224 Cervantes Reviews brilla lo grato de aquel viaje, aunque no por ello se esquive la tensión que don Miguel de vez en cuando provoca entre sus devotos. Por último, en “Presente y futuro de la Asociación de Cervantistas” se refiere la admirable tarea que desde la Asociación se sigue llevando a cabo año tras año para mantener viva la llama del cervantismo, incluso cuando los fastos y los jolgorios parezcan dejar a Cervantes en un segundo plano. En este capítulo final, José Montero habla y escribe desde su responsabilidad como presidente de la Asociación de Cervantistas, reproduciendo los discursos oficiales con que le correspondió cumplir en los coloquios celebrados en Seúl, Argamasilla de Alba y Alcalá de Henares entre 2004 y 2006. Cuando ya casi amenaza en el horizonte del 2015 un nuevo centenario del Quijote con todo su aparato de encuentros, saraos y páginas impresas, José Montero Reguera nos ofrece con este libro una excelente puesta al día del cervantismo y una demostración inequívoca de la salud de hierro que los estudios en torno a Cervantes han mantenido a lo largo de los últimos cuatro siglos. Y es que todavía—aunque no sabemos si por mucho tiempo—hay gentes dispuestas a sacrificar sus ocios y consagrar sus vidas para adentrarse en ese laberinto maravilloso y esquivo que encierra el Quijote y descifrar el enigma que encierran sus páginas. Luis Gómez Canseco Universidad de Huelva canseco@uhu.es Mar González Mariano Universidad de Huelva lamariglez@hotmail.com Cervantes, Miguel de. The Bagnios of Algiers and The Great Sultana: Two Plays of Captivity. Edited and Translated by Barbara Fuchs and Aaron J. Ilika. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2010. xx + 175. ISBN: 978-0-8122-4209-6. Miguel de Cervantes published Los baños de Argel [The Bagnios of Algiers] and La Gran Sultana [The Great Sultana] in Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos, nunca representados (1615). Barbara Fuchs and Aaron J. Ilika chose to translate Volume 31.2 (2011) 225 Reviews these two plays because they “offer very different Mediterranean locales and visions of captivity” (xiii). In the introduction, Fuchs and Ilika explain why Cervantes published a collection of plays never performed: “This highly unusual venture, in a period where plays were generally published only after having been exhaustively performed, served Cervantes as an alternative to the theatrical success that eluded him” (ix). While Cervantes never achieved the high acclaim as a playwright he hoped would be his legacy, his Mediterranean captivity plays established, according to Florencio Sevilla Arroyo and Antonio Rey Hazas, a “mini-genre,” which Cervantes “perfected and enriched” (xiii). Fuchs and Ilika base their prose translation on Sevilla Arroyo and Rey Hazas’s critical edition of the plays, because, among other reasons, “this solid edition corrects the errors in the original texts of the plays and provides variant readings from all the manuscripts as well as noting corrections by previous editors of the collection” (xxvii).8 Fuchs and Ilika’s translation of The Bagnios of Algiers and La Gran Sultana, which they intend to be a source of study not performance, begins with a lengthy introduction that provides for the reader the necessary literary, historical , political, and social background to appreciate and enjoy Cervantes’s captivity plays. The introduction is divided into several subsections, including “Cervantes, playwright,” “Cervantes’s Mediterranean,” “Captivity in Algiers,” “A View of the Turk,” “Forbidden Pleasures,” and “The Problem with Renegades.” It concludes with a comprehensive and insightful analysis of both plays, a discussion of the translation, and an explanation on coins, which includes a chart that lists the different denominations of Spanish coinage. In their introduction, Fuchs and Ilika address a breadth of topics relevant to the plays. The political and religious rivalries that developed as expansionist Spain clashed with the Ottoman Empire and its North African protectorates throughout the sixteenth century serve as the historical background for each of the plays. Cervantes’s personal experiences as a captive for five years in a royal bagnio (prison) in Algiers inform the geographical, cultural, and social milieu of the plays. A main theme of The Bagnios...