This study examines a series of recurring patterns that can be observed in Miguel de Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares (1613). Author E. T. Aylward proposes that the precise ordering of Cervantes's twelve novellas is based on the thematic and structural patterns of the individual stories contained in the collection.

"As they reshaped the Italian novella under the inquisitorial atmosphere of the Counter-Reformation, Spanish narrators labelled their texts as exemplary. However, critics have usually agreed that there is a contradiction between the morals preached in the narrative frames, prologues, and sententiae of Spanish novellas and the content of the plots. This book argues that this ambiguity is a result of the use of the rhetoric of the fictitious case. Spanish novellas rewrite the Italian genre through the rhetoric of the fictitious case and with the specific purpose of either challenging or validating the new set of rules regarding marriage introduced by the Council of Trent."--BOOK JACKET.

This edited volume of fourteen specially commissioned essays written from a variety of critical perspectives by leading Cervantine scholars seeks to provide an overview of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares which will be of interest to a broad academic readership. This edited volume of fourteen specially commissioned essays written from a variety of critical perspectives by leading cervantine scholars seeks to provide an overview of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares which will be of interest to a broad academic readership. An extensive general Introduction places the Novelas in the context of Cervantes's life and work; provides basic information about their content, composition, internal ordering, publication, and critical reception, gives detailed consideration to the contemporary literary-theoretical issues implicit in the title, and outlines and contributes to the key critical debates on their variety, unity, exemplarity, and supposed 'hidden mystery'. After a series of chapters on the individual stories, the volume concludes with two survey essays devoted, respectively, to the understanding of eutrapelia implicit in the Novelas, andto the dynamics of the character pairing that is one of their salient features. Detailed plot summaries of each of the stories, and a Guide to Further Reading are supplied as appendices. Stephen Boyd is a lecturer in the Department of Hispanic Studies of University College Cork.

Four books of dark fantasy and eroticism from “a literary great . . . A series of Gothic, interlinked stories set in an alternate Paris” (The Washington Post). With these four books, together now in one collection, escape to a city known by three names—Paradys, Paradise, and Paradis—where you’ll find many strange stories and novellas exploring gender, identity, sexual transgression, and more . . . The Book of the Damned: A poet discovers a mysterious ring that drags him into a world of vampires. A young woman’s attack sows the seeds for a civilization’s downfall. And a writer receives a cryptic note that leads her to a sinister, ancient force. The Book of the Beast: A young scholar has just moved to Paradys to study at the university, and a beautiful phantom of a young bride begins visiting him, drawing him toward her. Soon, he will be infected with the horrific curse of the Beast . . . The Book of the Dead: Seven stories of enchantment, misfortune, corruption, and death are in the third volume of this fantasy series, including the story of a vengeful orphan tracking down his parents’ killer only to find a treacherous nightmare. The Book of the Mad: A labyrinth of ice connects three nightmarish versions of one city—Paradis, Paradys, and Paradise. In each of them, a story unfolds, breaking taboos, relishing horror, and conjuring the perverse.