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Martin and the Ghosts of the Papacy: Don Quijote 1.19 between Sulpicius Severus and Thomas Hobbes

E. C. Graf
I keep wishing that we didnt have any theologians. Richard Rorty, Comments (74)

Attacks on religious practice abound in Don Quijote (160515) by Miguel de Cervantes (15471616). Among the most blasphemous is the knights decision to imitate the penitence of Amads de Gaula by fashioning a rosary out of a particularly lthy piece of clothing:
Mas ya s que lo ms que l hizo fue rezar y encomendarse a Dios; pero qu har de rosario, que no le tengo? En esto le vino al pensamiento cmo le hara, y fue que rasg una gran tira de las faldas de la camisa, que andaban colgando, y diole once udos, el uno ms gordo que los dems, y esto le sirvi de rosario el tiempo que all estuvo, donde rez un millin de avemaras. (1.26.29192) [Yet I well know that what he most did was to pray and commend himself to God; but what can I use as a rosary, not having one on me? As he said this an idea came into his head for making one, and he tore a long strip from his shirt-tail hanging down behind him, and he tied eleven knots in it, one of them bigger than the others, and this he used as a rosary all the time he was there, during which he said a million Ave Marias. (221)]1

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The second edition of 1605 reduced this passage to read Mas ya s que lo ms que l hizo fue rezar y as lo har yo [Yet I well know that what he most did was to pray and that is what I will do] (1.26.292n12). In 1624 the Portuguese Inquisition expurgated almost as much. Clearly, the rst modern novels lower-bodily contamination of the instrument of prayer to the Virgin transgressed orthodoxy (cf. Fig. 1).2 But just how radical was DQs sacrilege? What importance, intentional or otherwise, should we attach to it? Critics decry the anachronism of calling Cervantes an Enlightenment skeptic; others insist he is the product of Renaissance religious humanism. Both are unnecessary restrictions. The scatological impertinence of Don Quijotes rosary gures a materialist critique of theism, just as the general thisworldliness of DQ dispels metaphysical superstitions. By specifying the medieval origin (Sulpicius Severus) and the rst serious Enlightenment reception (Thomas Hobbes) of the cuerpo muerto (dead body) adventure of DQ 1.19, I will demonstrate how the novel overcomes religious humanism and inaugurates modern empiricism.3 Martin and corpses
The decisive transformation took place when a genuine religious ethos superseded the religious pathos which had motivated the preceding centuries of religious controversy. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (164)

The cuerpo muerto adventure relates Don Quijote and Sanchos encounter with a nighttime funeral procession, which they mistake for otherworldly beings. Don Quijote attacks the mourners, who ee, and the one he manages to unhorse excommunicates him. There are two schools regarding the sources of this episode. Many argue it refers to the chivalric novel Palmern de Inglaterra (1.7677), where Florin del Desierto encounters the dead body of Fortibrn el Esforzado.4 Florins adventure is short and its connections to DQ simple: a corpse on a bier, the interrogation of a grieving squire, and Florins desire to avenge Fortibrns death. The allusion ts Cervantes parody of novels of chivalry, so details like the asas (beams) on which the corpse is carried or Don Quijotes interest in the story of both corpse and mourners might echo Palmern. Nevertheless, the chivalric

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episode does not occur at night, there is no confusion, fear, or suspense regarding anything supernatural, and there is no violence. Others argue the cuerpo muerto adventure retells the events surrounding the transportation of the body of San Juan de la Cruz from beda to Segovia in 1593.5 This too might explain several details. Cervantes priests have set out from Baeza, near beda, and their destination is Segovia. The novels nocturnal encounter suggests the secret itinerary for the relocation of San Juans body, due to the cities rivalry over

Fig. 1. Jrme David, Don Quijote 1.20 (1650). Courtesy of The Hispanic Society of America, New York.

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the sacred relics. The fearful, mysterious tone of the estraa visin [strange vision] (1.19.201; 148) recalls the testimony given by San Juans mourners, who claimed they were twice confronted by diabolical apparitions. These are suggestive interpretations, and even work well together if we imagine Cervantes unleashing his protagonists obsession with chivalric ction on real personages. But they are less satisfactory when we consider the chapters premises, actions, and themes. Neither adequately accounts for Don Quijotes failure to recognize the mourners, his decision to assault them, or his subsequent excommunication. A third referent in DQ 1.19, equally defensible through textual details, but more in harmony with its events and motifs, is Chapter 12 of De vita Beati Martini by Sulpicius Severus (c.353c.429):
Accidit autem insequenti tempore, dum iter ageret, ut gentilis cuiusdam corpus, quod ad sepulcrum cum superstitioso funere deferebatur, obuium haberet; conspicatusque eminus uenientium turbam, quidnam id esset ignarus, paululum stetit. Nam fere quingentorum passuum interuallum erat, ut difcile fuerit dinoscere quid uideret. Tamen, quia rusticam manum cerneret et, agente uento, lintea corpori superiecta uolitarent, profanos sacriciorum ritus agi credidit, quia esset haec Gallorum rusticis consuetudo, simulacra daemonum candido tecta uelamine misera per agros suos circumferre dementia. Leuato ergo in aduersos signo crucis, imperat turbae non moueri loco onusque deponere. Hic uero, mirum in modum, uideres miseros primum uelut saxa riguisse. Dein, cum promouere se summo conamine niterentur, ultra accedere non ualentes ridiculam in uertiginem rotabantur, donec uicti corporis onus ponunt. Attoniti et semet inuicem aspicientes, quidnam sibi accidisset taciti cogitabant. Sed cum beatus uir conperisset exequiarum esse illam frequentiam, non sacrorum, eleuata rursum manu dat eis abeundi et tollendi corporis potestatem. Ita eos et, cum uoluit, stare conpulit et, cum libuit, abire permisit. (278) [Now, it came to pass some time after the above, that while Martin was going on a journey, he met the body of a certain heathen, which was being carried to the tomb with superstitious funeral rites. Perceiving from a distance the crowd that was approaching, and being ignorant as to what was going on, he stood still for a little while. For there was a distance of nearly half a mile between him and the crowd, so that it was difcult to discover what the spectacle he beheld really was. Nevertheless, because he saw it was a rustic gathering, and when the linen clothes spread over the body were blown about by the action of the wind, he believed that some profane rites of sacrice were being performed. This thought occurred to him, because it was the custom of the Gallic rustics in their wretched folly to carry about through the elds the images of demons veiled with a white

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covering. Lifting up, therefore, the sign of the cross opposite to them, he commanded the crowd not to move from the place in which they were, and to set down the burden. Upon this, the miserable creatures might have been seen at rst to become stiff like rocks. Next, as they endeavored, with every possible effort, to move forward, but were not able to take a step farther, they began to whirl themselves about in the most ridiculous fashion, until, not able any longer to sustain the weight, they set down the dead body. Thunderstruck, and gazing in bewilderment at each other as not knowing what had happened to them, they remained sunk in silent thought. But when the saintly man discovered that they were simply a band of peasants celebrating funeral rites, and not sacrices to the gods, again raising his hand, he gave them the power of going away, and of lifting up the body. Thus he both compelled them to stand when he pleased, and permitted them to depart when he thought good. (3435)]6

