This is the first major study on Azorin to appear in two decades. The first part explores parallels between the cultural milieus in France and Spain when both countries lost their colonies in the second half of the nineteenth century. The second part studies the fiction and essays of Jose Martinez Ruiz (Azorin). Illustrated.

Examines the evolution of Ortega y Gasset's literary criticism from 1902 through 1959 against the parallel background of his philosophical and methodological development. The author concentrates on three distinct phases in Ortega's evolution: the social phase of his earlier writings; the phenomenological phase beginning around 1911; and the final, ontological phase which begins after his reading of Heidegger in 1927.