Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda

In 1614 a sequel to Cervantes' "Don Quixote" was published under the pseudonym Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. The identity of Fernández de Avellaneda has been the subject of many theories, but there is no consensus on who he was.

Modern readers generally agree that his continuation, which Cervantes damns up and down in his own Part 2, is far inferior to the work of Cervantes. However, it is possible that Cervantes would never have completed his own continuation were it not for the stimulus Fernández provided.

But there is evidence that some of Cervantes' condemnations are tongue-in-cheek references to errors or jokes in Part 1. In Part 2, Chapter 59 of Cervantes' version, Don Quixote disregards Avellaneda's Part 2 because in it Sancho Panza's wife is called "Mari Guitierrez" instead of "Teresa Panza". However, in the early chapters of Part 1 Sancho's wife is called by many names (some within just two paragraphs) including "Juana Panza", "Mari Gutierrez", "Juana Gutierrez", "Teresa Cascajo", etc. "Teresa Panza" is settled on only after she becomes a substantial character, just as "Sancho's donkey" is named "El Rucio" (or, as he is known in English, "Dapple") only after the animal becomes central to various subplots (Pt 1, Ch 25). It is difficult to decide whether these are true mistakes, as malapropisms, aliases and puns are a running joke throughout the books. Cide Berengeli is miscalled Berengena (eggplant), Teresa called Teresona Panza (approximately, "Fat Belly"), and so on.

For an introduction, a good article in English is Jim Iffland's “"Do We Really Need to Read Avellaneda?"” [http://www.h-net.org/~cervantes/csa/artics01/iffland.pdf] , published in the journal of the Cervantes Society of America [http://www.h-net.org/~cervantes/csapage.htm] .