The central component of this study is an index of the numerous motifs through which topoi of the text as symbol are articulated in the religious poetry, sermons, and sacramental plays of Golden Age Spain. Paired with the index is an anthology of the texts on which the book is based. In her introduction, Louise Salstad discusses the transmission and transformation of the topoi as they appear in the Old and New Testaments, classical literature, church writings, and medieval texts, and she considers the influence of the contemporary milieu on the shaping of these motifs. The book also includes an explanatory introduction to the index, biographical notes on authors, a chronology of works, a bibliography, and key word indexes of motifs in English and Spanish. The most extensive investigation of specific topoi undertaken in Spanish studies, this book will also be of interest to art historians and cultural historians whose focus is theology, the history of spirituality, or the history of the book.

This book undertakes the most comprehensive and theoretically rigorous examination to date of Luis Rafael S¡nchez's work in the context of cultural politics in Puerto Rico, and of the international and regional dimensions of S¡nchez's work in relation to

Golden Age departures in historiography and theory of history in some ways prepared the ground for modern historical methods and ideas about historical factuality. At the same time, they fed into the period’s own "aesthetic-historical culture" which amalgamated fact and fiction in ways modern historians would consider counterfactual: a culture where imaginative historical prose, poetry and drama self-consciously rivalled the accounts of royal chroniclers and the dispatches of diplomatic envoys; a culture dominated by a notion of truth in which skilful construction of the argument and exemplarity took precedence over factual accuracy. Literature and Historiography in the Spanish Golden Age: The Poetics of History investigates this grey area backdrop of modern ideas about history, delving into a variety of Golden Age aesthetic-historical works which cannot be satisfactorily described as either works of literature or works of historiography but which belong in between these later strictly separate categories. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The transformation of Late Petrarchism from earlier stages reflects a profound shift in cultural values--a 'crisis of the Renaissance' that generated new perspectives in poetic theory and practice. Broadly, this book identifies a distinctive 'poetics of inconstancy' that came to the fore at the end of the sixteenth century and pervaded the love verse of the age. At the same time, as a study based on the inductive method, the book takes as its point of departure a single poet: Etienne Durand. Because of his frequently anthologized 'Stances a l'Inconstance,' Durand is often singled out as 'the poet of inconstancy.' This study, however, identifies the theme of universal change as a hallmark of Durand's contemporaries as well--a signal of a stylistic revolution that heralded the end of Renaissance verse.

Published in two parts in 1548 and 1552, Le Quart Livre is Rabelais's last book of certain authenticity and his most difficult and mysterious work. In it, Pantagruel and Panurge undertake a sea voyage and a quest for "the word of the Divine Bottle," but the islands they visit along the way are inhabited by strange beings whose nature and physiognomy defy natural categories. Expressing the elderly writer's despair at the failure of all his dreams as a young humanist, the voyage traces the last phase of the heroic quest, the cycle of old age and death. It is a descent into the underworld, but one that is undertaken hopefully, for the Quart Livre continues the search for a wife and for paternity begun in the Tiers Livre. Ultimately, all of these strivings may be associated with the writer-physician who faces misfortunes in order to cure them. In the end, the Quart Livre affirms the healing power of wine, laughter, and words.

This book explores the change that occurred in the writings of Spanish novelist Benito Perez Galdos when he entered his segunda manera in 1881 with the publication of La desheredada, his first contemporary novel. Critical work on this important phase of Galdos's career has tended to concentrate on the content of his novels, with little attention given to the way in which Galdos conveys that content to the reader. By studying these works in light of how their stories are told, Linda Willem shows that La desheredada marks the beginning of a more sophisticated and varied mode of narrative in Galdos's novels. Through close readings of his first seven contemporary works, Willem shows how the affective response associated with various narrative devices plays a role in the rhetorical strategies of each text.