NOTES
- The collection of novelas was published in 1613, but most of the stories contained in it were composed much earlier. The dates of composition suggested by Ruth El Saffar, in Novel to Romance. A Study of Cervantes' ‘Novelas ejemplares’ (Baltimore: The John Hopkins U. P., 1974), are as follows: Rinconete y Cortadillo, 1604; the Coloquio de los perros, before 1606; La ilustre fregona, after 1606. The composition of all three novelas coincides with the high point of the popularity of the picaresque novel in Spain.
- M. de Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. L. A. Murillo (Madrid: Castalia, 1978), Vol. I, 271.
- Cervantes, Don Quijote, ed. cit., 272.
- Some commentators, following Américo Castro, have suggested that Cervantes was open-minded about moral issues, unwilling to condemn the behaviour of his creations, who had a right to their point of view. This interpretation seems to be denied by Cervantes’ Prologue to the Novelas ejemplares and by the evidence of the novelas themselves, as I shall argue. The most influential exponent of this argument is Carlos Blanco Aguinaga in ‘Cervantes y la picaresca. Notas sobre dos tipos de realismo’, NRFH, XI (1957), 314–42.
- Novelas ejemplares, ed. J. B. Avalle-Arce (Madrid: Castalia, 1982), Vol. I, 63–64. All references, hereafter inserted in the text, are to this edition.
- This fact is amusingly thrown into doubt by the story of the witch, la Montiela, whose two children are turned into dogs at birth.
- In Mateo Alemán, Guzmán de Alfarache, ed. F. Rico (Barcelona: Planeta, 1967), Part I, Book II, Chapter 4, 271–80.