El guitarrista and El curioso impertinente. A New Read of Cervantes’s Novel through Luis Landero

Abstract

Starting from the hypothesis of the presence of Cervantes’s fictions in twenty first-century literature, we carry out an intertextual analysis between El curioso impertinente and El guitarrista by Luis Landero. The subject of mockery allows us to trace a historical journey throughout European literary tradition in which literary motifs such as the two friends, the old man and the girl or the proof of virtue appear. Both writers assimilate and renew their literary inheritance with unusual originality. The study of influences from a bidirectional perspective illuminates the meaning of Landero’s masterpiece and discovers new resonances in Cervante’s one. The comparison of motifs and literary techniques between the two authors justifies the reputation of Landero as one of the most Cervantinian current writers.