Por el de pila famosa (Dq, I, 1): Modesta conjetura cervantina

The reading “por Hepila famosa”, which appeared in the first chapter of the princeps of Don Quijote and then disappeared for centuries, replaced by the trivialising emendation “por hacerla famosa” (as early as the second edition of Juan de la Cuesta, 1605), has begun to trouble philologists and critics in modern times, urging the search for hermeneutic approaches capable of justifying the mysterious proper name. The frustration with the main proposals advanced so far —which are discussed here— makes it necessary to consider new perspectives. For this reason, an attempt is made to show that “Hepila” is most probably a symptom and a consequence of a process of textual corruption that generated a false difficilior. Finally a conjecture is put forward that is based both on the material circumstances and on the discursive logic of the Quijote, the usus scribendi and Cervantes’ irony.