Icaza goes on to list another set of unusual phrases and colloquial expressions that go unclarified in the text of TF. Among these are del tiempo de Fernán González, guantes de polvillo, replicar broqueles, meterse en danzas de espadas, hacer refacción y deshecha, estar de dos dormidas como gusano de seda and ir hecho un San Jorge (108).

Icaza also notes several expressions in TF that are exact Spanish translations of certain Italian phrases in Aretino's look among them abrir tienda, esquilmar majuelo, vendimiar viña and disfrutar la heredad (108).

One wonders why Gossy doesn't take her argument one step further and observe that the denouement of TF is anything but Cervantine. Where else among Cervantes's works do we have such a bizarre «happy» resolution of events (two students fighting over how and by whom Esperanza shall be «possessed»)? The «moral» here is simply too obvious, facile and unsophisticated to be from Cervantes's pen. A more typically Cervantine moral coda is the one we find at the conclusion of La gitanilla, where the Gypsy girl Preciosa, now reconstituted as the aristocratic Costanza and reunited with her biological parents, submits to her parents' will and elects to abandon the carefree life of the aduar (where she had lived in complete contentment and freedom) in order to take up the very confining (and boringly conventional) role of the wife of the young noble, Juan de Cárcamo. What many critics have overlooked about the ending of La gitanilla is that Preciosa's long-time spiritual counterpart, the page-poet Clemente, is then quietly allowed to slip away from the royal authorities who seek to imprison him in order to make his way to Italy, where we assume he will continue to live free and unencumbered by the stifling conventions of the aristocrats' society. The subtle criticism contained in the subtext of La gitanilla is what has made Cervantes's writing so attractive and rewarding to critics over the centuries. That sophistication and subtlety are precisely the elements that are lacking in TF, which constitutes a major reason for doubting that Cervantes has had any hand whatsoever in its composition.

All citations from El casamiento engañoso are taken from Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares, III, ed. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce.

All citations from La tía fingida are taken from the Porras version as reproduced in Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares III, ed. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce.

For a fuller explanation of the arguments against Cervantes's authorship, see Aylward, Cervantes: Pioneer and Plagiarist.

For other interpretations of Quevedo's technique, see Goytisolo, Read, and Smith (72-9).

Of course, Bakhtin's landmark work on Rabelais is fundamental to understanding the political implications of the intimate early modern relationship between humor and the material bodily lower stratum that is the subject of this [p. 68] essay. Among his many observations on Cervantes is the following: «The fundamental trend of Cervantes's parodies is a 'coming down to earth', a contact with the reproductive and generating power of the earth and of the body» (22).

For a succinct discussion of the potential iconoclasm of excremental discourse, see Stallybrass and White (23-4, 5, 49, passim).

Américo Castro rightly calls the sonnet «irónico comentario al monumental catafalco erigido en la catedral de Sevilla para los funerales de Felipe II» (Cervantes 99).