This slim volume could well be epoch-making in its import. It has potential to re-focus critical energy in a new direction. It will be of interest to all Cervantes scholars, but perhaps especially so to those of the new historicist and materialist persuasions. We are dealing here with the socio-historical context, after all, and with issues that must necessarily impinge on our understanding of Cervantes’s life and literary production, particulary «Don Quixote». It will surely make those who maintain that Cervantes is not a satirist in any form revisit their position.