8/13/2019 Los libros en El Prlogo de las Novelas ejemplares. mencionados por Cervantes. 1970.pdf

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The Books in the Prologue to the Novelas Exemplares

Author(s): Karl-Ludwing SeligSource: MLN, Vol. 85, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (Mar., 1970), p. 249Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2908329.

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8/13/2019 Los libros en El Prlogo de las Novelas ejemplares. mencionados por Cervantes. 1970.pdf

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M L N 249The Books in the Prologue to theNovelasExemplares

The prologue to Cervantes'Novelas Exemplares has been commentedupon many timesand the literary rinciples it expresseshave been thesubject of much scholarlywriting.1There are a few sentencesprecedingthe much debated and famous phrase . . . yo soy el primero que henouelado en lengua castellana . . . whose possible implications seem tohave escaped the criticalreader. I am referringo the followingpassage(italicsmine):Horas ay de recreacion,donde el afligidoespiritudescanse.Para este efeto se plantan las alamedas, se buscan las fuentes,seallanan las cuestasy se cultiuan,con curiosidad, os jardines. Vna cosame atreuere a dezirte,que si por algun modo alcansara que la lecciondestasNovelas pudiera induzir a quien las leyeraa algun mal desseo opensamiento . . . (ed. Schevill-Bonilla, pp. 22-23).

It appears to me that Cervantessubtlybuilds into the remarkscited anumber of key words that give the reader an enumerationof worksreferring o certain novella texts that preceded his own Novelas ex-emplares. While the author's primary oncern is to give some clue orexplanationas to his artistic ntent and what he means by exemplary,several wordsand expressions eemto have a secondarymeaning. Takingfor granted that the passage contains a number of well establishedcommon-places,herealso seemsto be a highfrequency,n accumulationof terms r words that can be meaningfullyelated in anotherway: readalmost a clef,theyseem to allude to specificworksand contain in totoor in part the title of someparticulartext or collectionofnovelle. Horas. . . de recreacion ould refer o theSpanish translationwith thatprecisetitle of Lodovico Guicciardini's Detti et fatti piacevoli (1586), . . .curiosidad, os jardines mightreferto Antonio de Torquemada's Jardinde flores uriosas (1570), a work in fact mentionedby Cervantesalso inDon Quixote in the judgmentof the books, and leccionmaypossiblybea slight allusion to one of the most popular miscellanea containingnovella materialof theperiod,Pedro Mexia's Silva de varia lecion. Thesewere afterall the kind of workswhich one can presume to reflect heliterary tradition of Cervantes's projected and many times promisedSemanas del Jardin.

Columbia University KARL-LUDWIGSELIG1See particularly E. C. Riley, Cervantes's Theory of the Novel (Oxford,1962), and Walter Pabst, Novellentheorie und Novellendichtung. Zur Ge-schichte ihrer Antinomie in den romanischenLiteraturen,2. ed. (Heidelberg,1967).

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