, Adolf Pawiński, Józef Wawel-Louis, and Stanisław Starża. The analysis of the letters was divided into thematic blocks: historical Polish-Spanish relations, perceptions and impressions, opinions about Spaniards and Spanish women, and cultural controversies (corrida, cockfighting).

Forget Not Who Thou Art: Contradictory Identification in Ruiz de Burton's Play Don Quixote de la Mancha

In her play Don Quixote de la Mancha. A Comedy, in Five Acts, Taken from Cervantes’ Novel of that Name (1856), María Amparo Ruiz de Burton is seen to identify with her Don Quixote, a cathartic character who views himself as impotent and mistreated. The identification of Don Quixote as a colonized, mad Californio is not accidental, but done for ideological effect. He serves as an expression of an incipient —even if problematic— oppositional identity for Californios within the new Anglo/US hegemonic regime post-1848. It is a contradictory identification, loaded with racial and class anxieties, which aims to redress the decentering and despoliation of Californios as a whole while shining a light on those upper-class Californios who associated with their US colonizers. This article suggests that the play’s significance, and indeed uniqueness, is the creation of an incipient border identity for the Californios through the prism of madness.

The Presence of María de Velasco in Pinar’s Juego trobado, in the Carajicomedia, and in La novela del licenciado Vidriera by Cervantes

Research on the court ladies who participated in Pinar’s Juego trobado, a card game in verse completed in 1496, led to the discovery that María de Velasco, wife of Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, and adoptive-mother of Ignatius Loyola, subsequently appears in several literary texts, the first of which is the Carajicomedia, where she is metamorphosed into an old prostitute skilled in the arts of seduction. Surprisingly, I have detected her presence in La novela del licenciado Vidriera, one of Cervantes’ Novelas ejemplares: each of the names of the main character, given or adopted during the course of his life, is linked in some way with this lady; and, furthermore, there are other correspondences, above all the symbolism of the quince. This begs the question whether the tale was intended to convey a coded message, and if so, one wonders what kind of message. This discovery also seems to add some credence to the theory that in Don Quixote Cervantes wished to parody the life of Ignatius Loyola as well as the heroes of chivalric romance.

“Clinging Stubbornly to the Antithesis of Assumptions”: On the Difference Between Hegel’s and Spinoza’s Systems of Philosophy

This essay re-examines Hegel’s critique of Spinoza’s Ethics, focusing on the question of method. Are the axioms and definitions unmotivated presuppositions that make the attainment of absolute knowledge impossible in principle, as Hegel charges? This essay develops a new reading of the Ethics to defend it from this critique. I argue that Hegel reads Spinoza as if his system were constructed only according to the mathematical second kind of knowledge, ignoring Spinoza’s clear preference for knowledge of the third kind. The Ethics, I argue, is a book with several layers: it is at once a deductive mathematical system, and a handbook to aid the intuitive power of the active philosophical reader. The letter of each text may be identical, but they have little else in common – Pierre Menard’s rewriting of Don Quixote given systematic philosophical form.

El Quijote en la calle: historia de un espectáculo

Don Quijote en la Calle (Don Quixote on the street) is a popular show that takes place in Argamasilla de Alba (Ciudad Real). It is currently performed during the town’s Cervantine Days (April-June). At the moment, around 150 locals take part in this show, bringing the adventures of Don Quixote to life: horses, live music, dances from the Golden Age, fireworks, etc. In doing so, this unusual type of show achieves a unique staging. Heir to Estampas del Quijote (a street theatre that was formerly performed in the town), the Town Council of Argamasilla de Alba has applied to the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha for Don Quijote en la Calle to be declared worthy of ‘Regional Tourist Interest’.

Magias parciales de Cervantes: Garcilaso contra Avellaneda

This paper focuses on the references to Garcilaso de la Vega in Don Quixote, particularly in the second part, dated 1615. The aim of this study is to highlight the mechanism used by Cervantes to make Garcilaso’s verses an efficient tool for the dispute that his Quixote holds with Avellaneda’s text. From this perspective, I inquire into the way Cervantes builds himself as a reader of the classic writer, and sets his own writing on that trail. Garcilaso’s work is useful to him, among other things, to raise a discussion on the survival of texts for posterity.

El Don Chisciotte in Sierra Morena de Apostolo Zeno y Pietro Pariati: del Quijote al libreto

Zeno and Pariati are the authors of the libretto Don Chisciotte in Sierra Morena, composed by Francesco Conti and represented for the first time in 1719 at the court of Charles VI in Vienna. The episode has a central position in the First Part of Don Quixote, and offers several themes and a set of characters that hinder any reduction other literary genres. Apart from some changes due both to the requirements of opera poetry and the taste of the time, the analysis of the text of the libretto reveals a faithful relationship with the corresponding chapters of the Spanish work. However, when analysing the development of the reception of the themes and characters of Quixote, starting from the date of its publication (1605), it is possible to verify how much seventeenth-century rewritings influenced some of the choices made by librettists.