Severus passageopening a section paradoxically entitled Conuersio Paganorum [Conversion of Pagans]facilitates correspondences with the cuerpo muerto adventure that the other sources do not. The exposition of the encounter between Martin (c.315c.399) and the corpse is paralleled when Don Quijote and Sancho Panza await the approaching funeral with uncertainty: estuvieron quedos, mirando atentamente lo que poda ser aquello [there they both sat motionless, peering to make out what it could be]; apartndose los dos a un lado del camino, tornaron a mirar atentamente lo que aquello de aquellas lumbres que caminaban poda ser [standing a little to one side of the road, they peered again to try and make out what all those moving lights could be] (1.19.20001; 14748). Martins commanding intransigence is amplied in Don Quijotes boldness: Deteneos, y sed ms bien criado y dadme cuenta de lo que os he preguntado; si no, conmigo sois en batalla [Halt, and mind your manners, and inform me of what I have asked. If not, I challenge you all to mortal combat] (1.19.202; 149). Similar to what Severus describes, but retouched with physical instead of spiritual causes, are the whirling panic and paralysis that grip Cervantes mourners when attacked: Los enlutados asimesmo, revueltos y envueltos en sus faldamentos y lobas, no se podan mover [But the men in mourning, swathed and tangled in their skirts and cassocks, couldnt run] (1.19.202; 149); moments later Don Quijotes rst victim shouts, Harto rendido estoy, pues no me puedo mover, que tengo una pierna quebrada [Ive given up alreadyI cant move, one of my legs is broken] (1.19.203; 150). Beyond these details is the misperception of religious heresy central to both texts. More in keeping with Cervantes design than

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the two devils reported by the mourners of San Juan are Severus simulacra daemonum eventually unveiled as a case of mistaken identity on the part of the hero. The eager knight misidentifying priests as enemies, and vice versa, parodies and complicates the over-zealous Martin mistaking Christians for pagans. Early on, the narrator relates the perspective of the mourners under attack, who ee the knight porque todos pensaron que aquel no era hombre, sino diablo del inerno [because they all thought he wasnt a man but a devil from hell] (1.19.202; 149). At the episodes climax, trying to dissuade the madman from violence, the bachiller (Bachelor of Arts) Alonso Lpez appeals to their common faith: suplico a vuestra merced, si es caballero cristiano, que no me mate, que cometer un gran sacrilegio, que soy licenciado y tengo las primeras rdenes [I beg you, if youre a Christian knight, not to kill meyoud be committing a great sacrilege because Im a master of arts and Ive taken my rst orders] (1.19.203; 150). The language with which Don Quijote confesses his confusion reinforces the theme: Pues quin diablos os ha trado aqu dijo don Quijote, siendo hombre de Iglesia? [And what the devil brings you here, said Don Quixote, if you are a man of the cloth?] (1.19.203; 150). The most overt appropriation of Severus story is Don Quijotes dismissal of his error as an unavoidable conict between his professional duty and his inability to perceive the Christian status of the mourners: propiamente semejbades cosa mala y del otro mundo; y, as, yo no pude dejar de cumplir con mi obligacin acometindoos, y os acometiera aunque verdaderamente supiera que rades los mesmos satanases del inerno, que por tales os juzgu y tuve siempre [The trouble . . . arose from your coming . . . looking exactly like something evil from the other world; and so I could not fail to full my obligation to attack you, and I should have attacked you even if I had known that you were the very devils from hell, which is what I took you for] (1.19.204; 15051). The Latin formula Lpez uses to excommunicate the knight links all these misperceptions to the demonizations of the enemy casually certied by the rhetoric of Counter-Reformation doctrine: Olvidbaseme de decir que advierta vuestra merced que queda descomulgado por haber puesto las manos violentamente en cosa sagrada, iuxta illud, Si quis suadente diabolo, etctera [Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that youre excommunicated for laying violent hands on what is sacred, according to where it says, Anyone who, persuaded by the devil, etc.] (1.19.206; 152,

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994). Don Quijotes response carries the episodes impertinence to the top of the Catholic hierarchy:
No entiendo ese latn respondi don Quijote, mas yo s bien que no puse las manos, sino este lanzn; cuanto ms que yo no pens que ofenda a sacerdotes ni a cosas de la Iglesia, a quien respeto y adoro como catlico y el cristiano que soy, sino a fantasmas y a vestiglos del otro mundo. Y cuando eso as fuese, en la memoria tengo lo que le pas al Cid Ruy Daz, cuando quebr la silla del embajador de aquel rey delante de Su Santidad del Papa, por lo cual lo descomulg, y anduvo aquel da el buen Rodrigo de Vivar como muy honrado y valiente caballero. (1.19.206) [The Latin is beyond me, Don Quixote replied, yet I know very well that it was not my hands but this pike that I laid on you; and furthermore I did not think I was attacking priests or anything to do with the Church, which I respect and adore as the good Catholic and faithful Christian that I am, but ghosts and phantoms from the other world. And even if I have done what you say, I can remember what happened to the Cid Ruy Daz when he smashed the chair of that kings ambassador in front of His Holiness the Pope, who excommunicated him for what he had done; yet the good Cids behaviour on that day had been that of a very honourable and valiant knight. (152)]

We can approach the meaning of the cuerpo muerto adventure through Javier Herreros understanding of the two-step process of the authors irony. In his study of the Sierra Morena episodes at the heart of DQ, Herrero observes that Cervantes most sophisticated irony involves a second rhetorical move whereby it acquires sincerity. Turning back on what has just been narrated, such moments involve not only an ironical version of the adventure, but, through its irony, a valid commentary on it (60). This happens at the end of DQ 1.19, where the bachillers and the knights subjective evaluations of their comical encounter represent the priestly and military castes ignorant senses of professional duty. But DQ 1.19s second-order irony also has hagiographical and biographical dimensions. We should consider why this particular early modern Spanish author appropriated the life of a particular medieval saint. Cervantes excommunication while a requisition ofcer for the Armada in 1587 makes for a more heartfelt attack against the Counter Reformation Church. Biographer Jean Canavaggio thinks Don Quijotes response to Lpez expresses the authors anticlericalism (187). The personal irony of the knights excommunication also connects to the life of Martin. The saint performs no

