Lexington Books
Pages: 142
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-0-7391-9347-1 • Hardback • September 2015 • $101.00 • (£78.00)
978-1-4985-2678-4 • Paperback • August 2017 • $47.99 • (£37.00)
978-0-7391-9348-8 • eBook • September 2015 • $45.50 • (£35.00)
William H. Clamurro is professor of Spanish at Emporia State University.
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
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 Reviews