Editor’s Note

In my Editor’s note for the Spring 2013 issue of Cervantes I mentioned that we had “fully entered” a season of Cervantine commemorations that intially began with the 2005 celebration of part one of Don Quixote. I return to this comment here in order to note that we have now entered the final phase of this commemorative period. As also happened four centuries ago, when Miguel de Cervantes published the most important works of his professional life in rapid succession prior to his death, the last three years have seen a flurry of fourth centenaries—for the Novelas ejemplares (1613), the Viaje del Parnaso (1614), the Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses (1615), and part two of Don Quixote (1615)—that ultimately culminated in the 400th anniverary of Cervantes’s death in April 1616. Only the last element of this commemorative season remains: next year’s celebration of the 1617 publication of Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda.

We begin this Spring 2016 issue of Cervantes with an article by John O’Neill examining the influence of Plautus and the commedia dell’arte on La entretenida. This essay has been given pride of place as the issue’s leading article in part as a belated nod to the Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses, a text whose 400th anniversary was greatly eclipsed in 2015 by having to share its commemorative year with the much more famous part two of Don Quixote.

O’Neill’s essay is followed by several articles on one apsect or another of Don Quixote. Marsha Collins examines the always-intriguing issue of time in Cervantes’s two-part novel. Ricardo Castells looks at “the beginnings” of women-centered approaches to Don Quixote—specifically that of María Carbonell Sánchez—in the 1905 commemorations that marked the third centenary of the novel’s publication. Adrián Sáez returns to the “Captive’s Tale” and examines its place in the history of “military autobiography.” Benito Gómez analyzes the importance of Don Quixote’s house (along with his abandonment of it) as an important component of the mad knight’s derangement. And Manuel Fernández Nieto, Francisco Parra Luna, and Clark Colohan, using the tools of social science, argue that Campo de Montiel is the most likely candidate for the unnamed “lugar de la Mancha” where Cervantes’s novel initially takes place.

Following this cluster of essays on Don Quixote, we offer an uncommon addition to the journal: an English translation of A. J. Greimas’s 1943 “Cervantes and His Don Quixote.” Julija Korostenskienė provides a wonderful translation of this important essay, which is preceded by an insightful introduction written by Thomas Broden.

This Spring issue concludes with four book reviews: Steven Kirby on Roger Tinnell’s Música basada en la vida y obra de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: Católogo anotado con discografía, filmografía e información sobre material audiovisual; Rosa María Stoops on Vicente Pérez de León’s Cervantes y el Cuarto Misterio; Susan Byrne on Michael Scham’s Lector Ludens: The Representation of Games & Play in Cervantes; and Diana de Armas Wilson on Ilan Stavans’s Quixote: The Novel and the World.

As always, I would like to thank my editorial assistant John Beusterien for helping me stay on top of the submissions process. A special thanks as well to Soemer Simmons for helping me typeset this issue of the journal. And I also thank our many peer reviewers and Associate Editors for all their hard work and expertise in selecting these essays for publication.