Quixotic Memories: Cervantes and Memory in Early Modern Spain

by Julia Dominguez

Overview

The work of Miguel de Cervantes – one of the most influential writers in early modern Europe – is a reflection of the rich culture of memory in which it was created. More than a theme, memory is a system of understanding in Cervantes’s world, resulting from the major social, religious, and economic changes that epitomized Renaissance humanist culture and that informed the transition to modernity.

Quixotic Memories offers insight into the plurality and complexity of memory and demonstrates how it plays an exceptionally critical role in Cervantes’s Don Quixote. It acknowledges Cervantes’s transition into modernity as he engaged with theories of memory that were developed in classical antiquity and adapted to the specific circumstances of his own time. Julia Domínguez explores the many spaces that memory created for itself in early modern Spain, particularly in the fields of philosophy, medicine, rhetoric, mnemotechnics, the visual arts, and pedagogy.

Engaging with primary and archival sources, Quixotic Memories provides a new reading of Cervantes’s famous novel by tracing the socio-historical and cultural prominence of memory throughout the author’s lifetime.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487543921
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	04/29/2022
Series:	Toronto Iberic
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Julia Dominguez is a professor of Spanish at Iowa State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Obsessions with Remembering: The Culture of Memory in Early Modern Spain

1. The Anatomy of Early Modern Memory

Cervantes and the Early Modern Mind
The Topography of the Early Modern Brain
Memory and Recollection
Don Quixote’s Memory

2. Mental Libraries: The Places of Memory

Imaginary Libraries
Cervantes and Artificial Memory
The Art of Memory and Its Tradition
The Art of Memory in the Time of Cervantes
Sierra Morena: The Vast Territories of Memory

3. Ut Pictura Memoria: The Mnemonic Power of Images

Visual Expressions of Mnemonic Culture in the Age of Cervantes
Cervantine Mnemonic Inflections
The Mnemonic Power of Images: The Imago Agente in Don Quixote
Affectio and the Corporeality of the Phantasmata
The Circulation of Images in Cultural Artefacts

4. Information Overload: Stocking Memory in the Age of Cervantes

The Anxiety of the "Labyrinths of Letters"
Pedagogy, Mnemonics, and the Limits of Humanist Education
The Cousin: Student and Humanist
External Memories
The Mimetic Memory of the Cousin

5. Disputes over Memory: Sancho and the Artful Manipulation of Memory

"O Sancho miente o Sancho sueña"
"A fe que no os falta memoria cuando vos queréis tenerla": Sancho’s Selective Memory
"Como ya pasó, no es"
The Story of Torralba and the Performative Dimension of Memory
"Alta y sobajada señora…"
The False Memory Embedded in Imagination

Epilogue
Lethe and the Laws of Oblivion: Sites of Forgetting in Don Quixote

What People are Saying About This

Edward H. Friedman

"An exceptional amount of research has gone into this beautifully crafted study. The result is an in-depth survey of the role of memory in Don Quixote and in the broader framework of the early modern period. A brief analysis of forgetfulness offers a superb complement. The volume provides much information, many lessons, and considerable food for thought."

Frederick A. de Armas

"Quixotic Memories is a truly groundbreaking volume that will shape future research. Julia Domínguez establishes from the very start the importance of memory for any reading of Don Quixote. Memory, she argues, relates to personal experience, social practice, and identity formation. Much more than that, it serves to swerve from the past to modernity. Learned and ingenious, the volume turns with ease from Plato's innate knowledge to memory overload and from nostalgia for the past to anxieties over recollection. A fascinating read."

Marsha S. Collins

"Julia Domínguez's Quixotic Memories demonstrates that prevailing concepts and concerns about memory and forgetting are actually inscribed into Cervantes's Don Quixote and therefore are foundational to the Western novel as a literary genre. Domínguez makes readers aware of how important the theme of memory is in the cultural imaginary of the time and how rich the literature and discussion about this theme was in Spain. The voluminous scholarship, elegant prose, and masterful use of cognitive theory will make this book highly influential while offering readers a valuable way to get at the heart of this great masterpiece."

Editorial Reviews

"With her masterful analysis of how Cervantes treats memory throughout Don Quixote, Domínguez has accomplished something quite rare in the world of Cervantine studies, a field populated by new books every month: writing a book that will be remembered."

—William Worden, The University of Alabama, Hispanófila

"An exceptional amount of research has gone into this beautifully crafted study. The result is an in-depth survey of the role of memory in Don Quixote and in the broader framework of the early modern period. A brief analysis of forgetfulness offers a superb complement. The volume provides much information, many lessons, and considerable food for thought."

—Edward H. Friedman, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor in the Humanities (Emeritus), Vanderbilt University

"Julia Domínguez’s Quixotic Memories demonstrates that prevailing concepts and concerns about memory and forgetting are actually inscribed into Cervantes’s Don Quixote and therefore are foundational to the Western novel as a literary genre. Domínguez makes readers aware of how important the theme of memory is in the cultural imaginary of the time and how rich the literature and discussion about this theme was in Spain. The voluminous scholarship, elegant prose, and masterful use of cognitive theory will make this book highly influential while offering readers a valuable way to get at the heart of this great masterpiece."

—Marsha S. Collins, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

" Quixotic Memories is a truly groundbreaking volume that will shape future research. Julia Domínguez establishes from the very start the importance of memory for any reading of Don Quixote. Memory, she argues, relates to personal experience, social practice, and identity formation. Much more than that, it serves to swerve from the past to modernity. Learned and ingenious, the volume turns with ease from Plato’s innate knowledge to memory overload and from nostalgia for the past to anxieties over recollection. A fascinating read."

—Frederick A. de Armas, Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago

From the Publisher