Edición, estudio y notas de Alberto Montaner. Con un ensayo de Francisco Rico. by Cantar de Mio Cid (review)

Alberto Montaner’s new edition of the Cantar de Mio Cid, the first in the Real Academia Española’s Biblioteca Clásica series that now features over 100 texts, is an impressively comprehensive introduction to the text itself and to the culture out of which it emerged. Such a tome understandably tries to be all things to all people. Yet, for those scholars who have worked with Montaner’s other editions of the text, the contents of this particular edition will undoubtedly seem familiar as it reuses a substantial amount of material. That said, in order to give this edition its fair shrift, the goal of this review will be twofold: I will provide an overview of the changes and updates found here in comparison with Montaner’s earlier editions. At the same time, for those unfamiliar with any of his work on the Cantar, I will also outline this edition’s contents.

As mentioned, a considerable amount of this edition’s contents can be found in Montaner’s early work on the Cantar. His first edition, published in 1993 by Crítica as part of its Biblioteca Clásica series, was a welcome introduction to the text for both newcomers and those already familiar with the Cantar. In 2000, the 1993 edition reappeared with minor changes as part of Crítica’s Clásicos y Modernos series. His original edition was comprehensively updated in 2007 for publication by the Instituto Cervantes’s Centro para la Edición de los Clásicos Españoles with the inclusion of a number of paleographic analyses and other studies on the text that had been published in the meantime. The 2011 edition, the subject of this review, builds on Montaner’s 2007 release. For its preparation, Montaner returned to the Biblioteca Nacional’s sole codex (ms. Vitr. 7-17) for a fourth time with, for the first time in his long engagement with the Cantar, the technology to attain hyperspectral digital images. This technology, which is becoming more common due to its ability to expose writing not discernible to the visible spectrum, allowed Montaner to recover and examine parts of the codex once thought lost due to damage or re-use of the physical material. Preliminary results of this technology-based investigation were published as articles in Ecdotica in 2008 and in an edited volume released by the Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura in 2009. Although Montaner underscores that only certain results of this hyperspectral analysis have been incorporated into the notes of this edition, he does mention plans for a completely updated facsimile and paleographic edition with a full incorporation of these analyses in the future. Nonetheless, he notes that this consultation of the codex, along with the others he carried out during the preparation for and after his original 1993 edition, situates this edition of the Cantar alongside other well-known paleographic editions published over the last hundred years.

After a brief four-page presentation of the text with reference to its epic characteristics, structure, and links to the European heroic tradition, the poem is presented. Periodically, basic plot summaries are offered as footnotes to aid and situate those readers having difficulty with the language. Furthermore, headers on the right-hand page position the reader at a specific plot point. The text itself is accompanied by extensive footnotes that clarify expressions, explain plot holes and ambiguities, and discuss the historical veracity of certain characters. There are also numerous footnotes dedicated to linking geographic locations mentioned in the text with present-day cities, towns, and regions in Spain. While some of the footnotes refer to editorial decisions, such as the omission of repeated lines, the vast majority of the notes of this type are found in the extensive...