ABSTRACT
This chapter assembles a corpus of Medieval and early modern conduct literature concerned with valorizing the concept of fame. It reconstructs the discourse on fame in early modern Spain the better to situate the ambiguous operations of fama observed in Don Quixote either within or beyond prevailing paradigms. The discourse on fame addresses primal anxieties concerning human mortality, the debates over corporate versus individual identity, the ethics of humility and distinction, and the polemic on ascribed versus achieved social status. The politics of reputation or fama set in motion sociological, religious, and psychological polemics that helped to reshape the image of masculine virtue in early modern Spain. The prospect of cultivating a lasting reputation began shedding its Medieval stigma of vanity to emerge in early modern Spain as the ultimate desideratum of a noble life. The promise of ennoblement held out by Spain's eight-centuries-long Reconquista lends a unique Spanish spin to the discourse on renown.
