The literary relationships between Spain, France and Italy were strong during the
17th and 18th centuries. The interest in their respective literary works promoted
many translations with the aim of making them accessible to interested readers.
Dictionaries became a fundamental tool to facilitate understanding of confusing
expressions and ambiguous words, both for native speakers and for translators.
This paper focuses on the relationships between literature and lexicography and
particularly on how the vocabulary of Cervantes’ works is presented in some of
the most important monolingual and bilingual dictionaries in the 17th century:
Covarrubias (1611), Oudin (1607) and Franciosini (1620). Bilingual lexicographic
repertoires contained long explanations and not only a sequence of equivalent
words. They included extensive definitions, information about idiomatic expressions,
examples and proverbs which helped to understand the literary texts.
