Vida do grande Dom Quixote de la Mancha e do gordo Sancho Pança by António José da Silva: transmission of the text and recension

Abstract

Don Quixote de la Mancha is considered the greatest work of Cervantes. Despite having enchanted and captured the imagination of society at that time, it was only in the 18th century that it was lavish with praise throughout Europe, especially from critics from Spain and Portugal. Inspired by Cervantes' work, the play Vida do grande D. Quixote de la Mancha e do gordo Sancho Pança, by the Portuguese-Brazilian António José da Silva, was staged for the first time in 1733 (COSTIGAN, 2009). When we look closely at the tradition of the Luso-Brazilian play's text, one aspect stands out: there is a manuscript testimony from 1782, 49 years after the play's staging and 38 years after the publication of the first printed testimony of the work. Thus, the purpose of our philologically oriented work (SPINA, 1977; BLECUA, 1983; CAMBRAIA, 2005) is to make known the manuscript copy of the text of this work, investigating the transmission of the text, analyzing the existing differences between the testimonies found, through the comparison of copying errors (BLECUA, 1983), with the purpose of understanding the genetic relationship between them.