Mass Culture

The Captive’s Tale Retold: High Culture and Mass Culture in Eighteenth-Century Spain


Madeline Sutherland




University of Texas at Austin

The eighteenth century was a time of wide social divisions in all of Europe. Spain was no different. In spite of their efforts to promote reform, the Spanish ilustrados remained irreparably separated from the largely rural, illiterate masses who were concerned not with education or enlightenment but with day-to-day survival. The literature, or literatures, of the eighteenth century clearly reflect this disparity. For the first time, the extremes of the social structure were unmistakably visible in the literary culture: a high literature coexisted alongside a mass literature12. As Francisco Aguilar Piñal has noted, in the eighteenth century «más que en ninguna otra época el gusto popular va por un lado y el erudito y cultivado por el extremo opuesto» (xiv). Julio Caro Baroja characterizes eighteenth-century Spanish society and the literatures it gave rise to as follows:

...con el advenimiento de los Borbones, poco más o menos, se marca un divorcio absoluto entre el pueblo como tal y las clases cultas, cultural y literariamente hablando, divorcio que no había existido hasta entonces ... se había dado una especie de polarización social y literaria conforme a la cual, mientras los literatos, letrados y eruditos se hacen de día en día, más «racionalistas», los elementos populares siguen intolerantes y aun exageran la credulidad y la beatería, hasta llegar a grados que molestan totalmente a los «cultos». La literatura dieciochesca, culta, es gélida y prosaica a la par, como batida en frío, voluntariamente limitada, a fuerza de preceptos retóricos y morales. La popular ... [es] incorrecta, emocional hasta llegar al delirio, dominada por pasiones hondas y a veces morbosas, lo más antiacadémica y lo más esperpéntica que puede pensarse, porque de ella sale el esperpento al natural (24-25).




One of the best examples of the popular (or mass) literature Caro Baroja describes here is the romance de ciego, or blindman’s ballad. The work of relatively unknown poets, these ballads were printed in pliegos sueltos (chapbooks) and sold by blindmen on the streetcorners and in the plazas of Spanish cities and towns. Hence the genre’s somewhat unusual name. Blindman’s ballads were cheap literature, easily afforded by the popular urban classes that made up most of their audience. Their subject matter was varied but always tended toward the sensational. The perils of young lovers, daring deeds of highwaymen, atrocities committed by criminals, miracles worked by saints, and sufferings endured by Christian captives were all common story lines.

The blindman’s ballad enjoyed its «Golden Age» in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The earliest forerunners of the genre may be traced back to romances and coplas of the sixteenth century (Sutherland, «Printed Ballads»). The popularity of these ballads and other related genres of literatura de cordel grew during the seventeenth century, as did opposition to them. Lope de Vega, for example, strongly disapproved of this literature and even appealed to the king to prohibit it (García de Enterría 88-89). Nonetheless, it is my contention that although Lope harshly criticized literatura de cordel, he and his contemporaries provided the models for the lesser poets who made a living penning romances de ciego. The development of the blindman’s ballad and other mass culture genres was influenced significantly by the high culture of the baroque, especially the short novel, the comedia, and the auto sacramental. Elsewhere I have argued for this connection on the basis of certain discourse features, for example, versification, rhetorical structure, and narrative persona (Sutherland, «Persistence»). As I will show in this article, further proof of a continuity across time and genre is found in blindman’s ballads that retell seventeenth-century novels.

Both Agustín Durán and E. M. Wilson have observed that a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century romances de ciego are based on

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earlier high culture works: «Griselda y Gualtero», for example, is based on one of the tales in the Decameron. These critics also point out that a number of seventeenth-century Spanish novels were later recast as ballads. One of the interpolated narratives in the Quijote, The Captive’s Tale, is the source of the blindman’s ballad «Arlaxa, mora». Cervantes’s exemplary novels La gitanilla and La fuerza de la sangre also provided the subject matter for blindman’s ballads. While the ballad version of La fuerza de la sangre retained the original title, La gitanilla was renamed «La gitanilla de Madrid». In addition, there are nineteenth-century imprints of a ballad version of La española inglesa. The novels of María de Zayas inspired a number of blindman’s ballads as well: the three-part ballad «Don Jaime de Aragón» is a reworking of her Tarde llega el desengaño, «El jardín engañoso» is based on the novel of the same title, «La peregrina doctora» is an adaptation of La perseguida triunfante, and «Don Pedro Juan de la Rosa» is a retelling of El juez de su causa. Cristóbal Lozano is yet another seventeenth-century novelist whose works were grist for the mills of eighteenth-century balladeers. «El cristiano y el gentil» is based on an exemplo included in Chapter 7 of the Primera parte de David perseguido y alivio de lastimados. «Lisardo, el estudiante de Córdoba» retells an episode related in the fourth Solitude of Soledades de la vida y desengaños del mundo. Finally, «Udo de Sajonia» is derived from El rey penitente.

