The Best Boy in Spain/El mejor mozo de España (review)

306 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies con su madre, Demeter, y en donde culmina, de manera magistral, el tema del retorno. Leyenda Napolitana es un viaje de vuelta a las profundidades del sei. Un poema heterogéneo en su forma, que incorpora el verso y la prosa poética, el teatro y la música para transcender las barreras tradicionales dd poema y convertirse en una entidad artÃ-stica inteidisciplinar, sin lÃ-mites. Mónica Jato University of New Hampshire The Best Boy in Spain/Elmejor mozo de España Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 1999 By Lope de Vega Introduction and translation by David Gitlitz The Best Boy in Spain, David Giditz's English translation of Lope de Vega's El mejor mozo de España, is a successful and even masterful endeavor to make this important comedia accessible to an English-speaking audience. Though such is clearly the principle purpose of Professor Giditz's undertaking and by itself validates the project, there are other concomitant benefits fot othet readers. Fiist, its calibei as a tianslation accords it significant value as a case study or model for those who would bettet understand the art and science of translation in general and particularly the translation of poetic discourse. In order to preserve the fhythmic and melodic structure ofthe original, Professor Gitlitz selects English metrical foims which correspond as closely as possible to the several metei and thyme configurations of theii Spanish counterparts. Thus the Spanish redondiüa becomes the English octosyllabic quatrain with the same "abba" rhyme scheme; the English pentametei in all cases replaces rhe Spanish endecasüabo. The section of the "Introduction," entitled "A Wotd About Versification," amply presents the reasons for Lope's shifts in meter, but some sort of explanation defending Professor Giditz's choice of each ofthe English coirektes would have been, if unnecessary for the casual readei, very helpful to those readers interested in translation. Second, the project will be very useful to bilingual ieadeis and especially to English-speakers who study Spanish language, culture and literature at an advanced level. For them, the sideby -side presentation of both Lope's text and Professor Giditz's translation offers immediate clarification and reinforcement without the constant need to inteirupt reading to search the dictionary. With the help of an English tianslation which preserves much of both the cultural and thetorical substance ofthe original, the inexperienced ieadet can begin to penetrate the essence of a complex liter ature of a complex age. Foi university students whose Spanish language skills, though comparatively advanced, still leave them unprepared for the comedias, conceptismo style of drama, Piofessot Giditz's ihetoiical fidelity in his translation offeis them examples of Lope's agudeza in theii mother tongue. For those of us who dale teach Spanish Baroque literature, this is welcome assistance in oui efforts to persuade our students to abandon their tendency to associate significance with realism and enter a reality based on analogical correspondence, metaphor and symbolism. Finally, English-speaking students of Spanish history and culture with limited Spanish language skills can now explore die reign ofthe Catholic Monarchs through its representation in the popular comedia. The "Historical Background" section of Professor Giditz's "Introduction" provides aU the necessary information for the reading of The Best Boy in Spain as "an artistic simplification of a much more convoluted historical record." His clarification ofthat iecord is the best I have read. He likens fifteendi-century European monarchical politics to a game of strategy in which "the aim of diplomacy is to keep on playing," He focuses on the contradicting natut e ofthe politics of royal mairiage—its usefulness as leverage for negotiation was always tempered by the need to insure a clean succession to the throne—and how the game was played out with respect to Isabel and Castile. The lines of succession and the existing ties among die several players (Aragon Castile, Portugal and France) are carefully detailed and culminate in a concise summary ofthe four major points at issue at the moment when Isabel made het decision to many Fernando of Aragon. Both the "Introduction" and the play will be required Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 307...