Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Social Class and the Paradoxes of Privilege
Chapter 2. Women and the Limits of Agency
Chapter 3. Corruption, Collaboration, and the Structure of
Society
Chapter 4. Justice, Forgiveness, and the Question of honra
Chapter 5. Syncretic Cultures and the Larger Spain
Chapter 6. How to Read: The Lessons of the Novelas
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
Index
William H. Clamurro is professor of Spanish at Emporia State University.
Clamurro is author of Beneath the Fiction (1997), a study of
Cervantes’s 12 exemplary novellas. Here he revisits the narratives
to consider recent criticism of the texts and to reflect further on
the structure and significance of the individual works and of the
collection as a whole. Clamurro always has viewed the novellas as
rich, suggestive, and complex, but here he seems more committed to
defining multiple options for contextualization, that is, to
seeking the tensions inherent in the fictions—and in the age of
which they were products—and, he stresses, their relevance for
today’s readers. He highlights not only a shared intricacy but also
a tone of pessimism and cynicism, or at least the potential for
negativity, that often has been unnoticed or underestimated. One
conclusion of the study is that social and cultural conventions in
the Novelas ejemplares are meticulously plotted and presented in a
manner that reveals points of contact between early modern Spanish
life (and art) and contemporary concerns. Like its predecessor, the
book is clearly written, well thought out, and illuminating.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and
above.
*CHOICE*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
