Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda: una crítica cervantina de la alegoresis emblemática

Abstract

The relationship between the heterogeneous and episodic nature of Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda and the dominant religious and political discourses of baroque Spain is a recurring topic of discussion in Cervantes studies. The purpose of my inquiry is to further this discussion by focusing on Cervantes’ treatment of the body and its relation to the production of language and meaning. Specifically, I am interested in comparing Cervantes’ use of what Mikhail Bakhtin has termed grotesque realism with the baroque aesthetic and philosophy of desengaño. At issue is Cervantes’ use and critique of “the emblematic mode of representation,” in which the corpse often functions as an allegorical sign of failed human aspirations. Cervantes articulates an alternative aesthetic and moral enterprise to baroque desengaño and the emblem, by privileging and problematizing the relationship between language and the body, refusing, in effect, to discard the grotesque body as a barrier to knowledge or redemption. To the contrary, Cervantes reframes the incorrigible nature of the human body—its sensuality as well as its bestiality—in order to ground his discursive practices and moral vision in an earthly arena, where other tongues must be learned and other bodies touched in order to break through the silence of desengaño and its symbolic interdictions.