In this article my primary focus will be a Cervantine text, The Captive’s Tale, and the romance de ciego that derives from it, «Arlaxa, mora». Although critics (Durán 2: 304, Oliver Asín 328n, Wilson 198-200) have commented that the blindman’s ballad is a reworking of the interpolated novel, no detailed comparison of the two texts has ever been made. Here we will consider these texts in some detail and then discuss what they reveal about the complex relationship between mass culture and high culture in eighteenth-century Spain.



The Captive’s Tale and «Arlaxa, mora»


«Arlaxa, mora» is a two-part romance de ciego written by a poet named Juan Pérez. We know nothing of Pérez, other than his name. We know that only because he follows the genre’s convention of identifying himself in the closing lines of the ballad: «...y acaba / aqui la historia, y Juan Perez / pide perdon de sus faltas» (2: 290-92). «Arlaxa, mora», which develops the popular theme of the Christian captive, exhibits the language, rhetorical structure, narrator, temporal disposition, and clear-cut, unambiguous ending that are characteristic of the romance de ciego (Sutherland «Romance de Ciego»). In short, this ballad is representative of the genre to which it belongs, although it is based on a work by Cervantes.

Few imprints of «Arlaxa, mora» survive. The oldest known version of the ballad was printed in Valencia by Agustín Laborda probably between 1750 and 1774 (Serrano y Morales 242-44, Wilson 199). This text may be found in the British Library in London (Shelf Mark T. 1958). The other extant eighteenth-century version was printed in Málaga by Félix de Casas y Martínez sometime between 1781 and 1805 (Alvar 10). This text belongs to the Archivo Municipal in Málaga (signatura 1789-8) and has been reprinted by Manuel Alvar (271-78). «Arlaxa, mora» seems to have retained its popularity into the nineteenth century. In addition to the texts included in Durán’s Romancero general (2: 302-05), chapbooks printed by Rafael García Rodríguez in Córdoba also survive. Some of these chapbooks are housed in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid (signatura R 18957, for a more complete listing, see Aguilar Piñal 103-04). Unless otherwise noted, the text printed by Félix de Casas y Martínez is the one cited in this article.

In our comparison of The Captive’s Tale and «Arlaxa, mora» we will look, first, at how the two works begin. Next, we will consider some of the key moments in the story. We will see how Juan Pérez changed certain features of his model while adhering to others. In this discussion we will examine one instance of misreading or misprinting which, although probably unintended, nonetheless changed the text in an interesting way. We will also compare the conclusions to the two works and see that the ballad tells a tale quite different from that told in the novel.

In Don Quijote 1: 37, the Spanish Captain Ruy Pérez de Viedma and the lovely Moorish maiden Zoraida appear at the inn where the knight and his squire are staying. Don Quijote’s discourse on arms and letters takes up most of Chapter 38, and not until the end of that chapter does the Captain begin to tell the story of his life. His tale takes up Chapters 39-41. In Chapter 42, the Captain’s brother and niece appear and the story draws to a close.



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The Captain introduces his story the way narrators of novelas cortas typically introduce their tales -by emphasizing the truth of the account that follows: «Y así, estén vuestras mercedes atentos y oirán un discurso verdadero a quien podría ser que no llegasen los mentirosos que con curioso y pensado artificio suelen componerse» (1: 38). After he has spoken these words, perfect silence reigns and he begins his account. In the Cervantine text, then, there is an omniscient first-person narrator who recounts his story to an assembled audience. Moreover, the story is embedded in -though not related to- a larger story.

The Captain comes from an unnamed place that he refers to simply as, «un lugar de las Montañas de León» (1: 39). His father was known in the surrounding area as a rich man, «y verdaderamente lo fuera», says the Captain, «si así se diera maña a conservar su hacienda como se la daba en gastalla» (1: 39). Aware of his spendthrift ways, the father devised a plan to assure that his three sons would share in his estate. He called them together one day and explained that the time had come for them to choose professions and that, once they had done so, they would receive their inheritance. He stipulated the three professions they were to choose from: «Iglesia, o mar, o casa real» (1: 39). And so it was that the youngest son went to Salamanca to study, the middle son elected to go to the New World, and the future Captain, who was the eldest, chose to serve the King.

After this fairy tale beginning, the Captain offers an account of his life as a soldier. He tells of how he went to Flanders with the Duke of Alba and later served under Don Juan of Austria. He was taken captive by the Turks during the battle of Lepanto. This part of the Captain’s story is full of references to contemporary historical events: the Duke of Alba went to Flanders in 1567, and the battle of Lepanto took place in 1571. It is also notable that the Captain’s military career is similar in some ways to that of his creator: Cervantes was also a soldier, he too fought in the battle of Lepanto, and, like the Captain, he was taken captive, although not at Lepanto. Cervantes was captured while en route from Italy to Spain in the fall of 1575, and was held in Algiers until 1580 (Allen, Zamora Vicente; for a contemporary account of Cervantes’s captivity, see Haedo 3: 163-65; for information on Alonso López, whose career was similar to that of Cervantes and Ruy Pérez de Viedma, see Oliver Asín 297-300).

