A History of the Spanish Novel

The origins of the Spanish novel date back to the early picaresque novels and Don Quixote, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the history of the genre in Spain presents the reader with such iconic works as Galdos’s Fortunata and Jacinta, Clarin’s La Regenta, or Unamuno’s Mist. A History of the Spanish Novel traces the developments of Spanish prose fiction in order to offer a comprehensive and detailed account of this important literary tradition. It opens with an introductory chapter that examines the evolution of the novel in Spain, with particular attention to the rise and emergence of the novel as a genre, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the bearing of Golden-Age fiction in later novelists of all periods. The introduction contextualizes the Spanish novel in the circumstances and milestones of Spain’s history and in the wider setting of European literature. The volume is comprised of chapters presented diachronically, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century and others concerned with specific traditions (the chivalric romance, the picaresque, the modernist novel, the avant-gardist novel) and with some of the most salient authors (Cervantes, Zayas, Galdos, and Baroja). A History of the Spanish Novel takes the reader across the centuries to reveal the captivating life of the Spanish novel tradition, in all its splendour, and its phenomenal contribution to Western literature.

J. A. Garrido Ardila is Professor of Modern Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of eight monographs and has edited multi-author volumes and Spanish classics. His work has centred on the Spanish novel of the Golden Age and the twentieth century, the Cervantean and picaresque traditions in England, and Scandinavian literature.