Alban K. Forcione, in his chapter on La Gitanilla in his Cervantes and the Humanist Vision: A Study of Four Exemplary Novels (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), discusses this view of marriage and human nature: «There are two implications of Christian Humanist thought concerning the 'well-founded' nature that we should bear in mind if we are to understand correctly Cervantes' celebration in La Gitanilla of Christian marriage, family authority, and the state-family as all belonging to the order of perfected nature. In his optimistic view of human nature, Erasmus rejected the austere dualisms characteristic of rigid stoicism and ascetic Christianity, which maintained that the affections and the instincts were a ruinous part of the human being, ever to hold in check and suppressed through discipline. To be sure, reason is the authentic nature of man, and the passions are never to be glorified as certain naturalistic philosophies had allowed, but they are not to be condemned as totally unnatural. If they are channeled according to the direction of man's true nature, that is, reason, for creative purposes, they are in fact natural and beneficial» (p. 162). (N. from the A.)

Ruth El Saffar notes that: «The reciprocity between masculine and feminine is shown in the initial encounter between hero and heroine in Chapter 4 of Book I. Auristela dresses as a man to show that she is loyal, even to death, to her vow to remain a virgin until she reaches Rome with Periandro. Periandro dresses as a woman to prove his willingness to find Auristela at all costs. The change to the opposite-sex role is both an expression of devotion and a sign that each is able to cross the barrier separating the masculine from the feminine» (Beyond Fiction, p. 133). The similarities of pattern in these situations leads us to wonder whether perhaps we have not only a mutual understanding between the sexes, but also an evolution from an emphasis on the passive, typical of the pastoral genre, toward the active, adventurous chivalric mode, and from there to a combined state. This not only would explain all the happy marriages present and / or possible at the end of the Persiles, but would trace in miniature the development of Cervantes' works from the Galatea through the Quixote to the Persiles itself. (N. from the A.)

Ruth El Saffar links the stories of Rutilio and Periandro through this aspect of lust that we have discussed earlier: «Rutilio's story sets the stage for one of the principal struggles in the work -the desire for a young lady that will tempt Periandro and a host of rivals throughout the journey. It also focuses on... the baser intentions of his flight with Sigismunda to Rome» (Beyond Fiction, p. 136). (N. from the A.)

Renato and Eusebia are very reminiscent of Ovid's ideal married couple, Philemon and Baucis, who also live isolated from civilization guarding a temple. See Ovid's Metamorphoses, Vol. I, Book VIII, lines 628-724. (N. from the A.)

For Robert ter Horst's response to this review article, see «On the Importance of Being Earnest: a Reply to Cesáreo Bandera», Cervantes 5.1 (1985): 59-63. (N. from the E.)

This is a response to Cesáreo Bandera's review article, «About Female Art, Male Silence, and the Frivolous in General», Cervantes 5.1 (1985): 45-57. (N. from the E.)