I believe that the Marcela/Grisóstomo episode was Cervantes' first experiment in the mixing of genres in Don Quixote, quite possibly the first in his comic fiction; and that the way he handles the experiment is deeply influential on his later practice. I am not convinced by the arguments originally proposed by G. Stagg, recently carried forward by R. Flores, that the episode, in a «primitive» version of Part I, occupied a place in the middle of the book. See G. Stagg, «Revision in Don Quixote Part I», Studies in Honour of I. González Llubera, ed. Frank Pierce (Oxford; Dolphin, 1959). pp. 347-66.

On the subject of satire, see Riley's previously cited article (n. 2) in Suma cervantina, p. 299. There are frequent references to the theme of satire and the problems connected with it in Cervantes's works. See El coloquio de los perros in Novelas ejemplares, ed. cit., pp. 224, 240-41, 248; the concluding remarks in Don Quixote's discourse on poetry in Part II, Chapter 16 (p. 651); Persiles y Sigismunda Book I, Chapter 14, ed. cit., I, 98, and Book II, Chapters 4 and 5, in which the libellous satirist Clodio is characterised. In the statement in Viaje del Parnaso, Chapter 4, lines 11- 12: «Nunca voló la humilde pluma mía / por la región satírica...» Cervantes is presumably referring to the type of personal satire which he so often repudiates.

«Que esto del ganar de comer holgando tiene muchos aficionados y golosos: por esto hay tantos titereros en España, tantos que muestran retablos; tantos que venden alfileres y copias... Toda esta gente es vagamunda, inútil y sin provecho; esponjas del vino y gorgojos del pan.» see Novelas ejemplares, ed. cit., II, 282, and cf. similar observations in El licenciado Vidriera, ibid., p. 63.

Maese Pedro slyly refers to himself as a vagamundo (p. 736). Obviously he is a glib charlatan -at least in respect of his soothsaying monkey. He is suspected of being extremely rich and of having a splendid time in taverns, «todo a costa de su lengua y de su mono y de su retablo» (p. 724).

See my article (n. 10), pp. 343-44.

Because of this unavoidable concentration on Dulcinea criticism, some of the greatest names in Cervantes scholarship have to be left out of this article. Salvador de Madariaga, Arnérico Castro, Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, Mills Franco Meregalli, Bruce Wardropper, Mauricio Molho, Ciriaco Morón Arroyo, Jean Canavaggio, and many other illustrious names are, consequently, absent from a paper which concentrates on a very limited topic.

For a comprehensive study of the genre see Robert J. Clements and Joseph Gibaldi, Anatomy of the Novella: The European Tale Collection from Boccaccio and Chaucer to Cervantes (New York: New York University Press, 1977).

The debate has, by and large, been confined to the Novelas ejemplares but, recently, E. C. Riley has discussed the issues and extended the discussion to the interpolated tales in the Quixote. See his «Cervantes: A Question of Genre», in Medieval and Renaissance Studies on Spain and Portugal in Honour of P. E. Russell, ed. F. W. Hodcroft et al. (Oxford: The Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1981), pp. 69-85.

All my references to the Quixote are from the edition by Martín de Riquer (Barcelona, Juventud, 1968). and have been incorporated into the text.

See Javier Herrero, «Arcadia's Infierno: Cervantes' Attack on Pastoral», BHS, 55 (1978), 289-99, where the link between the knight's Golden Age speech and the Marcela story is considered to be additional evidence of Cervantes' critique of pastoral.