In Contrast to the apologetic and ambiguous prologue of the Libro de buen amor, that preceding the Lazarillo de Tormes shocks us with its forthright arrogance: “Yo por bien tengo que cosas tan señaladas y por ventura nunca oydas ni vistas vengan a noticia de muchos y no se entierren en la sepultura del olvido.” The evasive ego of Juan Ruiz—an ego which, as Alfonso Reyes notes, is comic by mediaeval definition and slips with childish glee into one role after another—has been replaced by an explosion of self: “Yo por bien tengo …” The “soy quien soy” of the hero-braggarts of the “comedia” seems to have been combined with the autobiographical complacency of an Alonso de Contreras or a Pedro de Baeza. The result is that the reader, as soon as he becomes aware of the insignificance of the events so pompously announced, tends to read the prologue as a parody. If Lazarillo is an anti-hero, the prologue is appropriately an anti-prologue. The oral bombast of “cosas tan señaladas y por ventura nunca oydas ni vistas” sounds almost as if it were designed to hawk the “pliegos sueltos” of a “romance.” Prologues are by definition self-conscious, but in this one self-consciousness is driven to self-caricature.