SPAN 392: Rogues, Cross-Dressers, and Conquistadors: A Transatlantic Picaresque (HC)

This is the first comprehensive history of Spanish literature to be published in English since the 1970s. It brings together experts from the USA, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Together, the essays cover the full range of Spanish poetry, prose, and theatre from the early Middle Ages to the present day. The classics of the canon of eleven centuries of Spanish literature are covered, from Berceo, Cervantes and Calderón to García Lorca and Martín Gaite, but attention is also paid to lesser known writers and works. The chapters chart a wide range of literary periods and movements. The volume concludes with a consideration of the influences of film and new media on modern Spanish literature. This invaluable book contains an introduction, more than fifty substantial chapters, a chronology (covering key events in history, literature, and art), a bibliography, and a comprehensive index for easy reference.

This A-to-Z encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference to the literary works, writers, and concepts of the Renaissance. Spanning the years from approximately 1500 to 1660 CE, this guide examines the history and development of literature as it flourished around the world during this period. Coverage includes not only European literature but also the people and works of China, India, Japan, the Islamic world, and the Jewish diaspora, as well as written and oral literature of the New World, Africa, and Oceania.

Exiled to the margins of society and surviving by his wits in the course of his wanderings, the picaro marks a sharp contrast to the high-born characters on whom previous Spanish literature had focused. In this illuminating book, Peter N. Dunn offers a fresh view of the gamut of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish picaresque fiction.

This book offers a theory about the origin and evolution of the Latin American narrative, and about the emergence of the modern novel. It argues that the novel developed from the discourse of the law in the Spanish Empire during the sixteenth century, while many of the early historical documents concerning the New World assumed the same forms, furnished by the notarial arts. Thus, both the novel and these first Latin American narratives imitated the language of authority. The book explores how the same process is repeated in two key moments in the history of the Latin American narrative. In the nineteenth century, the model was the discourse of scientific travellers such as von Humboldt and Darwin, while in the twentieth century, the discourse of anthropology - the study of language and myth - has come to shape the narrative. Professor González Echevarría's theoretical approach is drawn from a reading of Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos, and the book centres on major figures in the tradition such as Columbus, Garcilaso el Inca, Sarmiento, Gallegos, Borges and Garcia Marquez.