Formalistic Aspects Of Cervantes S Novelas Ejemplares

This study examines the narrative features and numerous textual aspects of the Novelas ejemplares, and also takes into consideration certain external aspects like intertextual features and specific concerns within narratology.

This edited volume of fourteen specially commissioned essays written from a variety of critical perspectives by leading Cervantine scholars seeks to provide an overview of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares which will be of interest to a broad academic readership. This edited volume of fourteen specially commissioned essays written from a variety of critical perspectives by leading cervantine scholars seeks to provide an overview of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares which will be of interest to a broad academic readership. An extensive general Introduction places the Novelas in the context of Cervantes's life and work; provides basic information about their content, composition, internal ordering, publication, and critical reception, gives detailed consideration to the contemporary literary-theoretical issues implicit in the title, and outlines and contributes to the key critical debates on their variety, unity, exemplarity, and supposed 'hidden mystery'. After a series of chapters on the individual stories, the volume concludes with two survey essays devoted, respectively, to the understanding of eutrapelia implicit in the Novelas, andto the dynamics of the character pairing that is one of their salient features. Detailed plot summaries of each of the stories, and a Guide to Further Reading are supplied as appendices. Stephen Boyd is a lecturer in the Department of Hispanic Studies of University College Cork.

Novelas ejemplares ("Exemplary Novels") is a series of twelve novellas that follow the model established in Italy, written by Miguel de Cervantes between 1590 and 1612. The collection was printed in Madrid in 1613 by Juan de la Cuesta, and received well in the wake of the first part of Don Quixote. Cervantes boasted in his foreword to have been the first to write novelas in the Spanish language: My genius and my inclination prompt me to this kind of writing; the more so as I consider (and with truth) that I am the first who has written novels in the Spanish language, though many have hitherto appeared among us, all of them translated from foreign authors. But these are my own, neither imitated nor stolen from anyone; my genius has engendered them, my pen has brought them forth, and they are growing up in the arms of the press. The novellas are usually grouped into two series: those characterized by an idealized nature and those of a realistic nature. Those idealized in nature, which are the closest to the Italian models, are characterized by plots dealing with amorous entanglements, by improbable plots, by the presence of idealized characters and psychological development, and the low reflection of reality. They include: El amante liberal, Las dos doncellas, La española inglesa, La señora Cornelia and La fuerza de la sangre. These seré The most popular of the novellas at the time. The realistic in nature cater to the descriptions of realistic characters and environments, with intentional criticism in many cases. The realistic in nature are the best-known stories today: Rinconete y Cortadillo, El licenciado Vidriera, La gitanilla, El casamiento engañoso (which leads directly into the fantasy El coloquio de los perros), and La ilustre fregona. However, the separation between the two groups is not sharp and elements of the idealistic may be found in some of the realistic novels. Since there are multiple versions of two of these stories, it is believed that Cervantes introduced some variations in these novels for moral, social and aesthetic purposes (hence the name 'exemplary'). The more primitive versions were found in the manuscript, now lost, called by the name of its one-time possessor, Porras de la Cámara, a miscellaneous collection of various literary works which include a novel usually attributed to Cervantes, La tía fingida. On the other hand, some short stories are also embedded in Don Quixote, such as El curioso impertinente or Historia del cautivo, and where a character possesses a manuscript of Rinconete y Cortadillo, unpublished at the time (1605).

Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares: Reading their Lessons from His Time to Ours offers a fresh approach to the Novelas ejemplares (1613) of Cervantes in which the twelve novelas are not analyzed individually nor on the basis of generic definitions but rather from a thematic perspective. In this way, certain pertinent themes and problems are explored by grouping the relevant novelas as they dramatize these problems, often leaving the reader with unresolved “conclusions,” and in other instances offering an affirmative solution. The issues examined include the ironies and injustices of social class, the problem of honra and justice, the complex hostilities and interactions of distinct cultures, and the problem of finding a seventeenth-century work of fiction relevant and stimulating to the twenty-first-century reader.

Reference Guide to Short Fiction provides study and commentary on the most instrumental writers of short fiction through the 20th century. International in scope, this single scholarly volume includes 779 entries on 377 authors and 402 short stories.

"Ricapito's amply documented study of the Gypsy in Spain, the complex political relationship between Spain and England, and the Italo-Hispanic cultural relations of the period point up new areas of inquiry hitherto lacking in the study of Cervantes' "La gitanilla, La espaola inglesa, " and "La seora Cornelia.""--Dominick Finella, author of "Pastoral Themes and Forms in Cervantes' Fiction."