"El Amante Liberal": Cervantes's Ironic Imitation of Heliodorus (Miguel De Cervantes) (Critical Essay)

"EL amante liberal", from Cervantes's 1613 Novelas ejemplares, has been described as one of Cervantes's least popular works to readers in the twentieth century. This is, no doubt, because it shares little of the content or purportedly more realistic style of his more popular works, such as the Quixote, or with other novelas from the same collection, such as "La gitanilla" and "Rinconete y Cortadillo." Nevertheless, "El amante liberal" was quite popular in its original Spanish as well as in translation in the period immediately following its publication (Hart, 41-42, and El Saffar xii). It is the story of how an essentially good but willful young man, and the woman who initially detests him, find love and personal growth through long and difficult trials. The exceptional nature of their trials is one of the story's main sources of interest; they are captured by Turkish pirates, sold and resold as slaves, threatened with physical violation and its subsequent dishonor, lost at sea in storms, witness to political intrigues of the Ottoman colonial administration, and, on the way to Constantinople, are engaged in a terrible naval combat of no fewer than four separate factions on three different ships.