«Arlaxa, mora» begins as blindman’s ballads generally begin, with an exordium (Sutherland, «Romance de Ciego» 64-66). In the early lines of the poem, the narrator invokes Fame (lines 1-8), asserts the truth of the story he is about to tell (line 5), and calls for the audience’s attention (lines 11-14):


Resuene el clarín dorado
por aquesta región vaga
del viento, y con sus acentos
notorio a los hombres haga
esta verdad infalible.
Y porque más breve vaya
a volar por todo el mundo
en las alas de la fama,
he querido en estos versos
referirla y declararla,
porque sé que a los curiosos
la música les agrada.
Presten, pues, atención, cuando
oyen que un romance cantan.


This exordium fulfills the same function that the Captain’s brief introduction does in The Captive’s Tale: it prepares the listeners for what they are about to hear. But the ballad audience is not a part of the text, as the audience is in Don Quijote. What is more, in the ballad the story stands alone. There is no larger narrative that contains it.

Once the exordium is complete and the ballad narrative begins, we see that the identity of the narrator has changed. It is no longer the Captain who tells his tale, but rather an omniscient, unidentified, third-person narrator. The Captain, who in the ballad is named Diego, is, however, referred to as the source of the story: «...y estuvo / según él mismo declara, / quince años en cautiverio» (1: 89-91). This reference further emphasizes the truth of the story, a point initially made in the exordium.

The first section of the narrative, which provides the background to Diego’s military exploits, follows:


... en un lugar que le llaman
Llanes, cuyo antiguo asiento
viene a ser en las montañas
de Oviedo, un anciano noble
dos mozos hijos criaba.
Y para que le adquiriesen
más honores a su casa,
dispuso que el ejercicio
de las letras y las armas
siguiesen, porque con ellas
nuevos blasones ganaran.
Y así el menor de ellos hizo
que a estudiar a Salamanca
fuese, y que el mayor sentase
en una bandera plaza
para que fuese a servir
a Carlos Segundo de Austria.



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As this passage shows, Pérez has made some changes in the story. First, with respect to the setting, the family no longer hails from an unnamed place in the mountains of Leon, but rather, from a specific town in Oviedo, Llanes. In fact, there is a town called Llanes on the coast of the Bay of Biscay between Gijón and Santander. So Pérez grounds the beginning of his story in a real place, further contributing to the aura of truth. Second, the composition of the family is altered: the three sons become two (the middle brother who goes off to the New World is left out). Third, the father’s motivation for having his sons choose professions when they do is changed. The father in the ballad is neither liberal nor gastador but, rather, wishes that his sons acquire honor. As in the original, the father determines the routes they may follow, which are reduced to two: letters and arms. The younger goes to Salamanca to study and the older goes off to serve Charles II. This is the fourth major change in the early part of the narrative. Pérez has updated the story a bit, moving the events out of the mid-sixteenth century, the reign of Philip II, and into the later seventeenth century, the reign of Charles II. Thus the events recounted in the ballad are brought closer in time to the contemporary audience. (Although the oldest imprints of «Arlaxa, mora» are from the eighteenth century, the mention of Charles II may be an indication that this ballad was composed in the late seventeenth century [Wilson 199].)

Pérez’s protagonist follows a different geographical route than the Cervantine Captain, though both begin in Flanders and both are taken captive in the same fashion. In the heat of battle, they both leap aboard an enemy galley and are taken prisoner. The Captain, who is captured by the Turks, says simply: «Me hallé solo entre mis enemigos, a quien no pude resistir, por ser tantos; en fin, me rindieron lleno de heridas» (1: 39). Pérez embroiders quite a bit on this brief description and adds the details that we see below:


Y Don Diego, que se vido
solo, y que con algazara
y las armas en las manos,
lo cercan y lo amenazan.
Y que, por estar herido,
manchaba las torpes tablas
con su sangre, y que ya el brazo
para resistir faltaba
el brío, se rindió. Y luego
al punto le aseguraban,
echándole a un pie un grillete
y una cadena pesada
tan grande que casi apenas
podía Don Diego arrastrarla.


As we see, in the ballad, the situation is much more extreme. Diego’s blood stains the deck of the ship and he is put into chains so heavy he can hardly drag them behind him.

Eventually, both Diego and the Captain end up in a prison-house in Algiers, and it is here, the ballad narrator says, «por donde no esperaba / el remedio hallase» (1: 106-07).

