THE CONCEPT OF “MAN OF LETTERS AND ARMS” IN CERVANTES’ PROSE

Abstract

In the paper the author investigates one of the key concepts of Spanish “golden age” literature that is the rhetorical topos of “man of letters and arms” shaped up in the medieval historiography and didactic literature, and traces how it is transformed in Cervantes’ prose. In his two novels, Don Quixote and The Works of Persiles and Sigismunda , Cervantes plays upon this traditional topic and its lexical formulaic definition in a manifold way: scattering its constituent elements, changing their meaning, trifling with and travestying the established ideal of his age. By doing so, he makes the pivotal rhetorical shift that leads to the creation of a new type of novel and literature in general.