Brian Dutton's Cancionero project has turned up an interesting poem in the Cancionero de San Román (ca. 1454, Real Academia de la Historia). Catalogued as [ID0328] MH1-65, the original title is missing. Professor Dutton offers the title «Lanzas», and believes it is the work of Juan de Mena. In the poem, certain married ladies of the court complain to the king: «mas el bien de nuestro lecho / es vn canpo contrafecho / de tan flacos estandartes / que ninguna de las partes / nunca lieua su derecho». The ladies would have their husbands better armed: «datnos gente bien armada / para dar este conbate / ca la gente que tenemos / por fallarla cada dia / desarenada quando çia / floxamente con los Remos». The key stanza, and the one which explicitly refers to the phallus as a lance, is perhaps the most humorous of the poem: «Mas quien desto se reçela / deue dar esta cabtela / ensayarse sienpre dantes / ca non es abto de galanes / non yr diestro por la tela / & quien rige gruesa lança / o quien tal poder alcança / venga firme como deue / el que desto non se atreue /pierda luego el esperança». I am grateful to Professor Dutton for sharing this poem with me.

In «Heroic Striving and Don Quixote's Emblematic Prudence», a forthcoming article in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, I argue that the barber's surrendering of the basin that will become the yelmo de Mambrino is an emblematic act of symbolic castration. By donning the helmet as a spoil of war, epic tradition dictates that Don Quixote will assume its unique properties: impotence and emasculation.

For versions of the «Penitencia del rey don Rodrigo», see: Diego Catalán et al., El romancero pan-hispánico: Catálogo general descriptivo (Madrid: Seminario Menéndez-Pidal, 1982) 7-19 and María Goyri & Ramón Menéndez Pidal, eds., Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas (español-portugués-catalán-Sefardí) [Madrid: Gredos, 1957] 58-95.

Most early studies on Rocinante blindly adhered to an idealized vision of his role in the novel. See, for example: Ramón González-Alegre, «Meditación sobre Rocinante», Nuestro Tiempo 55 (1959): 23-43 and Marcial José Bayo, «Rocinante y Clavileño, caballos de don Quijote», Miscelânea de Estudos a Joaquim de Carvalho 4 (1960): 414-24.

The Tesoro de la lengua gives the following definition: «Rixoso, el que siempre está aparejado para reñir. Cavallo rixoso, el inquieto, particularmente quando veen las yeguas, y siempre se lleva mal con los otros cavallos»(910).

Olga Prjevalinsky Ferrer establishes in «Del Asno de Oro a Rocinante: Contribución al estudio del Quijote», Cuadernos de Literatura 3 (1948): 247-57, that Rocinante's desire to «refocilarse con las señoras facas» may be based on a similar passage from the Asno de Oro (255).

Howard Mancing takes note of the peculiar use of the verb refocilarse in the novel (The Chivalric World 59). Martín Alonso provides the following significant definition in his Enciclopedia del idioma: «Recrear, alegrar. Dic. particularmente de las cosas que calientan y dan vigor» (vol. III: 3552). Carlos Fernández Gómez provides another instance where Cervantes uses the term to mean sexual dalliance in his Vocabulario de Cervantes. The text in question is from the Coloquio de los perros: «Baxaua la negra, como has oydo, a refocilarse cõ el negro» (879).

The term 'cautionary school' denotes the critical reaction against Romantic ('soft') interpretations of Don Quijote. Perhaps the best-known example of the cautionary ('hard') tradition is Anthony's The Romantic Approach to Don Quixote (1977).

Genette uses the two terms interchangeably (228). Despite the invariably relative nature of these terms, I shall (for the sake of clarity, and following Parr) use the term 'intradiegetic' in this essay to refer specifically to the «universe of the characters» (Anatomy 58), that is, the basic level of narrative on which Don Quijote and Sancho have their adventures and interact with other characters.

All quotations, except where indicated, are from Part I of the Murillo edition of Don Quijote (Castalia, 1978).