This essay will try to show that the ‘Prólogo al lector’ (Prologue to the Reader) that prefaces the Novelas ejemplares is exemplary in its appropriateness to the stories it introduces. As one would expect from the introduction to any book, it serves the purely functional purpose of providing readers with general information about what they are about to read, but beyond that, and more unusually, for those who do not refuse its challenges, it also offers an induction into the reading skills, or habits of mind, that they will require if they are to properly understand and enjoy the novelas. In other words, the readerly expertise required to understand the enigmas of the Prologue is closely analogous to that demanded by the stories themselves. It is commonplace to observe that Cervantes liked to experiment with the conventions associated with the various literary genres of his time. The Novelas ejemplares are a prime example of this love of literary experimentation, and the first sense in which the Prologue is exemplary as an introduction to them is in its artful exploitation of the conventions of the genre. Therefore, before considering the content and structure of this prologue, and the other ways in which it is exemplary, it is appropriate to begin by briefly describing those conventions and outlining Cervantes's approach to them as evidenced in the introductions he provided for some of his other works.

Cervantes and the Prologue Tradition

As George McSpadden has made clear, Spanish readers in Cervantes's time (and before it) had come to expect much more from a prologue than mere information:

Traditionally, the primary purpose of the prologue, from the author's point of view, was the captatio benevolentiae: the ‘capturing’ of the goodwill of the reader.