Textual Play and the Discourse of Seduction
Although Diego de San Pedro's Cárcel de Amor was published in 1492, just one year after the first publication of Arnalte y Lucenda, critics from Menéndez Pelayo to Keith Whinnom have examined the Arnalte primarily as a foil to Carcel''s supposed stylistic superiority. Nevertheless, the Arnalte continues to leave many readers with a sense that perhaps there is much more to the text than a mere careless first draft of Cárcel or that they are two stylistic variations on the same theme. As Keith Whinnom writes, "Something, somewhere, does not quite fit in Arnalte and Lucenda" (DSP 83).
Marina Brownlee, in The Severed Word, has taken a perceptive step toward reversing the traditional approach to San Pedro's novels by acknowledging a dialogic link between the two texts. Brownlee posits that the close publication dates of these two texts argues in favor of the deliberate aesthetic juxtaposition of registers originating in two distinct literary traditions.
Written at a time of great cultural, political, and social change the traditional dividing line between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Arnalte y Lucenda and Cárcel de amor epitomize an historical "dialogue" between two radically different literary currents that mirrors the changing sensibilities of readers and the contemporaneous preferences of "women as the readers of men's discourse of love." The exploration of the dialogic link between Arnalte and Cárcel suggested by Brownlee is essential to our understanding of the fifteenth-century Spanish novelas sentimentales as an historically pivotal juncture in the development of novelistic discourse in Europe.
In both works, the dialogue of mutual attraction, the game of love and seduction, between men and women informs narrative, intertextual and linguistic dialogue. The discourse of love also serves to bring San Pedro's two sentimental novels into dialogue with each other and draw one's attention to an historical point when the long-established medieval Ovidian tradition was giving way to neoplatonic-dolcestilnovistic currents newly imported from Italy. Finally, we can gain new insight into the traditionally problematic issues of reception through exploration of the three dialogic components of San Pedro's texts. To what extent are these texts to be taken seriously? To what extent are they literary parody?
Seduction, and the styles of discourse on which it depends, create a space for play in San Pedro's two novels in which the frontiers between narrative agents, distinct texts, literary traditions, languages, styles of language, as well as the very boundary between literature and life are repeatedly transgressed. In late fifteenth-century Spain, the traditional medieval Ovidian agenda seems to have been losing its power to convince, to engage the imagination of both readers and lovers. Whether or not Ovid's advice in the Ars amatoria was ever itself "meant" or taken seriously in classical or earlier medieval times, it was undoubtedly received as the predominant literary prescription for successful seduction in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Spain. Thus Ovid's texts not only invite, but also demand incursion by every new text on the subject of love.
In Arnalte's failure as a seducer and Leriano's tragic death we find two paradigms of the ultimate negative and parodically exaggerated consequences of the discourse of seduction on the male lover. They are highly literary paradigms that exploit the socio-historical dialogue between the Ovidian and neoplatonic "styles" of erotic discourse. Dialogue between the sexes informs a tripartite (narrative, intertextual and linguistic) dialogicality throughout both texts. Although claims have been frequently made to the contrary, an application of theoretical narratology confirms that both texts present the game of love and seduction from a predominately male-centered point of view. The complexity of narrative dialogue in San Pedro's texts obfuscates the fact that women are never focalized from within. Their discourse is at all times mediated by a male narrative agent at a higher narrative level. In addition to the historical collision of two distinctly different literary traditions to which I have referred above, intertextual dialogue raises also the perennial questions of whether or not the San Pedro novels, particularly the Arnalte, can be read, were meant to be read, or were in fact read, as literary parody.
Arnalte y Lucenda Compared to Cárcel de Amor
Despite the tendency to compare the Arnalte unfavorably to San Pedro's second novel, there is also a long-established tradition of considering it somehow "more of a modern novel" than Cárcel de amor. Recently, Rey and Brownlee reach the same conclusion because of the text's apparently self-aware manipulation of language. "More of a novel" traditionally meant "less of a romance." If we follow Northrop Frye's definition of a novel as a work whose protagonist is human, as opposed to romance, whose protagonist is a hero, and myth, whose hero is a god, we must surely concur with the judgement of the Arnalte as "more of a novel" and "less of a romance." Arnalte, the protagonist, is clearly not heroic.
