Aristophanes' The Birds and the Ornithological Tour de Force in Fortunata y Jacinta

,l* OUR studies have called attention to the use of * ubird imagery in Fortunata y Jac nta. This matter Swas first discussed as a tangential issue in the 1 polemical exchange between Stephen Gilman and " Carlos Blanco-Aguinaga ("The Birth of Fortunata" and "On 'The Birth of Fortunata,' " AGald, 1 [1966], 71-83; and 3 [1968], 13-24, respectively). Then Roger L. Utt and Agnes Money Gull6n focused more directly on the question of the bird imagery itself, showing its extensiveness and tracing it throughout the novel as a (leit)motif ("El pajaro vol6: observaciones sobre un leitmotif en Fortunata y Jacinta" and "The Bird Motif and the Introductory Motif: Structure in Fortunata y Jacinta," both in AGald, 9 [1974], 37-50; and 51-75, respectively). To date, however, the importance of Aristophanes' comedy The Birds as a creative stimulus for all this ornithological imagery has not been explored. In fact, the only mention of intertextuality between The Birds and Fortunata y Jacinta is the conjecture (initiated by Gilman and rejected by Blanco-Aguinaga) that an echo of the birth of Eros from an egg may be perceived at the beginning of the Juanito Santa Cruz/Fortunata relationship, as Fortunata makes her first appearance in the novel holding a broken egg. Gilman says, "[Although] there is no overt reference to the well-known description of the birth of Eros in The Birds,. . . we can speculate