Lenio kills Carino, disappears, then suddenly reappears to explain himself, saying: «Perdonadme, comedidos pastores, si yo no lo he sido en haber hecho en vuestra presencia lo que habéis visto, porque la justa y mortal ira que contra ese traidor tenía concebida, no me dio lugar a más moderados discursos» (I:29). Stamm perceptively suggests that Cervantes is having some fun with pastoral convention in this passage («El concepto del género», pp. 340).

Jorge Urrutia parcels sections of narration in Cervantes' works into blocks of plot, which he then divides into two types, basic and modifying. See «La técnica de la narración en Cervantes», in Cervantes: su obra y su mundo (Actas del I Congreso Internacional sobre Cervantes [Madrid: EDI-6, 1981], pp. 93-101).

Of course, beyond the variation of poetic and historical sections of the text, there may be further relationships between narrations and materials used to interrupt them. Here, for example, Mireno's situation previews what will happen to Silerio, since Timbrio, not he, will marry Nísida, as Daranio weds Silveria, not Mireno.

Avalle-Arce rightly observes that one type of character or event seems to provoke the appearance of its opposite (NPE, p. 243). Also, as either character or situation changes, its opposite does likewise.

The balance between poetic segments and historical ones functions on various levels of the narration, even within certain single elements of the text. For example, the «Canto de Calíope» is in itself a traditional part of a pastoral book, typically being a long laudatory poem. Calíope, however, sings not of dead heroes or beautiful women but of live poets, whose profession relates less to the content or supposed purpose of the narration than to the act of writing it.

Dora Issacharoff, «Imágenes manieristas en La Galatea de Cervantes», in Cervantes: su obra y su mundo (Actas del I Congreso Internacional sobre Cervantes [Madrid: EDI-6, 1981], p. 330). Critics typically point to this lack of resolution as the major fault of La Galatea: see Ruth El Saffar's essay «La Galatea: The Integrity of the Unintegrated Text», also in Cervantes: su obra y su mundo, pp. 345-53. Undoubtedly the most appropriate critic to cite is the one who described La Galatea saying: «Tiene algo de buena invención; propone algo, y no concluye nada» (Don Quijote I, 75).

Harry Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1969), p. 140.

For example: Ruth Saffar, in her article «La Galatea: The Integrity of the Unintegrated Text», refers to the «failure» of La Galatea and terms it Cervantes' «least fortunate literary effort», Dipositio 3 (1978), 337. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce uses the word «fracaso», though he adds that for any other writer La Galatea would have been a major accomplishment, La novela pastoril española, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Istmo, 1974), p. 262. Manuel Durán finds the only «redeeming grace» in La Galatea to be its style, «the melody of its words», which one need not understand Spanish to appreciate, in Cervantes (Boston: Twayne, 1974), p. 84. Jennifer Lowe, «The Cuestión de Amor and the Structure of Cervantes' Galatea», BHS 43 (1966), 108, states that while the book is not a «complete failure, ... it would be wrong to claim that the Galatea is an outstanding book which clearly bears the stamp of Cervantes». William Atkinson, «Cervantes, El Pinciano, and the Novelas ejemplares», HR, 16 (1948), 192, terms La Galatea a «technical failure». In her book, Novel to Romance: A Study of Cervantes's «Novelas ejemplares», Ruth El Saffar explains La Galatea's «weaknesses» as «the product of inexperience» (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974), p. xi. On this basis she eliminates it from consideration in her theory of the development of Cervantes' art. Javier Herrero sets aside La Galatea as irrelevant to his analysis of the pastoral episodes in the Quixote, in his article, «Arcadia's Inferno: Cervantes' Attack on Pastoral», BHS 55 (1978), 298 n.

The notion of La Galatea as an artistic failure ultimately implies that it lacks unity. The two most serious attempts to discover unity in the work are Lowe's study, «The Cuestión de Amor... », and Kenneth P. Allen, «Cervantes' Galatea and the discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi of Girladi Cinthio», RHM 39 (1976-77), 53-68. Lowe shows that all the stories represent «cuestiones de amor», and that some of the interruptions in the narrative serve to interweave stories that show different facets of the same basic «cuestiones». Allen shows that the stories are also arranged according to four specific «lover's complaints», «Muerte», «desdén», «ausencia», and «celos», motifs which are repeated in the same order in the eclogues at Daranio's wedding near the center of the work. The actions of the characters vary, but the subject, in the form of these four quejas, remains constant. He also observes two other sources of unity recognized by neo-Aristotelian theorists: the title character, Galatea, is a source of inspiration for the other characters' actions, and there are various «linking techniques» which serve to connect episodes. While these studies suggest a logical scheme behind the arrangement of the episodes, they do not reveal any overall unity. Allen does not dispel Lowe's conclusion that «there is no one dominant theme or aim» which provides a unifying force for the various parts of the work. Avalle-Arce, in particular, takes issue with the episodes of violence. In his view they constitute a «realismo exagerado» which is incompatible with pastoral and ultimately destroys the work's harmony, in La novela pastoril española, pp. 130, 230-31, & 247. A similar opinion is offered by Francisco López Estrada, in «La influencia italiana en La Galatea de Cervantes», CL 4 (1952), 168. The dissonance between two different visions of the world, exemplified in the contrast between pastoral tranquility and violent action, contributes to Enrique Moreno Baez's conclusion that La Galatea lacks a coherent ideological framework, in «Perfil ideológico de Cervantes», in Suma cervantina, ed. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, and E. C. Riley (London: Tamesis, 1973), pp. 236-39.

E. C. Riley, Cervantes's Theory of the Novel (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 19-21, and 116-31; also Alban Forcione, Cervantes, Aristotle, and the «Persiles» (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1970), p. 94 n. While the focus of attention has been on Cervantes' theory as found in later works, La Galatea does contain echoes of well-known Renaissance ideas of harmony and proportion. For example, the perfection of the human body: «Muéstrase la una parte de la belleza corporal en cuerpos vivos de varones y de hembras, y ésta consiste en que todas las partes del cuerpo sean de por sí buenas, y que todas juntas hagan un todo perfecto y formen un cuerpo proporcionado de miembros y suavidad de colores» (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, La Galatea, ed. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, 2nd ed., Clásicos Castellanos [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1968], II, 44. All references will be to Avalle's edition).