Involvement and Detachment in Cervantes’s <i>La casa de los celos y selvas de Ardenia</i>

Miguel de Cervantes’s three-act La casa de los celos y selvas de Ardenia (1615) treats the French Matter to a burlesque makeover indifferent to theatrical conventions of unity and verisimilitude. Cervantes’s Roldán (Orlando) and his companions are all furiosos; that is, impassioned and intemperate. By contrast, the Saracen warrior-princess Marfisa acts with rational self-control. In terms coined by Norbert Elias, Marfisa’s “detachment” in the face of danger might be said to distinguish her from her peers’ emotionalism or “involvement.” For Elias, Marfisa’s rationalism would have signaled a civilizing advance away from medieval reactivity toward an emerging Renaissance figuration increasingly governed by reason.