From the Editor

It has been five years since I drove to Williamsburg to pick up sixteen cubic feet of archives and back issues from George Greenia. The excitement of becoming the new editor of La corónica was mixed with some apprehension. I knew that I could not possibly fill the shoes of my predecessor and my goals were modest, polishing the edges of George Greenia’s colossal work and continuing with the publication of superb scholarship. For that purpose I have relied on Isidro J. Rivera, our Managing Editor and institutional memory, who has guided me with kindness and a steady hand, and on the recently created position of Associate Editor, ably performed by Emily C. Francomano. Mark D. Johnston’s enthusiasm has increased the number of book reviews to numbers that are becoming difficult to manage, and Paco Gago-Jover maintains a beautiful, and informative, Web site and updates us in the area of information technology. George Greenia has offered wise counsel as editor at large. I have relied as well on the advice of the members of the executive committee of the MLA Division of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures and Cultures; and on the generosity of countless scholars who have tutored me on how to select and edit a manuscript. I am relieved that my apprehensions were unfounded and that the community of medieval Hispanists, quite alive and thriving, is always ready to offer its support. My most sincere thanks to all for your patience and kindness. It has been a happy and productive time in my life. I leave for last my most sincere appreciation for Cornelia W. Barr, my intrepid production editor, without whose intelligence, sense of humor and technical knowledge I could not have survived as editor. I am extremely pleased with La corónica’s accomplishments in these five years but you, patient reader, should be the judge of that.

The reflection on the past continues with the inclusion in this issue of a piece by Joseph T. Snow, “The Birth, Infancy and Adolescence of IMANA, 1998–2006”, that takes us back to the time when La corónica was the newsletter of the Modern Language Association’s Division on Spanish Language & Medieval Literature. The newsletter’s mission, as stated in vol. 1.1 in 1972, was “the dissemination of news of interest to the 300 or so American Scholars of the Hispanic Medieval Period” (12); the red cover page features two interconnected globes, “linking the old and the new”. Forty years later –and as I write I realize that we have missed this momentous celebration– our mission has broadened to include publishing scholarship that transcends the linguistic and/or cultural borders of Spanish and explores the interconnectedness of those languages and cultures that coexisted in medieval Iberia. Snow’s brief history of the Ibero Medieval Association of North America’s foundational years, in the style of the old newsletter, links the old and the new by recording the first steps of a group that has been instrumental in helping La corónica expand its scope. The growing number of sessions sponsored by IMANA at the Kalamazoo Congress complement those at the MLA; these sessions are the source for many of the excellent articles published in our pages. The IMANA banquet provides the opportunity to meet rising young stars and get updated on the profession’s current events, linking once more the old and the new. I am sure Snow’s piece will bring back memories for many of you, and I invite you to share your comments on Snow’s essay, and your experiences with IMANA, in the blog on the La corónica Web site (<http://www.lacoronica.org>; click on the blog tab on the right).

I am delighted to announce that ProjectMUSE has added several years of La corónica’s back issues (vols. 29 through 36) to their collection (<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/la_coronica/>). In those volumes you can find the clusters on sentimental fiction, the Poema de mio Cid (Story Weavers and Textual Critics Interpret the Poema de mio Cid), The Historian’s Craft in Medieval Iberia, a forum questioning the death...