The 2007 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: Sancho as a Thief of Time and Art: Ovid’s Fasti and Cervantes’ Don Quixote 2

Abstract

Returning from Algerian captivity in 1580 — when Gregory XIII’s calendar reform was implemented in Spain — Miguel de Cervantes had only two years to adjust from Islamic to Christian time. The fragility and instability of time hence became a central motif for Cervantes. In part 2 of Don Quixote, the time-altering anxieties of the Gregorian calendar appear in glaring gaps in time, in the shifting chronology of the text, and in images that recall the sundial as reflective of time and of the brevity of human life. Cervantes uses Ovidian feasts to further destabilize the quixotic chronology, pointing to the sacred, political, and personal uses (and abuses) of time. Indeed, Sancho Panza takes advantage of chronological conundrums and turns to Ovid’s Fasti in order to mislead his master through a mock-Floralia and a voyage to the Pleiades. For beneath the cloak of simplicity Sancho guides the knight along unexpected paths, thieving from Ovid in order to speak with Mercury’s eloquence and to craft artful designs that rival Botticelli’s Primavera.

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