In the next section of the narrative, Pérez follows Cervantes closely. One day, our captive is out in the yard of the prison house with some companions (three in the novel, two in the ballad) and they see a cane with a handkerchief tied at one end being lowered out a window that faces onto the baño. The cane is being moved in such a way that the captives realize they are being summoned to come and take it. One by one, the other captives go over and stand beneath the cane, but each time it is raised up. When the Captain/Diego goes over, the cane is dropped at his feet. He finds money tied in a knot in the handkerchief (10 zianies in the novel, four silver coins in the ballad). Some days later, when our captive and his companions are again alone in the prison yard, the cane appears a second time. They follow the same procedure as before. This time, the captive receives not only money (the Captain receives 40 crowns whereas Diego receives 10 doubloons) but also a note written in Arabic.

Since neither Diego nor the Captain reads Arabic, each avails himself of the services of a repentant renegade who, as luck would have it, reads and writes Arabic. In Don Quijote, the Captain shows the letter to a Murcian renegade with whom he has become friends. After the renegade has translated the letter, he asks the Captain and his friends to take him into their confidence and promises to help them gain their freedom. The Captain then describes what the renegade does:

Y diciendo esto sacó del pecho un crucifijo de metal y con muchas lágrimas juró por el Dios que aquella imagen representaba, en quien él, aunque pecador y malo, bien y fielmente creía, de guardarnos lealtad y secreto en todo cuanto quisiésemos descubrirle... (1: 40).




In the ballad, the renegade offers his help before he translates the letter from Arlaja, but the oath he swears is much the same as what we find in Don Quijote:


Metió la mano en el pecho,
de él un crucifijo saca,
y le dijo: -Yo te juro
por aquesta imagen santa
de Cristo, a quien reverencio
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y adoro dentro del alma,
que te he de ayudar en cuanto
pudiere, si tu me tratas
la verdad. Y porque la digas
sin recelarte de nada,
te he de referir mi historia.
Escucha, que no es muy larga.


What might be called «The Renegade’s Tale» follows. It is completely the invention of Juan Pérez.


Yo nací de humildes padres
en la ciudad de Calabria
y por ser aficionado
a navegar por las aguas,
de pescador el oficio
con gusto lo ejercitaba.
Mas quiso mi mala suerte
que de moros me pescaran,
y a Argel me trajeron, donde
un mercader me compraba,
el cual tenía una hija
discreta y de buena cara.
Y aficionándome a ella,
por interés de gozarla,
negué la fé, y ciego sigo
la secta mahometana.
Con ella me casé. Y luego,
quiso el cielo que enviudara.
Y arrepentido del yerro
que hice, deseo que haya
orden de poder pasar
a España, Francia o Italia,
para poder desde allí
ir a que me absuelva el Papa.


This added tale is notable for a number of reasons. First, the renegade is a shadow or double of Diego, and his story, although much shorter, is an alternative narrative of captivity. Indeed, in most romances de ciego which tell stories of Christian captives, the captive is at some point put under severe pressure to abandon his faith and embrace Islam. Generally, he will be given a tangible reward, such as great wealth or a beautiful princess, if he complies with his captor’s wishes. Thus, «The Renegade’s Tale» adds some details to the story that the audience is accustomed to expect, but will not find in the larger narrative. A second aspect of «The Renegade’s Tale» that is interesting is the ideological function that it fulfills in the ballad. Blindman’s ballads are highly moralizing and, more often than not, the moral they impart is religious in nature. The repentant renegade, who makes declarations such as «ciego sigo / la secta mahometana» (1: 225-26), imparts a clear, definite message to the audience about the status of faiths other than Christianity.

We will now compare the letters the two captives receive. Again, we will see that Pérez changed certain aspects of the story while leaving others untouched. Looking first at Don Quijote, the letter Zoraida writes to the Captain contains some notable examples of what Leo Spitzer calls «linguistic perspectivism». Specifically, Spitzer calls our attention to Zoraida’s use of Arabic words to refer to things Christian: la zalá cristianesca is the Christian prayer, Lela Marién is the Virgin Mary, and Alá is the Christian God (258). Zoraida’s letter to the Captain begins,

Cuando yo era niña tenía mi padre una esclava, la cual en mi lengua me mostró la zalá cristianesca y me dijo muchas cosas de Lela Marién. La cristiana murió y yo sé que no fue al fuego, sino con Alá, porque después la vi dos veces y me dijo que me fuese a tierra de cristianos a ver a Lela Marién, que me quería mucho (1: 40).




In his ballad, Pérez retains the word Alá but removes the other Arabic terms. He also changes Zoraida’s parentage, making his character Arlaja half-Christian. While Zoraida’s mother is never mentioned, Arlaja is the daughter of a Christian captive who was her father’s slave:


Yo nací de las entrañas
de una cristiana cautiva
que era de mi padre esclava,
y aquesta después crióme,
y me enseñó a que rezara.


These lines show another notable change: the absence of Lela Marién. While Zoraida’s slave told her about the Virgin Mary, Arlaja’s mother simply taught her daughter to pray.

