Other people read novels but to regenerate I like to read academic articles out of immediate field. This is Silvia Goldman, “Alonso Quijano o el relativismo inmutable,” RILCE 24.2 (2008) 323-337.
DQ: between the medieval and renaissance worlds, dramatizing the social transformations that occurred with the advent of print culture … “El Quijote es el primer Alonso Quijano (pre-imprenta) leído por el segundo A. Q. (post-imprenta); es el hombre medieval que ya no es leído por el hombre renacentista que está por ser; representa al hombre instalado en el umbral de un modo de percepción inclusivo, sostenido en la naturaleza multidimensional de la palabra oral, y un modo de percepción exclusivo, cuyo método de conocimiento se basa en el análisis y en la desarticulación rigurosa de las diversas capas que conforman el escaenario de lo ‘real’.” (323)
Perception as instancia individual y absoluta de la experiencia vs. perspectivismo … DQ is el hombre engrosado sobre sí mismo and is therefore a meta-lectura de la identidad.
McLuhan (The Gutenberg galaxy): print is the technology of individualism. DQ reads print about a world that is growing obsolete. So there is a clash of technologies: manuscript and print, and of two ways of reading, aloud and silently. DQ has characteristics of the new person: aislamiento, soledad, duda and perspectivismo.
This article is very interesting. Quijote reads like an hombre tipográfico and this derealizes reality (because of the nature of the sign); he ends up fabricating a self-referential world. This article is VERY interesting! Reality is determined by the perceiver and reading is an adventure in which self is created and assured.
You need a perspective to get an identity; DQ se convierte en sujeto que se debe solamente a sí mismo. He’s Cartesian: reality is doubtful, and the subject creates it as [he] creates [him]self. THE NEW TRANSCENDENTAL SUBJECT IS THE READER/WRITER. Universe is now read in a linear way, like a book (silently) read. And this way reading requires persistent vision and becomes LA GARANTIA DEL SER.
DQ is trying to use this modern technology to install himself in a pre-imprenta era. But the issue is that the book is a comment on the literate world, the print world, and is an impulse toward it and its many possibilities… AND he’s a modern character in that he wants to sanction the autonomy of individual thinking and feeling.
Also, much of the novel takes place in ventas, which are crossroads para excellence (and we are talking here about DQ as a kind of crossroads); in the ventas people read aloud to groups, which confiere sacralidad a la venta, in this communal experience. But DQ prefers to read alone.
The novel installs the reader in the text, although ones the duques come in there is ficcionalización a la inversa; the novel installs itself in the reader. And in Part II, el hidalgo se hace testigo del potencial de su lectura/escritura (331).
— And there is more here, including the idea of the “libro-personaje.” I am fascinated by this article and now want to teach the Quixote.
Axé.
