Cervantes's Rinconete y Cortadillo (Rinconete and Cortadillo) is an object-lesson in how the reader's heavy investment in understanding the text has not generally been paid back in critical kind. I mean by this that few critical readings work at the linguistic density that characterizes the text. Aden W. Hayes proves one of the exceptions when he identifies the linguistic behaviour of characters with the meaning of the story. Language is an artefact wrought by the character with the intention of constituting a distinctive persona. This focus safeguards my experience as the reader of a text that has a high level of linguistic complexity by acknowledging that the complexity is essential to the critical gloss. In the course of his reading, Hayes singles out Monipodio for detailed attention, in particular justifying the factual errors he commits by placing them in the context of the leader's need to reinforce his authority; the truthfulness of words to experience is secondary to Monipodio's assertion of his will through the manipulation of language. In the formulation of this argument, Hayes avoids attributing errors to the author, in contrast to a positivistic critique which habitually laid textual contradictions at Cervantes's door. Instead, textual contradictions are to be attributed to what Hayes calls the character's ‘delusory and self-serving use of language’ (p. 14). What would happen, however, if we were to include the narrator among the manipulators of language in the novela? The question has a certain resonance with those studies which have raised an awareness of the fact that the narrator is a presence in the tale, a not entirely transparent mediator between us and the events that are told. This study in part resumes the enquiry into the narrator, but within the frame of reference set by language. By reason of the latter qualification, there are times when I will find it more natural to refer to the narrator as the writer, though not of course meaning Cervantes.

The narrator in Rinconete y Cortadillo exercises great care over certain aspects of his practice in the narrative.