Cervantes and the Comic Mind of His Age

This book relates Cervantes's poetics of comic fiction to the common framework of assumptions, values, and ideas held by Spaniards of the Golden Age about the comic and the kinds of writing which expressed it. This collective mentality underwent significant evolution in the period 1500 to 1630, and the factors which caused it are reflected in the ways in which the major comic genres--satire, the picaresque, the comedia, the novella--are re-launched, transformed, and theoretically rationalized around 1600, the moment when Don Quijote and Cervantes's most famous novelas were written. Though Cervantes is universally acknowledged to be a master of comic fiction, his poetics have never before been considered from that specific angle, nor in such ample scope. In particular, the book sets itself to identify the differences between that poetics and the conceptions of comic fiction of his contemporaries, including Mateo Alemán.


Author: A. J. Close
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 11/30/2000
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.46lbs
Size: 9.48h x 6.48w x 1.03d
ISBN: 9780198159988

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2001 pg. 1468

This title is not returnable