Books in the Studies in Romance Literatures series

A discussion of the trope of paradox as a governing rhetorical strategy in "Don Quixote". In his readings of portions of the work, Charles D. Presberg shows how it enlarges the tradition of paradoxical discourse by imitating as well as transforming fictional and non-fictional models.

Cervantes''s great novel Don Quixote is a diptych, the first part of which was published in 1605 and the second in 1615. Focusing almost entirely on the novel''s second part, Henry W. Sullivan is the first critic to offer a systematic account of Don Quixote''s passage from madness to sanity. Sullivan argues that Part II of the novel is a salvation epic, within which the Cave of Montesinos episode is the single most important pivot in the Knight''s confrontation with his own emotional difficulties.In this carefully researched and challenging study, Sullivan shows that chapters 22-24 (the Cave of Montesinos episode) represent an entrance into Purgatory, while chapter 55 is the exit from this realm. The Knight and his Squire are made to suffer excruciating torments in the chapters in between, experiencing a Purgatory in this life. This original reading of the book is coupled with an explanation that this Purgatory is "grotesque" since Don Quixote''s and Sancho''s sins are venial and can thus be cleansed by theological means against a background of comedy. By combining these two aspects, Sullivan exposes both the deeply agonizing and the comic aspects of the text. In addition, the combination of theological interpretation and Lacanian analysis to show Don Quixote''s salvation/cure in this life results in a truly comprehensive vision of the Knight''s progress. Sullivan also summarizes, in five different streams of critical tradition, the accumulated reception history of the Cave of Montesinos incident, drawing on scholarly writings from the nineteenth century to the present.

An examination of the themes of love, medicine and dreams in the late mediaeval Spanish masterpiece, "Celestina". It explores the European cultural and literary tradition to discover theoretical approaches to the physiology of lovesickness and its dreams and visions.

Published in 1554, "Lazarillo de Tormes" shocked art and society during the Renaissance. Giancarlo Maiorino treats this picaresque narrative as a prism for exploring "econopoetics", a term he uses to foreground the ways in which literary and economic modes of production feed off one another.

The counter-epic is a literary style that developed in reaction to imperialist epic conventions as a means of scrutinizing the consequences of foreign conquest of dominated peoples. This work covers the representation of militant Christian imperialism in early modern Spanish literature.

French-Cuban author Eduardo Manet's work is acclaimed internationally, though mainly overlooked by French and Latin American critics due to his odd position as a Latin American writing in French. This study includes poetry, plays, novels and films written and directed by this bilingual writer.