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Where Does Scholarly Critique End? Where Does…“Parody” Begin? A Mini-Contribution to a Mini-Symposium on Critical Book Reviews, with the Permission of Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral

Abstract

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In a village of Europe, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those book reviewers that keep a soft-tongue in the lance-rack for his friends' books, an old buckler with partisan coat-of-arms as a mark of his feudal loyalty to his academic ancestors, a lean hack to accompany him in the dark alleys of scholarly fears, and a greyhound for coursing his civil-servant oriented career's ambitions. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. His first years in academia were of such quality as to drive him to the verge of quitting this miserable life more than once. The rest of his income went to a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches to attend academic congresses, and shoes to match for holidays, that were always research-oriented, and on weekdays he made a brave figure in his best homespun.

Type
Mini-Symposium: Critical Book Reviews & Academic Freedom
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 6 , 01 June 2010 , pp. 653 - 655
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 “Figaro” and “Duende” as well as (vid. infra) “El pobrecito hablador” (literally, “The poor little talker”) are some of the conspicuous literary pseudonyms of Mariano José de Larra (1809–1837) who was a Spanish romanticist writer noted for chastising with satire Spain's 19th century ills in his work. A true classic of the Spanish letters, he is considered as perhaps the best prose writer of 19th-century Spain.Google Scholar

2 See: supra note 1.Google Scholar

3 As it is well known, despite the fact that the excerpts appear in the original between brackets, Miguel de Cervantes does not provide sources for the quotations he takes from the half-fantastic works of chivalry that he parodies in the opening paragraphs El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha (1605)Google Scholar