THE CENSORSHIP OF "ORLANDO FURIOSO" BEYOND THE ÍNDEX: THE PROSE VERSION BY VÁZQUEZ DE CONTRERAS (1585).

Abstract

The prose version of Orlando Furioso created in 1585 by Diego Vázquez de Contreras was the last of the translations made in the 16th century of the famous Ariostan poem after the more successful one by Jerónimo de Urrea (1549) and the practically forgotten one by Hernando Alcocer (1550), both in verse.  In keeping with the ideological shift at the end of the century under  strict control of the censors of the Council of Castile, the Toledan translator severly expurgated the Italian poem in order not only to impose the religious orthodoxy of the Counter-Reformation on the Furioso, but very especially to safeguard the honor of the military exploits of the Hispanic monarchy.  The severity of the excising with the elimination of many octaves and entire episodes surpassed the previous censorship imposed by the indexes of Spanish prohibited books of the 17th century [Sandoval (1612), Zapata (1632) and Sotomayor (1640)], which center exclusively on the Italian original and in Urrea's translation, thus placing Vázquez de Contreras's version as a prolegomenon of the combative intolerance displayed by both the local Italian censors and the Portuguese expurgatory indices of Almeida (1581) and Mascarenhas (1624).