“Famoso [y valiente] hidalgo”: sobre conjeturas y deturpaciones textuales

Abstract

The textual manipulations to which the epigraph of the first chapter of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha has recently been subjected to offer an obvious example of Textual Bibliography critical threats when handled carelessly. Although it is true that spurious textual “changes” caused by the “printing by forms” and its “count of the original text” were current in Golden Age manual presses, the risk of distortions that threaten its non-well-informed amendment is also evident.
In this case, a restitution of a supposed involuntary omission by the compositors is pretended, famoso [y valiente] hidalgo, which runs away from the first chapter’s epigraph in the original text of the Quijote, under the evidence from the first edition “Tabla de los capítulos”. Nevertheless, there are many typographical evidences that lead to conclude exactly the opposite: it is rather an apocryphal appendix, introduced by the compositor of the “Tabla” from an original famoso y valiente, and aimed just to solve a remaining blank in the last gathering of the book. The amendment, thus, far from restoring the original text, distorts Cervantine writing replacing it for an evident typographical trap.
It would be necessary to bear in mind that the only Cervantine text of the first Quijote with critical authority went out of Juan de la Cuesta’s printing presses around Christmas in 1604- 1605...