In other words, if all the shepherd lovers who contemplated suicide or claimed to be dying of love actually did, the pastoral space would be desolate and unimaginable. Referring to Grisóstomo's suicide, Poggioli states: «Yet, besides being a Christian, Grisóstomo was a shepherd too, and any reader well acquainted with the pastoral tradition will immediately realize that his suicide is a literary transgression as well as a mortal sin... In brief, within the economy of the bucolic genre, Grisóstomo's suicide is no less arbitrary and unique than Marcela's decision to become a shepherdess in order to deny even more fully the rule of love». (170) (N. from the A.)

Thus, in Lacanian terms, Marcela is an ethical subject who does not cede her desire to an external Symbolic construct. (N. from the A.)

For example, Yvonne Jehenson interprets Don Quixote's reaction strictly within an objectifying mechanism. According to Jehenson, «Marcela has subverted the male view of her as a textual object, but she remains a sexual object. Everyone, including Don Quixote, wants to go after this beautiful object». (30-1) (N. from the A.)

Among the most salient are Don Quixote's questionable «locura», the priest's love-hate relationship with literature, and Sancho's contradictory wavering between his master's imaginary construction and his own views of «reality». (N. from the A.)

This is not to say that there are not many cases in the pastoral genre where the male protagonists have diverging view-points. Again, Montemayor's Los siete libros de la Diana is exemplary, with Sylvano's view throughout the last five books corresponding to that of «el desamorado» vis-à-vis Sireno's dedication to love. Yet, even within this split, the characters remain tightly united in the pastoral space, listening to each other's «canto amebeo» and building upon the male bond that they had established from the inception of the text. To the contrary, Anselmo and Eugenio are not capable of such unity. Instead, Eugenio mocks Anselmo and does not feel he can share a tight bond with his competitor: «Entre estos disparatados, el que muestra que menos y más juicio tiene es mi competidor Anselmo... Yo sigo otro camino, más fácil, y a mi parecer más acertado...» (595) (N. from the A.)

I would like to thank Diana De Armas Wilson, Frederick De Armas, and the readers for Cervantes whose suggestions have greatly strengthened this article. (N. from the A.)

In accordance with many critics who utilize a materialist approach to the study of culture, I do not capitalize adjectives such as marxist, gramscian, etc. (see Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, preface and ed. Terry Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, ix). (N. from the A.)

Tony Bennett (186) uses the term deployment to describe his concept of literature as a field of social practices which is set apart from other practices by the manner in which texts are used in specific historical circumstances, rather than by their aesthetic qualities. I will use this concept to describe comedia genres according to their social uses instead of their formal characteristics. (N. from the A.)

See for example: Ruiz-Ramón, p. 129; Belli, p. 128; Correa p. 283; Shivers, p. 14. Casalduero has even criticized 19th and 20th century theatrical revivals which «deformed» the original by using it in the explicitly political context of the Napoleonic siege and the Civil War (p. 86). The critical tendency to find affirmation of the status quo in comedias is not limited to La Numancia; see also David Lanoue on the hegemonic representation of Imperial mythology in Calderón's Roman plays, p. 92, and José Maravall's overview of theater and society in the Golden Age. (N. from the A.)

Forcione la llama «a false paradise of confinement» y «a monstrous machine of confinement». (N. del A.)