De preñeces, partos y palurdos: huellas de la patraña del hombre embarazado en Avellaneda

Abstract

The essay centers on the ending of Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda’s apocryphal continuation of Cervantes’s Don Quijote de la Mancha. Avellaneda leaves Don Quijote in the Casa del Nuncio, an insane asylum in Toledo while Sancho Panza serves as a buffoon in the house of a wealthy noble. The last paragraph of the work suggests, however, that Don Quijote returns to his adventures after his release from the asylum, bringing along as a «squire» a serving woman who has disguised herself as a man in her efforts to escape from her master after being left pregnant. When his «squire» ends up giving birth in the middle of the road, Don Quijote is left astonished by this «marvel». The essay proceeds to explore the possible connection between this event and the «Tall Tale of the Pregnant Man» found in European folklore. It suggests that Avellaneda uses it as part of the battle he wages against the ideological implications of Part I of Cervantes’s Don Quijote. Subsequently, different aspects of Cervantes’s own Part II are analyzed to demonstrate that he cleverly responds to Avellaneda’s strategy, seeking to reestablish the original ideological thrust of his work.

Keywords

• Avellaneda
• apocryphal Don Quijote
• male pregnancy
• female cross-dressing
• folklore