This edited volume of fourteen specially commissioned essays written from a variety of critical perspectives by leading Cervantine scholars seeks to provide an overview of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares which will be of interest to a broad academic readership. This edited volume of fourteen specially commissioned essays written from a variety of critical perspectives by leading cervantine scholars seeks to provide an overview of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares which will be of interest to a broad academic readership. An extensive general Introduction places the Novelas in the context of Cervantes's life and work; provides basic information about their content, composition, internal ordering, publication, and critical reception, gives detailed consideration to the contemporary literary-theoretical issues implicit in the title, and outlines and contributes to the key critical debates on their variety, unity, exemplarity,and supposed 'hidden mystery'. After a series of chapters on the individual stories, the volume concludes with two survey essays devoted, respectively, to the understanding of eutrapelia implicit in the Novelas, andto the dynamics of the character pairing that is one of their salient features. Detailed plot summaries of each of the stories, and a Guide to Further Reading are supplied as appendices. Stephen Boyd is a lecturer in the Department of Hispanic Studies of University College Cork.

La vengenza de Tamar was first published in 1968 and is one of the outstanding plays of the Spanish Golden Age dramatist Tirso de Molina (1580?-1648). The name was the pseudonym of a Mercedarian friar, Fray Gabriel Tellez. Tirso was greatly influenced by Lope de Vega and in turn influenced the master of the Spanish comedia, Calderon. He was a prolific writer whose most famous plays are El burlador de Sevilla and El contenado por desconfiado. The plot of La venfanza de Tamar comes from the biblical story in II Samuel xiii: Amnon, the eldest son of King David falls in love with his beautiful half-sister Tamar; feigning illness he entices her into his house and rapes her; he is later put to death at a banquet by his half-brother Absalom. Tirso uses this violent and passionate story to develop a play that is rich in dramatic purpose and tragic content.

This edited volume of fourteen specially commissioned essays written from a variety of critical perspectives by leading Cervantine scholars seeks to provide an overview of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares which will be of interest to a broad academic readership. This edited volume of fourteen specially commissioned essays written from a variety of critical perspectives by leading cervantine scholars seeks to provide an overview of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares which will be of interest to a broad academic readership. An extensive general Introduction places the Novelas in the context of Cervantes's life and work; provides basic information about their content, composition, internal ordering, publication, and critical reception, gives detailed consideration to the contemporary literary-theoretical issues implicit in the title, and outlines and contributes to the key critical debates on their variety, unity, exemplarity,and supposed "hidden mystery". After a series of chapters on the individual stories, the volume concludes with two survey essays devoted, respectively, to the understanding of eutrapelia implicit in the Novelas, andto the dynamics of the character pairing that is one of their salient features. Detailed plot summaries of each of the stories, and a Guide to Further Reading are supplied as appendices. Stephen Boyd is a lecturer in the Department of Hispanic Studies of University College Cork.