As the letter continues, it appears that either Pérez misread Cervantes, thereby missing an instance of linguistic perspectivism, or that Felix de Casas, the printer, missed a line. The result is that the fate of Arlaja’s captive, Christian mother is quite different from that of Zoraida’s Christian slave.


Esta murió, y con Alá
no dudo fue a las llamas
porque la he visto después,
y me ha dicho que me vaya
donde pueda recibir
el bautismo que me falta.


Thus, in the ballad, the damned mother reaches out from Hell to save her daughter from the flames. Line 244 appears to be a printer’s error and not a change made by the author. In the other extant eighteenth-century text, published some 10-30 years earlier by Agustín Laborda, the line reads, «No dudo fue, no a las llamas». Laborda’s rendering is consistent with the Cervantine original.

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Moreover, it results in a correct, octosyllabic line. But regardless of how, or at what point, or by whom the change was introduced, the meaning of the sentence was altered significantly for some portion of the audience. In this version, Arlaja’s desire to be baptized becomes all the more compelling.

The first part of «Arlaxa, mora» ends with the receipt of Arlaja’s letter. In the second part, Pérez continues to conform to the model created by Cervantes. The Captain/Diego writes back expressing his willingness to go along with Zoraida/Arlaja’s plans and receives another letter in return. In this second letter, Zoraida/Arlaja advises him that she will be going to a different house to spend the summer. With the aid of the renegade, the Captain/Diego and the other captives figure out how they will escape. Next, the Captain/ Diego goes to the house where Zoraida/Arlaja is staying to inform her of their plans. He enters the garden of the house, but before meeting his beloved, he encounters her father. In both texts, the captive uses the same subterfuge to explain his presence: he is a slave of one of the father’s friends and has come to gather herbs for a salad. At this point, Zoraida/Arlaja enters and joins in the conversation. The three discuss the captive’s freedom, his plans to leave Algiers, and the beauty of the woman he plans to marry-who is, of course, the Moorish maiden he is speaking with. This small section of text from Don Quijote is followed by the corresponding section of the ballad. Again, we see how closely Pérez followed his prose model:

-Debes de ser sin duda casado en tu tierra -dijo Zoraida-, y por eso deseas ir a verte con tu mujer.

-No soy -respondí yo- casado, mas tengo dada la palabra de casarme en llegando allá.

-¿Y es hermosa la dama a quien se la diste? -dijo Zoraida.

-Tan hermosa es -respondí yo- que para encarecella y decirte la verdad se parece a ti mucho.

Desto se riyó muy de veras su padre, y dijo:

-Gualá, cristiano, que debe de ser muy hermosa si se parece a mi hija, que es la más hermosa de todo este reino. Si no mírala bien y verás como te digo la verdad (1:41).




-Serás casado, y por eso
te parece de que tarda
el tiempo porque no estás
a la vista de quien amas.
Respondió: -No soy casado,
mas mi palabra empeñada
tengo en que he de serlo
en yendo allá. -Y esa dama,
dime, ¿es hermosa? Y el dijo:
-Es toda una semejanza
de tu persona. Y el padre
dijo riendo: -No es mala
la cristiana, si parece
en algo a quien la comparas.


As the story continues, Pérez begins to make some substantive changes. In Chapter 41, the Captain and his companions are prepared to make their escape. Their last stop is Zoraida’s house. Zoraida, beautiful and richly dressed, opens the door to them. The renegade declares that they should take Zoraida’s father, whose name is Hadji Murad, and everything that is of value in the house, with them. Zoraida refuses, insisting that her father is not to be touched. She then adds that she will bring with her all they need to be rich and happy. She goes back into the house and returns with a coffer full of gold crowns. At this moment, her father awakens and sounds the alarm. In the ensuing ruckus, the Captain’s companions capture Hadji Murad and bring him with them -his hands are tied and they stuff a handkerchief in his mouth to keep him quiet.

In the ballad, Arlaja behaves differently. She appears barefooted so as not to make any noise, but she lets Diego and his friends into the house so that they may take what is of value.


Arlaja salió descalza,
porque no fuesen sentidas
de su padre las pisadas,
y dijoles con silencio
entrasen hasta la sala,
para que sacasen de ella
joyas, dineros y galas.


Perhaps Pérez made this change so there would be a plausible reason for the father to wake up. Once awakened, Arlaja’s father begins to shout. He is overpowered by the Christians and taken on board ship with them.

At this point the narratives diverge markedly. In the novel, Hadji Murad does not immediately recognize the role his daughter has played in the events that have just transpired. The painful realization comes as he sees, first, that she is decked out in her finery, and second, that the box she keeps her jewels in is on board. He asks her how this can be and the Renegade answers,

no te canses, señor, en preguntar a Zoraida tu hija tantas cosas, porque con una que yo te responda te satisfaré a todas, y así, quiero que sepas que ella es cristiana y es la que ha sido la lima de nuestras cadenas y la libertad de nuestro cautiverio; ella va aquí de su voluntad, tan contenta, a lo que yo imagino, de verse en este estado como el que sale de las tinieblas a la luz, de la muerte a la vida y de la pena a la gloria (1: 41).





