Emily C. Francomano - The Prison of Love: Romance, Translation, and the Book in the Sixteenth Century

This is a book that I have wanted to write since my first semester in graduate school, when I took a seminar on the Spanish Sentimental Romances and learned that the works of Diego de San Pedro and Juan de Flores had been widely translated and used as language-learning tools in the sixteenth century. I am ever grateful to Patricia Grieve for introducing me to these works and for her unfailing guidance as I entered, and stayed in, academia. The idea that had been simmering away on the back-burner of my brain for more years than I wish to number here at last began to take shape with the support of an American Council of Learned Societies research fellowship in 2008, for which I am deeply grateful. The National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar, The Reformation of the Book, 14501700, in 2009, directed by John King and James Bracken, provided invaluable space, time, and mentorship as the project took on more definite outlines. The Folger Library colloquium, Early Modern/Renaissance Translation, led by Anne Coldiron in the 201415 academic year, was a wonderful forum for testing my ideas as work on the book reached its conclusion. I was immensely fortunate to participate in these programs, which gave me the opportunity to discuss Book History and translation with many extraordinary scholars.

I wish to thank colleagues who so generously shared their expertise, read and commented upon drafts, invited me to give talks, and asked fruitful questions at conferences over the past years, especially Lourdes Alvarez, Heather Bamford, Lucia Binotti, Marina Brownlee, Joyce Boro, Robin Bower, Linde Brocato, Anne Coldiron, Vronique Duch-Gavet, Elizabeth Einstein, Irene Finotti, Leonardo Funes, Ethan Henderson, Gwen Kirkpatrick, Debbie Lesko-Baker, Sarah McNamer, Clara Pascual-Argente, Peter Pfeiffer, Sol Miguel Prendes, Joanne Rappaport, Jonathan Ray, Isidro Rivera, Ron Surtz, Chris Warner, and Barbara Weissberger. Georgetown University has been generous in its support for this project in the form of several summer grants, a semester of senior research leave, and in securing the publication subvention. I owe many thanks to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown, not least for contributing to the publication subvention, but first and foremost for providing talented research assistants from our graduate programs, some of whom are now colleagues: Tyler Bergin, Yoel Castillo Botello, Ins Corujo Martn, Mara Jos Navia, Sacramento Rosell Martnez, Maureen Russo de Rodrguez, Estefana Tocado Orviz, Martina Thorne, and Jovanna Zujevic. I am also grateful to Allison Brice, who was my undergraduate research assistant in the summer of 2012. I also wish to thank Suzanne Rancourt, at the University of Toronto Press, for sharing my enthusiasm about the book from the time I first pitched it to her and for shepherding it into print.

Heartfelt thanks go to friends and family whose hospitality and company was invaluable during my travels to libraries in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, and the United States: Vivian and Roger Cruise, Nick Francomano, Borja Ibarz, Mara Ibarz, Lola Lpez Ibarz, Tanya, Steve, Jackson, and Lucy Schlemmer, and Harriet Welch. Above and beyond their unflagging support, I thank my mother, Nina Rulon-Miller, the comma queen, for her willingness to read drafts, and my father, Frank Francomano, for his help with sixteenth-century Italian. There is no way to thank Eugenio and Pablo enough for their patience, encouragement, and readiness to travel with me. Nor can I thank Eugenio enough for reading every page I have written.

Parts of and the conclusion first appeared in Reversing the Tapestry: Prison of Love in Text, Image, and Textile, Renaissance Quarterly 64, no. 4 (2011). I am grateful to the British Library, the Fondation Bodmer Library, and the Hispanic Society of America for allowing me to reproduce images from their collections in this book without permissions fees.