Antonio de Eslava

Antonio de Eslava (Sangüesa, Navarra, around 1570 - around 1640), Spanish narrator of the Golden Age. He is considered one of the cultivators of the Spanish short novel of the 16th and 16th centuries. XVII.

Biography

Little is known about the Navarrese writer. His brother Juan de Eslava was a rationer of the Cathedral of Valladolid. His birth certificate, which is assumed to have taken place around 1570, has not been found, and he is only mentioned in a census deed from Sangüesa, preserved in the General Archive of Navarra, where it is said: «on the fourth day of the year 1603, Antonio de Eslava, our notary and royal porter, and Susana Francés, his wife, residents of Sangüesa»

He was a curious man, a lover of books, who read avidly, as noted in the dedication that prefaces his Winter Nights:

I have always tried to talk to the dead by reading various books of ancient stories, for they are witnesses of the times and images of life.

Indeed, in this work there are many reminiscences of the narrative genres most in vogue at that time.

Work

In 1604 he published a novel with a chivalric plot titled Milón de Aglante's loves with Berta and the birth of Roldán which had three editions, the aforementioned one in 1604, another in 1609 and a last one in Córdoba. in 1626. This work unknown today is, however, for many authors a romance poem that could have been a free translation of the Italian poem Innamoramento di Milone d'Aglante é by Berta Sorella del Re Carlo Magno so it can be presumed that it was written in eighth rhyme.

But his best-known work is the Winter Nights. It was published in Pamplona under the precise title of First part of the book entitled Winter Nights by Carlos de Labayen, in 1609, the author announced the release of a second part, of which it was never obtained. news. The book is dedicated to Miguel de Navarra y Mauleón, Marquis of Cortes and Lord of Rada y Traibuenas. There is also an edition, which can be consulted online in Google books (a copy from the British Museum), which appears on the cover as printed in Barcelona, at the home of Hieronymo Margarit and at his expense, the same year, 1609. It bears approvals in Latin from Joan Vicente, on behalf of the Illmo. and Rev. Matías Amell, canon of Barcelona and vicar general and official of his diocese. The dedication, which is always signed by Carlos de Labayen himself, is addressed in this issue to Juan Jorge Fernández de Heredia, count of Fuentes, lord of the house and Barony of Mora, governor of the Order of Calatrava in the district of Aragón and gentleman from Boca del Rey.

Perhaps using the example that Gaspar Lucas Hidalgo offered him in his Dialogues of peaceful entertainment (Barcelona, 1605), he wrote narratives related to the courtly novel and inspired by Italian sources that he collected in the eleven dialogues set in Venice that make up the book.

The characters are Leonardo, Fabricio, Silvio and Albanio, and later a lady, Camila, who very eruditely defends the goodness of women against the attacks of some of her fellow members, joins. In these dialogues, extensive narratives are intertwined with the most various disquisitions on moral philosophy, history and natural science, which serve as a distraction between one story and another. These narratives range from the generic molds of the Byzantine novel and the Moorish novel to the chivalric novel and the pastoral novel. Among the sources is I Reali di Francia, a popular work composed between the 14th and 15th centuries, and Le prime impresse del Conte Orlando (1572) by Ludovico Dolce, translated into Spanish in 1594 and also used by Lope de Vega for his comedy La mocedad de Roldán, written in 1604 but printed much later.

The IV novel of the first night of the Winter Nights served as a source for The Tempest by William Shakespeare. For Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo —who studies the work in his work entitled Origins of the novel, vol. III, p. 188-212—admits direct imitation. However, he does not have a good opinion of his style, calling him "one of the roughest and most disheveled authors at a time when almost everyone wrote well, some by study, others by instinct." The modest author would agree with him, since in the first prologue he talks about his "rough and poorly prepared dialogues" ruminated & # 34; in the office of the short understanding of it & # 34; and in the second of "the sharp thorns of my rude tongue". Menéndez Pelayo acknowledges, however, that his arguments are usually interesting and that some of his bibliographical sources are strangely remote (for example, a Flemish Juan de Vespure of whom there is no news), circumstances to which he owed his popularity and appreciation. among the most widely read people of his time. The truth is that this crudeness is only apparent, since the text is written influenced by the Navarrese-Aragonese dialect. Eslava set out to write to «relieve the sadness of the nights by soothing the reader's ears with some questions of natural and moral philosophy, inserted in peaceful stories»

It is true that the work was a success in its time. There is evidence of several editions inside and outside Spain. That same year three editions appear in Barcelona:

• an edition dedicated to Juan Jorge Fernández de Heredia, Conde de Fuentes, made at the house of the prestigious Jerónimo Margarit and at the expense of Miguel Manescal, edition that lacks part of the preliminarys of the princeps;
• another “at the expense of Sebastian de Cormellas, the merchant of books”;
• and a third, but “at the expense of Luis Menescal”.

Some authors mention a 1609 edition in Zaragoza by those already mentioned in Barcelona, Jerónimo Margarit and at the expense of Miguel Manescal, but others consider that it is a dubious bibliographic cataloging.

Already outside of Spain:

• In 1610 another appeared in Brussels, made by Roger Velpio and Huberto Antonio, which seems to have been made on the princeps;
• On this edition there is one translated into German in Vienna, made by Matthew Drummer in 1649, and another in Nuremberg in 1683.
• There are news of a partial edition in French, in 1777
• In English there is also a partial edition of 1832, reissued in 1880. Regarding one of them was the English author and translator Thomas Roscoe who showed interest in including Antonio de Eslava in his book devoted to Spanish Novelists (1832, 3 vols) together with other classic authors such as Don Juan Manuel, Cervantes or Quevedo being an author who has not been able to reach a wider audience today, but who "tampoco was a stranger in the literary panorama of the seventeenth century".

The action of the censorship will cause the work to disappear from the Castilian literary panorama, since in 1667 it decided to include the work in the Index expurgatorias and included it again in 1747 in the Index last of banned books. The suspicion of having a background of immorality in the subject, an unseemly attitude on the part of the protagonists and an absence of exemplarity and good advice seem to be among the causes of such censorship. Opinions that, some researchers point out, are maintained until the 20th century.

Among the recent critical reissues, we highlight:

• of Eslava, Antonio (1942). Luis María González Palencia (ed. lit.), ed. Winter nights. Editorial Saeta. Incomplete version with some incorrections.
• of Eslava, Antonio (1986). Julia Barella Vigal (ed. lit.), ed. Winter nights (2nd edition). Government of Navarre, Prince of Viana Institution. ISBN 84-235-0729-7.
• of Eslava, Antonio (2002). Winter nights. Navarre Basic Library (BBN) (36). Fundación Diario de Navarra. ISBN 9788485112951.
• of Eslava, Antonio (2014). Winter nights. Ibero-American-Vervuert. ISBN 97884897774.