Los avatares de un nombre: Saavedra y Cervantes

Abstract

Saavedra was not Cervantes's last name, nor one that his direct ancestors bore. The writer assumed this surname after his return from Barbary, where he was a captive from 1575 to 1580. This surname acquires an extraordinary significance in the light of the Cervantine literary production, because Saavedra is also the name granted by Cervantes to the protagonists of his dramas El trato de Argel and El gallardo español, and to a character in La historia del cautivo, interpolated in Don Quijote Part I. This essay examines the adoption of the patronymic Saavedra by Miguel de Cervantes from interdisciplinary perspectives, such as literary history, psychoanalytic theory, and a study of the frontiers between autobiography and fiction in the Spanish author. Saavedra represents a testimony of the limit experience of captivity and, simultaneously, a response to this experience emerging from artistic creation.