Spanish literary critics and poets of the stature of Juan Ramon Jimenez, Gerardo Diego, Rafael Alberti and Pedro Salinas, have noted repeatedly the importance of Fernando Villalon's work, and the originality and significance of his poetry. The present book is the first in-depth study of Villalon's literary production. It examines how the extraordinary popularity Villalon enjoyed as a person has to a great extent overshadowed his work, and separates, finally, the myth relative to Villalon's personality and life-style from historical reality."

This book, which offers the first feminist reading of the "carpe diem" theme in Fernando de Rojas' masterpiece, reveals a positive and liberating portrayal of female characters. The application of certain contemporary French feminist theories such as those of Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray, elucidates Rojas' "deconstruction" process, which breaks with patriarchal attitudes towards women.

Feghali shows that the reader of Songe will observe a dissonant narrative voice that wavers between intention and rhetoric, moral and practice, and the simultaneous affirmation and denial of narrative responsibility.

Thought-provoking study of the impact of Fascism on Italian literature. Excellent political and historical perspective on World War ll, propaganda myths of the regime; satire and surrealism; anti-Semitism; and the Renaissance.

A rigorous examination of the treatment of Jimena from the Cantar de Mio Cid to Renaissance, Romantic, and modern adaptations of the story of the Cid. Presents a picture of Jimena that is more complete and revealing than any other study of the character. Provocative and informative literary, cultural, historical, and social interpretations."

Poet, journalist of world wars and the Russian Revolution, prolific novelist, translator, playwright, respected society figure: Sofia Casanova intrigued and influenced the Spanish reading public for over fifty years. Sofia Casanova's unique achievements should have drawn considerable critical and scholarly notice. Yet today her life and works remain unexamined or ignored. It is the purpose of this book, researched in Spain and Poland, to reintroduce Sofia Casanova to the scholarly and general public."

A detailed examination of Beckett's dramas based on reductionist models in the arts and sciences. Various experimental aspects of composition and production are shown to reflect Beckett's search for a minimal theater of silence and inaction, as well as his epistemological uncertainty.

With a grounding in the current theoretical understanding of Renaissance feminism, this work presents an examination of Francisco Delicado's profeminist position in the context of what are currently described as individualist and relational models. The individualist model proposes an autonomy of women in relation to men, law and politics, while the relational explores what women are and do in contrast to men. Delicado's text offers the possibility of invoking both models simultaneously.

Using the theory of orality, this book shows how the poems were composed with the techniques of oral tradition; and the oral character of this poetry helps in establishing the uniqueness of the experience induced by the poems. This book is an original and yet attentive reading of the poetic texts using an interdisciplinary approach (philosophical, philological and literary). It represents a major contribution to the study of the poetry of John of the Cross: shattering, and yet rigorous and faithful to the text.

This book examines how medical language provided Aleman with an extraordinary linguistic tool that made the emergence of the modern novel possible. Mateo Aleman disclosed to subsequent generations of writers, and in particular to Cervantes, the possibilities of novelistic medical discourse in the area of psychology, politics, and even religion. Through recourse to the medico-philosophical tradition of Juan Luis Vives and Huarte de San Juan, Aleman fictionalizes the intricate relationship between the soul and the body, consolidating, before the creation of don Quijote, the mental illness of a...