| Francisco de Quevedo
(1580-1645), the Spanish poet and satirist whose books were
by far the most widely read in Spain in the seventeenth century,
died unaware that his genius had created modern satire in Spanish,
and that for the ensuing five centuries, as we now know, his
name would be a household word wherever Spanish was spoken.
Between 1604 and 1621, Quevedo wrote a sequence of five “Dreams”
or “Visions” (Sueños y discursos),
in each of which he hilariously envisions Spanish society as
populated by people rightfully condemned to Hell. These astonishingly
witty and irreverent satires of contemporary Spanish culture,
morality, prejudice, and religious fanaticism, were composed
in a style so allusive, elliptical and equivocal as to successfully
entertain both those who barely understood their full range
and import, and others who celebrated the poet’s rebellious
insinuations. Censorship prohibited the publication of such
satire in its original form, but hundreds of copies were made
by hand and circulated widely. In 1993 a critical edition of
all of the surviving manuscripts was published.
Today the Sueños are commonly read in modern
editions of the first censored version, printed in 1627. The
present book compares this version with all of the 43 extant
manuscripts, and for the first time identifies those groups
of manuscripts from which the publishers of the first edition
derived their text. This text can now be seen as a version
not only censored, but corrupted successively by copyists
and editors who did not understand Quevedo’s satire,
and did not hesitate to add entire clauses, omit others, and
transfer sentences from one place to another. The result is
hardly what Spain’s most famous satirist originally
wrote.
"This work is an important effort by a major scholar,
one of the best quevedistas in the world."
James Iffland, Boston University
"Para el especialista en estudios áureos o
la transmisión manuscrita, la importancia de este
libro supera sus ciento treinta y dos páginas. ...
como conclusión e invitación, Crosby insiste
en la necesidad de más estudios para poder desmitificar
la corrupción textual que ha afectado los Sueños
durante su transmisión manuscrita." John
C. Parrak, Calíope
For the full review, see Calíope 2.1 (2005):
112-14.
"Professor Crosby's study of the manuscript tradition
of the first edition of Quevedo's Sueños
places before the reader, in minute detail, the trail of
evidence which he has followed to establish his line of
thought. Crosby has, once again, shed light on some of the
darkest and most difficult corners both of Quevedo's original
texts and of the world of seventeenth-century Spanish manuscripts.—Roger
Moore, Bulletin of Spanish Studies
For the full review, see Bulletin of Spanish Studies
83 (2006): 989-90.
See also
La Perinola (2005), Eventos y publicaciones,
p. 340, where a full-page illustration of the cover of this
book is featured.
Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 67 (2005).
James O. Crosby, Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Florida
International University in Miami, has studied the works of
Francisco de Quevedo, the top poet of Spain’s Golden
Age and the creator of modern satire in Spanish. Crosby was
awarded national fellowships to work on Quevedo, and his many
literary studies and critical editions drawn from original
seventeenth-century manuscripts have been published since
1955 in Spain, England, Mexico, and the USA, and have been
reviewed by some of the best scholars in the field.
1-55753-346-6
2005. Vol. 31. xvi, 132 pp. Paper $42.95
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