See, for example, E. D. Hirsch, «We found the types of meaning we expected to find, because what we found was in fact powerfully influenced by what we expected»... and «... his interpretation is dependent upon the last unrevised generic concept with which an interpreter starts. All understanding of verbal meaning is necessarily genre-bound». Validity in Interpretation (New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 1967), p. 76. (N. from the A.)

Pierre Kohler, «Contribution à une philosophie des genres», Helicon, I (1938), 233-44; II (1940), 135-47. Cited by Paul Hernadi, Beyond Genre (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell U. P., 1972), p. 43. (N. from the A.)

Tzvetan Todorov, «The Origin of Genres», NLH 8 (1976), 159-70. Alastair Fowler. «The Life and Death of Literary Forms», NLH 2 (1971), 199-216. (N. from the A.)

Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature. An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1982), ch. 9, 10. (N. from the A.)

Notably by Ruth S. El Saffar, From Novel to Romance: A Study of Cervantes's «Novelas ejemplares» (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. P., 1974). (N. from the A.)

E. C. Riley, «Cervantes: A Question of Genre», in Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies on Spain and Portugal in Honour of P. E. Russell, ed. F. W. Hodcroft et al. (Oxford: The Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1981), pp. 68-85. (N. from the A.)

Cervantes and the Humanist Vision: A Study of Four «Exemplary Novels» (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1982); Cervantes and the Mystery of Lawlessness: A Study of «El casamiento engañoso y El coloquio de los perros» (Princeton U. P., 1984). The quotation is from the latter, p. 17. (N. from the A.)

The question of hermeneutic circularity came into a new critical focus in the early 19th century when Friederich Ast discussed the problem of the harmony of the inner parts in relation to the spirit of the work. This at least forms the background of the thinking of Schleiermacher and later Dilthey, from which the modern critical tradition takes its orientation. In Cervantes' time the issue of how to understand a written text had two particular foci: the aesthetics of genre and Biblical exegesis. The question of genre forms was posited of course on authorial intention rather than reader comprehension, but nevertheless, the problem of understanding is implicit in any such discussion. The more urgent problem of understanding the Bible was central to Catholic/Protestant polemics and to the idea of a humanistically achieved scriptural text. In Cervantes' writing the problem of interpreting what language says is inherent in most of his work. In the opening passages of La Galatea, for instance, the relationship between Galatea and Elicio is constituted as one in which the element of mutual (mis-)understanding of what is said and not said is already precarious. Thus the present study does not imply that the problem of hermeneutic circularity is in any way unique to this chapter of the Quijote; rather the interest in this episode is posited on the particularly apt formulation of the question in the differing interpretations of their situation given by Don Quixote and Sancho.

For a review of the modern development of the idea of hermeneutic circularity see Richard E. Palmer Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969). Dilthey himself traces the sources of the problem to its classical origins and comments on the nature of the conflicting Catholic and Protestant exegetical claims in the 16th century. See Frederic Jameson's translation of Wilhem Dilthey's «The Rise of Hermeneutics» in New Literary History III (1972), 229-44. Subsequent citations are from this text. In this essay Dilthey examines the problem of scriptural interpretation in the 16th and 17th centuries. During the prolonged debate that centered on the question of the Catholic claim of Tradition as stipulated by the Council of Trent, the Protestant polemicists insisted on the validity of the individual's ability to read scripture. Dilthey discusses the writings of Flacius (1567) and cites a statement by him that clearly postulates an awareness of the circularity of the interpretive act: «And indeed the individual parts of a whole everywhere draw their comprehensibility from their relationship to that whole and to the other parts» (p. 238).

Hans-Georg Gadamer delineates this historical stage in the development of hermeneutics in Truth and Method, translation edited by Garrett Barden and John Cumming, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, [p. 16] 1985), pp. 153-62. Catholic/Protestant polemics at the beginning of the 17th century would have provided both Cervantes and his readers with a heightened awareness of the perils of textual interpretation. From the Catholic standpoint in the debate Don Quixote is an example of the individual's inability to read texts without guidance, and his madness is an exaggerated instance of hermeneutical fallibility. The difficulty with this problem, however, is complicated by the fact that Cide Hamete's critique of Don Quixote's interpretation of the libros de caballerías appears equally flawed at the conclusion of the novel. (N. from the A.)

The nature of the confusion between history and fiction in the Renaissance is examined by William Nelson in Fact or Fiction: The Dilemma of the Renaissance Storyteller (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973). The most comprehensive study of this problem in the work of Cervantes is found in Edwin Williamson, The Half-Way House of Fiction: Don Quixote and Arthurian Romance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). Williamson traces the connections between the narrative traditions of Arthurian romance and Cervantes' concern with the authority of the text. This latter point in particular comprehends the question of Cide Hamete's narrative stance in relation to his own text. (N. from the A.)

Dilthey, p. 243. (N. from the A.)