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The father then turns to his daughter who explains that she never wished to do him any harm; she only wished to do herself good. When her father asks what that good is, she is unable to tell him and responds, «Eso ... pregúntaselo tú a Lela Marién, que ella te lo sabrá decir mejor que yo» (1: 41).

When he hears these words, Hadji Murad throws himself head-first into the sea. The Christians save him and, eventually, at Zoraida’s request, he and the other Moorish captives are put ashore. He curses his daughter but, then, as the ship sails away, forgives her and begs her to return to him. Zoraida’s final words to her father offer him little, if any, consolation:

-¡Plega a Alá, padre mío, que Lela Marién, que ha sido la causa de que yo sea cristiana, ella te consuele en tu tristeza! Alá sabe bien que no pude hacer otra cosa que la que he hecho, y que estos cristianos no deben nada a mi voluntad, pues aunque quisiera no venir con ellos y quedarme en mi casa, me fuera imposible, según la priesa que me daba mi alma a poner por obra esta que a mí me parece tan buena como tú, padre amado, la juzgas por mala (1: 41).




In the ballad, the painful interchange between Zoraida and her father, so essential a part of The Captive’s Tale, is left out entirely. After they are all on board and the ship has set sail, Arlaja asks that her father be put ashore, and Diego complies with her wishes. No word is spoken between father and daughter:


y Arlaja pidió à Don Diego
que à su padre lo dexàran
en tierra, que viendo el viento
à su favor combidaba.
Dexaron libre los Moros


The ship sails on and eventually lands near Braga, a town in northern Portugal. There Arlaja is baptized and takes the new name Mariana. She and Diego are married and then travel to his hometown, where they find his father. As the ballad ends, the reunited family awaits the return of Diego’s brother, who, like the brother in Don Quijote, is an Oidor in Mexico.

The most salient differences between The Captive’s Tale and «Arlaxa, mora» are found in the dénouements. Moreover, these differences underline some of the defining features of the romance de ciego as a literary genre and enable us to see how Pérez adapted the Cervantine narrative to conform to it.

The tale the Captain recounts is one of a miracle of salvation worked by the Virgin Mary. (For a discussion of the legend of Notre Dame de Liesse as a possible source for The Captive’s Tale, see Cirot, Oliver Asín 289-90, Vaganay; Márquez Villanueva 102-06 discusses this and other legends of Marian devotion). A new Christian, Zoraida, has been brought into the fold. Like Lela Marién who she longs to serve, Zoraida is also an agent of redemption, for she helps to secure the freedom of the Captain and his companions -including the repentant renegade. The story ought to be a simple and joyful one, but in the hands of Cervantes it becomes a complicated tale that forces the reader to look into «the abysses of the divine» (Spitzer 262) and to see the human consequences of this miracle-grief and pain. Cervantes achieves this effect by focusing the reader’s attention on Hadji Murad, the loving father Zoraida cruelly and selfishly abandons in order to embrace her new faith. In this way, the miracle story is transformed into what Spitzer calls «the most violent and the most tragic of all the episodes in the novel» (261).

The story told in «Arlaxa, mora» is far simpler. In the ballad, the realistic, human elements of the story, most notably the father’s love for his daughter, disappear entirely. As I have already noted, the last, wrenching conversation between Zoraida and her father is left out, as is the final view of Hadji Murad beseeching his daughter to return. The result of these changes is that the reader is untroubled by Arlaja’s actions. All that matters in the romance de ciego is that she wishes to become fully Christian. What she must do to attain this goal is unimportant.

The changed dénouement of «Arlaxa, mora» and the disappearance of the elements which make the Cervantine text so disturbing show that Juan Pérez understood well the conventions of the genre he was working with. Blindman’s ballads clearly delineate good and evil; they have no space for any categories that might fall in between. Thus, Pérez wisely removed all elements which create ambiguity. The added episode I have dubbed «The Renegade’s Tale» -Pérez’s own creation- further reinforces the manichean vision of the world that is typical of the genre.