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excommunications during his encounter with the corpse in Gaul, but Severus story both presupposes and illustrates his uncompromising stance against heresy. In The History of the Franks, Gregory of Tours (53894) claims that Martin was a powerful advocate of excommunication in late antiquity, particularly in Spain: He persuaded Maximus against the war which he was planning in Spain in an attempt to wipe out the heretics, considering it sufcient for them to be expelled from Catholic churches and from Catholic communion (10.31.594). By Cervantes day, excommunication and the infamous auto de fe were favorite means of coercion in what J. H. Burns calls the confessional state, where religious conformity was the prerequisite for citizenship (2).7 We face four possibilities for the corpse episode: a reference to chivalric ction, a play on reliquary politics, personal revenge against clerical authority, or a systematic satire on hagiography and excommunication. Although not incompatible, critics preferences reect the degree of radicality they grant to DQ. Those privileging the reference to Palmern read a relatively uncomplicated parody. Others, like Columba Cary-Elwes and Edward Sarmiento, think Cervantes is playing with the clergy of Segovia: They, or their emissaries, had been scared by the devil; no, says Cervantes, that was my Don Quixote prowling about (128). Like Leo Spitzer, Erich Auerbach, P. E. Russell, Anthony Close (Cervantes), et al., they envision a lighthearted breed of satirist, showing us once again the detestability of self-willed, self-appointed interfering . . . with complete serenity, with much good humor and even some slapstick (Cary-Elwes and Sarmiento 129). Those favoring the biographical mode sense more serious hostility toward religious orthodoxy. Finally, the humanist reading links this anger to an intellectual program: Cervantes seems to be suggesting that there is no inherent difference between a religious procession and a vision out of hell. This is a scandalous proposition in the repressive environment of 1600, possible only to someone nurtured on Erasmus and his distaste for processions ( Johnson 13). Cervantes use of Martin suggests Erasmian scandal. Undermining religious hypocrisy and chicanery he rewrites the silliest of miracles, one in which, ironically, the hagiographer describes the saints innocent antagonists as ridiculous. Now the mourners think that Don Quijotein the position of the confused saintis possessed by the devil, and instead of realizing their error, they excommunicate him. Like the medieval chivalric knight, Martin is removed from his

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fourth-century world and dropped into the late Renaissance. The anachronism is again comical, pathetic, and provocative. Poetic justice from the perspective of excommunicated Christians: the patron saint of the policy takes his own medicine. In the fourth century, containing heretics instead of killing them was progressive; by the sixteenth century, to some at least, the same attitude seemed outdated, producing public executions that replicated the imperialist brutality it once sought to control.8 Finally, if the corpse episode deals a realistic blow to one of Don Quijotes ights of fancy, it makes possible later an Erasmian contrast between the popular folly of sacred spectacle and the more meaningful essence of Christianity. DQ 1.19 disarms religious pathos; 2.58 glosses a more enduring and ethically grounded episode from Martins life. In the latter episode, Don Quijote asks a group of peasants to uncover the images of saints they plan to use in a local mystery play. His commentary on the rst of these alludes to Chapter 3 of De vita Beati Martini (Fig. 2):
Descubrila el hombre, y pareci ser la de San Martn puesto a caballo, que parta la capa con el pobre; y apenas la hubo visto don Quijote, cuando dijo: Este caballero tambin fue de los aventureros cristianos, y creo que fue ms liberal que valiente, como lo puedes echar de ver, Sancho, en que est partiendo la capa con el pobre y le da la mitad; y sin duda deba de ser entonces invierno, que, si no, l se la diera toda, segn era de caritativo. (2.58.1096) [The man uncovered it, and it emerged as St Martin on horseback, dividing his cloak with the beggar. And as soon as Don Quixote saw it he said: This knight was another of the Christian adventurers, and in my opinion he was more generous than courageous, as you can observe, Sancho, in the fact that he is dividing his cloak and giving the beggar half of it; and it must have been winter at the time because he was so charitable that otherwise he would have given the beggar all of it. (87475)]

Martins humble charity is admired, his magical mistake discarded. Recalling the anti-hagiographical tactics of DQ 1.19, the prosaicness of Don Quijotes nal comment in 2.58 is both funny and meaningful. The temperature of the air and Martins imperfect desire to ameliorate anothers suffering, giving only half of his cloak, are matter-of-fact details that foreclose the mystical trappings of theisms divine interventions and post-mortem rewards.9 But this persistent, countervailing, empirical attitude toward Martin

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Fig. 2. El Greco, Saint Martin and the Beggar (159799), Widener Collection, Image 2004 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

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moves us beyond the scope of satirical paradox la Erasmus and onto a new vision of reality. In her typology of Severus hagiography, Clare Stancliffe considers Martins encounter with the corpse exemplary of the nature miracles (364), and one especially problematic for modern readers: There are a few nature miracles, however, for which we are unlikely to be able to nd any underlying rationale: notably the xation miracles (255). This is because the admiratio (marvel) produced by medieval hagiography reinforces a style of writing and reading that quashes critical inquiry into the events described. The modern mind remains amused and bemused by the inability of author and readers to grasp the absurdity of a miracle that occurs when a saint attempts to punish people who turn out to share his beliefs. DQ 1.19 formulates its own readers epistemological status in terms of her reaction to Severus story: if she takes Martins encounter with the corpse seriously, she is deluded and medieval; if she laughs, she is rational and modern. Cervantes facilitates the latter. Pushing the limits of his humanist instruction he disallows the suspension of the laws of nature that would grant a man control over the bodies of others through the sign of the cross. The stage is now set for the Enlightenment, and to argue that Cervantes was neutral, non-critical, or non-problematic in this respect, as Spitzer, Auerbach, Russell, Close (Cervantes), et al. do, is misguided. We should even interrogate the compromise involved in Alban Forciones idea that Cervantes writes secular miracles (Humanist 317 ff.). His humanist training is important, but the contrast between a man who shares clothing with another and a saint who mistakenly brandishes divine power against his own people, only to say oops, carry on, indicates a skeptical author, not a deeply religious one.10 On the contrary, satirizing the medieval mind still lurking about in the Renaissance world, DQ 1.19 signals modern materialism. The simultaneous attacks on miracles and Counter-Reformation authority are underpinned by an important contrast between the body and notions of its incorporeal perpetuation. Cervantes exploits Martins initial belief that the mourners are his devil-worshipping adversaries, but he outstrips the issue of heresy by specifying that Don Quijote and Sancho suspect the presence of ghosts.11 These carry over from the previous chapter, when the knight had explained his helplessness during the public abuse of his squire, claiming he had been transxed by fantasmas y gente del otro mundo [spirits or people of another world] (1.18.186; Shelton trans. 1.132). The dialogue opening DQ 1.19 adds the theme of heresy to that of ghosts by guring Sanchos previous abuse as a sign of Don Quijotes excommunication

