(DOWNLOAD) "Space in "la Fuerza de la Sangre"." by Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Space in "la Fuerza de la Sangre".
- Author : Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
- Release Date : January 22, 2005
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 211 KB
Description
My interest in "La fuerza de la sangre" relates to those aspects of our engagement of space that involve fundamental issues of orientation and identity. Generally, the function of space in this novella has been approached in terms of various overarching interests. In his classic study of the Novelas ejemplares, Joaquin Casalduero sees in "La fuerza" a replay of the human drama of sin and redemption. While attending with his customary perspicacity to form and narrative rhythm, he underlines in the tale's development the thrust of Christian eschatology and subsumes all issues of space to this movement. Rodolfo's trip to Italy, for instance, which clears the way for Leocadia's recognition of the various spaces of her sundering (inner space of the self, room as the locus of the rape, disordered social space of family and town), is understood as merely part of a social tradition: the formative voyage undertaken by young noblemen. The crucifix which Leocadia takes with her as a marker of space and identity (Rodolfo's) is seen by Casalduero with its full symbolic weight. Such a near-allegorical reading makes "space" a mere ground for the enactment of a symbolic sacrifice and undervalues the care with which location is deployed in the novella. Ruth El Saffar tells us at the outset of her commentary on the novella that "neither the plot nor the characters are to be evaluated by realistic or naturalistic standards" (128). She assigns the novella to Cervantes's later works because of its "recourse to character types to present the universal problems of sin and salvation, its use of religious symbolism, its absence of historical or social detail, and its careful structuring of scenes" (129). In this context most references to space acquire a moral connotation: the family's climb toward the city and the young men's descent are seen as a move toward and away from civilization. The crucifix itself is a symbol of Leocadia's restoration, rather than a simple marker of place. While El Saffar's reading is perceptive and enlightening in many ways, it bypasses the issue of bodily agency within "place" as well as issues of orientation that underpin Leocadia's and dona Estefania's reordering of fractured or disordered space.