Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
Volume X, Number 1, Spring 1990
THE CERVANTES SOCIETY OF AMERICA
President
JAVIER HERRERO (1991)
Vice President
RUTH EL SAFFAR (1991)
Secretary-Treasurer
ALISON WEBER (1991)
Executive Council
| JOHN J. ALLEN | PC CARROLL B. JOHNSON |
| PETER DUNN | SW FREDERICK DE ARMAS |
| RUTH EL SAFFAR | MW HOWARD MANCING |
| HELENA PERCAS DE PONSETI | SE INÉS AZAR |
| ELIAS L. RIVERS | NE MARY M. GAYLORD |
Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
Editor: MICHAEL MCGAHA
Assistant to the Editor: THOMAS A. LATHROP
Book Review Editor: HOWARD MANCING
Editor's Advisory Council
| JUAN BAUTISTA AVALLE-ARCE | EDWARD C. RILEY |
| JEAN CANAVAGGIO | ALBERTO SÁNCHEZ |
Associate Editors
| JOHN J. ALLEN | PC CARROLL B. JOHNSON |
| PETER DUNN | LOWRY NELSON, JR. |
| RUTH EL SAFFAR | HELENA PERCAS DE PONSETI |
| ROBERT M. FLORES | GEOFFREY L. STAGG |
| EDWARD H. FRIEDMAN | BRUCE W. WARDROPPER |
| CARROLL B. JOHNSON | FRANCISCO MÁRQUEZ VILLANUEVA |
Cervantes, official organ of the Cervantes Society of America, publishes scholarly articles in English and Spanish on Cervantes' life and works, reviews, and notes of interest to cervantistas. Twice yearly. Subscription to Cervantes is a part of membership in the Cervantes Society of America, which also publishes a Newsletter. $17.00 a year for individuals, $20.00 for institutions, $28.00 for couples, and $9.00 for students. Membership is open to all persons interested in Cervantes. For membership and subscription, send check in dollars to Professor ALISON WEBER, Secretary-Treasurer, The Cervantes Society of America, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903. Manuscripts should be sent in duplicate, together with a self-addressed envelope and return postage, to Professor MICHAEL MCGAHA, Editor, Cervantes, Department of Modern Languages, Pomona College, Claremont, California 91711-6333. The SOCIETY requires anonymous submissions, therefore the author's name should not appear on the manuscript; instead, a cover sheet with the author's name, address, and the title of the article should accompany the article. References to the author's own work should be couched in the third person. Books for review should be sent to Professor HOWARD MANCING, Book Review Editor, Cervantes, Department of Foreign Languages, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907.
Copyright © 1990 by the Cervantes Society of America.
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A Symposium on Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda was held at Whitman College on February 23 and 24, 1990. It was organized by Celia Weller and Clark Colahan and sponsored by Whitman College. Funding came from a grant from The Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of Culture and United States' Universities, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures' Cagley Fund, the College's visiting educator fund and its Sheehan Gallery.
The symposium was prompted by the 1989 publication by the University of California Press of The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda, the first English version to appear in over one hundred years. The translators, Weller and Colahan, have been hoping through the translation and the symposium to stir scholars not previously familiar with the Persiles to see its broad possibilities for criticism and reading enjoyment. Three well-known Cervantes scholars with special interest in the Persiles were invited: Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, from whose Spanish edition the translation was done; Ruth El Saffar, and Diana de Armas Wilson.
A call for papers was issued and resulted in a number of papers, some from people who had not earlier worked with Persiles; this response led to a full two days of sessions with presentations on varied topics relating to the romance. You will find most of those papers published in this volume. Students from Clark Colahan's Cervantes class began discussion of each paper with questions and comments. Faculty members —6→ from several departments at Whitman, as well as other scholars, also participated as discussants.
In conjunction with the Persiles symposium, Whitman College's Sheehan Gallery mounted an exhibit (which ran from January through February) of illustrations of Cervantes' works. Professor Enrique Rodríguez Cepeda of U.C.L.A. was very helpful to the gallery, loaning much of his collection of illustrations of the Quixote; he attended the Persiles symposium as guest of the college, speaking on an iconographic interpretation of Don Quixote. Whitman students and local artists also contributed works in various media to the exhibit after reading selections from the Persiles translation, and it was exciting to compare the old and contemporary iconographies. Four of the local artists who contributed works to the Cervantes exhibit gave presentations to the Whitman faculty at a Faculty Forum, explaining the techniques used and concepts behind their interpretations. The opening of the Sheehan Gallery Exhibit in January was attended by a wide range of people from the Whitman and Walla Walla communities. The Whitman Renaissance Consort and Madrigal Singers performed early Spanish music in the Sheehan Gallery in mid-February and also for the symposium participants at a paella dinner at the nearby L'Ecole winery.
The symposium ended to the delight of the participants with a performance at Whitman's Harper Joy Theatre of Fletcher and Massinger's The Custom of the Country, a play loosely based on some characters and episodes from the Persiles. Throughout February the Whitman library ran an exhibit of Cervantine and related works. The symposium successfully brought together scholars from several areas of inquiry and regions of the country, as well as Whitman faculty, students, and the public, to celebrate and enjoy Persiles.