Miguel de Cervantes' Interludes/Entremeses (review)

Reviews279 Listerman, Randall W. Miguel de Cervantes' Interludes/Entremeses. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Meilen Press, 1991. Hardcover. 128 pp. A funny thing happened on the way to writing this book review. While most scholars typically derive genuine pleasure from seeing the fruits of their labors in print, fewer (fortunately) are afforded the opportunity of seeing them in someone else's book, and fewer still while reviewing that book for a scholarly journal. Suffice it to say that Randall Listerman's introduction to his translation of the entremeses seemed very familiar to me at first glance. A closer reading revealed that Professor Listerman had indeed plagiarized my 1989 doctoral dissertation, sometimes verbatim, borrowing extensive passages, paraphrasing others, and duplicating my ideas and expression right down to the quotation of other scholars and typographical errors (the latter found in certain bibliographical entries). A sense of déjà vu first struck me while reading, on the second page of Listerman's introduction: "Lope de Rueda captured dramatically the specific values of rural Spanish popular culture in the sixteenth century" (2). Turning to page 57 of my dissertation, I found some familiar words: "Lope de Rueda defined the specific values of rural Spanish popular culture as they pertained to the theatre in the sixteenth century." I initially hoped that the coincidence was merely accidental, perhaps an isolated example of sloppy scholarship, and so I read on. To my dismay, I discovered that the following ten pages were almost entirely reconstructed from sections of my thesis, numbering as many as 12 sentences (some 250 words) per page. On page 3, for example, Listerman writes: "The use of prose would come to define the language of the interlude, in contrast with the full-length comedia and its use of several meters" (compare to my sentence: "the use of prose would come to define the language of the interlude, in contrast with the full-length comedia and its complex versification" [58]). Having ruled out absent-mindedness or inattention to detail, I soon discovered that pages 2-3 of Listerman followed the overall progression of ideas introduced on pages 57-58 of my dissertation (similarly Listerman's pages 5-6 recast my pages 29-31, and his 7-10 attempt to duplicate my 76-83). In total, at least 63 sentences lifted from my earlier work appear in Listerman's brief, twelve-page introduction. Most of the passages, like those mentioned above, have been copied verbatim or nearly so. Still, the cleverly-paraphrased sections may reveal more about the dangers of plagiarism and the elusiveness of the plagiarist than the verbatim parts. 280BCom, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Winter 1994) A few artistic liberties can transform an original sentence into something at once familiar and parallel in a structural sense, yet somehow different at the same time. Hence my "In El retablo de las maravillas the power of the artistic word is shown not only to be capable of manipulating the characters on the stage, but also momentarily deceives the theatre-going public" (26) becomes Listerman's "The interlude entitled El retablo de las maravillas shows the linguistic manipulative power of Cervantes as he controls the characters on the stage and simultaneously deceives the audience" (4). My "We as the audience never see that new order; we are left hanging in an ironic and open-ended suspense looking toward the future —hopefully a brighter one" (79) is recast creatively in "As the audience we never see the new order; rather we are left in an open-ended continuum that looks to the future—admittedly one hopes a more enlightened one" (8-9). Additionally, some of the borrowed passages from my dissertation show up in the Listerman text with their references to other scholars left intact. My quotations of Eugenio Asensio and Amelia Agostini Bonelli de Del Rio (pages 29 and 30, respectively) appear on page 5 of Listerman in the same sequential order. My reference to Bakhtin on page 76 resurfaces on page 7 of Listerman, couched within the same context of my words. On page 78, I quote Edwin Honig, whereas Listerman paraphrases him (without documentation, I might add) on page 8. Listerman also apparently wished to give me...