The treatment of mythological material in the poetry, prose, drama, art and music of the Hispanic Baroque. Thirteen essays engage with one of the most obsessive aspects of the Baroque aesthetic, a dedicated commitment in distinct artistic contexts to the treatment of mythological material. Within the various 'Baroques' uncovered, thereis a single unity of purpose. Meaning is always negotiable, but the process of interpretation is dependent upon intertextual forms of understanding, and presupposes the active participation of the receiver. The volume explores how the paradigmatic mythical symbols of a Renaissance epistemological world view can be considered a barometer of rupture and a gauge of the contradictory impulses of the time. Essays explore the differing functions of mythology in poetry [Quevedo, Espinosa, Gongora], prose [Cervantes], drama [Lope de Vega, Sor Juana, Calderon], art [Velazquez], and music [Latin American opera]. Collectively they trace the dialectic of continuity and rupture that underpins the appropriation of classical mythology in the period; demonstrating that the mythological legacy was not as uniform, as allegorically dominated, nor as depleted of potential as we are sometimes led to believe. ISABEL TORRES is Head of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at Queen's University, Belfast. Contributors: JEAN ANDREWS , STEPHEN BOYD, D. W. CRUICKSHANK, TREVOR. J. DADSON, B.W. IFE, ANTHONY LAPPIN, OLIVER NOBLE WOOD, JEREMY ROBBINS, BRUCE SWANSEY, BARRY TAYLOR, ISABEL TORRES, D. GARETH WALTERS

A guide to the interpretation of the Golden-Age ballad. Collections of traditional Spanish ballads were made in the early seventeenth century; some recorded directly from singers, others reworked by educated poets. So popular were these that Court poets composed ballads of their own. Most Spanish poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries circulated in manuscript among a small coterie of wits and fellow poets, and it often contains references to contemporary events and people, sideswipes at institutionsand individuals, and allusions to other writings of the time. The modern reader has to know about the people and events criticized and lampooned, and everything from municipal by-laws to contemporary painting can prove helpful. The traditional popular associations of the ballad also led to many poets combining in their poems the language of the street alongside that of polite society and the schoolroom. This volume discusses some of the problems encountered by anglophone students and teachers of literature when they turn to the Golden-Age ballad and offers informed guidance on how such poems might be read. The nine poems discussed have been chosen with such difficulties in mind and a strophe-by-strophe prose translation is provided for each, followed by a detailed critical analysis. Edited by NIGEL GRIFFIN, CLIVE GRIFFIN, ERIC SOUTHWORTH and COLIN THOMPSON, all of Oxford University. OTHER CONTRIBUTORS: Oliver Noble-Wood, John Rutherford, Ronald Truman.