The galatea

La Galatea is a novel by Miguel de Cervantes published in 1585 in Alcalá de Henares under the title First part of La Galatea, divided into six books . Ascanio Colonna is the dedicatee of La Galatea, who in the 1580s was completing his studies at two Castilian universities: the University of Jaén and the University of Linares.

History

The novel probably began to be written when Cervantes returned from his captivity in Algiers (December 1580). It had little success in bookstores, especially when compared to the enormous Diana by Montemayor and the enormous Diana in Love by Gil Polo. Cervantes had a very high opinion of his novel throughout his life and the intention of publishing the second part, but he died without having done so.

Features

The Galatea in an illustration of Cecilio Pla

La Galatea is usually classified as a shepherd's book or a pastoral novel. The novel has a complex structure. On one side is the arcade, or the pleasant place, where conversations, songs and debates about love take place; on the other, there is a series of inserted novels that are intertwined with the pastoral plots. Finally, a commendation is inserted to one hundred contemporary intellectuals of Cervantes, many of whom know the books and poems that they published mostly, but not only, in the 1580s. This poem is usually known under the name of "Song of Calliope".

Most of its characters are shepherds, but it is a vehicle for a psychological study of love, and this is Cervantes' loving purpose in writing it. The novel is set somewhere –between ideal and real– on the banks of the Tagus. There is a main plot and several subplots. In the main one, Elicio and Erastro are two shepherds in love with Galatea, a beautiful shepherdess who gathers all the other virtues of the Cervantes heroines: discretion, intelligence, good judgement, honesty and kindness. But Galatea adores her spiritual independence and does not want to see herself subjected to her loving yoke, so she will make the two shepherds named Elicio and Erastro suffer from scorn. We will find juicy dialectical duels on the nature of love (book IV, the shepherds Lenio and Tirsi make their respective apologies for heartbreak and love), or on the psychology of love (book III, Orompo, Marsilo, Crisio and Orfinio discuss, in verse, on what passion derived from love causes more pain, if jealousy, disdain, absence, or the death of the loved one).

Regarding the shepherds, some of these shepherds and their pastoral names are masks behind which are in some cases recognized poets of the time. An example would be Francisco de Figueroa, known as "el Divino" by his contemporaries. Pastor Tirsi, who appears in Book II of La Galatea, is Francisco de Figueroa, as attested by the three poems of his that Pastor Elicio mentions. Likewise, it must be taken into account that this Tirsi/Figueroa is one of the hundred mills mentioned in the Song of Calliope.

In addition to these poetic duels of the shepherds and shepherdesses, in La Galatea there are interesting and entertaining novelle interspersed within the main theme, as Cervantes would also do later in El Quixote and in The works of Persiles and Sigismunda.

Placa dedicates to Juan Gracián's printing house in Alcalá de Henares, where the first edition of "La Galatea" was published.

Book VI contains the commendation known as "Canto de Calliope": the muse of poetry appears to the shepherds and this serves Cervantes to introduce an extensive song in which he praises a hundred living geniuses of the Spanish poetry of that time. He names and praises, for example, Góngora, Lope de Vega, Alonso de Ercilla, Fray Luis de León, Francisco Díaz and many others.

At the end of the book, the events of the novel are abruptly interrupted:

The end of this loving tale and history (...) with other things happened to the shepherds here named, in the second part of this history they promise, which, if with gentle wills this first comes received, will have daring to come out quickly to be seen from the eyes and understanding of the people.

But the much-promised second part was never published. In fact, during the book burning of Don Quixote, several pastoral novels ended up at the stake. The priest and the barber save La Galatea and announce that Cervantes will soon be releasing the second part. But there is no real data on the production of this work, only announcements that were not fulfilled.

Versions

French writer Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian published an abridged version of the novel in French and added a sequel of his own. Later, the Spanish writer Cándido María Trigueros published another continuation entitled Los enamorados de Galatea y la boda de ella .

Critical editions

La Barrera, Cayetano A de, ed. 1863. Complete works of Cervantes: Volume II: Books V and VI ofLa Galatea, List of festivals in Valladolid in 1605, Letter to Don Diego de Astudillo. Madrid: Rivadeneyra.

Fitzmaurice Kelly, James, ed. 1903. Complete Works of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Volume II. Gowans & Gray.

Schevill, Rodolfo and Adolfo Bonilla, ed. 1914. La Galatea. From Miguel de Cervantes. 2 vol. Madrid: Printing press of Bernardo Rodríguez.

Avalle-Arce, Juan Bautista, ed. 1961. La Galatea. From Miguel de Cervantes. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.

López Estrada, Mª Teresa López García Berdoy, ed. 1995. La Galatea. Madrid: Chair.

Montero, Juan, Francisco J. Escobar, Flavia Gherardi, ed. 2014. La Galatea. Madrid: Royal Spanish Academy.