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for breaking a vow. The squire implores the knight to reconcile with eccelesastical authority lest les volver la gana a las fantasmas de solazarse otra vez conmigo, y aun con vuestra merced, si le ven tan pertinaz [those spirits will take again a fancy to solace themselves with me, and peradventure with you yourself if they see you obstinate] (1.19.199; Shelton trans. 1.143). Pertinaz also means reo de la Inquisicin que persiste en su error o en la hereja de que es acusado [defendant before the Inquisition who persists in his error or in the heresy of which he is accused] (Cervantes 1.19.199n5). Subsequently, as the ghosts approach, Sancho fears more bodily harm. This time Don Quijote promises protection against all metaphysical enemies that may materialize: Desdichado de mi! respondi Sancho; si acaso esta aventura fuese de fantasmas, como me lo va pareciendo, adnde habr costillas que la sufran? Por ms fantasmas que sean dijo Don Quijote, no consentir yo que te toquen en el pelo de la ropa [Unfortunate I! quoth Sancho. If by chance this adventure were of ghosts, as it seemeth to me that it is, where will there be ribs to suffer it? Be they never so great ghosts, said Don Quixote, I will not consent that they touch one hair of thy garments] (1.19.200; Shelton trans. 1.144). In the dialogue with Lpez, Don Quijote continues the theme, rst claiming the priests seemed to him cosa mala y del otro mundo [some bad thing and of the other world] and later fantasmas y . . . vestiglos del otro mundo [shadows and spirits of the other world] (1.19.204, 206; Shelton trans. 1.148, 150). But ghosts, spirits, shadows, and other worlds share the fate of miracles and religious authority: as untenable as a supernatural event or a Christian persecution are concepts like non-bodily bodies or metaphysical places. Thus, when the knight wants to investigate si el cuerpo que vena en la litera eran huesos o no [whether the corpse that came in the litter were bones or not], thanks to the pragmatic wisdom of Sancho, the cuerpo muerto remains just that, a dead body: El jumento est como conviene; la montaa, cerca; la hambre carga: no hay qu hacer sino retirarnos con gentil comps de pies, y, como dicen, vyase el muerto a la sepultura y el vivo a la hogaza [The ass is in good plight, according to my desire, and the mountains at hand, and hunger oppresseth us, therefore we have nothing else to do at this time but retire ourselves with a good pace, and as it is said, To the grave with the dead, and let them that live to the bread] (1.19.20607; Shelton trans. 1.150). Here is the implacable this-

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worldliness of DQ that dealt the best-selling coup de grce to theism and made European thought modern. Hobbes and ghosts
A spectre is haunting Europethe spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Manifesto of the Communist Party (473)

The beginning of The Manifesto of the Communist Party is likely the most famous ideological deployment of incorporeity in the history of modern thought.12 Both poignant honesty and brutal condence prompt Marx and Engels representation of the materialist struggle as the haunting presence of the inescapable rebellion against the reality of economic relations. In 1848 the communist program has not materialized . . . yet. But the Marxian specter is also a legacy of the anti-theists of the late Renaissance. In his Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right Marx recognizes that the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism, and although he believes this work is largely completed, he remains intrigued by religions nonbodily bodies and metaphysical places: Man, who has found in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a supernatural being, only his own reection, will no longer be tempted to nd only the semblance of himselfa non-human beingwhere he seeks and must seek his true reality (53). Religion is not only the opium of the people, it is the soul of soulless conditions; and it is the task of history, therefore, once the other world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world (54).13 To the extent that political thought depends on tropes, it is important to note shades of Thomas Hobbes (15881679) in Marx and Engels spectral formulation of what terries their reactionary enemies. Elsewhere the communists make no bones about this debt. In Engels letter to Joseph Bloch he writes: Hobbes was the rst modern materialist (Marx 764). At a crucial moment in Capital We must now examine more closely this peculiar commodity, labourpower. Like all others it has a valueMarx quotes directly from

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Hobbes: The value or worth of a man, is as of all other things his pricethat is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power (339n5; Leviathan 10.63).14 The communists respect for the philosopher makes sense. The precondition of their own critique was the debunking of religions invisible powers, incorporeal souls, and metaphysical placesi.e., the work of Hobbes: this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion; and in them that worship, or feare that Power otherwise than they do, Superstition; of the Essence of a Man, which (they say) is his Soule, they afrm it, to be All of it in his little Finger, and All of it in every other Part (how small soever) of his Body; and yet no more Soule in the Whole Body, than in any one of those Parts; whereas Motion is change of Place, and Incorporeall Substances are not capable of Place, they are troubled to make it seem possible, how a Soule can goe hence, without the Body to Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory; and how the Ghosts of men (and I may adde of their clothes which they appear in) can walk by night (Leviathan 11.75, 46.466). Fifty years ago, Edward Wilson claimed that comparative literature need not only go one way; even an inferior imitation may be a useful pointer backwards (28). He was laying the groundwork for the commonly held view that early interpretations of DQ as exemplary comic art conrm its authors modest intentions. But cervantistas of the casual humorist or aesthetic innovation schools border on prevarication in their avoidance of Hobbes. A reader and writer of his caliber, gravity, and importance challenges the logic of keeping Cervantine thought separate from Enlightenment skepticism. To the degree that Hobbes was inuenced by DQ, modern rational empiricism, even communism, are legacies of the novel. If Hobbes merely found Cervantes laughably delightful, then Erasmian humanism still marks the philosophical limit of the Spaniards modernity. But Hobbes understood DQ more than most, incorporating the major tropes and themes of Cervantine realism into his most ambitious work. Hobbes references DQ most explicitly in the short treatise Human Nature (1650), which emphasizes the need for skepticism in response to the fallibility of human intelligence. Among the defects of the human mind is madness, and among the examples of a particularly dangerous type of arrogant madness is Don Quijote: And the gallant Madness of Don Quixotte is nothing else but an Expression of such Height of vain Glory as reading of Romance may produce in pusillani-

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mous Men (qtd. in Cherchi 47; Hobbes 67). Importantly, Hobbes allusion follows a discussion of the delusions of religious fanatics and false prophets. On the basis of Human Nature, Paolo Cherchi asserts that compared to other seventeenth-century English readers of Cervantes, Hobbes is exceptional: In nessuna allusione dei contemporanei di Hobbes si rinviene una cos profunda caraterizzazione della pazzia delleroe cervantino [In no other allusion by Hobbes contemporaries does one nd such a profound characterization of the madness of the Cervantine hero] (48). The philosophers greatest contribution to the history of ideas, however, is his theory of the civil state in Leviathan (1651). Here again he had Cervantes very much in mind.15 Laying the groundwork for his political theory, Hobbes surveys the human imagination in a passage echoing Human Nature. He distinguishes between simple imagination, which he associates with sensory perception and elementary memory, and a more complicated and dangerous mode, which he calls compounded imagination. The pragmatic empirical materialist exhorts us to regard with skepticism the complications of the mind: So when a man compoundeth the image of his own person, with the image of the actions of an other man; as when a man imagins himselfe a Hercules, or an Alexander, (which happeneth often to them that are much taken with reading of Romants) it is a compound imagination, and properly but a Fiction of the mind (2.16). To quote Ronald Paulson: It is doubtful that Hobbes could have written this sentence without thinking of Don Quixote (8). Paulson suggests that Cervantes had a more thought-provoking effect on early readers than most would allow. Nevertheless, like Cherchi, he limits his impact to psychological theory. The connection between DQ and Leviathan runs far deeper than the matter of impaired human reason. Leviathan begins by discussing the error of individuals who succumb to their self-indulgent fantasies, but quickly turns to attacking the political entity that benets most from their compounded imaginationsi.e., the Catholic Church. As Hobbes leverages the civil state against each of these problems, Cervantes is his natural ally on both fronts: the general premise of DQ reveals dysfunctional thinking at the personal level; the specic double critique of ghosts and excommunication in DQ 1.19 exemplies the struggle between the real civil state and the illusory religious one. During the litany of denunciations of Catholic doctrine in Leviathans nale, Hobbes transfers the metaphor of the ghost, which he has

