Since my interpretation of La Gitanilla -the same can be said of La Galatea- breaks with traditional exegesis of this novela, I shall, with one or two exceptions, not refer to the many studies on this work and on the Novelas ejemplares in general. One of these exceptions is the study by Alban K. Forcione (included in Cervantes, Aristotle and the «Persiles», Princeton, 1970, pp. 306-19), who seems to have approached the essential point of Cervantes's novela when he suggests (p. 313) that Preciosa is a symbol of Poetry and a «siren of the Platonic tradition», and when he speaks of «the ritualistic celebration of death and rebirth which lies behind the plot of the Gitanilla».

For mention of close connections between the pastoral world of La Galatea and the gipsies of La Gitanilla, consult Agustín de Amezúa y Mayo, Cervantes, creador de la novela corta española, (Madrid, 1958), II, pp. 27, 33.

This opposition is best noted when a gipsy asserts that their realm has nothing to do with the old refrain: «Iglesia, o mar, o casa real», (Either Church or sea or Royal House), a saying which really sums up the aspirations of the nobility in Spain. When the gipsy rejects this refrain, he is indeed rejecting the traditional Spain of Santa Teresa, Lepanto and Charles V.

«Thousands and thousands of colors are given off by the gems of the portals and by the very bright and lively carvings». Lib. I, 97.

«One nymph with both hands holds above her moist locks a garland bright with gold and oriental jewels; another sets pearls on her ears; still another appears to be draping around her bosom and white shoulders precious necklaces...» Lib. I, 102.

«La Visione di Venus: antico poemetto popolare», edited by Alessandro D'Ancona in Giornale di Filologia Romanza, I, (1880), 111-18; esp. p. 115.

Gerald Snare, «Spenser's Fourth Grace», Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXXIV (1971), 354-55. The quotation is from The Fairie Queene, VI, X, 12:

	And in the middest of those same three, was placed
	Another damzell, as a precious gemme
	Amidst a ring most richly well enchaced,
	That with her goodly presence all the rest much graced.

«Little gipsy girl, who can for her beauty be praised; because of the stone that is part of you, the world calls you Preciosa». La Gitanilla, p. 22.

La Gitanilla, p. 6. The precise manner in which Cervantes describes the procession of gipsies -four old women, four young and one male gipsy- constitutes in both the total number (nine) and in the grouping (four plus four plus one), an important allusion to the number of figures in the Primavera and stresses the ease with which they can be grouped into a four-four-one arrangement. More will be said on this in another section.

La Gitanilla, p. 10.