Following Bakhtin's criteria for classifying novels of the First and Second line of development, we find that the Arnalte is the most unique of all the Spanish late fifteenth-century sentimental novels. Internalized linguistic dialogism argues in favor of its Second line (modern novel) classification. Yet it is not the internalized heteroglossia common in modern novels, however, that we find in the Arnalte, but internalized polyglossia, implicit dialogue between two national languages. Moreover, through examination of the multileveled "dialogic" nature of the text, it is apparent that despite the virtually universal reluctance among critics to find the Arnalte a "comical" text, it is impossible to fail to recognize the text's potential for being read as literary parody.
Reader instantiated intertextual dialogue finally encouraged by linguistic dialogue in the Arnalte, as we will see, leads inevitably to the two textual traditions that are brought into dialogue each becoming both the vehicle and target of literary parody. Each of the three levels of dialogue can be used as a measure of the Arnalte 's potential reading as literary parody.
Before examining levels of dialogue in the Arnalte, I would like to consider some of the essential differences in character and plot between the Cárcel and the Arnalte to see if they can lead to any conclusions about the opposing literary currents from which they draw inspiration. The question of the ennobling power of unrequited love is a key issue to the basic difference between the two protagonists. Leriano is ennobled by his love for Laureola, a woman of higher social rank, and fights to save her honor and life when they are unjustly threatened. Arnalte, on the other hand, is abased by his love for Lucenda, a woman who is at best his equal, and fights to destroy a rival who has married her.
Leriano seems to gain in strength of character and human dignity through his love for Laureola. He is an ideal lover, an ideal knight, and his exemplary qualities seem to feed on his love, even when that love is ultimately denied all hope. Arnalte suffers a loss of dignity because of his obsession for Lucenda. By examining those points in Arnalte's story where he seems to behave in ways antithetical to the neoplatonic-dolcestilnovistic lover, we can clearly see that the effects of love therein are at no time nor in any way an ennobling.
After Arnalte falls in love with Lucenda at first sight, he immediately begins to press his suit by writing love letters and seeking every opportunity to declare his passion. Lucenda tears up his first letter. Learning of Lucenda's habit of attending mass on Christmas, Arnalte dresses as a woman in order to be able to sit next to her in church and speak of his love. The scene is evocative of the carnivalesque, the grotesque. It is clearly not an act which ennobles Arnalte. This first example of loss of dignity comes into better perspective if the reader familiar with Cárcel de amor tries to imagine Leriano engaging in any such humiliating antics.
Rejected at church, Arnalte writes a poem to Lucenda and has it sung under her window, all to no avail. The hapless protagonist then uses his apparently considerable influence with the King to persuade him to conclude a tournament with a masquerade ball to which all the ladies of the city will be invited. Again we note, albeit mild, the suggestive intrusion of the carnivalesque.
At both the tournament and the dance, Arnalte embarrasses Lucenda by publicly displaying his frustrated love in the motes and devices with which he has his shield and cloak decorated. Arnalte's motes on the day of the tournament and night of the masquerade ball are variations on a theme already established by the logos he has inscribed over the entrance to his home and on the tomb he expects to one day occupy: 1) "Esta es la triste morada / del que muere / porque no le quiere la muerte" (91); 2) "Vedes aquí la memoria / del triste que se querella / porque no están él y ella" (92); 3) "En lo poco que esperança / pesa, se puede juzgar / cuánto pesa mi pesar" (113); and, 4) "Este, triste más que hombre / que muere porque no muere, / bivirá cuando viviere / sin su nombre" (114).
At the dance, Arnalte, taking advantage of the proximity of the queen, slips Lucenda another letter; when she cannot possibly protest without causing a scandal. By use of a similar ploy, Arnalte succeeds in getting her to dance with him by making his request under such intense public scrutiny as would make her rejection seem suspicious. Arnalte's use of all the tricks at his disposal in order to force Lucenda's attention is not the ennobled behavior of a perfect courtly lover.
When Arnalte returns from the dance he is obsessed by the thought that Lucenda might discard his letter without reading it. In yet another fortuitously prosaic scene, he sends his servant to riffle through her garbage looking for scraps of torn letter:
al paje mío que a su casa de Luçenda fuese le mandé, diziéndo que asý en toda la casa como en las partes donde los rreposteros acostunbran echar aquello que las casas limpias dexan mirase, porque podría ser que quando aquéllos limpiasen la casa, los pedaços de la carta por el suelo leuassen. Y el paje, que todo muy bien lo miró, en ninguna parte partes della pudo hallar. (81)
Here both the detail and the comic contrast between what Arnalte is saying and the pompous language with which he is saying it would be more at home in the Libro de Buen Amor than in San Pedro's own Cárcel de amor.
