Review. El Abencerraje. Estudio y notas de Eugenia Fosalba, Madrid, Real Academia Española (Biblioteca Clásica, 33), 2017

Abstract

This edition, in the care of Eugenia Fosalba, presents the three different versions of El Abencerraje in a single volume, which allows the reader to consult and assess for themselves the qualities of each one. The oldest version, known as the Chronica, is the one that most closely approximates the original, oral text, written not before 1548. This version, very disdained by critics, left a very useful critical space that the editor has taken advantage of with a critical edition annotated and justified within the modern interpretative coordinates. The second version appeared in the Inventario of Antonio de Villegas, and the third, the most read and disseminated, was inserted at the end of book IV of the Diana de Montemayor (Valladolid edition). The editor tackles in the introductory study the irresolvable problems until the moment of Abencerraje: Who is the author of the Chronica?, what is the textual evolution of the different versions ?, and / or was it Montemayor who signed the inserted version in the Diana? On the authorship of the Chronica, Fosalba points to Jerónimo Jiménez de Urrea, a man of humanistic temperament, military and writer, responsible for the famous translation of Orlando furioso and Arcadia, as the most plausible. About the precedence of the versions is shown how the Chronica is prior to I and D with irrefutable indications such as the erotic notes and the mispronounces included in some passages of C that are scissored in I and D. Finally, an exhaustive collation of the version appeared in the Diana with other works of Montemayor would support the hypothesis that the Portuguese writer is behind the pastoral Abencerraje.