11
William H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic, Vol. I (Philadelphia: McKay, n.d.), p. 299.
12
Erika Spivakovsky, Son of the Alhambra: Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, 1504-1575 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), pp. 327-28.
13
Cristóbal Pérez Pastor, Documentos para la biografía de D. Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Madrid: Fortanet, 1905).
14
Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas ed. Ángel Valbuena Briones, Vol. II Comedias (Madrid: Aguilar, 1973), p. 1702.
15
Francisco de Quevedo, Obra poética ed. José Manuel Blecua, Vol. I (Madrid: Castalia, 1969), p. 213.
16
«... the brief scene of the gambling house, where we observe the knights of the court occupied in idle pursuits which the leaders of Spain avidly enjoyed at the time and where the cross of Calatrava, one of the central symbols of the work, appears in a context of perversion», Cervantes and the Humanist Vision, p. 212. Forcione pursues the idea of the wickedness of the scene even more zealously in the long note attached to the phrase cited above but would perhaps do well to apply his own observation on an incident in the Persiles: «Cervantes's fiction resists reduction according to the conventional moralizing literature with which he was familiar» (p. 213, n.). On the other hand, Forcione's treatment of La gitanilla, in contrast to a great deal of previous criticism of it and of the Novelas ejemplares generally, is anything but reductive; and while I occasionally differ from and, I hope, extend the interpretation found in Cervantes and the Humanist Vision, I gratefully acknowledge its unprecedentedly high level of acuity. Forcione's two volumes of the Novelas brings us into a new and much richer phase of understanding.
17
For a fascinating study of this word in Cervantes, see Bruce W. Wardropper, «La eutrapelia en las Novelas ejemplares of Cervantes», Actas del Séptimo Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas (Rome: Bulzoni, 1982). Pp. 153-69.
18
Autoridades: «Barra. Se llama en la mesa del juego de trucos un hierro en forma de arco, ò pórtico, que está colocado como à cinco palmas de la superiór tabilla, y sirve para encubrir las bolas, hacerlas dificultosas de jugar, y otros primóres del juego».
19
Guzmán de Alfarache ed. Benito Brancaforte (Madrid: Cátedra, 1979).
20
Comedias, p. 131.