This Companion to Cervantes's ‘Novelas ejemplares’ has its origins in a colloquium entitled ‘Artificio e Invención: Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares’ held at University College, Cork from 6 to 7 April 2001 at which earlier versions of Chapters 3, 4, 8, 9 and 14 were read as papers. These have been adapted for this volume and are accompanied by a further nine specially commissioned essays, so that with the exceptions of El amante liberal (The Generous Lover), Las dos doncellas (The Two Damsels) and La señora Cornelia (Lady Cornelia), each of the twelve stories that comprise the Novelas ejemplares has a whole chapter devoted to it. One of them, La fuerza de la sangre (The Power of Blood) is considered from different points of view in two separate chapters (7 and 8). The first chapter looks at the Prólogo al lector (Prologue to the Reader), Cervantes's preface to the Novelas, while each of the two final chapters (13 and 14) examines an important aspect of the collection as a whole. The chapters are arranged to reflect the original ordering of the stories. The intention has been to provide students and non-specialist readers with a general overview of the Novelas ejemplares (a function primarily, although not exclusively fulfilled by the Introduction, Chapters 13 and 14, the Synopses, and the Guide to Further Reading), and to complement this by offering detailed analyses of individual stories, or of particular aspects of them, by specialists whose work represents something of the variety of critical approaches to be found in contemporary Cervantine scholarship.

English translations for quotations from the Novelas ejemplares, and for other citations in Spanish or other languages, have been provided. Where these translations have been taken from published sources, or are the work of individual contributors, this is acknowledged in footnotes. All other translations are by the editor.

The editor gratefully acknowledges the receipt of generous grants towards the publication of this book from the Research Publication Fund of the Faculty of Arts at University College, Cork, and from the Research Publication Fund of the National University of Ireland.