'Better mad with the crowd than sane all alone' In these witty, Machiavellian aphorisms, unlikely Spanish priest Baltasar Gracian shows us how to exploit friends and enemies alike to thrive in a world of deception and illusion. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658). Gracian's work is available in Penguin Classics in The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence.

Arts of Perception offers a new account of a key period in Spanish history and culture and a fundamental reassessment of its major writers and intellectuals, including Gracian, Quevedo, Calderon, Saavedra Fajardo, Lopez de Vega, and Sor Juana. Reading these figures in the context of European thought and the new science, and philosophy, the study considers how they developed various 'arts of perception' - complex perceptual strategies designed to overcome and exploit epistemic problems to enable an individual to act effectively in the moral, political, social or religious sphere. The study takes as its subject the distinctive epistemological mentality behind such 'arts of perception'. This mentality was fostered by the creative interaction of scepticism and Stoicism, and found expression in the key concepts ser/parecer and engano/desengano. The work traces the emergence, development, and impact of these concepts on Spanish thought and culture. As well as offering new interpretations of specific major figures, Arts of Perception offers an interpretation of the mentality of an entire culture as it made the fraught transition to intellectual modernity. As such it ranges over numerous discourses and formative contexts and provides a wealth of new material which will be of use to all those seeking to understand and interpret the literature, culture and thought of Golden Age Spain. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

Arts of Perception offers a new account of a key period in Spanish history and culture and a fundamental reassessment of its major writers and intellectuals, including Gracian, Quevedo, Calderon, Saavedra Fajardo, Lopez de Vega, and Sor Juana. Reading these figures in the context of European thought and the new science, and philosophy, the study considers how they developed various 'arts of perception' - complex perceptual strategies designed to overcome and exploit epistemic problems to enable an individual to act effectively in the moral, political, social or religious sphere. The study takes as its subject the distinctive epistemological mentality behind such 'arts of perception'. This mentality was fostered by the creative interaction of scepticism and Stoicism, and found expression in the key concepts ser/parecer and engano/desengano. The work traces the emergence, development, and impact of these concepts on Spanish thought and culture. As well as offering new interpretations of specific major figures, Arts of Perception offers an interpretation of the mentality of an entire culture as it made the fraught transition to intellectual modernity. As such it ranges over numerous discourses and formative contexts and provides a wealth of new material which will be of use to all those seeking to understand and interpret the literature, culture and thought of Golden Age Spain. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

Published in memory of Ivy L. McClelland, a pioneer-scholar of Spain's eighteenth century, this volume of original essays contains, besides an Introduction to her career and internationally influential writings, three previously unpublished essays by McClelland and nine studies by other scholars, all of which are focused on elucidating the Enlightenment and its characteristic manifestations in the Hispanic world. Among the Enlightenment writers and artists, works and genres, themes and issues discussed, are: Nicolas Moratin and epic poetry, Lillo's The London Merchant and English and French influences on eighteenth-century Spanish drama, Jose Marchena and literary historiography, oppositions and misunderstandings within Spanish society as reflected in El si de las ninas, Goya and the visual arts, Quintana's Pelayo and historical tragedy, Enlightenment discourse, the Periodical Press, theatre as propaganda, the ideology and politics of Empire, the roots of revolt in late viceregal Quito, women's experience of Enlightenment in Spain, social and cultural difference in colonial Peru, ideological debate and uncertainty during the Age of Reason, eighteenth-century Spain on the nineteenth-century stage, and public opinion in Spain on the eve of the French, and European, Revolution. First published as a Special Issue of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies (LXXXVI [November-December 2009], Nos 7-8), this book will be of value and stimulus to all scholars concerned to investigate and interpret the culture, theatre, ideology, society and politics of the Enlightenment in Spain, Europe and Spanish America.

This volume commemorates the quatercentenary of Don Quijote (Part I, 1604-05), widely acknowledged to be the 'first modern novel'. Through Don Quijote, his Exemplary Novels and other major works, Cervantes, Spain's master novelist, has for centuries shaped and profoundly influenced the different literatures and cultures of numerous countries throughout the world. Containing chapters written in both English and Spanish by leading scholars worldwide, this book deals with topics as fundamental and diverse as contested discourses in Don Quijote, psychology and comic characters in Golden-Age literature, the title of Cervantes' master novel, and Cervantes, Shakespeare and the birth of metatheatre. A special issue of the journal Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

The first comprehensive study of Calderon in English Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681) is one of the most important dramatists - many would say the single most important dramatist - of the Spanish Golden Age. Spain's dominant and most prestigious playwright for much of the seventeenth century, his work is still regularly staged and translated, influential in more recent times on writers as diverse as Schiller, Shelley and Lorca. The author of around 120 plays (not counting his numerous Corpus Christi autos) in a variety of styles, Calderon is most famous for his stirring dramas, characterized by rhetorically powerful poetry, dramatic structures carefully calibrated to produce poignant echoes, and the fizzing intellectual energy they apply to the age's ontological, eschatological and political preoccupations. His plays succeed in combining these perennial concerns with compelling plots subtle enough to defy definitive interpretation. As this volume seeks to show, however, Calderon's comedies deserve equal recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright's comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderon in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueno, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.

