Cervantes’ treatment of otherness, contamination, and conventional ideals in persiles and other works

Cervantes’ treatment of otherness and what Counter-Reformation society widely conceived of as threats of moral, racial, or religious contamination is remarkably consistent across his work.¹ Whether we examine his dramas of captivity and his comedic interludes, his beloved Galatea, his exemplary tales, or his long novels, we can see that the Cervantine world is populated by familiar others, that is, stock images of religious, moral, and racial contamination and social and political antagonism. Yet these familiar images are consistently bracketed in Cervantes’ tales as artificial constructs that say more about the cultural anxieties of his day and the limitations of common literary and theatrical conventions than about the social agents they ostensibly represent.