From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 16.1 (1996): 112.
Copyright © 1996, The Cervantes Society of America

FORUM

Professor Finello’s objection to my review appears to be three-fold. First, that I am simplistic in stating that he has made Sancho and Dulcinea indistinguishable. On page 83 of his book we read: “Sancho and Dulcinea [not Aldonza, be it noted] of course can be counted among the novel’s most significant rustic personages.” Second, that I am unfair in failing to note that Klaus Theweleit’s view of pastoral as a “game” is the basis of Part III of Finello’s book. My point is that Theweleit, following Norbert Elias (to whom Finello refers), foregrounds pastoral’s “game” not as playful but as an ideological apparatus which, to quote my review, “produces the very realities the 17th-century courtly society wanted the classes beneath them to take for granted as ‘reality.’” Is it likely that Cervantes was unaware of this power “play” as he set up his rural charades, and finally led Don Quijote to the centers of ducal and bourgeois power and illusion making? The question has to be posed. Lastly, Professor Finello finds it unfair that when he lists Grisóstomo, Marcela, Cardenio, Basilio, and the Gentleman in Green as “Arcadian figures” (p. 102), I call them “a mixed bag.” His response that Cardenio is “surely associated with the pastoral” is symptomatic of the syncretic vagueness and the analytical weakness to which my review drew attention.

YVONNE JEHENSON

University of Hartford

     * Jehenson's review of Finello's book Pastoral Themes and Forms in Cervantes’s Fiction appeared in Cervantes 15.2 (1995). This current piece is a response to Finello's reaction —“Finello Replies to Jehenson,”— which is also given in this issue (Cervantes 16.1 [1996]). -FJ.

Prepared with the help of Sue Dirrim

Fred Jehle jehle@ipfw.edu	Publications of the CSA	H–Cervantes
URL: http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/cervante/csa/artics96/jehenson.htm