Del Examen de ingenios de Huarte a la ficción cervantina, o cómo se forja una revolución literaria

Abstract

One of the themes that fascinated the thinkers of Spanish Golden Age was undoubtedly that of the powers of wit (ingenio) and imagination, whose role evolved considerably over the sixteenth century, from an interpretative function to a creative function, independent from reality and preexisting tradition. In this evolution, the physician and philosopher Huarte de San Juan plays a key role. The seed sown by Huarte germinates in literary fiction and more precisely in the prose of Cervantes. Our contribution shows how the ideas of Huarte, and more precisely his conception of wit and imagination, and its exaltation of the invention (taken in its modern, creative, sense, detached from the ancient inventio derived from rhetoric tradition) is one of the bases of the modern creative freedom that Cervantes claims in his paratext and his metatext.

Keywords

• Huarte de San Juan Juan
• Cervantes Miguel de
• novelesque prose
• fiction
• wit
• invención