The lengthy Byzantine romance Persiles y Sigismunda, which Cervantes completed only days before his death in 1616, has conventionally been considered a relatively pure example of romance fiction. This study of genre in the Persiles questions that view by analysing the novelistic or realist aspects of the work. An extensive comparison with examples of Byzantine romance from its Greek origins to its Renaissance evolution highlights the degree to which Cervantes departs from the established canon, notably in the characterisation of the heroine and the significance of the protagonists' wedding,...

Luis de Gongora completed the first version of his Soledad primera in the spring of 1613. Immediately his poem became the centre of a vigorous literary polemic. The writings of his detractors and of his supporters marked the beginning of a period of intense literary criticism in Spanish letters. The corpus of these writings has yet to be properly listed, edited and analysed in its totality. Approaching the problem of the obscurity of Gongora's writings by way of the reception of the Soledades in the seventeenth century, the author has been able to determine why his contemporaries found...