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The Diabolical Adventures of Don Quixote, or Self-Exorcism and the Rise of the Novel*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Abstract
This study explores Cervantes’ appropriations of the terminology and imagery of Catholic exorcists and demonologists in the Spanish Golden Age. The “lucid intervals” of Don Quixote, his constant sense that someone pursues him, and his explicit voicing of the words of the exorcism ritual can only be understood fully in relation to contemporaneous religious belief. This essay also argues that the devilishly-described Don Quixote exorcized himself. This action anticipated self-exorcism as preached by the Franciscan Diego Gómez Lodosa. In Cervantes studies, Don Quixote's selfexorcism will become paradigmatic of the autonomous action of this first novelistic character.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2002
Footnotes
The author wishes to thank Eduardo Urbina, James Parr, and Alban Forcione for their meticulous readings which only such superb cervantistas could provide. Thanks also to Carolyn Morrow and her graduate students at the University of Utah for their stimulating discussion of this article. I am grateful to Barbara Newman for discussing with me the uniqueness of self-exotcism. Finally, thanks to Paul Grendler for his editorial improvements. All translations are my own, and I have retained original orthography and accentuation even in cases where modern Spanish would be spelled or accented differently.
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