What is surprising about «Arlaxa, mora» is that Pérez left the miraculous aspect of the Cervantine tale undeveloped. As I noted earlier, blindman’s ballads tend to be religious and highly moralizing. Those ballads that focus on the plight of Christian captives are especially so and generally employ miracles as a means of resolving the story. For example, in «Lastimosa carta desde Argel» (Alvar 239-46), a devout Christian captive is imprisoned in a trunk. At the end of the

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ballad, the Virgin Mary spirits the trunk (and its contents) away onto the deck of a merchant ship bound for Spain, and thus the captive is reunited with his family. In «San Antonio a lo Militar» (Alvar 255-62), St. Anthony of Padua appears to Zulema, a Turkish woman who is married to a renegade, and convinces her to leave her «false faith» and become a Christian. As a result, not only is Zulema saved, but so is her husband. In contrast, in «Arlaxa, mora», there is no miracle of conversion, as there is in The Captive’s Tale, since Arlaja is half-Christian by birth. What is more, the Virgin Mary, the supernatural force that motivates all of Zoraida’s actions, is omitted from the ballad completely. In the end, «Arlaxa, mora» is the story not of a miracle but of an escape from captivity.





High Culture and Mass Culture


We will now turn to the larger issue of the relationship between high culture and mass culture in the eighteenth century. «Arlaxa, mora» and the many other blindman’s ballads I enumerated at the beginning of this article show that, in the eighteenth century, balladeers rejected contemporary high culture models and instead embraced those of the baroque.

Textual comparisons such as the one made here reveal much about how these writers plied their trade. We know that the poets who wrote blindman’s ballads were not innovators. Their ballads followed well-established, successful conventions (Sutherland, «Romance de Ciego»). By recasting The Captive’s Tale in ballad form, Juan Pérez followed two well-proven models: the romance de ciego and Cervantes. Indeed, our comparison of passages from the two texts strongly suggests that Pérez did not simply have a good memory for features of plot or language, he had a copy of Don Quijote in front of him as he composed his ballad.

Although Pérez makes no reference to Cervantes, from time to time we find authors who acknowledge that they have borrowed directly from other texts. An interesting example, and one which shows that this practice was not confined to the eighteenth century, is provided by Cristóbal Bravo. Bravo was a blind poet from Córdoba who was active in the late sixteenth century. His earliest known publication is a chapbook from 1572 (Rodríguez-Moñino, «Cristóbal Bravo»). One of the compositions in this chapbook is a poem written in coplas that retells a story from Antonio de Torquemada’s 1570 novel Jardín de flores curiosas. Although Bravo does not mention Torquemada or his novel by name, he makes clear to his audience that he is following another text as he writes. A funeral scene is described as follows:


y vido gran compañia
de frayles y clerezía
y la yglesia relumbraua
con muchas lumbres que aiua
Y ansi visto aquesta gente
oyo cantar reziamente
y en medio vn tumulo puesto
segun nos cuenta el texto
en la manera siguiente.



(Rodríguez Moñino, «Cristóbal Bravo», 257)



Thus earlier writers who catered to the popular audience were also influenced by high culture models. This example is especially interesting for Torquemada’s text and Bravo’s coplas are the earliest literary sources for the story related in Lozano’s Soledades de la vida y desengaños del mundo which was later retold in «Lisardo, el estudiante de Córdoba».

It was not just the reworked novels of the seventeenth century that appealed to the mass audience of the eighteenth century. The theater of the preceding century also enjoyed considerable popularity with this public. Extracts from comedias and autos sacramentales that were printed in chapbooks, in particular speeches in ballad meter known as relaciones, sold briskly during the eighteenth century. The same printers who turned out romances de ciego also turned out relaciones, and these dramatic texts were among the blindman’s wares. The numerous extant chapbooks containing relaciones from the plays of Calderón, Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón, Antonio Enriquez Gómez, Tirso de Molina, Juan Pérez de Montalbán, Lope de Vega, and Francisco de Zárate testify to the enduring popularity of the baroque theater well into the eighteenth century. Calderón seems to have been the great favorite; extant chapbooks include selections from a number of his plays: El purgatorio de San Patricio, El rigor de las desdichas, El mayor monstruo los celos, La Sibila de Oriente y gran reina de Saba, and La vida es sueño, to name only a few.

This continuity of taste, this love of baroque literature, that we find in the popular audience of the eighteenth century has a parallel in the elite, educated eighteenth-century public. While authors such as Juan Pérez and printers such as Agustín Laborda and Félix de Casas were busily excerpting and repackaging the works of seventeenth-century

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writers for a popular public, printers such as Antonio de Sancha were reprinting these same works in their original form for the more well-to-do, book-buying public. Sancha, for example, printed his 21-volume Colección de las obras de Lope between 1776 and 1779. During this same period he began publishing the novels of Cervantes: Don Quijote appeared in 1777 and, six years later in 1783, Sancha published the Novelas ejemplares (Rodríguez-Moñino, Antonio de Sancha).

The number of eighteenth-century editions of seventeenth-century novels provides further evidence of their popularity with the learned eighteenth-century audience. The works of Cervantes were exceedingly popular, and between 1700 and 1799 there were 35 editions of Don Quijote and 16 of the Novelas ejemplares (Glendinning 134). María de Zayas’s Novelas amorosas y ejemplares, the inspiration for a number of romances de ciego, went through 13 editions in the eighteenth century (Amezúa xlviiixlix). Cristóbal Lozano’s Soledades de la vida y desengaños del mundo was republished at least 10 times over the course of the eighteenth century13.

