Quixotic Economy: Comedy, Romance, and Early Modern Economics in Don Quijote

Abstract

The ascension to the throne of Philip III in 1598 brought social and political changes that were reflected in two of the major cultural discourses of the period. In a series of late articles, Anthony Close analyzed the process through which a relaxation of the ecclesiastical and secular censorship and cultural austerity that characterized the reign of Philip II led to a resurgence in the production of comic fiction, particularly following the publication of Guzman de Alfarache in 1599 and 1604.1 Concurrently, the possibility of political reform under the new regime gave rise to a renewal in the number of memorials submitted to the government by the so-called arbitristas, the political economists of the age. Michel Cavillac has shown that these reform proposals, which insist on the honorability of productive labor and the need for all social classes to participate in the economic renewal of the kingdom, constitute an important part of the cultural background in the realistic fiction of the early seventeenth century (42; original emphasis). Moreover, he argues that this economic discourse contributed to the breakdown of the orthodox division of literary styles by helping to dissolve the traditional topicos de persona on which they were predicated, particularly in Guzman de Alfarache and Don Quijote. These are precisely the two prose works of the period that Close identifies as successfully transcending the traditional burlas/veras dichotomy, according to which los generos jocosos surgen como replica a los serios, presentandose como su contrapartida parodica y degradada ( La di cotomia 115). Both critics, therefore, attribute revolutionary formal and thematic innovations to the presence of discreet discourses within the narrative, the comic, and the economic, respectively. \nAs I shall argue in this essay, however, in Don Quijote the comic and the economic are not separable. Rather, Cervantes introduces the discourse of contemporary political economy as an integral part of the parody of chivalric romance from the inception of the narration, including in the characterization of Don Quijote himself. This aspect of the economic discourse is consonant with Close s analysis of the comic as a parodic reflection of its heroic opposite. Without ever abandoning this burlesque element, Cervantes nevertheless modulates the economic references in unexpected and original ways that transcend the rigorous separation of themes and styles, as Cavillac argues, so as to encompass political critique, social commentary, and, ultimately, to fashion a radical fusion with romance narrative in a sophisticated synthesis that presages the psychological complexity and everyday realism of the modern novel.