For Cervantes's vacillations between e and i, see Sieber (32) and Lapesa (368).

For a view of Cervantes's aesthetic that supports his capacity for such lexigraphical symbolism, see Lapesa (331-3). Lapesa even claims that Cervantes «posee un finísimo sentido de la palabra en sí, a causa del cual se complace en juegos que operan unas veces con el concepto, otras veces con el cuerpo fónico de los vocablos» (332).

For another, if less elaborate, instance of Cervantes's capacity for scatological humor, see McGrady. This is to say nothing of Don Quixote's famous fulling mill episode (1.245-6). Indeed, both the class structure and the religious irreverence of the sonnet are perceptible in the trajectory of chapters nineteen and twenty, where the excommunication of the «hero» is followed by his worldly sidekick's defecation.

Martín also claims that the term chapeo is a vulgarism, «a rather presumptuous Gallicism (chapeau) to describe the wide-brimmed hat favored by ruffians» (111). But in the context we have raised by calar, it needs pointing out that the «presumptuousness» is a much deeper political jab at the crown worn by Philip II, who betrayed (and was betrayed by) his own navy. We also have this extremely rare word's curious appearance in the Crónica de Aragón, where a tale of royal intrigue (as Don Carlos temporarily assumes the throne of Aragón) is typically dominated by excommunication and questions of pureza de sangre:

Y en señal de le poner en possessio<n>: le puso de su mano vn sombrero burgueryn de su tierra: que seria como corona. Otros dizen que no era sombrero: mas vn capirote françes: que tiene mas semejança de corona. y por esso le llamaua su hermano / don Phelipe: el rey del chapeu. faziendo burla de su corona. y la burla salio tan verdadera: que la casa de francia: la houo de llorar mas agramente / que nunca ella pensara: como adelante se diera, por que el rey de francia murio en la demanda: y antes de salir de catalueña. y la mayor parte de su gente: y ahun quasi toda. Mas el rey de Aragón: fue tan batalloso guerrero / y magnanimo / que oso fazer rostro: no solo el rey de francia: q<ue> abstara / y fuera sobrado: mas a todo el poder dela yglesia: que es mucho mas. al rey mismo su hermano: que era su carne: y su sangre: que no hay peor / ni mas peligroso enemigo (Fabricio de Vagad, fol. 138v).

Given the odd presence of chapeo in a poem with characters who are obviously faziendo burla of the crown of Philip II, it seems plausible that Cervantes could have ironically reworked the chronicle in order to take advantage of the Erasmian potential of one's «own flesh and blood» as the «enemy». Moreover, the decaying body of Philip II now allows the pathetic Carlos «rey del chapeu» to have the last laugh (perhaps a reference to Philip's most intimate critic, his own son Carlos of the leyenda negra?). Regardless, Cervantes's piece underscores the fact that the endless dynamics of power ultimately outlive their human hosts -i. e., Renaissance Spain is just a grander feudal situation in which the demise of the foreign Hapsburgs coincides with the demise of the international power of the Church.

Freud's connection between excrement and money is tempting here. I considered a Freudian reading, but felt that the historical and literary evidence held its own. For a most convincing case for Freud's appropriation/intuition of Cervantine thought, see El Saffar and Wilson (Eds.)

As Luther put it, «Erasmus was far from the knowledge of grace, since in all his writings he is not concerned for the cross but for peace» (cited by Dickens and Jones 117).

Whether this attitude is the result of neoestoicismo inherited from Seneca or a radical derivative of Erasmism will likely continue to be debated. For in both we are dealing with the dialectical interaction of paganism and Christianity that typifies Renaissance humanism. Castro raised the issue long ago in his seminal, if at times confused and contradictory, El pensamiento de Cervantes (1925). Only two pages after his famous «Sin Erasmo, Cervantes no habría sido como fué», we find:

Vamos a demostrar que la moral de Cervantes es en su última raíz de carácter esencialmente filosófico, puramente natural y humana, sin ingerencia activa de principios religiosos [...]

Sabe el lector que el neoestoicismo es la doctrina moral que en el siglo XVI trató de conciliar, en lo posible, el rigor del estoicismo clásico (fatalista y, en el fondo, panteísta y negador de la inmortalidad del alma) con las exigencias del dogma cristiano o católico.

(322)

If one insists on the loyalty of Cervantes to his king and his church, I would insist that said loyalty be understood only in terms of the loyalty of the office of the advocatus diaboli to Catholic theology. Politics, like cathedrals and sonnets, are complex and self-critical affairs, and I fail to see how a man only recently released from a Seville jail for supposed disloyalty to the state could pen homenajes to the Crown.

Margaret Church. Don Quixote: the Knight of La Mancha, (New York: New York University Press), 1991, p. 105-106.

Así, Evelio Echevarría («La comparación de personajes en Don Quijote (II Parte)». ACer, 16 (1977), 178, 183-184), quien a su vez cita la opinión de J. Casalduero (Sentido y forma del «Quijote», [Madrid: Ínsula, 1949], p. 274) de que estos personajes no pasan de ser «un desfile de figuras de la sociedad» de aquellos tiempos.