Cervantes in the center of the canon

Abstract

Above all due to its proximity to the birth of the genre, the Quijote has become consolidated as the mother of all modern novels.
Cervantes took advantage of the popularity of the voluminous books of chivalry and the possibilities opened up – with its success – of Guzmán de Alfarache. Pondering the strength afforded by the multiplication of publics, he conceived a reader character that exceeds in identifying the authority of the written word with the truth of life. This indistinctness, which is so attractive for the development of the fable, commits the status of the book itself, which is left in suspension in an equivocal location; it is read as such within the fiction and its characters are left in suspension in an equivocal location and its characters transcend the terms of the letter. This trend promoted by Cervantes contaminated later reception of the Quijote for centuries, and critical history read it so obediently that it fostered re-writing and re-appropriation distant or marginal to the text. The history of Carvantism is almost as madcap as Don Quijote, making the book, author and characters speak according to their will according to the circumstances and, paradoxically, redoubling its presence and worth by means of these practices.