Even more popular in their day than Don Quixote, Cervantes's Exemplary Stories (1613) surprise, challenge and delight. Ranging from the picaresque to the satirical, Cervantes's Exemplary Stories defy the conventions of heroic chivalric literature through a combination of comic irony, moral ambiguity, realism, and sheer mirth. With acute narrative skill and deft characterisation, drawing on colloquial language and farce, Cervantes creates a tension between the everyday and the literary, the plausible and the improbable. While encouraging us to reach our own moral conclusions, he also persuades us to accept the coincidental and the incredible: two boys indulge their life of crime at a time of public prayer; a young nobleman undergoes a change of identity at the behest of not a princess but a mere gipsy girl, and, most fantastically, talking dogs philosophize in a ward full of syphilitics. By placing the extraordinary within the contexts of the ordinary, the Exemplary Stories chart new novelistic territory and demonstrate Cervantes at his most imaginative and innovative. This new translation captures the full vigour of Cervantes's wit and makes available two rarely printed tales, `The Illustrious Kitchen Maid' and `The Power of Blood'.

From the creator of Don Quixote, the most famous figure in Spanish literature, comes this trio of novellas: "La gitanilla," a gypsy romance; "El coloquio de los perros," a dialogue between two dogs; and "Rinconete y Cortadillo," a day in the underworld of 18th-century Seville. Introduction, new English translation, and notes.

'No Spanish voice was heard during the fifty years of his active intellectual life which could compare with his in the strength of his passion nor in the profound seriousness with which he challenged every complacency...The central idea in all his fiction is the struggle to create faith from doubt and ethics from inner strife.'

At the height of María de Zayas’s popularity in the mid-eighteenth century, the number of editions in print of her work was exceeded only by the novels of Cervantes. But by the end of the nineteenth century, Zayas had been excluded from the Spanish literary canon because of her gender and the sociopolitical changes that swept Spain and Europe. Exemplary Tales of Love and Tales of Disillusion gathers a representative sample of seven stories, which features Zayas’s signature topics—gender equality and domestic violence—written in an impassioned tone overlaid with conservative Counter-Reformation ideology. This edition updates the scholarship since the most recent English translations, with a new introduction to Zayas’s entire body of stories, and restores Zayas’s author’s note and prologue, omitted from previous English-language editions. Tracing her slow but steady progress from notions of ideal love to love’s treachery, Exemplary Tales of Love and Tales of Disillusion will restore Zayas to her rightful place in modern letters.

"It was the Exemplary Novels, published three years before his death ... that established Cervantes' literary reputation among the intellectuals of his time. These picaresque stories ring with racy idiom and peasant humor, and with explicit characterizations that show how well he knew the speech and folkways and psychology of the common people. Among the Exemplary Novels presented here are three of his most famous ones: The Deceitful Marriage, a cynical tale of Spanish domestic life, merciless in its realism, pungent in its humor; The Little Gypsy, a love story of a high-spirited girl whose haunting counterpart has reappeared in the works of Goethe and Victor Hugo; and The Dogs' Colloquy, judged by many critics to be the greatest short story ever written."--Page 4 of cover.

"The Exemplary Novels" by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is a collection of brief memories that exhibit Cervantes' mastery of narrative and character improvement. This series consists of twelve novellas that cover a wide variety of topics, such as love, honor, deception, and justice. Each novella in the series gives a unique story with numerous characters and settings, providing a glimpse into the human revel in in seventeenth-century Spain. Cervantes' storytelling prowess shines via as he weaves intricate plots, moral dilemmas, and surprising twists that engage readers and initiate idea. Through these exemplary novels, Cervantes explores the complexities of human nature, the effects of selections, and the moral challenges that individuals face of their pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. The tales are rich in symbolism, wit, and social observation, reflecting Cervantes' eager observations of Spanish society and the human condition. "The Exemplary Novels" exemplify Cervantes' ability as a storyteller and his ability to craft compelling narratives that resonate with readers across time and lifestyle. This collection remains a timeless masterpiece of Spanish literature, showcasing Cervantes' enduring impact at the genre of the novel and his affect on subsequent generations of writers.