NOTES
- For a useful and succinct summary of earlier criticism, see R. L. Predmore's article, ‘Rinconete y Cortadillo. Realismo, carácter picaresco, alegría’, Ínsula, XXIII (1968), No. 254,17–18. This comprehensive study tackles such aspects as the supposed realism of the tale, the prevalent ironic treatment of the cofradía, the essential differences between Rinconete y Cortadillo and the picaresque novel proper, and the role of the two boys as somehow above their calling. See Note 5 below.
- Relatively recent analyses of Cervantes’ individual approach to the novella can be found in Ruth El Saffar's Novel to Romance. A Study of Cervantes's ‘Novelas ejemplares’ (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U.P., 1974), and Alban Forcione's Cervantes and the Humanist Vision: A Study of Four ‘Exemplary Novels’ (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton U.P., 1982).
- The edition of the tale used in this article is that of J. B. Avalle-Arce, Novelas ejemplares (Madrid: Castalia, 1982), 1, 217–72, followed by the Porras version, 273–317. Avalle-Arce also deals briefly with Rinconete y Cortadillo in the introduction to Vol. I, 32–37.
- See F. Rodríguez-Marín's introduction to his edition of the tale (Rinconete y Cortadillo. Novela de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Edición crítica [Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1920]), in which he examines Cervantes’ life in Seville and the extent to which he was thus able to create Monipodio's world; he further shows that the latter closely reflects the corrupt society of the city at this time. Cf. also F. Pierce's article, ‘Reality and Realism in the Exemplary Novels’, BHS, XXX (1953), 134–42, in which it is pointed out that Cervantes chooses Seville and other parts of Southern Spain for his ‘picaresque’ experiments, as against the more settled regions of the North, from which he draws some of his heroes and heroines (including our card-sharper and pickpocket!).
- Cf. Predmore, art. cit., in which he makes considerable play with the lack of hypocrisy and the sincerity of Monipodio and his fellows. Cf. also J. Casalduero (in his Sentido y forma de las ‘Novelas ejemplares’ [Buenos Aires: Instituto de Filología, 1943], and, especially for Rinconete y Cortadillo, 72–92), who lays great stress on the positive aspects of the tale, its alegría, the relative comfort of Monipodio's house and its cleanliness, the playfulness of the whole scene and, above all, Cervantes’ treatment of reality, which is seen as quite distinct from nineteenth-century naturalism. Many good points are made in this famous study, but it also suffers from Casalduero's persistent search for what is uplifting and his consequent underplaying of the tale's essential irony.
- See Américo Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes (Madrid: Editorial Hernando, 1925), and for his remarks on ‘Lo picaresco’, 230–39.
- See Casalduero, op. cit., 87. Monipodio and his house as a thieves’ kitchen are mentioned in the Coloquio de los perros, when Berganza tells how his policeman-master had dealings with Monipodio (see the Avalle-Arce edition, III, 282). Apart from the significance of this reference for the possible chronology of some of the Exemplary Novels (and there is of course the Porras ms. of 1606), it would appear that Cervantes’ residence in Seville was very much in his mind and imagination at this stage. (It will also be recalled that our tale is mentioned by name in Don Quixote, I, Chapter 47, when the innkeeper shows the priest the text of the story, which the priest now promises himself to read.)
- See the interesting article by Domingo Yndurain Muñoz, ‘Rinconete y Cortadillo. De entremés a novela’, BRAE, XLVI (1966), 321–33, in which, as its title suggests, he argues that in an early form (and he makes great use of the Porras version of the tale), Rinconete y Cortadillo was an entremés, for which he analyses the short novel in all its parts. He calls in support Casalduero's remarks about the influence of the theatre on different episodes in Monipodio's house, although Yndurain extends this to the opening sections at the inn and the first scenes in Seville, and he sees the two boys not as pícaros but as ‘figuras del donaire’. In declaring that the novel is ‘un entremés anovelado’, Yndurain further states that Cervantes may have turned it into a short novel because of his trouble with the ‘autores’ who did not want his plays. Much in this study is both well argued and convincing, but once more much of Cervantes’ use of irony is missed.
- Special mention from among the fauna of Monipodio's house should be made of the following: La Gananciosa, El Narigueta, Silbatillo, Maniferro and Desmochado.
- This is the first reference to the passage of time since the two boys contracted themselves as carriers on the day following their arrival in Seville. Thus most if not all of the tale takes place within the space of one day.
- As outsiders our two protagonists allow Cervantes to create a distance between the reader and the cofradía, although he also allows them their own freedom to comment adversely on the latter, while permitting them equally to continue for the present with Monipodio, as we shall see below. This freedom granted to Rinconete and Cortadillo perhaps leads on naturally to the point made by Avalle-Arce that ‘la dualidad de protagonistas es una norma cervantina, impuesta, seguramente, por la necesidad de puntos de vista múltiples, o al menos doble’ (see the introduction to Vol. I of his edition, 35), and he then cites as examples two further stories from the Exemplary Novels. This is a thesis developed by Avalle-Arce in his Nuevos deslindes cervantinos (Barcelona: Ariel, 1975).
- Several critics have dealt with the tale's structural divisions. See for example Yndurain's article in Note 8 above. A much more deliberate attempt to examine the structural complexities is to be found in José Pascual Buxó's ‘Estructura y lección de Rinconete y Cortadillo?, Lavori Ispanistici, Serie 11 (Messina/Firenze: Università degli Studi, Firenze, 1970), 69–96. Buxó, who at more than one point echoes and quotes from Casalduero's monograph, makes some very perceptive statements about, for example, the extent of the two boys’ descent into Monipodio's den of thieves, and about the significance of germanía. He is chiefly concerned however with the sections of the tale dealing with Monipodio's house, its theatricality, and the supposed divisions arising from the disturbances among the cofradía which are linked to the use of three proverbs associated with them. This analysis however suffers from repetitiveness and a certain prolixity.
- See T. E. May's informative and scholarly article, ‘Pícaro: A Suggestion’, RR, XLIII (1952), 27–33, in which he analyses the historical and semantic background to the word, and goes on to examine the varied social and religious underworlds of the sixteenth century, induding the alumbrados of Seville and other parts of Spain. These illuminists, as they are also called, together with other similar European groups, were both secretive and lived in isolated communities, but are not to be confused with the criminal underworld. For an analysis of germanía, see K. L. Selig's ‘Cervantes y su arte de la novela’, in Actas del 2° Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas (Nimega: Instituto Español de la Universidad de Nimega, 1967), 585–90. One should also recall here Rodríguez- Marín's introduction to his edition, as in Note 4 above.
- Perhaps the last note by Avalle-Arce to his edition (p. 272 of Vol. 1) is appropriate here: ‘el Guzmán de Alfarache termina su segunda parte (1604) prometiendo tercera parte. Claro está que no hay evidencia alguna de que Cervantes haya continuado, ni siquiera pretendido continuar, el Rinconete. Se atiene, más bien, a un lugar común de la novelística de la época.’
- Cervantes tends to end his Exemplary Novels either on a note of cautious moralizing, or of praise of the hero or heroine, or of satisfaction at a happy outcome: thus La española inglesa, El coloquio de los perros, and the Rinconete; El amante liberal and El licenciado Vidriera, and La gitanilla and La fuerza de la sangre, respectively.
- This article is an expanded version of one of a series of lectures in Spanish given in Palma de Mallorca (see my book, just published, on Narrativa española de los siglos XVI y XVII: cuatro lecciones, Col-lecció Paraula Dita 4 [Palma de Mallorca: Universitat de les Illes Balears, 1991], 54–59).