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used throughout, onto his ultimate target. The authority of the Pope, says the philosopher, poses the ultimate threat to the civil state, and as such it is the most diabolical ction ever perpetrated on humanity. Paradoxically, the key to the Churchs success is its appropriation of a political power that has been dead for over a millennium:
[F]rom the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for Bishop Universall, by pretence of Succession to St. Peter, their whole Hierarchy, or Kingdome of Darknesse, may be compared not untly to the Kingdome of Fairies; that is, to the old wives Fables in England, concerning Ghosts and Spirits, and the feats they play in the night. And if a man consider the originall of this great Ecclesiasticall Dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy, is no other, than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen Power. (47.480)

Hobbes pushes the limits of Don Quijotes pride at being excommunicated like the Cid before Su Santidad del Papa. The Pope is not only the enemy of personal honor, he is historys greatest usurper of the public trust. Extending his critique to Catholicisms reliance on the power of a dead language, the philosophers damning analogy is the same as that between the ghostly funeral procession at the beginning of DQ 1.19 and the vanquished cleric who uses Latin to reassert his authority at its conclusion: The Language also, which they use, both in the Churches, and in their Publique Acts, being Latine, which is not commonly used by any Nation now in the world, what is it but the Ghost of the Old Romane Language? (47.48081). He subsequently applies the analogy to the entire sacerdotal caste: The Ecclesiastiques are Spirituall men, and Ghostly Fathers. The Fairies are Spirits, and Ghosts. Fairies and Ghosts inhabite Darknesse, Solitudes, and Graves. The Ecclesiastiques walke in Obscurity of Doctrine, in Monasteries, Churches, and Church-yards (47.481). The edices from which this ghostly empire exerts its authority recall the deluded topography of Don Quijote: The Fairies also have their enchanted Castles, and certain Gigantique Ghosts, that domineer over the regions round about them (47.481). Finally, Hobbes labels the Churchs representatives Superstitious, Enchanted Subjects (47.481) and tilts denitively against the policy of excommunication: the Spirituall Power of the Pope (without bounds of his own Civill Dominion) consisteth onely in the Fear that Seduced people stand in, of their Excommunication; upon hearing of false Miracles, false Traditions, and false Interpretations of the Scripture (47.482).

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The gurative protocols of Hobbesian empiricism are among the most immediate and enduring legacies of DQ, and the importance of this connection is difcult to over state. For those of us who hold that truth and justice lie in the direction marked by the successive stages of European thought (Rorty, Comments 77), Hobbes remains a major turning point between the dualistic fantasies of the ontotheologians of the past and the liberating empiricism of the rationalists of the modern era. Contemporary American philosopher Richard Rorty has called him the most important heir to Lucretian skepticism before Darwin: Lucretius and Hobbes tried to tell us that complexity is in fact sufcientthat we, like everything else in the universe, are best understood as accidentally produced assemblages of particles (Rorty, Philosophy 263).16 Not only does the most striking metaphor of Marxist discourse likely descend from the Spanish novelists enlightenment of the English philosopher, the Cervantes-Hobbes connection is arguably the cornerstone for the principal achievements of modern thought: the privatization of religion, the rise of the secular state, the scientic revolution. Critics have no trouble grasping Madame Bovarys or Candides debts to Don Quijote, but creative literature has other effects. It is folly to hold Galileos scientic battle with Rome apart from his respect for Ariosto.17 Similarly, we can draw a line from Cervantes through Hobbes to David Hume (171176), the father of modern pragmatism, whose assault on the supernatural even shocked a reader as modern as Voltaire (cf. Hume On Miracles). Figuring early-modern selves
. . . precritical commitments to different modes of discourse and their constitutive tropological strategies account for the generation of the different interpretations of history . . . Hayden White, Metahistory (430)

While Cervantes and Hobbes share a metaphorical base from which they leverage empirical responses to religious myth, the outer contours of their thought exhibit contrasting ethical attitudes and levels of condence about the consequences of their critiques. Contemplating self-doubt and mutual ignorance, Cervantes writes comedy tinged

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with sadness; less compromising, Hobbes bulwarks the absolutist state. We expect differences between an artist and a political theorist. But the sincerity of Severus hagiography and the irony of the rst modern novel are tonal and generic oppositions that signal incompatible views of reality. Thus, we should address the tension between Hobbes and Cervantes. How is it that the novelist avoids the philosophers gall? Are their materialisms therefore antithetical? Leviathan and DQ are massive refractions of national sensibilities from roughly the same epoch. Regarding the conict between England and Spain, their authors work on opposing sides of a major rift. This difference in perspectives on Catholic hegemony accounts for how similar materialist critiques accompany distinct ethical and emotional postures. Unlike the precritical commitments that Hayden White nds among the deeply incompatible imaginations of nineteenth-century historians, I would argue that Hobbes and Cervantes are separated by post-critical impressions of seventeenthcentury geopolitics. Because Hobbes is pessimistic about the civil states survival against the ubiquitous evil of theocracy, his humor is unidirectional and defensive, sadistic, caused by the contemplation of the inrmities of othersa theory based on superiority of the laughter and denigration of the object of laughter (Paulson 21). Leviathan is a call to arms, wasting no ink on subtle complications of what makes life funny. The enemy is the principal aberration in Hobbes universe, deserving of purposeful and derisive laughter. At the global level, and in the long run, despite the successes of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the delusions of Catholicism still appear to have the upper hand. Hobbes insistence on the primacy of material reality, which disallows the divine justication of actionsMiracles now cease . . . (32.259) stems from his dread of a future in which the civil state succumbs. In the nal prophetic moments of Leviathan, Hobbes gives an ominous double warning: Romish thought may well disseminate itself abroad, strengthen, and return; and in all likelihood other peoples will export even more dangerous mystical fantasies:
But who knows that this Spirit of Rome, now gone out, and walking by Missions through the dry places of China, Japan, and the Indies, that yeeld him little fruit, may not return, or rather an Assembly of Spirits worse than he, enter, and inhabite this clean swept house, and make the End thereof worse than the Beginning? For it is not the Romane Clergy onely, that pretends the Kingdome of God to be of this World, and thereby to have a Power therein, distinct from that of the Civill State. (47.482)18

