Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This essay examines the presence of incest in the cultural imaginary of the early modern Spanish novel, taking as its inaugural case a piece by no other than Pérez de Montalbán and finishing with the little-known novelist Luis de Guevara. I read incest as a phenomenon that was conceived by Cervantes’s heirs as a self-reflexive trope to comment on both the state of the novel and on the readership who promoted its growth. I argue that this taboo manifested itself in these first decades of the century through two interconnected phenomena: on the one hand, as the radical condition from which to express a literary and social endogamy that was essential to the success of its agents; on the other hand, as one of the greatest reasons for the success of a new publishing formula, that of the short-story collection. In order to release all of its transformative potential, I take as case studies two significant elaborations of the topic—one at the early stages of the formation of the Baroque novel, the other near its swansong—that employ incest to reflect on processes that redefine acceptable choices in sexual partners, while simultaneously questioning class structures and means of promoting kinship.  Through a selection of novels by Juan Pérez de Montalbán and Luis de Guevara, I interrogate the family’s relationship to itself and to the state in the transition of a society highly stratified along feudal lines to one faced with different possibilities for social advancement. The narrative construction of incest, I conclude, should be examined as a fertile tactic through which the novel engaged with national history, societal expectations, civil and canon law, and the (ever increasing) institutional control over the genre

This article examines the satirical image of the playwright in Cervantine caricatures, because their author is the most conspicuous representative of the theatrical opposition to Lope de Vega, or of the frustrated competition against him, but also because of Cervantes’ constant references to amateur playwrights, in different tones and with some authobiografical and authocritical projections that oscilate between satire, compassionate condescension, and a kind of collegial empathy. In order to examine them, we explain the sources and meaning of these caricatures, that often appear nuanced, or that have a discreet and kind tone. Among them we underscore the caricature Cervantes included in the exemplary novel «El coloquio de los perros», because it dates approximately from the years of Don Quijote and because it shares with the latter some elements that appear in passages where characters debate about the nature of theater in the period.

This article examines some of the causes of the strangeness of Góngora's language, and analyzes metapoetic commentaries about the sound quality of his texts. It concludes, always taking in consideration the Polémica Gongorina of the period, that the sound of Góngora's verses is a powerful echo of the meaning of the words that form it.

In the following pages we propose an investigation of the point of encounter between chivalry and American chroniclers through the work of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, by means of analyzing the reminiscence, in his book, of the chivalric ideal and the characteristics of the institution of chivalry, with the intention of tracing all evocations of the latter or its influences, in later time and different spaces, particularly regarding the different participants who joined the ceremony of investiture, the ritual regarding it, and the privileges and obligations thereof derived.