To Read the Bride: Elision and Silence in Cervantes' "The Jealous Extremaduran"

Abstract

elas in Spanish for, he asserts, his predecessors took their material from existing works in other languages. These two statements are significant since they constitute both a reading guide and a cautionary word. To take up the matter of the table of tricks first, it should be noted that, in its earliest meaning it refers to a sort of billiards table.2 The implications of this characterization are twofold: on the one hand, to fulfill its function, a table of tricks necessitates one or more players; on the other, according to how the game is played one may, alternatively, either win or lose. Cervantes thus engages his player/reader directly: it is the manner in which the playing/reading is conducted that determines its eventual outcome. The reader, thus inscribed in the text, should proceed carefully and resist the temptation to assimilate the novelas into earlier literary traditions, bearing in mind Cervantes' claim to originality. The reading guide and the cautionary word included in the Prologue are particularly important for the reading of El celoso extremeflo. It should be pointed out at the outset that this novela has been, and still is, among the most studied of the Novelas ejemplares.3 It is, indeed, a fascinating, habit-forming text; it plays with the reader, and it is this inscribed playfulness that begs to be decoded.