port during the research period of this project. First and foremost, I
thank the University of Missouri at Columbia for a generously funded
research leave in 1990-91. I also thank the Research Council of the
University of Missouri for a further grant in 1991-92 that enabled me
to travel to libraries in Madrid and Barcelona. Finally, I thank the
Research Council for a third grant in 1993 that enabled me to com-
plete my research at the Cambridge University Library and the Brit-
ish Library in London. I here express my deep and special gratitude
to the associate vice-provost for research at the University of Missou-
ri-Columbia, John McCormick, for his unfailing advice and encour-
agement.

The professional and intellectual debts that this study has incurred
are also very numerous. I acknowledge here the assistance of the staff
and research facilities of the British Library in London, the Cam-
bridge University Library, and the Bodleian Library in Oxford; as well
as of the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris, the Biblioteca Nacional in
Madrid, and the Biblioteca de Catalunya in Barcelona. In the United
States, I acknowledge the assistance of the Pius XII Memorial Library
at Saint Louis University, and especially of their university archivist,
John Waide; further, the Burke Library at Union Theological Semi-
nary in New York City, and the Ellis Library of the University of Mis-
souri-Columbia.

I thank the sorely missed Professor Stephen Gilman of Harvard
University for his early endorsement of the book's main hypothesis;
as well as Dr. Melveena McKendrick of Girton College, Cambridge,
for sharing her wisdom with me concerning Cervantes. I express my
gratitude also to Diana de Armas Wilson ( University of Denver),
Frederick A. de Armas ( Pennsylvania State University), and John Jay
Allen ( University of Kentucky-Lexington) for their conversations,
suggestions, and generous support of this project as referees; also to
my distinguished colleagues at Missouri: John Zemke, the Spanish
medievalist and Hebraist; and Charles Presberg, the Golden Age
scholar and theologian. I also thank Daniel Heiple ( Tulane Univer-
sity) for a meticulous reading of the draft manuscript, and for his
many invaluable suggestions.

At Penn State Press, I extend my gratitude to Philip Winsor, Senior
Editor, and to Cherene Holland, Managing Editor, for their patience
and counsel in guiding this book to completion. Finally, I thank most
of all my ex-wife, Ellie Ragland, for innumerable conversations on
Lacanian psychoanalytic theory taken with literary problems and
enigmas.

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