See Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957); René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965); Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); and Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (London: Merlin Press, 1971). One might also note Ramón Saldívar's recent contribution to the theory of the novel in Figural Language in the Novel: The Flowers of Speech from Cervantes to Joyce (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), a deconstructive theory that might be said to emanate from one of Quixote's evil enchanters. (N. from the A.)

Mikhail Bakhtin, p. 276. (N. from the A.)

«Dialogue and Dialogism», Poetics Today 4 (1983),107. De Man, it should be noted, is trying to turn Bakhtin's notion of dialogue back against him here. (N. from the A.)

Quoted from an unpublished translation by Vern W. McGee, to whom I am indebted for assistance in surveying Bakhtin's oeuvre. (N. from the A.)

This essay is a much revised and expanded version of a paper first presented at the 1985 NEMLA conference in Hartford; I would like to acknowledge and thank Prof. M. Levisi of Ohio State, Chair of the Cervantes session, for including my paper in the program and, also, Prof. E. Urbina (Texas A & M) for his incisive and helpful comments on a later draft of the paper. (N. from the A.)

To date, the most important studies of the Novelas ejemplares that also deal extensively with La ilustre fregona include J. Casalduero, Sentido y forma de las «Novelas ejemplares» 2.ª edición corregida (Madrid: Gredos, 1974), in particular pp. 190-203, and R. S. El Saffar, Novel to Romance: A Study of Cervantes' «Novelas Ejemplares» (Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974), especially pp. 86-108. My own reading is much indebted also to A. M. Barrenechea, «La ilustre fregona como ejemplo de estructura novelesca cervantina», Actas del Primer Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas (Oxford: Dolphin Book Co., 1964), pp. 199-206; J. M. Díez Taboada, «La estructura de las Novelas ejemplares», Anales cervantinos, 17 (1979-80), 87-106; J. Lowe, Cervantes: Two «Novelas Ejemplares»: La gitanilla and La ilustre fregona (London: Grant & Cutler, 1971), especially pp. 56-74; and F. Pierce, «Reality and Realism in the Exemplary Novels», BHS, 30 (1953), 134-42. While it generally remains true that La ilustre fregona has attracted relatively less scholarly attention, a recent collection of studies -Lenguaje, ideología y organización textual en las «Novelas Ejemplares». Actas del Coloquio celebrado en la Facultad de Filología de la Universidad Complutense en mayo de 1982 (Madrid; U. Complutense de Madrid & Toulouse: Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1983)- contains eight short but highly provocative commentaries on this work: A. M. Maestro, «Conjunciones y disyunciones en La ilustre fregona», pp. 69-79; J. Paulino, «El espacio narrativo en La ilustre fregona», pp. 93-108; A. Redondo & C. Sainz de la Maza, «La ilustre fregona: cuatro cuartos y una cola», pp. 109-18; M. Débax, «Ser y parecer», pp. 163-70; M. Ezquerro, «Tres por dos son seis», pp. 171-78; M. Ramond, «'Yo soy la ilustre fregona' o la simbolización de un delirio», pp. 179-90; C. Chauchadis, «Los caballeros pícaros: contexto e intertexto en La ilustre fregona», pp. 191-97; and J. Alsina, «Algunos esquemas narrativos y semánticos en La ilustre fregona», pp. 199-206. (N. from the A.)

See El Saffar, Novel to Romance, pp. 25-26. (N. from the A.)

Ibíd., pp. 14-17; given the basic theoretical framework of her book and the reliance on a plausible chronology of the composition of the novelas, El Saffar speaks of «earlier» vs. «later» texts, but many of her observations fit with my slightly looser categories based on a more or less Fryean scale of comedic / positive vs. ironic / negative; see N. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1973), especially pp. 43-49. (N. from the A.)

See A. Castro, «La ejemplaridad de las novelas cervantinas», in Hacia Cervantes (Madrid: Taurus, 1967), pp. 451-74, especially p. 466; see also F. Pierce, «Reality and Realism in the Exemplary Novels». (N. from the A.)

H. Sieber, ed., the Novelas ejemplares of Cervantes (Madrid; Cátedra, 1980), vol. II, p. 21; all subsequent references to the text of La ilustre fregona will correspond to this edition and volume and will be identified by page number. (N. from the A.)