Where Does the Prologue of Lazarillo End?

Abstract

It is now reasonable to assume that the rubrics in the three earliest surviving editions of the sixteenth-century, anonymous La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades are apocryphal. This article stresses that, if so, the first tractado epigraph no longer necessarily marks the division between prologue and letter. The prologue probably in fact ended a paragraph earlier. Scholars have long sought to reconcile what now appear as the prologue proper and a factitious extension. The new structure proposed, while by no means abolishing problems in this area, may nonetheless enable us to take a more relaxed view of them.