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Fictions of Human Development: Renaissance Cognitive Philosophy and the Romance

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Abstract

Fictions of human development are stories that both explore and portray the evolution of the human mind in relation to its physical, social and historical context. They emerge at a time when the understanding and the representation of consciousness are evolving and becoming increasingly complex, regarding both subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Taking Cervantes’s Don Quixote as a prototype, this chapter explores how the notion of human cognitive development is comprehended and expressed through fictional discourses in the Renaissance, discussing (1) the generic affiliation of these fictions, (2) the early modern philosophical ideas that relate to them and to the work of Cervantes and (3) how Cervantes portrays human development through his character Sancho Panza.

Keywords

  • Cervantes
  • Renaissance
  • Development
  • Mind
  • Consciousness

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for instance, Hogan (2017), Gerrig (2004, 2012), Oatley (1999, 2011), and Mishara (2012).

  2. 2.

    Spanish early modern thinkers such as Vives and Huarte are precursors of Descartes, Bacon, and other figures, as well as pioneers of what will later become a more nuanced and systematic understanding of human psychology. On the impact of these Spanish thinkers, see Watson (1915) and Martín-Araguz and Bustamante-Martínez (2004), among others.

  3. 3.

    See Jaén (2005, 2012, 2013).

  4. 4.

    For instance, for an analysis of human development in the theatre of Calderón, see Jaén (2017).

  5. 5.

    See Doody (1996, 1). On the origin of the novel and the view that it replaced archaic forms of narrative modes, see Pavel (2013; Introduction).

  6. 6.

    See Severin (1989, 24) .

  7. 7.

    See her study Novel to Romance (1974). As Mancing notes, El Saffar’s claim tries to reverse the traditional view of Cervantes’s production as progressing from a youthful tendency to the romance towards the novel (Mancing 2000, 129n4).

  8. 8.

    See Mancing (2000). On categorization and prototype theory, see, among others, Rosch (1978), Lakoff (1999), and Gabora et al. (2008).

  9. 9.

    In his work on literary genre in relation to Fernando de Rojas’s Celestina, Simon suggests this authorial dynamic affiliation thread: ‘the author’s decision to change, in response to the reception of contemporary readers and audiences, the generic filiation of his work (Simon 2014, 82n3).

  10. 10.

    See Simon (2016, 14).

  11. 11.

    On the Renaissance interest on man, see Kristeller (1990). On the decentralization of discourse and ideology and its connection to the birth of new forms of discourse, see Bakhtin (1981, 382).

  12. 12.

    See Zunshine (2006, 2007, 2011).

  13. 13.

    See Crane (2000, 2014) .

  14. 14.

    See Leverage (2010).

  15. 15.

    See, among others, Jaén (2005, 2012, 2013), Simon (2009, 2017), Mancing (2011, 2014), Barroso Castro (2011), Simerka (2013) and Reed (2012). Simon has argued that ‘the study of the literary consciousness of characters from a Theory of Mind perspective can complement Bakhtin’s theory on the rise of the novelistic discourse’ and proposed that ‘the psychologizing of literary characters, as it is apparent in Celestina, constitutes another line of development of the modern discourse in addition to the two identified by Bakhtin in his essay “Discourse in the Novel”’ (2017, 46).

  16. 16.

    See also Boyd (2010).

  17. 17.

    On Vives’s cognitive philosophy and his view of emotion, see Casini (2002, 2006) and Noreña (1989).

  18. 18.

    See Pereira (2000 [1554]).

  19. 19.

    See Introduction to Vives (1765 [1524]).

  20. 20.

    See Huarte (1989 [1575], 214–18).

  21. 21.

    Jaén (2012) .

  22. 22.

    For a study of Don Quixote’s development through the contemporary lenses of autopoiesis, see Mancing (2016).

  23. 23.

    On the connection between Huarte and Cervantes , see, among others, Escobar Manzano (1949), Iriarte (1948), Salillas (1905), López-Muñoz et al. (2008), and Martín-Araguz and Bustamante-Martínez (2004).

  24. 24.

    See Soufas (1990), among others.

  25. 25.

    Mancing (2011), Jaén (2005, 2012, 2013), Wagschal (2012), and Wyszynski (2015) .

  26. 26.

    An early hint at how both Don Quixote and Sancho develop throughout the novel comes from Madariaga (1926), who speaks of a ‘sanchification’ of Don Quixote and ‘quixotization’ of Sancho to refer to the osmosis between their two minds, to how they change and resemble each other by the end of the novel. Madariaga’s study, however, remains at a purely critical level and does not include the mind philosophy of Cervantes’s time.

  27. 27.

    As I have written elsewhere, ‘In the same fashion that we find today scientific and humanistic discourses contributing jointly to the investigation of the mind and its cultural manifestations, we encounter in early modernity diverse and powerful explorations—expressed through a variety of media and genres—that enrich and widen our understanding of humanity as it was viewed back then, aiding, in turn, our present-day understanding of what humans are, as individuals and as a species’ (Jaén 2013, 55).

  28. 28.

    See Jaén (2012, 2013).

  29. 29.

    See Giorgini (2017). Giorgini argues that Sancho, in fact, might have been previously questioned (and tortured) by the Inquisition, which might explain his elusive proverb-talk and his fear of the wooden horse in the Clavileño adventure in chapter forty-one of Don Quixote part II (wooden ‘horses’ were used by the Inquisition as instruments of torture).

  30. 30.

    The 1611 Spanish dictionary Tesoro de la lengua castellana by Sebastián de Covarrubias defines medrar as ‘vocablo antiguo corrompido del verbo Latino meliorare de melior, que es mejorar, y adelãtar vna coſa. Suéleſe dezir, en la ſalud, en la hazienda, en las coſtuſbres, y en toda cualquier coſa que va procediendo de mal a bien, o de bien en mejor. Medrar también vale ſer aprouechado en alguna coſa, como el que ſirue al ſeñor, que le haze merced, dezimos que està medrado…’ [Old corrupted word of the Latin verb meliorare from melior, that is to improve, and to advance something. It is usually said in the context of health, estate, habit, and about anything that goes from bad to good, or from good to better. Medrar also means to profit from something, as in the one who serves his master, and obtains a favour from him, we say that he is medrado] (Tesoro 554v).

  31. 31.

    See also Reed (2012), on the episode of the fulling mills.

  32. 32.

    See Hakemulder (2000) , Oatley et al. (2012) , Kidd and Castano (2013) and Koopman and Hakemulder (2015) .

  33. 33.

    See the work of Mishara, Gerrig, and Oatley, among others.

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  1. Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

    Isabel Jaén

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  1. Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Dr. Barry Stocker

  2. Durham University, Durham, UK

    Dr. Michael Mack

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Jaén, I. (2018). Fictions of Human Development: Renaissance Cognitive Philosophy and the Romance. In: Stocker, B., Mack, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54794-1_15

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