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1Lobo is “wolf,” and lobuna is “wolflike”; in the next phrase, zorro is “fox,” and zorruna is “foxlike.”

9 The constellation of the Pleiades.

3 Cervantes uses a phrase, dar pantalia, whose exact significance is not clear. It can mean either polishing or repairing shoes (Shelton translates it as “cobble,” but the contemporary French and Italian versions differ).

7 The story, in fact, dates back to the popular life of the saints called The Golden Legend (Legenda aurea) by the Italian Dominican Iacopo da Varazze (1228?–1298).

1 There were, at the time, two Asturian provinces: Asturias de Oviedo and Asturias de Santillana.

2 Aranjuez is a royal palace famous for its fountains; fuenteis the word for both “fountain” and “issue,” which allows the wordplay.

1 The phrase is based on a proverb: “When you have a good day, put it in the house,” which is roughly equivalent to “Make hay while the sun shines.”

4 A person of Muslim descent, living in territory controlled by Christians, who had ostensibly, and often forcibly, been converted to Christianity.

1 Vireno abandoned Olimpia in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso; Aeneas abandoned Dido in Virgil’s Aeneid.

10 A hunter who came upon Diana when she was bathing; she turned him into a stag, and he was then torn to pieces by his own dogs.

11 This is the Catalan word for “thieves,” used here as an insult.

6 Martín de Riquer points out that the book has not been identified and that in Italian the title would be Le Bagattelle, not Le Bagatele. There has been speculation that this might be an anagram for Le Galatee, by Giovanni della Casa, which was translated into Spanish in 1585 by Dr. Domingo Becerra, who was a prisoner in Algiers at the same time as Cervantes.

5 The Spanish word for “priest” that is used here is cura.

1 The earliest Greek poets, including Orpheus, were allegedly from Thrace.

3 The sun, in Greek mythology.

3 An embroidered cloth or tapestry, bearing a knight’s coat of arms, that was draped over pack mules.

8. Published anonymously, it has two parts, which appeared in 1521 and 1526, respectively.

9. An unfaithful prose translation of Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato (Roland in Love), it was published in three parts in 1533, 1536, and 1550, respectively. The first two are attributed to López de Santa Catalina and the third to Pedro de Reynosa.

10. The archbishop of Reims, whose Fables (1527) are a fictional Carolingian chronicle. He is constantly cited for his veracity in The Mirror of Chivalry.

11. Matteo Boiardo was the author of Orlando innamorato; Ludovico Ariosto, who wrote Orlando furioso, referred only to the Christian God in his work. Cervantes disliked the Spanish translations of Ariosto, including the one by Captain Jerónimo de Urrea (1549), which he refers to in the next paragraph.

12. The references are to two poems, the first by Agustín Alonso (1585) and the second by Francisco Garrido Vicena (1555).

13. The first of the Palmerín novels, published in 1511, is of uncertain authorship. The Palmerín of England was the third novel in the series; it was written in Portuguese by Francisco Moraes Cabral and translated into Castilian by Luis Hurtado (1547).

14. Written by Jerónimo Fernández and published in 1547.

15. As indicated earlier, this was first published in 1490; composed in Catalan by Johanot Martorell and continued by Martí Johan de Galba, the anonymous Castilian translation was published in 1511.

16. In the translation of this sentence, which has been called the most obscure in the entire novel, I have followed the interpretation offered by Martín de Riquer. One of the problematic issues in Spanish is the word galeras, or “galleys,” which can mean either ships or publisher’s proofs.

17. As indicated earlier, this was the first pastoral novel in Spanish.

18. A very poor continuation by Alonso Pérez, a Salamancan physician, printed in 1564; also published in 1564 is the highly esteemed Diana