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Item Condition: Used; Good
has pencilled notes.-
NOTE
THERE is uncertainty as to who was the original authot
of El Abencerraje or the Story of Abindarráez and the
beautiful Jarifa. It is commonly attributed to Antonio
de Villegas, who inserts it in his Irentario, a miscellany
in verse and prose, which he states was licensed for the
press in i$SI. T'he first edition of this book, however,
only appeared in Is6s, and four years carlier (in zs61)
Montemayor had already published the story in his
pastoral novel, La Diana. Further, an edition of
El Abencerraje, by itself, was issued, printed in Gothic
type, at Toledo in 1s6. Competent judges are of
opinion that both Villegas and Montemayor were
plagiarists; the story is foreign to the style of either,
and most probably should be accounted anonymous,
dating from the earlier years of the sixteenth century.
As regards the text printed in the Diana, it will be found
that Montemayor has inserted some additional verses,
and throughout considerably amplified the prose, while
on the other hand he has curtailed the close of the story
by omitting two of the three Jetters, as also the edifying
anecdote of the Alcaide of Alora told to the lovers by
the old man whom they meet on their return journey.
The events narrated in the story take place in the
second decade of the fifteenth century, after I410, when
Ferdinand, the Good Regent (who governed Castile
during the minority of his nephew Juan Il) besieged
and took Antequera from the Moors. Antequera, which
lies in a direct line over so miles west ofGranada, thus
became the Christian outpost, with Alora standing
some ten miles to the southward, on the Guadalhorce
river. Rodrigo de Narváez the Governor (in the story)
of these two important posts is a known historical
character. but the like cannot be said of Abindarráez
the Abencerraje. Cártama, said to have been his birth-
place, still, at the time named, within the kingdom of
Granada, lies about ten miles south of Alora, and Coin
where Jarifa lived (ahe being the daughter of the Moorish