Novelas ejemplares by Miguel de Cervantes, and: The Complete Exemplary Novels by Miguel de Cervantes (review)

There are four significant Cervantes centennials spanning the years 2005–16, each celebrating a landmark publication, and, as is customary, each brings with it a flurry of dedicated commentary. Not that we need to be roused from our slumber, because the critical enterprise proceeds apace with or without these landmark events. The 2013 anniversary of the Novelas ejemplares has prompted two remarkable editions of that diverse and original collection, one published in England and addressed primarily to those who have little or no Spanish, but with the complete text in Spanish on facing pages, and the other is a critical edition destined primarily for other scholars and research libraries, published under the auspices of the RAE. Each is praiseworthy on its own merits and for what it contributes to the collective enterprise.

The RAE volume would pass for an edición de lujo. It is hardbound, red in color, and further protected by a handsome and sturdy blue paper sobrecubierta, each solapa of which offers in its inner margin a vertical column of numbers that align nicely with the text—a clever device, but one of debatable usefulness. It has, moreover, a slim ribbon page marker that will indeed be useful. The paper is thin but of high quality. There are reminiscences here of the classic Aguilar editions of years past, albeit without the imitation leather binding and the print that would sometimes bleed through.

The 1200-page RAE edition’s contents are sketched in a sumario at the very beginning and presented in detail at the end, in the customary Tabla. García López offers a succinct but substantial introduction at the outset, in which he makes some acute observations about the close connection between these novelas and the 1605 Quijote, proposing in fact that the first Quijote is essentially a collection of novelas and that it stems from that form of writing. He also offers in these 3½ pages an eloquent defense of responding appropriately to each novela ejemplar, concluding that “a la gran literatura se juega con muchas barajas” (xii).

Having set the stage, he proceeds to open the door to the collection itself without further ado. As is traditional in this sort of edition, the critical commentary in the footnotes occasionally occupies as much space on the page as the text proper. As we proceed, we note that the title of each story is repeated at the top of each lefthand page, while a pithy running commentary on plot content appears at the top of the righthand page (e.g., “PLANES Y CONSEJOS DE MONIPODIO” [213]). Following the standard dozen novelas (one of which is largely a frame for “El coloquio de los perros”), three successive appendices reproduce, from the Porras de la Cámara manuscript, “La tía fingida” (not included in the twelve published by Cervantes and still of debatable attribution) plus variant texts of “Rinconete y Cortadillo” and “El celoso extremeño.” We may be grateful that he does not include here “Las semanas del jardín.” Nor do Ife and Thacker. I should add that the bibliography offered by García López is itself worth the price of the book.

The British compilation is a work of considerable scholarship also, although it does not pretend to be a critical edition. It is, rather, an excellent classroom text or scholarly edition for courses offered at a fairly advanced level, either in Spanish or in English. It would also serve well for a course in the art of translation, containing as it does a series of what might be considered case studies in that art.

There is a first-rate introductory study of the twelve novelas by Barry Ife. One is not likely to find its equal anywhere in the...