| An incredible amount of bibliography has been written about Cervantes' Don Quijote (Part One, 1605 and Part Two, 1615), but an amazingly small portion of it is devoted to an examination of friendship in this work. This study is an attempt to fill the lacuna.;In order to understand the idea of friendship in the Renaissance, one must first study the tradition in Antiquity, the Bible, and the early Fathers of the Church, all of whom exercised a great deal of influence upon the thinkers of later ages. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca, the Old and New Testaments, the desert Fathers and St. Augustine all wrote on the theme of friendship, and are studied in Chapter One in order to lay a solid groundwork for the study of friendship in the Spanish Renaissance.;Chapter Two examines the way in which friendship is treated by the theorists of the Renaissance. The authors studied are all Spanish, and wrote in the vernacular. This was done intentionally in order to estimate as accurately as possible the most common currents in Spanish Renaissance though without admitting any obscure arguments that may have appeared in more learned circles where Latin was the language of communication.;Chapter Three studies some friendships between men (Don Quijote/Sancho, Barber-Curate/Don Quijote, Roque Guinart/Bandoleros) and Chapter Four examines friendships between men and women (Sancho/Teresa, Grisostomo/Marcela, father/daughter) and also the relationship between two women (niece/housekeeper, Maritornes/innkeeper's daughter, and duchess/companions). None of the friendships between the characters are the truest type described and praised by the theorists. Men in the novel form friendships for utility, women for pleasure, though the relationships between men and women, with the exception of Grisostomo and Marcela, most closely resemble the highest type of friendship as described by the theorists. |
