¿Haya, encina o alcornoque? Ecos de una polémica virgiliana en El Quijote

Abstract

Cervantes frequently adopts a double point of view when he describes the reality. This fact is detected in Don Quixote and, from a syntactic point of view, it is revealed by the presence of disjunctive couples. In this article we deal with one of them: «beech or holm oak». Although these couples have been explained by reason of Cervantes's perspectivisme, in this case another explanation can be given: in the commentaries that appear in XVIth and XVlIth centuries about Virgil's Eclogues, there is a controversy about whether fagus (Ecl. 1, v. 1) means beech or holm oak. We think that, under this disjunctive couple, there is an ironical criticism against this sort of comments, which is bound to Cervantes's conception of Humanism.