Loving Economy and New Value of the Body and its Clothing in Two Miguel de Cervantes’ «Exemplary Novels»

Abstract

This paper studies two Exemplary Novels written by Miguel de Cervantes, The English Spaniard and The Liberal Lover, focusing on the economic anxiety that existed at the time. The «abstraction» of money due to the emerging use of credit is part of a series of irreversible and significant changes that Europe experiences as a result of the gold extracted from the New World. This anxiety reveals itself, at the same time, a clear inestability in the economic and affective discourse of the period, expressed in the semantic moving that the narrative of the body and clothing expresses.