«Que yo soy, por hijo, parte apasionada»: the Editions of "Llanto de Menardo" between Manuscript and Print

Abstract

The "Llanto de Menardo" is a poem in octaves written by the Portuguese-born doctor Duarte Núñez de Acosta and dedicated to the tragic flood that devastated Salamanca in January 1626. The text has reached us thanks to two different testimonies. We find it among the pages of the Museo en que se describen diferentes poemas que compuso el doctor don Duarte Núñez de Acosta, a manuscript anthology compiled by Duarte's son, which preserves the majority of the author's work. Additionally, the Llanto was published in 1626 by the Salamancan printer Diego de Cussío. The text provided by the only known copy of this edition is mutilated and interrupts at the height of octave 42. The comparison between the two testimonies, although relative only to a part of the poem, shows, besides a different order of the octaves and small variants, a different extension of the text that suggests the existence, very probable, of two versions of the work.