Commentary on is as universal as affirmations of the novel’s importance, yet until now no study has examined what Cervantes said about it. In the prologue to the first half of the work (1605) the self-conscious author, in a tongue-in-cheek dialogue with the reader and an unconventional friend, makes a good number of comments on his own book. In the opening chapters of Part 2 (1615), the same sort of witty evaluation continues with remarks by Sancho Panza, Sansón Carrasco and Don Quixote in a lively and extended conversation focused on what has been said about Part 1 since its publication and how the characters feel about those readings. The present study carefully examines and compares these and other self-reflective passages to clarify the work’s successes and failures as interpreted by a privileged reader – the author himself.

The Author: Emilio Martínez Mata, professor at the University of Oviedo, Spain, and visiting professor in several universities, is a specialist in Golden Age Spanish literature and the chair of an international team of scholars studying the worldwide reception of He is the author or editor of several books, including Cadalso’s and Iriarte’s Samaniego’s and Moratín’s

Contents: The Cervantes’ game of the work’s fictional authors – Ridicule of literary affectation – The nature of the connections to chivalric romance – Seeing both sides of human behaviour – The ironies inherent in insisting on the truth of a narrative – Perspectives on the two protagonists – The relevance of the inserted tales – as meta-literature and as a work of entertainment – The widely divergent readings that it has provoked. Inhaltsverzeichnis