The Spanish novel in a turbulent century. This collection of studies by eighteen prominent theorists and critics offers a diverse panorama of the modern Spanish novel seen through the prism of Spain's recent political, cultural and ideological history. It considers the development of the novel as a social mirror and as a changing literary form, torn between the tradition of stern realism and the aesthetics of rupture affecting all Western literature from the Avant-Garde to the Postmodern age. While some essays emphasise the Spanish cultural context and canonical writers, others are of a broader nature, grouping lesser-known writers under certain literary tendencies: the metaphysical novel, the urban novel, recuperative accounts of the Civil War, feminine first-person narrations, and the rise of the popular detective, historical, and erotic novels. Three studies address the resurgence of the Catalan, Basque and Galician novel and their departure from a poetics of identity to one of global concerns. Interdisciplinary approaches address the reciprocal impacts of literature and cinema, and the effects of the marketplace on the consumption of fiction are not forgotten. The Companion provides ample bibliographies and a valuable chronology, while all titles and quotations are translated into English. Contributors: Marta E. Altisent, Katarzyna Olga Beilin, Ramon Buckley, Jose F. Colmeiro, Stacey Dolgin Casado, Sebastiaan Faber, David K. Herzberger, Carlos Alex Longhurst, Kathleen N. March, Cristina Martinez-Carazo, Alfredo Martinez Exposito, Nina L. Molinaro, Gonzalo Navajas, Mari Jose Olaziregi, Janet D. Perez, Randolph D. Pope, Josep Miquel Sobrer, H. Rosi Song.

Surveys the thought and literary work of a towering figure in twentieth-century Spanish cultural and political life. As a novelist, dramatist, essayist, poet and public intellectual, Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) was a strikingly energetic and prolific writer, and a towering figure in twentieth-century Spanish cultural and political life. His work explored fundamental questions about existence and identity (both individual and national).Widely recognised and translated during his lifetime, he was an inescapably canonical figure on university syllabi across Europe and the Americas for many years after his death, and still appears on many curricula. In this Companion, a range of distinguished scholars with very different approaches both survey Unamuno's work chronologically, analysing major developments and turning points or breaks as well as continuities, and further study key themes and preoccupations across his prolific narrative, theatrical and essay output. All contributors offer not just incisive discussion of the texts or topics studied, but also a balanced overview of issues and debates arising in Unamuno studies. Julia Biggane is senior lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Aberdeen. She is a general editor of theBulletin of Spanish Studies, and director of the Sir Herbert Grierson Centre for Textual Criticism and Comparative Literary History at the University of Aberdeen. John Macklin was Professor of Hispanic Studies and Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Glasgow. In 1994, he was made a Commander of the Order of Isabel la Catolica by King Juan Carlos of Spain.

The master of the realist novel of nineteenth-century Spain, Benito Perez Galdos, is the subject of these new studies. The master of the realist novel of nineteenth-century Spain, Benito Perez Galdos, is the subject of New Galdos Studies, offered in memory of John Varey, author of Galdos Studies, the foundational text for contemporary Galdosian scholarship. Eamonn Rodgers describes Galdos's early readership and reception; James Whiston illustrates Galdos's creativity in Lo prohibido; Rhian Davies explores the enrichment of the novelist's language in Torquemada en la Cruz; Teresa Fuentes Peris demonstrates Galdos's radical critique of dominant social assumptions in Fortunata y Jacinta; Alex Longhurst deals with the representation of poverty in Misericordia while Lisa Conde detects a feminist intention in Tristana; Eric Southworth finds rich cultural and spiritual allusion in the same work; Nichols Round relates the deaths of children in the Torquemada novels and Angel Guerra to end-of-century ideological concerns.