Published in memory of Ivy L. McClelland, a pioneer-scholar of Spain s eighteenth century, this volume of original essays contains, besides an Introduction to her career and internationally influential writings, three previously unpublished essays by McClelland and nine studies by other scholars, all of which are focused on elucidating the Enlightenment and its characteristic manifestations in the Hispanic world.

Among the Enlightenment writers and artists, works and genres, themes and issues discussed, are: Nicolas Moratin and epic poetry, Lillo s The London Merchant and English and French influences on eighteenth-century Spanish drama, Jose Marchena and literary historiography, oppositions and misunderstandings within Spanish society as reflected in El si de las ninas, Goya and the visual arts, Quintana s Pelayo and historical tragedy, Enlightenment discourse, the Periodical Press, theatre as propaganda, the ideology and politics of Empire, the roots of revolt in late viceregal Quito, women s experience of Enlightenment in Spain, social and cultural difference in colonial Peru, ideological debate and uncertainty during the Age of Reason, eighteenth-century Spain on the nineteenth-century stage, and public opinion in Spain on the eve of the French, and European, Revolution.

First published as a Special Issue of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies (LXXXVI November December 2009], Nos 7 8), this book will be of value and stimulus to all scholars concerned to investigate and interpret the culture, theatre, ideology, society and politics of the Enlightenment in Spain, Europe and Spanish America.

A unique collection of advice for life, Baltasar Gracian's The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence is a philosophical gem, and perhaps the first 'self-help' book ever written. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Spanish with an introduction by Jeremy Robbins. Written over 350 years ago, The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence is a subtle collection of 300 witty and thought-provoking aphorisms. From the art of being lucky to the healthy use of caution, these elegant maxims were created as a guide to life, with further suggestions given on cultivating good taste, knowing how to refuse, the foolishness of complaining and the wisdom of controlling one's passions. Baltasar Gracian intended these ingenious, pragmatic aphorisms to challenge the mind, and recognised that few would be capable of applying them. In Jeremy Robbins's introduction to his penetrating new translation, he examines Gracian's place in Spanish literature and his previous works. Robbins also looks at the themes, contexts and contradictions of The Pocket Oracle, as well as the brevity and subtlety of Gracian's cool-headed aphorisms. This edition also contains a chronology, suggested further reading and notes. Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658) was born in Belmonte, Aragon and entered the Society of Jesus in 1619. Teaching in Jesuit colleges across the Kingdom of Aragon, he was also at one time confessor to the viceroy of Aragon and chaplain to the Spanish army. But it is as one of the great Spanish stylists and moralists that he is best known. He wrote a series of short moral tracts marked by their elliptical, epigrammatic style, as well as a three volume allegorical novel, The Critic (1651-57). Published in 1647, The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence influenced the vogue for the form in France, and was quickly translated into the major European languages. If you enjoyed The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence, you might like La Rochefoucauld's Maxims, also available in Penguin Classics.

Incomparable Realms offers a vision of Spanish culture and society during the Golden Age, the period from 1500 to 1700 when Spain unexpectedly rose to become the dominant European power. But in what ways was this a 'Golden Age', and for whom? The relationship between the Habsburg monarchy and the Church shaped the period, with both constructing narratives to bind Spanish society together. Incomparable Realms unpicks the impact of these on thought and culture, and examines the people and perspectives such powerful projections sought to eradicate. The book shows that the tension between the heavenly and earthly realms, and in particular the struggle between the spiritual and the corporeal, defines Golden Age culture. In art and literature, mystical theology and moral polemic, ideology, doctrine and everyday life, the problematic pull of the body and of the material world is the unacknowledged force behind early modern Spain. Life is a dream, as the title of Calderon's famous play of the period proclaimed, but there is always a body dreaming it.

This up-to-date introduction to the French Enlightenment corrects the view that the writers of the period were a mere stopover to modernity. It discusses current debates that A-level and first-year students need to know today. Voltaire agonised over the fact that his 'age of critique' followed Louis XIV's much more important 'age of genius'.Church religion was dispensed with, but not religion itself. Enlightenment was a fierce battle that lacked a predetermined outcome. The book covers key exam literature, in particular Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, Rousseau, Montesquieu and also Rivarol, Sedaine, Palissot, theatre, gender issues, and feminism.

This volume commemorates the quatercentenary of Don Quijote (Part I, 1604-05), widely acknowledged to be the 'first modern novel'. Through Don Quijote, his Exemplary Novels and other major works, Cervantes, Spain's master novelist, has for centuries shaped and profoundly influenced the different literatures and cultures of numerous countries throughout the world. Containing chapters written in both English and Spanish by leading scholars worldwide, this book deals with topics as fundamental and diverse as contested discourses in Don Quijote, psychology and comic characters in Golden-Age literature, the title of Cervantes' master novel, and Cervantes, Shakespeare and the birth of metatheatre. A special issue of the journal Bulletin of Spanish Studies.