Poetry in Fiction: an approximation to the structure of «El curioso impertinente»

Abstract

The present work analyzes how poetry breaks into the structure of El curioso impertinente. Firstly, it should be highlighted that El curioso impertinente is a novel considered as fiction within the don Quixote’s frame of reference (fictional plane), and in which characters are constantly acting fake situations, that ends up becoming true, which leads them to a renewed need to feign or to lie. From this perspective, the work focuses on the paradox that, given this plane fixed so far from the reality of the reader, the three poems recited by the characters come from a world outside fiction since they have actual authors in Cervantes’s time. Furthermore, the two sonnets ‘written’ by Lotario belong to the more serious Cervantine poetry, and thus belong to Spanish Golden Age lyrical tradition. Another paradox is also present: the five poems, which are rated as literature by the characters of the novel, foreshadow the events that will take place in the novel’s reality; unveiling a structure in which reality is constantly imitating fiction.