In this regard, I find myself largely in agreement with A. Castro's position as outlined in his section on «Lo picaresco» in El pensamiento de Cervantes (Barcelona & Madrid: Noguer, 1973), pp. 228-235. The picaresque, when it can be said to be present at all in a Cervantine text -e. g., here or in Rinconete y Cortadillo- represents the inclusion into a larger context of episodes or characters that evoke the lower reaches of society, rather than the elaboration of a total and exclusive picaresque vision, the basically alienated and critical view of society. For more specific considerations of the integration of picaresque elements into La ilustre fregona, see M. Joly, «Para una reinterpretación de La ilustre fregona: Ensayo de tipología cervantina», in Aurem Saeculum Hispanum: Beiträge zu texten des Siglo de Oro, eds., K. H. Körner & D. Briesemeister (Weisbaden: Steiner, 1983), pp. 103-16, and R. M. Johnston, «Picaresque and Pastoral in La ilustre fregona», in Cervantes and the Renaissance, ed. M. D. McGaha (Easton, PA: Juan de la Cuesta, 1980), pp. 167-77. (N. from the A.)

In this light, Carriazo's picaresque sub-plot functions as a temporary excursion from his authentic identity and social rank, curiously reaffirming his inherent nobility, rather than as the meaningful immersion of the youth into the picaresque world or, even less, his transformation into a pícaro. (N. from the A.)

This latter structure largely conforms to the notion of the «romance» genre, as El Saffar has argued (Novel to Romance), though La ilustre fregona would still be, in El Saffar's scheme, a problematic, transitional text, still very much tied to novelistic realism. (N. from the A.)

See Johnston, «Picaresque and Pastoral in La ilustre fregona». William Empson's classic study -Some Versions of Pastoral (New York: New Directions, 1960; first published in 1938)- is very much a product of its epoch and reflects a refreshingly inventive response to what he saw as the stultifying excesses of the «socialist realist» vein of some Marxist literary criticism; nonetheless, Empson's highly original redefining of the pastoral genre renders the term susceptible to being applied to a vast range of works of fiction. In my opinion, Johnston's use of the concept brushes, though perhaps does not overstep, the boundaries of the justifiable use of the term. (N. from the A.)

Consider the subtle and specifically modified pastoral of the Grisóstomo and Marcela episode in Don Quijote, Part I. And as Johnston has so carefully put it, «the true pastoral of La ilustre fregona is an internal sort of pastoral. Instead of happening in a place resembling the earthly paradise or the Golden Age, it exists within the characters as a state of mind» («Picaresque and Pastoral», p. 174). (N. from the A.)

If, however, one steps back from the more restricted conventions of Renaissance pastoral and considers the more inclusive Empsonian notion of «the pastoral process of putting the complex into the simple» (see Empson, pp. 3-23), one is still left with the question of what is the concentrated and «simple» discourse of La ilustre fregona into which a complexity has been placed: And what is this complexity? (N. from the A.)

See M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, M. Holquist, ed., C. Emerson & M. Holquist, trans. (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981), especially the essays «From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse» (pp. 41-83) and «Discourse in the Novel» (pp. 259-422). What Bakhtin states as a general case seems especially appropriate to the situation of language and genre in La ilustre fregona: «The prose writer as a novelist does not strip away the intentions of others from the heteroglot language of his works, he does not violate those socio-ideological cultural horizons (big and little worlds) that open up behind heteroglot languages -rather, he welcomes them into his work. The prose writer makes use of words that are already populated with the social intentions of others and compels them to serve his own new intentions, to serve a second master...

... «Diversity of voices and heteroglossia enter the novel and organize themselves within it into a structured artistic system. This constitutes the distinguishing feature of the novel as a genre» (pp. 299-300). See also pp. 320-21, on «incorporated genres». (N. from the A.)

The centrality of the inn as an apt setting for disguise, mistakes, and final anagnorisis -as well as its more subtle function as a device for the temporary bringing together of diverse social sectors and their discourses- is not only fitting in light of the narrative exigencies of this novela, but it also suggests a significant allusive connection between this shorter work and Don Quijote, Part I, where the inn setting frequently discharges similarly complex and crucial functions. For a highly insightful analysis of this aspect, see J. Paulino, «El espacio narrativo en La ilustre fregona». (N. from the A.)

In this regard, the posada is emphatically that which Sieber has characterized as the typical space and moment of the Cervantine novela's action: «Casi todas las Novelas ejemplares presentan personajes en una situación, digamos, entre paréntesis», and thus the Cervantine novela «tiene lugar para los personajes y para los lectores en este espacio parentético» (Novelas ejemplares, vol. I, p. 15). (N. from the A.)

As J. Paulino («El espacio narrativo») states, «El narrador, al seleccionar y combinar sus menciones y comentarios, está oponiendo Burgos, Valladolid y Salamanca (lugares de vida noble, honrada, recta y de estudio) a Madrid, Toledo y Sevilla, centros de la picaresca y el engaño. Con esto se configuran dos espacios globales en el relato y una incursión a un espacio límite al que no se llega otra vez» (p. 99). (N. from the A.)