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By contrast, in DQ 1.19 secular (Quijote) and religious (Lpez) agents, although at odds, are each inept in their own right. When Don Quijote praises the Cid, he rather pathetically longs for the medieval epic hero in a moment of supreme irreverence before the Pope; when Lpez excommunicates the knight, he arrogantly incarnates the religious orthodoxy at the heart of the Counter Reformation. As crazy as Don Quijote is elsewhere, Hobbes has no qualms choosing sides here. But Cervantes lacks the Englishmans sober conviction: his humor is a double-edged sword, critical of others ignorance, but also a tool of self-agellation. If Cervantes expresses skepticism about Catholic hegemony or contempt for the ineffectual ecclesiastical bureaucracy, he cannot uncritically embrace the secular state. The unresolved dialectic between Don Quijote and his religious alter is even more complicated than Hobbes could have known. The cuerpo muerto episodes analysis of the Spanish self hinges on a culturally specic play on the term estantigua, allowing a critique of medieval religion to coexist with a critique of modern secular independence. Ironically, the word never materializes in the text, but the informed reader encounters it at every turn. On one level, Cervantes deploys estantiguas medieval, folkloric sense of a procession of ghosts, a contraction of the old-Spanish huest antigua (ancient host) where huest derives from the Latin hostis or enemy. Such is the initial impression made by the other-worldliness of the funeral in DQ 1.19. The Latin etymology complements the episodes thematic confusion between friend and foe.19 But Cervantes also uses estantiguas later meanings. The 1732 edition of the Diccionario de la lengua espaola of the Real Academia Espaola gives two denitions, showing how its medieval specicity was singularized and then metaphorically transposed. The rst, Vision, phantasma que se ofrece la vista, causando pavr y espanto [Vision, phantasm which makes itself appear, causing dread and fear]the same denition found in Sebastin de Covarrubias Tesoro de la lengua espaola (1611)pertains to nearly every character in the episode. The second denition cuts directly to its reexivity: Por translacion se d este nombre la persona que es de gra deforme, anda vestida en trage ridiculo semejante la phantasma [By translation this term describes a person who has a deformed gure, or who goes about in ridiculous dress like a phantom]. For this more gurative meaning the dictionary cites an example from El Buscn (c.160308), the picaresque novel by Cervantes contemporary Francisco Quevedo: A las doce y

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media entr por la puerta una estantgua vestida de bayeta hasta los pies [At twelve-thirty a phantom came through the door, dressed head to toe in rags] (estantigua, RAE 1732). The deformed gure and the ridiculous dress in both denition and example are features epitomized by Don Quijote. Later metaphorical denitions are even more quijotesque: persona muy alta y seca, mal vestida [tall, dry person, poorly dressed] (estantigua, RAE 1791). Ultimately, in the episode of the cuerpo muerto Don Quijote encounters nothing more than himself. The etymological mirror of DQ 1.19 interrogates the identity of the ghosts haunting early-modern imaginations. For Hobbes, Romish priests are the protagonists of a sinister fraud, peddling and embodying the reminders of death that turn human fear to their advantage. Hobbesian ghosts signal the material and spiritual egotisms of the Church and its ock. Analyzing the particular horror and intensity (217) of the ghost of Hamlets father, Stephen Greenblatt offers a more sympathetic description of the phenomenon in Shakespeare. Hamlet (1601) explores the Protestant publics lingering anxieties over the loss of purgatory. The Catholic world-view, now anathema, once provided comfort, continuity, and communicability with dead forebears. Like Hamlet, Shakespeares contemporaries fret with uncertainty about the meaning and existence of ghosts because they cant bear the thought of not seeing their loved ones in the afterlife. By contrast, in Tirso de Molinas El burlador de Sevilla (before 1630), the phantom very clearly damns the Keynesian libertine who would mock the judgment day of traditional morality. The CounterReformation ip side of Hamlets father, Tirsos ghost comes to life as a statue at the plays conclusion and escorts the protagonist straight to Hell. He is an unyielding reaction to early-modern doubts about Catholicisms metaphysical doctrine. But whether they arise from a desire to vanquish, honor, or avenge, the babbling dreams of Hobbes, Shakespeare, and Tirso allude to the contingency of the past. They are spirits of history, echoes of what is gone or fading and what shouldnt or should endure.20 Rather like those of Marx (see n11), the countervailing ghosts of Cervantes cuerpo muerto adventure represent more than stubborn reminders. Deceptive, mystical phantoms of the past confront a paradoxically material one from the present. Critics usually think of Don Quijote as a nostalgic gure, a tragic last gasp of medieval heroism. But he is also an image of what remains once magic, spirits, and otherworldly places are gone (cf. Lukcs). Moreover, Cervantes

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ghostly protagonist shows how Tirsos, Hobbes and Shakespeares echoes from the past inevitably imply their opposites from the future: the emotional difculty of embracing the reality principle transforms even the most unwilling messengers of its intense horror into gures just as fearful as the ghosts they sweep away. With the advent of modernity notions of post-mortem life and divine protection precipitate out into the intransigence of Lucretian particles, and we materialists replace the ghosts that have always haunted believers. What more terrible spirit than the one that annihilates the possibility of spirit? Cervantes is somewhere between Shakespeare and Marx, the difference being that his early materialist ghost provides neither the secret solace of the beyond nor the promise of the reallocation of wealth. In this way, the etymological reexivity in DQ 1.19 anticipates poststructuralist views on ethical and philosophical levels (cf. Parr). Deconstructing Don Quijote at an apex of anti-papist bravery signals ambivalence about materialisms erasure of morality. Hobbes refuses to consider secular hubris: the Church must be destroyed, and any toleration of sedition against the tyrannical state is Toleration of hatred to Common-wealth in generall (Leviathan 486). But while acknowledging that religious orthodoxy is awed, Cervantes wonders if secular authority might be too. What if, in rejecting religion as the ground for any action, we become overly condent of our earthly value system and force it willy-nilly on those still clinging to metaphysical views? When Don Quijote breaks the leg of a priest, the real estantigua proves as dangerous as the imagined one. A postcolonial reading of this situation might recall the nal words of Leviathan and ask whether we modern, materialistic Europeans have not become as oppressive as Hobbes ghosts. Even pragmatically speaking, what if that Assembly of Spirits, worse than the one in Rome, is actually provoked into fearful action by our insistence on the primacy of material reality? DQ 1.19s ironical critique of the late-sixteenth-century re-assertion of religious orthodoxy approaches any number of freely-oating postmodern meditations on the inevitability of guilt, but I react to this effect as indicative of artistic playfulness, puzzling, pleasant even, but generally not the proper grounds for thinking about political reality. I remain particularly unconvinced that we should respond to anybodys fear of spirits with more than a list of the advantages of liberty. Cervantes too has a more earthly agenda embedded in his art. He tips his hand as secularist and pragmatic materialist through

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Sancho. In a moment of post-Platonic common sense, undermining both the excesses of poetic creativity and the shadowy misimpressions of cavernous metaphysics, Sancho formally christens Don Quijote as the estantigua that he really is. When Sancho characterizes his lord as el Caballero de la Triste Figura [the Knight of the Sorry Face] (1.19.205; 151), the discussion begins with the disappearance of the knights religious alter, who was also the source of the light by which Sancho formulated his new vision:
Con esto se fue el bachiller y don Quijote pregunt a Sancho que qu le haba movido a llamarle el Caballero de la Triste Figura, ms entonces que nunca. Yo se lo dir respondi Sancho, porque le he estado mirando un rato a la luz de aquella hacha que lleva aquel malandante, y verdaderamente tiene vuestra merced la ms mala gura, de poco ac, que jams he visto; y dbelo de haber causado, o ya el cansancio deste combate, o ya la falta de las muelas y dientes. (1.19.205) [The bachelor of arts started riding away slowly, and Don Quixote asked Sancho why hed called him the Knight of the Sorry Face, and at that moment in particular. All right, Ill tell you, replied Sancho. I was just looking at you by the light of that poor blokes torch and the truth is that at this moment youre the sorriest sight Ive ever clapped eyes on. It must be because of being tired after your ght, or else losing all those teeth. (151)]

