{"id":970,"date":"2014-12-07T14:15:51","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T12:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=970"},"modified":"2014-12-07T14:15:51","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T12:15:51","slug":"outsmarting-cervantes-arturo-perez-revertes-edition-of-el-quijote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2014\/12\/07\/outsmarting-cervantes-arturo-perez-revertes-edition-of-el-quijote\/","title":{"rendered":"OUTSMARTING CERVANTES: ARTURO P\u00c9REZ REVERTE\u2019S EDITION OF EL QUIJOTE<\/em> <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, I went to Laie in search of a copy of Juan Ram\u00f3n Jim\u00e9nez\u2019s Platero y yo<\/em> (1914) for my nine-year-old niece. I asked for an edition aimed at children, meaning illustrated, and I was offered instead an adapted<\/em> edition. Scandalized that someone had dared touch the original, I bought her a beautiful edition commemorating the 100th anniversary of its original publication… with illustrations. Platero y yo<\/em>, as everyone knows, is not a book for children but the poetical language is perfectly accessible, and, in fact, I bought my niece the book on the basis of her dad\u2019s good memories of reading it as a child. It worked, she loved it (well, except the ending, too sad of course).<\/p>\n

Next thing I know, the internet is full of comments on the RAE\u2019s new edition for secondary school students of Miguel de Cervantes\u2019 El Quijote<\/em> \u2013and edition adapted by Arturo P\u00e9rez Reverte, one of RAE\u2019s members and, of course, a well-known author himself. RAE itself announces that in this way they finally fulfil the \u2018Real Orden\u2019 of 12 October 1912, commissioning this institution to produce a \u2018popular\u2019 edition and one for schools, apart from the critical edition (this was issued in 2004, edited by Francisco Rico). Obviously, I\u2019m not the first to note that in 1912 Spain was a mostly illiterate country, which may have made these other editions necessary. But today??<\/p>\n

During his presentation of the new edition in Mexico, Arturo P\u00e9rez Reverte took the chance to berate, precisely, the \u201cilliterate Ministers\u201d of Culture and Education that have eliminated El Quijote<\/em> from the compulsory school curriculum in at least six Spanish Castilian-speaking countries. He called for a return of Cervantes\u2019 masterpiece to all school systems in this linguistic area, on the habitual grounds that the book guarantees a much needed education in the shared language and in the values needed for today\u2019s life. I marvel how far Matthew Arnold\u2019s shadow extends, even in countries culturally alien to his preaching. Claiming that a book published in 1605 (1615, the sequel) is essential to face life in 2014 is odd, to say the least. And that the person making this claim is the local equivalent of Ken Follett and not of Harold Bloom is even stranger.<\/p>\n

What has P\u00e9rez Reverte done to El Quijote<\/em>? As RAE informs (I guess this is his own text), he has streamlined the narration, pushing to the margins the digressions and the interpolated tales (whether to footnotes, appendixes, or links I\u2019m not sure). As if this were Frankenstein\u2019s creature, the RAE’s press note refers to the \u201cspecial attention devoted to the cleanliness of the stitches\u201d used to conceal the cuts in the original. Chapters have been re-numbered and fused together… an operation accompanied by the truly cheeky claim that the integrity of the text has been respected. Now fancy Javier Mariscal adding colour to Picasso\u2019s \u2018Guernica\u2019 on the grounds that it\u2019s muted tones bore contemporary audiences and you get what P\u00e9rez Reverte has done.<\/p>\n

Juan \u00c1ngel Juristo, absolutely indignant, claims that RAE has simply and plainly \u201cexpurgated\u201d Cervantes (http:\/\/www.cuartopoder.es\/detrasdelsol\/la-rae-publica-una-edicion-manipulada-del-quijote\/5849<\/a>). He mentions as an example to follow Tales from Shakespeare<\/em>, the popular versions for children of the plays that Charles (and his sister Mary!) Lamb published in 1807. If you are to adapt a text for children, his point is, do it openly, and don\u2019t pretend that you\u2019re still offering the original, an argument I subscribe even though I think that adaptations are valid only in very particular circumstances. If young scholars are bored by El Quijote<\/em> we need to learn why, he concludes, and not mutilate the book.<\/p>\n

I was myself one of the scholars bored to death when aged 15 by El Quijote<\/em>. Reading it put me off Spanish Literature for many years, as I was reading at the same time the much more exciting work by Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson and similar English classics. When I asked my current students of Victorian Literature how they would solve the problem of making El Quijote<\/em> attractive to teenagers, they suggested inviting young students to read just some chapters and let them decide when to read the whole book. Checking this morning how the teaching of Literature is organised in Catalonia, I have come across a document indicating that this is what local teachers do (I mean in the itineraries for \u2018Humanities and Socials Sciences\u2019 and \u2018Arts\u2019 of \u2018Batxillerat\u2019). The same applies to the Catalan classic Tirant lo Blanch<\/em> (1490).<\/p>\n

Logically, the additional problem to be considered is the kind of literacy possessed by current teenagers, who may be absolutely proficient in following complex videogames or TV series but poor readers (a problem I believe made worse by young adult fiction). El Quijote<\/em> was not written with teenagers in mind and it is possible best read in a more mature phase of life, when the reader approaches it with a much bigger cultural baggage. The concern, however, is that unless young readers are force-fed El Quijote<\/em> they will never read it; likewise, I myself face the problem of having to force my second-year students to read Victorian Literature in the original language when most are not ready at all. Reading just chapters is not the solution at a university level, and adapted versions are totally out of the question. P\u00e9rez Reverte\u2019s monstrosity exposes a problem which has no easy solution. In the end, as I know very well, students simply choose to read complete books, a segment or a summary…<\/p>\n

As for RAE, instead of contributing to launching a dubious edition which may bring money to its coffers (and to Santillana, the publishing house) but no prestige, it should embark on a much needed project to guide readers beyond their teenage years. To begin with, since Rico\u2019s critical edition is freely available online (http:\/\/cvc.cervantes.es\/literatura\/clasicos\/quijote\/<\/a>), RAE should develop a hipertextual digital resource (which might also appeal to teenage readers). <\/p>\n

Actually, I would engage those teenage readers in producing the hypertext… and let Arturo P\u00e9rez Reverte continue to write his novels. May they never be compulsory reading…<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. Follow on Twitter the blog updates: @SaraMartinUAB. Visit my web http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/
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Recently, I went to Laie in search of a copy of Juan Ram\u00f3n Jim\u00e9nez\u2019s Platero y yo (1914) for my nine-year-old niece. I asked for an edition aimed at children, meaning illustrated, and I was offered instead an adapted edition. Scandalized that someone had dared touch the original, I bought her a beautiful edition commemorating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-tools-and-rules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}