Cervantes, Hardy and 'La fuerza de la sangre' (eBook)

Contents 8
Acknowledgments 10
Preface 12
Chapter I. Cervantes, His Life and Works 14
1. Cervantes' Life 14
2. Cervantes' Literary Production 16
3. La fuerza de la sangre 18
Chapter II. Alexandre Hardy 22
1. Hardy's Life and Times 22
2. Hardy's Works and Style 26
Chapter III. La Force du sang 38
1. Previous Editions 38
2. Sources of La Force du sang 39
3. Criticism 44
4. Style 48
5. The Characters 51
6. Adaptation and Imagery 55
Chapter IV. The Present Edition of La Force du sang 60
1. The Text: Mechanics, Procedures and Explanation 60
2. La Force du sang: The Play 64
3. Notes, Variants and References 119
4. La Force du sang: Hardy's "Irregular" Rhymes 138
5. La Force du sang: Hardy's Archaisms 138
6. La Force du sang: Hardy's Hispanisms 139
Chapter V. La fuerza de la sangre 141
1. Explanation 141
2. La fuerça de la sangre: The 1614 Edition 143
3. La fuerza de la sangre: The Rosset Translation 161
Bibliography 183
Index 188
A 188
B 188
C 188
D 188
E 188
G 188
H 189
I 189
J 189
L 189
M 189
N 189
P 189
Q 189
R 189
S 189
T 189
U 189
V 189
W 189

Chapter V: La fuerza de la sangre: The Original Edition and the Rosset Translation (p. 128)

1. Explanation.

Cervantes` La fuerza de la sangre and the other novelas knew an almost immediate success, as we have mentioned previously. There were several editions that Hardy could have consulted for La Force du sang. Assuming that he did not examine the manuscript copy (a theory implied by the Parfaicts` dating of the play) and also assuming that Hardy did not delay in writing the play after reading the original, then we must concede that he utilized one of the earlier editions as his point of departure.

The Spanish text we reproduce here should therefore be based on one such printing, and by definition it cannot reflect editions which chronologically follow La Force du sang.

Since we do not know the complete circumstances under which the play was written and have but a rather imperfect idea of the data and the date of composition, we cannot determine with absolute certainty which version of the story the dramatist followed.

If we hypothetically accept that Hardy did use a translation, as some critics have previously stated, and that the most likely one was the 1615 work by Francois de Rosset (published in Paris by Richer and reproduced in this chapter following the original), then the edition which concerns us should be the one to which that translator had access.

The edition followed seems to have been the one by Roger Velpio and Huberto Antonio, published in Brussels in 1614. Whether we accept the translation as Hardy`s immediate source or whether we believe in a firsthand examination of a Spanish original on his part, the 1614 text seems a reliable text for the present study.

It is sufficiently close in text and time to the princeps to represent the same basic information. Our concern in the present comparison is not to verify commas, periods and variant spellings, but to check similarities in ideas, content and detail.

At the very least, the 1614 edition serves as a reliable representation of Cervantes` story and, with some modifications, it is this text which we follow in this chapter.

French and Spanish printers of the seventeenth century had their own independent systems of reproducing texts and documents. The impression of a given Parisian publisher might not resemble in the vaguest manner that of his competitors in the French capital, on the other hand, the reproduction might look generally similar to texts reproduced in Brussels, Madrid, Barcelona or Milan.

What certain modern editiors may consider textual variants may be merely the idiosyncrasies of the individual printer, and these differences should not be categorized as "alternate texts."

In the present edition of La fuerza de la sangre, we have taken a few liberties in order to standardize or normalize the text, many of these changes resemble those made in the Hardy edition.

The "/" has been transformed to an "s," while "u," "v," "i," and "j" have been edited to reflect standardized modern orthography. The 1614 edition utilizes accute and grave accents indiscriminantly throughout, we have changed all accents in Spanish to the acute type in conformity with twentieth-century usage.