Relaciones de la vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón de Vicente Espineledición crítica y estudio

Abstract

The main goal of this dissertation is the critical edition and study of Vicente Espinel’s Relaciones de la vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón, published in 1618. Twenty testimonies have been collected in order to achieve the fixation of the text. The textual annotation is intended to help the reader easily explore Espinel’s text, as it considers lexical and linguistic questions, expressions, set phrases and proverbs, as well as the explanation of all historical and cultural elements necessary for a correct interpretation of the novel. This basic type of annotation is distinguished from the rest of the annotation set (dealing with critical and scholarly issues) by means of a diacritical mark (º), in accordance with the standard of the Biblioteca Clásica de la Real Academia, which distinguishes between footnotes and additional notes. Our study tackles the most relevant issues for the interpretation of Espinel’s novel. Our intention is not to simply describe the status of the issue but to highlight our own reading of those elements which have been largely overlooked by other scholars. The first section is a short biography of Espinel’s figure and literary projection. The literary dimension of the novel is dealt with in the following chapter, which addresses key factors in the construction of the text, namely: a) its relationship with the picaresque genre, together with the critical doubts that some scholars have cast upon this particular issue; b) Espinel’s use of some essential elements in the construction of the picaresque narrative, such as the string of successive masters, the itinerant structure, the reconstruction of the “caso” invented by the anonymous author of the Lazarillo, and the autobiographical perspective; c) the insertion of historical allusions within the narrative fiction, perhaps Espinel’s most prominent distinguishing feature; and d) the narrative matter sustaining the plot, the use of interspersed stories, and the ideology that Espinel tried to convey to his readers. The last two sections of the introductory study are, in our view, of paramount importance. The first one is a very detailed analysis of Espinel’s literary imitation and emulation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, whose second part appeared three years before the publication of the Relaciones del escudero Marcos de Obregón. Transcending the picaresque pattern established by the Guzmán de Alfarache , Espinel explicitly reconstructed the model in accordance with Cervantes’ own standard for entertainment literature. The last section of the study is devoted to the history of the text and its editorial transmission until today. The editing criteria and bibliography are followed, at the end of the dissertation and after the critical apparatus, by a chapter by chapter summary of the novel’s plot and an index of notes.