The two eighteenth-century reading publics were culturally divided, and the best efforts of the ilustrados did little to bring them together. This division was particularly evident with respect to contemporary literature. The popular audience had scant interest in, say, the writings of Feijoo, whose Teatro crítico universal went through 10 editions in the eighteenth century (Glendinning 134). There was, however, a marked continuity of taste in both publics with respect to the literature of the preceding century. And whether they bought chapbooks from a blindman or elegant editions from Antonio de Sancha, craftsman and count were united by their love of the baroque.





WORKS CITED


Aguilar Piñal, Francisco. Romancero popular del siglo XVIII. Madrid: CSIC, 1972.

Allen, John J. «Autobiografía y ficción: el relato del Capitán Cautivo Don Quijote I, 39-41». Anales Cervantinos 15 (1976): 149-55.

Alvar, Manuel, ed. Romances en pliegos de cordel. Siglo XVIII. Málaga: Delegación de Cultura Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Málaga, 1971.

Amezúa, Agustín G. de. See Zayas y Sotomayor, María de.

Caro Baroja, Julio. Ensayo sobre la literatura de cordel. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1969.

Catalán, Diego. «Los modos de producción y ‘re-producción’ del texto literario y la noción de apertura». Homenaje a Julio Caro Baroja. Ed. Antonio Carreira, Jesús Antonio Cid, Manuel Gutiérrez Esteve, Rogelio Rubio. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 1978. 245-70.

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Ed. Justo García Soriano and Justo García Morales. Madrid: Aguilar, 1968.

Cirot, Georges. «Le ‘Cautivo’ de Cervantes et Notre-Dame de Liesse». Bulletin Hispanique 38 (1936): 378-82.

Durán, Agustín, ed. Romancero general: Colección de romances castellanos anteriores al siglo XVIII. 2 vols. Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1849-1851. BAE 10 and 16.

García de Enterría, María Cruz. Sociedad y poesía de cordel en el Barroco. Madrid: Taurus, 1973.

Glendinning, Nigel. The Eighteenth Century. London: Benn, 1972.

Haedo, Diego. Topografía e historia general de Argel, 1612. Rpt. 3 vols. Madrid: Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1926.

Márquez Villanueva, Francisco. Personajes y temas del Quijote. Madrid: Taurus, 1975.

Oliver Asín, Jaime. «La hija de Agi Morato en la obra de Cervantes». Boletín de la Real Academia Española 27 (1948): 245-339.

Rodríguez-Moñino, Antonio. «Cristóbal Bravo, ruiseñor popular del siglo XVI. (Intento bibliográfico, 1572-1963)». La transmisión de la poesía española en los siglos de oro. Ed. Edward M. Wilson. Barcelona: Ariel, 1976. 253-83.

_____. La Imprenta de don Antonio de Sancha (1771-1790). Madrid: Castalia, 1971.

Serrano y Morales, José Enrique. Reseña histórica en forma de diccionario de las imprentas que han existido en Valencia desde la introducción del arte tipográfico en España hasta el año 1868 con noticias bio-bibliográficas de los principales impresores. Valencia: F. Domenech, 1898-1899.

Spitzer, Leo. «Linguistic Perspectivism in the Don Quijote». Leo Spitzer: Representative Essays. Ed. Alban K. Forcione, Herbert Lindenberger, and Madeline Sutherland. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988. 223-71.

Sutherland, Madeline. «The Persistence of the Baroque in Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: The Case of the Romance de Ciego». Selected Proceedings of the Sixth Louisiana Conference on Hispanic Languages and Literatures. New Orleans: Tulane UP, 1985. 339-47.



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_____. «The Romance de Ciego: A Description of a Mass Culture Genre». Romance Quarterly 37 (1990): 61-72.

_____. «The Romance de Ciego and the Printed Ballads of the Preceding Centuries». Actas del Congreso Romancero Cancionero. Ed. Enrique Rodríguez-Cepeda and Samuel G. Armistead. 2 vols. Madrid: Porrúa Turanzas, 1990. I: 192-204.

Vaganay, Hugues. «Une source du ‘Cautivo’ de Cervantes». Bulletin Hispanique 39 (1937): 153-54.

Wilson, E. M. «Tradition and Change in Some Late Spanish Verse Chap-Books». Hispanic Review 25 (1957): 194-216.

Zamora Vicente, Alonso. «El cautiverio en la obra cervantina». Homenaje a Cervantes. Ed. Francisco Sánchez-Castañer. 2 vols. Valencia: Mediterráneo, 1950. 2: 239-56.

Zayas y Sotomayor, María de. Novelas amorosas y ejemplares. Ed. Agustín G. de Amezúa. Madrid: Aldus, 1948.