Don Quijote relishes in the possibilities of this new identity, imagining himself among a select group of chivalric heroes like the Knights of the Burning Sword, the Unicorn, the Phoenix, and the Grifn. His impulse is to paint his shield with an allegory of this new melancholic gure, but Sancho rescues him from the metaphysicalness of paranormal epithets: No hay para qu gastar tiempo y dineros en hacer esa gura, . . . le hace tan mala cara la hambre y la falta de las muelas, que, como ya tengo dicho, se podr muy bien escusar la triste pintura [Theres no need to go wasting time and money on a painting, . . . what with being famished and not having any teeth your face is such a terrible sight that, as I just said, theres no need for any sorry painting] (1.19.206; 152). Just as Don Quijote lets y with transcendental images of knight errantryevading reality by glossing it with fantasySancho attributes his ghastly appearance to nothing more than exhaustion, hunger, and broken teeth, thereby emphasizing the modern metaphorical status of the now incredible concept of the estantigua. In other words, there are no analogies or abstractions that can make us the same as ghosts, either our own or anybody elses.

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The truly haunting sadness of late-sixteenth-century Spain has more to do with the fact that the military and noble castes, admittedly awed, but once more aligned with reformist humanism, had now handed their power to paranoid priests. Cervantes hoped his readers could learn to recognize the latter for what they were and reject them. We do well to recall the presence of Severus in the cuerpo muerto adventure. The realist critique of hagiography is the true impetus of Cervantes pre-Hobbesian anxiety about the states resignation before theistic delusions. Which is to say, I would rather that we read DQ 1.19 as the deconstruction of Martins metaphysical powers than an earlymodern instance of the post-Derridean gamery often employed to recuperate them. Conclusions As Marx recognized, before theorizing that the industrial nation state depends on the commoditys obfuscation of bodily labor, one must agree with Hobbes that the confessional state exploits humanitys desire for a metaphysical way around the fact that when the body dies it rots. Dening Cervantes as a Renaissance humanist and not an Enlightenment skeptic disregards two fundamental signs of his modernity: his disrespect for the miraculous mentality of thinkers like Severus, and his inspiration of the materialism of thinkers like Hobbes. Forcione has shown that Cervantes realism is Erasmian (Humanist; Mystery), but the paradox involved in his concept of a secular miracle already calls for a Hobbesian trajectory. A simple observation gets lost in discussions about the origins and meanings of DQ : The rejection of miracles is characteristic of both bourgeois rationalism . . . and the nascent realist novel, which rose along with the middle class (Rendall 137). Cervantes advanced this rational reality on a massive scale, and distinctions and abstractions are academic when they maintain that his importance is not to be confused with the scientic empiricism and mechanical rationalism that correspond to the next stage of bourgeois development, which was to take place in England and France (Read 6). Admittedly, modernity has produced much thinking about humans as mere pawns or byproducts of powerful ideological ctions. Marxists and Freudians like Georg Lukcs, Jacques Lacan (crits), Michel Foucault, and Louis Althusser (Lenin) formulate complex reservations about Enlightenment empiricism. They dehumanize historical, social, and psychological phenomena, remaking us into temporary

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hosts more or less epistemologically predisposed to succumb to nonphysical agents that we nowadays routinely think of as integral parts of our reality: things like capital, desire, power, etc. For example, noting the strikingly personal difference between Hobbes and Cervantes in the philosophers unwillingness to embrace the novelists humor, we might attribute the contrasting tones, ironies, and doubts in their respective materialisms to opposing geopolitical circumstances beyond their control or even awareness: Hobbesian certainty might be the natural consequence of a siege mentality, Cervantine playfulness a luxury at the hegemonic center. Or similarly, we might say that Hobbes materialist interpretation of Cervantes is a function of Protestant Englands anti-Catholicism. Paradoxically, these dynamics belittle acts like reading and writing and remove from the course of human affairs individuals receptivity to or advocacy of modes of thinking like theism or materialism. I see no reason for biography and epistemology to be mutually exclusive. Cervantes and Hobbes may result from their historical and ideological contexts, but their particular engagements with the specic ideas of others are also important focal points in the dialogical evolution of modern thought. Finally, unlike Leviathan, DQ is a compounded self-reection that pushes readers toward many of the same conundrums as poststructuralist theory. We may marvel at the implications of the antimetaphor of the estantigua: the self is its own ghost, a ghost to others, or even the ghosts of others to itself; identity is not physical, for we are more desires, beliefs, and thoughts than skin and bone; whether language is a socio-historical construct or a metaphysical continuum, the voices in our heads are indebted to the dead. But as Rorty, Hobbes, and Sancho remind us, such abstractions rarely prove useful. We shouldnt let the allegorical extremes of our self-deconstructions get the better of our materialist interests. The importance of todays choice between reading reality as Cervantes or Hobbes might has little to do with whether one is Catholic or Protestant. It depends more on the degree to which one locates a threat to society or personal freedom in the civil or religious authorities at home or in the still primarily religious enemy abroad. While these views may clash over certain issues, modernity also requires that we be prepared to embrace different strains of skepticism depending on the context.22
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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NOTES
1 All citations from Don Quijote are followed by volume, chapter and page information from the Rico edition. I note page numbers of translations after a semicolon. I use Rutherfords translation throughout, but note Sheltons (1612 20) when appropriate. Translations without page notations are my own. 2 For another of Cervantes transgressive scatologies, see Graf. 3 Most critics doubt Cervantes modernity: its facile reception by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century readers proves that DQ was for entertainment (Fitzmaurice; Peers; Wilson; Russell; Close [Cervantes]); DQs radicality is a matter of aesthetic innovation (Auerbach; Spitzer; Hatzfeld); DQ cannot be understood outside the context of sixteenth-century Erasmian humanism (Castro; Bataillon; Forcione [Humanist]; Herrero; Mrquez; Vilanova); intentionality of this magnitude is irrelevant because DQs materialism is a function, not a source, of the new Weltanschauung (Lukcs; Foucault; Mariscal [Contradictory]). I reject the conclusions based predominantly on humor and style, but I would argue positive results obtain from reconciling the Erasmian and materialist readings. The Erasmians should acknowledge modernitys inevitable de-sacralization of religious thought, reformed or otherwiselike DQ, Renaissance humanism is important not for preserving religion but for laying the foundations of rational skepticism (cf. Cassirer). The materialists should re-admit individual autonomy into the history of ideaseven Bertolt Brecht and Louis Althusser (Machiavelli) made concessions here. Methodologically, the tautological extremes of these two views can be attenuated by attention to the actual intertextual inuences and impacts of DQ. Interpretatively, we need an honest reconsideration of Alexander Dufelds lateRomantic Protestant reading of Cervantes common sense:
One of the methods by which our great and sunny satirist abolished for ever the sham sages and mock knights was bringing them into the light of nature and common sense, making myth and ction and lie to come in contact with reality; and when he makes rosaries out of shirt-tails, puts holy water into porringers, mitres and sanbenitos on asses backs, and the bones of saints and the holiness of friars into Sanchos mouth, it is to bring all these to a like test. (66n)