The "courtly" code of secrecy is also violated. Although Arnalte refuses to tell his sister Belisa the cause of his now visible affliction, he almost immediately proclaims his love for Lucenda to his old friend, and of course instant rival, Elierso. Arnalte has rekindled his friendship with Elierso, whose house is conveniently near Lucenda's, so that he can spend time there, peering out the windows in hope of catching a glimpse of her.
When Arnalte's sister Belisa figures out for whom her brother is "dying of love," she tries to intervene on his behalf. At first, not even Belisa's friendship with Lucenda seems to work in Arnalte's favor. Eventually, after Arnalte "threatens" to leave the city, Lucenda agrees, first to write then to meet. The meeting ends in an apparently definitive rejection although Arnalte has been granted the supreme favor of being permitted to kiss her hand. He has gained this courtesy, as Lucenda herself realizes, by means of hypocrisy. He is more concerned with the advantage his threatened absence from the city might bring than he is with a selfimposed exile at this point. Arnalte shows no shame or remorse at the indignity to which his sister is subjected in her new role as gobetween, a role that ultimately costs her what we assume was once a valued friendship. Belisa more or less continuously hounds Lucenda, even following her at the end to the convent where Lucenda takes final refuge and from which Belisa is evicted by the prioress at Lucenda's request.
After a meeting arranged and chaperoned by Belisa and Lucenda's apparently final rejection of Arnalte, the forlorn lover decides to accept his sister's invitation to go off on a hunting trip to her country house. This is a step in the right direction a strategy which might help him recover from his passion. But one day, while out riding, Arnalte is stricken by disquieting thoughts and premonitions about Lucenda and his old "friend" Elierso. On returning to his sister he learns that Elierso and Lucenda have married. In a rage, Arnalte challenges Elierso to a duel and kills him. He then offers to marry the newly widowed Lucenda. Without even answering his marriage proposal, Lucenda and her household pack off to a monastery where she takes her vows.
In these final scenes, the characters use absurd reason and logic to justify their own behavior and to serve their own selfish desires. Elierso, who we can assume is cut from much the same cloth as Arnalte, goes to the absurd extreme of saying that he married Lucenda for Arnalte's sake. Seeing his friend so ruined by his desperate love for Lucenda, Elierso claims that he felt that the only way to cure Arnalte would be if Lucenda became permanently inaccessible through marriage to another. Of course, this self-serving logic contradicts the internal logic of the work to this point. It is, in fact, precisely Lucenda's inaccessibility that has supposedly driven Arnalte to the brink of madness.
Arnalte himself uses this same sort of convoluted logic to explain to Lucenda (in his marriage proposal) how he has done her a favor by killing her husband. According to Arnalte, Lucenda now has the extraordinary opportunity to show her inner beauty by forgiving him.
Narrative distancing, male-centered focalization, and the inscribed commissioner(s) of the work: Narrative dialogue in Arnalte y Lucenda
Arnalte and Lucenda's implied author, primary narrator, and protagonist are successively distanced one from the next, and yet all faced with the same dilemma -- how to engage their addressees with a highly literary discourse of which their "readership" has grown weary, suspicious, and unsympathetic. The primary narrator, who presents himself as Sanct Pedro or el auctor, addresses the ladies of the court in the same highly stylized register that his metadiegetic narrator Arnalte employs to tell his own tale of woe and with which the hapless protagonist unsuccessfully attempts to win the love of Lucenda. Thus, the relationship between narrator and addressee at the primary narrative level mirrors an analogous relationship at the level of the metadiegetic narrative. This doubled dilemma of the ineffectual narrator and his reluctant addressees establishes a relationship between primary narrator and protagonist that invites a parodic reading in much the same way that Cervantes uses narrative distance in the Quijote.
Through exploration of "narrative dialogue," we also find that the Arnalte presents the game of love and seduction from an exclusively male-centered point of view. Even the direct discourse, the letters of Lucenda are reported and mediated by two male narrators at a more primary level. The Arnalte's auctor, or primary narrator, is a passive listener, reporting a story as told by the protagonist. One of the consequences of this two-fold male mediation in the Arnalte is that the characters, the female protagonist in particular, are never focalized from within. We may know what the auctor reports that Arnalte says that Lucenda wrote in a letter or said in a conversation, but we never know reliably what Lucenda feels or thinks.
Since they are never focalized from within, what women think is open to multiple interpretation in both of San Pedro's novels. When, in the prologue to Cárcel de amor, the auctor reports doña Marina Manuel's dissatisfaction with (presumably) the Arnalte, we know only that she said to a third party (the auctor's inscribed addressee) that she found (presumably) the Sermón "menos malo" [less bad or less evil].