This essay constitutes the final chapter of the Spanish section of a book in progress -The Fortunes of the Novel- on the Spanish origins of the mainstream of English and French prose fiction. A discussion of the Guzmán de Alfarache immediately precedes it, and it is followed by chapters on Defoe and Walter Scott. Fortunes will probably be published in 1986.

All citations of La gitanilla are to the Cátedra edition of Harry Sieber, Vol. I (Madrid, 1981).

In a review of Marina Scordilis Brownlee's The Poetics of Literary Theory: Lope de Vega's «Novelas a Marcia Leonarda and their Cervantine Context, Donald McGrady pointedly observes that: «Although the usual tendency is to accept Cervantes' claim that he was the 'indisputable initiator' of the short story in Spain..., the facts show otherwise. Besides Timoneda's important and influential Patrañuelo, there were the interesting Novelas en verso by the Licenciado Tamariz, which circulated in manuscript. Granted, most of the tales by Timoneda and Tamariz were initiated from Italian models, but they cannot be considered 'traducidas de lenguas extranjeras', as claimed by Cervantes of all Spanish novellas previous to his own. The same holds true for the four stories interpolated by Alemán in his Guzmán de Alfarache, which compare in quality with the best of Cervantes. It is time we realized that Cervantes' statement is not factual, but polemical». Hispanic Review 51 (1983), p. 330.

Hacia Cervantes (Madrid: Taurus, 1967), p. 268. Castro's next phrase is revealing: «De ahí la elusión, y cuando conviene, la amnesia...».

P. 52

Joaquín Casalduero's attempt, in his Sentido y forma de las 'Novelas ejemplares'» (Madrid: Gredos, 1969), p. 68, to gloss over this basic confrontation with vileness is a major critical blunder: «El ritmo de la frase desposee a 'ladrones' y 'hurtar' de todo sentido peyorativo, al transformar las palabras en un atributo tipificador». But taxonomy can only identify characteristic problems, not solve them.

Peter N. Dunn, «Las 'Novelas ejemplares'» in Suma Cervantina (London: Támesis, 1973), p. 96: «El baile de Preciosa no es nunca de esas representaciones eróticas que se suelen asociar con los gitanos; ella ni se exhibe ni tiene compañero. En el baile el espíritu y el cuerpo rivalizan, y su contienda se resuelve en ritmo y movimiento. Como acción, es al mismo tiempo energía sensual y una imitación del orden puro, del orden del movimiento. Es así a la vez una imitación de los poderes físicos del mundo y de las formas íntimas de naturaleza. Como movimiento alrededor de un eje repite la danza de las estrellas, los planetas y los elementos alrededor de su centro. La bailarina siempre vuelve al centro de su propio círculo; ése es el punto al que el cuerpo es atraído, al que debe volver cuando más alejado, como bien lo intuyen bailarina y espectador. La poesía y la danza, por lo tanto absorben y transforman lo orgiástico.»

Carnival has become, I am well aware, a special new-critical season, and one in which, precisely, the orgiastic and demonic are seen as being liberated. An excellent example is Gustavo Pérez's «Carnival in Don Juan Tenorio», Hispanic Review 51 (1983), p. 269-81. As with LeRoy Ladurie's Carnival in Romans, the emphasis is on the monstruous, le démon du midi. But while he certainly does not minimize the gross and the malign, Cervantes' progression in La gitanilla is in the direction of a contrapuntal opulence and blessedness, a true paradise of wealth as distinguished from the paradis artificiels of the romantics, of Baudelaire, of Zorrilla.

Sieber, note 70, p. 89: «... Mateu y Llopis, Glosario, pág. 59a: 'El doble ducado de los Reyes Católicos, acuñado también con los mismos tipos durante el siglo XVI por Carlos I y Felipe II.' Las dos caras, aluden a los bustos afrontados de los Reyes Católicos.»

«In his initial appearances Clemente represents a flawed experience of love which to some extent mars Juan's early courtship and which Cervantes would explore through isolation and emphasis in a shadowy double figure», Cervantes and the Humanist Vision (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 129. Clemente does double Andrés in his early address to Preciosa, while his brush with the law and exile into the gypsy world of economic motivation parallel Andrés sojourn away from Madrid and his definitive encounter with justice. However, the great and vital difference between the two men is that Clemente has not fallen under Preciosa's jurisdiction, or any other, until the tale is told out.