4 5

7 8

For a favorable review of the doubtful perspectives listed above, see Anthony Closes Las interpretaciones del Quijote. Close objects to accommodating Cervantes to modernity. A politicized version of Closes attitude is George Mariscals The Crisis of Hispanism as Apocalyptic Myth. See Clemencn. See Fernndez, also Cary-Elwes and Sarmiento, Montero, Snchez, Orozco, and Ifand. Ifand argues that the nocturnal spiritual anxiety in DQ 1.20s fulling mills adventure prolongs the carnivalesque reference to San Juan through a burlesque of his poetry. Jrme Davids 1650 illustration of DQ 1.20 graphically illustrates the material nature of Cervantes burlesque (g. 1). De vita Beati Martini was the preferred medieval and early-modern source for Martins miracles. In his Legenda Aurea, Jacobus de Voragine cites Severus nine times and works hard to provide preachers with less familiar episodes from his other writings. A fourteenth-century Latin codex with Severus text is in the library of Philip IIs palatial monastery at El Escorial (Antoln 2.20002). Cervantes participated in a vigorous but little recognized current of protest in Spain (see Kamen, Chapters 4 and 11; Maravall La oposicin). There might be a deeper historical irony here. Although separated by over a millennium, the Priscillianist and the Illuminst heresies were similar rebellions against religious authority in Spain (see Stancliffe 27896).

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9 For a traditional Erasmian reading of DQ 2.58, see Molina. 10 Richard Rorty denes the difference between religious believers and theologians as one between people who, when they think about God, immediately think about their own personal immortality, and those who think personal immortality largely irrelevant to God-talk (Comments 71). Believers think that you will survive death pretty much as you are, complete with parts and passions, and will then have dealings with a God who is built pretty much like you, only with bigger parts and passions (71). By contrast, theologians are eclectic and syncretic, caring more about the purity and rigor of their designs than about their own personal fates (72). Thus, theologians arent so mystifying: In private, at least, they tend to agree with the old-fashioned naturalistic atheists like me that when you die you rot (72). For an historians version of this short-circuiting of the difference between theologians and modern intellectuals, see Cassirer, who cannot imagine the Enlightenment without Renaissance humanism. 11 Some humanists were also suspicious of ghosts. Erasmus colloquy Exorcism, or the Specter (1524) is a good example, but the emphasis is on gullibility and trickery, not corpses. Thomas More was even more orthodox about Catholicisms metaphysical concepts. See Stephen Greenblatts discussion of The Supplication of Souls (13350). 12 Robert Tucker calls the Manifesto the most widely read and inuential single document of modern socialism (Marx 469). 13 About Marxs most salient, yet tragic metaphor, Jacques Derrida has written one of his onto-poetological meditations. There are more coherent assessments. Rey Chow: Marx taught us that it is precisely as a phantom that the commodity achieves its greatest power. By that he meant the reversal of a certain semiotic hierarchy, a reversal by which what was hitherto presumed to be a mere image and representation, secondary to the real thing, is steadily taking over society with a contagious primacy: the simulacrum that is the commodity usurps, is mistaken for, the original that is human labor (1392). Hayden White: Marxs thought moves between Metonymical apprehensions of the severed condition of mankind in its social state and Synecdochic intimations of the unity he spied at the end of the whole historical process (285). Chows and Whites formulations indicate that thinking religions ghost vanquished, Marx gured modernity as a struggle between the revolutionary futures synecdochic specter from the Manifesto (labor) and the capitalist presents metonymical phantom from Capital (commodity). I would call it an ironical paradox that inverts late-Renaissance materialisms attack on Catholic metaphysics while undermining Adam Smiths more apologetic and less inclusive synecdoche of the invisible hand. 14 A more honest citation would have been a mans Labour also, is a commodity exchangeable for benet, as well as any other thing (Leviathan 171). 15 The publication dates of Human Nature (1650) and Leviathan (1651), both likely begun even earlier, shatter the myth of early readers simplistic or aesthetic responses to DQ. Auerbach, Spitzer, Russell, Close (Cervantes; Las interpretaciones), et al. reformulate nineteenth-century English translator John Ormsbys opinion that DQ shows no deep design or elaborate plan (qtd. in Peers 236). Not long after Ormsby, James Fitzmaurice hailed the wisdom of those early readers who embraced DQ in a spirit of broad farce (4). Later, Wilson specied the casual assessment of Edmund Gayton in his Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot (1651) as setting the tone for generations of readers. None of these critics ever considered Gaytons more serious and thoughtful contemporary.

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16 Jacques Lezra reads Cervantes after Lucretius, but with Descartes less-modern half thrown in, he accentuates dualistic fantasy, not materialism. This makes DQ the most Cartesian of novels (134). I argue for a more Hobbesian novel. A view more like Rortys is that of Peter Gay, who emphasizes Lucretius materialism and polemics against religio and considers him the inspiration for the philosophes turn from metaphysics to epistemology in their critique of religion as the product of mens fears and hopes (304, 408). 17 Forcione offers a different assessment of Galileos appreciation of Ariosto and Cervantes attitude toward fantasy: Galileos enthusiasm for Ariostos powers of imagination and clarity of style and his evident lack of concern for the fashionable negative evaluation of the Furioso by contemporary standards of verisimilitude are logical in view of his sharp distinction between poetry and science. If Galileo saw a major adversary in those who would encumber science with constructs of the fantasy, Cervantes saw a major adversary in those who would inhibit the fantasy with notions derived from science (Aristotle 14243n21). In my opinion, Forcione confuses science with Cervantes more major adversary religion. For Cervantes use of Ariosto against the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, see Castro (49399). 18 Today, an uncanny irony haunts Hobbes prescience, especially from the perspective of a Counter-Reformation critic like Cervantes. The hero of Lepantos attempts at Catholic-Protestant reconciliation (La espaola inglesa, El amante liberal, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda) had much to do with his sense of the Muslim threat. Cervantes would have Hobbes worry more about that other assembly of spirits. 19 For the ancient, carnivalesque implications of estantigua, see Augustn Redondo. 20 Henry Sullivan argues the second part of DQ is unusually preoccupied with Purgatory (110). While this is intriguing, his assessment, through grotesque aesthetics and Jesuit and Lacanian notions of salvation, obscures Cervantes confrontation with metaphysics. 21 Interpretations of this title are numerous, but its immediate signicance is to underscore the specular nature of the protagonists encounter with the estantigua. For a different interpretation of a quixotic self-encounter, see Lezras discussion of DQ 2.73 (24656). 22 For something of this idea of liberty as a topic preferable to religious difference, see Noah Feldmans book After Jihad.

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