Thurston-Griswold's book on Juan Valera lends fresh credence to traditionalist art and criticism of Spain's early modern period, while it also depicts Valera as a modern esthetician. In contradiction to the critics who see discrepancies between Valera's critical preaching and his novelistic practice, Thurston-Griswold argues a tight linkage between the two. In the development of this critical argument, he searches for a common denominator for the novels: an esthetic which is based on a persistent theme of love and an insistent love ethic.

This collection of eight critical essays on the modern French novelist (selected from a session devoted to her at the 1991 MLA meeting) employs contemporary theory to examine "the unspeakable" in relation to postmodern (and classical) issues of desire and language: textuality, selfhood, femininity, psychoanalysis, madness, ontology, and mythology.