>Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 14:15:38 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Juergen Hahn <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Molinos
>To: [log in to unmask]
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>
>I applaud G.L. Gingras for taking the molino-debate
>where it belongs: into the actual text, and into
>Cervantes' own cultural sphere.
>
>I am sorry, but I cannot accept the proposed
>connection of the "moneda de molino"-idea to DQ's
>adventure until I see an enormous amount of detailed
>empirical textual proof. DQ striking an allegorical
>blow against Golden Age monetary policy? That seems
>too far off Cervantes' novelistic intention to make
>sense.
>
>By now I have read quite a number of interesting,
>elaborate studies on Golden Age windmills, but like
>most material culture studies, these end up being
>unsatisfactory, because they fail to link convincingly
>all the accumulated data to the text itself. For, DQ's
>adventure is, in my view, not so much about windmills,
>as it is about his mad obsession with giants, which he
>then readily projects on any remotely suitable object.
>The windmills just happened to be there. That in the
>end the windmill tilt turned out to be the most
>impressive, most memorable iconic image of his story
>must have surprised even Cervantes himself.
>
>My point is that any thematic relevance for the text
>resides less in the windmills, no matter how
>esthetically impressive, than in the giants, and DQ in
>his lucid moments is quite explicit about this: "Hemos
>de matar en los gigantes a la soberbia"(II,8). Killing
>giants means combating the Original Sin of Pride, a
>knight's Godly act ("gran servicio de Dios"[I,8]), an
>act that he repeats in the wineskin episode, where he
>allegorically kills Pride (Pandafilando) in response
>to Anselmo's Original Sin of prideful impertinent
>curiosity. (I elaborated on this in BHS [1972]).
>
>In short, there is indeed a theme that connects with
>giant-killing and windmills, a theme that relates
>directly to Cervantes' purpose, and it is emminently
>provable in the text. But it is a theological theme,
>and I am afraid that theological and Humanistic themes
>do not have great currency among most critics these
>days. They would rather pursue all the (post)modern
>"-isms" like Marxism, Freudianism, colonialism,
>empirialism, no matter how anachronistic and
>unfitting,  no matter how little textual proof. We are
>watching in this 400th anniversary year the dark
>sinister cloud of ideological, epistemological
>distortion hovering not only over Cervantine, but over
>all of literary studies. Let us hope (to God?) that
>the 500th will be more positive and enlightened.
>
>Juergen Hahn
>CCSF
>San Francisco, CA
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