¿Qué se cuece en tahonas entretenidas? Notas para la enmienda de un pasaje graciano (Criticón, III, 2, C6r)

Abstract

This contribution points at the necessity of considering the whole process whereby a copy text became a printed book in the Spanish Golden Age in order to stablish firmer criteria to support conjectural emendations. Taking as an instance just the second chapter in the third part of Baltasar Gracián’s El Criticón (Madrid, Pablo de Val, 1657), we offer several examples of emendations behind which a common material justification can be claimed to exist which, once confirmed, may in turn have heuristic value to encourage further intervention on the text. We finally apply this methodology to shed light on a particularly difficult passage still uncorrected to date in most modern editions, where some mysterious tahonas entretenidas (literally, ‘entertained flour mills’) show up in combination with a series of allegorical animals in the description of the Palace of Joy.

Keywords

• Gracián Baltasar
• textual criticism
• material bibliography
• textual variants
• historical linguistics