Persiles

from a village of la Mancha to the confines of the world

Abstract

The Wanderings of Persiles and Sigismunda is a posthumous novel that, due to its date of writing and yet almost inexplicably, has been conceived as the first and last work of Cervantes. For its accurate reading, it is vital to clarify its chronological location, since this is what allows to correctly place the Persiles in the whole of the Cervantine production. Throughout the centuries, the novel has been interpreted very differently, just in the same way that the Enlightenment, the Romanticism and the Generation of ’98 read a different Quixote. In the 4th Centenary of the death of Cervantes, it is pertinent to review past readings. Additionally, it is necessary to explore the etymologies, the symbols and the allegorical passages that can shed light on a possible new message of the novel. To our mind, this message confirms the existence of Cervantes as a freethinker and an Erasmist writer, and as the man ahead of his times that has been studied ever since the publication of Don Quixote. Some of the pages of Persiles introduce another matter, which is of singular importance when the novel is read in this side of the world: the presence of America in the work of Cervantes. In this way, Persiles casts a curious look on all the borders of the known universe.