Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Nov 2023)
Myth, resemantization and autopoiesis. The battle books of Tirante el Blanco and Juan Quinquín
Abstract
Tirant lo Blanch, the novel by Joanot Martorell, and Juan Quinquín en Pueblo Mocho, by Samuel Feijóo, are texts that share several isotopies. However, their characters behave in asymptotic ways with respect to epochal social conventions. Taking literary theory and rhetoric as models of analysis, we present a rereading of the concept of myth of the knight and the actions that allow the emergence of mythopoetic or resemanticizing attitudes, as well as their interaction with the autopoiesis of the complex literary system. Love behaves in both novels as the reticular structure that organizes and configures the actions of the literary subjects. Finally, it is concluded that Tirante is a split and borderline subject between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, who violates to a certain extent the virtues that knights must fulfill; and that Juan Quinquín, distant in time from the order of chivalry, tries to behave as if he were a knight-errant. Both characters err when they must perform the operation of mythologizing/resemanticizing and that failure leads them to failure in autopoiesis.
