Monografías A – serie

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionLanguage of the TextsTapsirThe TextsGlossaryPhotographs of the TextsBibliography and Abbreviations

The six essays collected in this volume are a selection from a number of papers which were given at a one-day colloquium on 'Art, Literature and the Spanish Civil War' which was held in Westfield College on 18 July 1986, preciselyfifty years to the day after Franco's military coup in the Canary Islands, which was destined to have such a decisive effect on the course of Spanish history. Though this date subsequently became a Francoist celebration - the so-called 'Dia del Alzamiento' (Day of the Uprising) - the papers collected here do not demonstrate a Francoist bias. The overall approach is intertextual and interdisciplinary, thereby stressing the international nature of the artistic response to the war. For the benefit of the English reader, all foreign quotations are followed by an English translation.

Juan Ruiz's Libro de Buen Amor is one of the major literary accomplishments of the Iberian middle ages, and has generated an extensive secondary bibliography. Its uniqueness and diversity have thrilled and perplexed readers, and its influence continues to be reflected in modern letters.

A distinguished group of specialists examine afresh issues of particular concern to historians of the Spanish Armada. In particular they look at the contemporary Spanish view of Philip II's imperialism (Watson); at the compositionand equipping of the fleet (Martin, Thompson, O'Donnell); at the unpredictable influence of outside agents, notably the Dutch fleet and the appalling weather of 1588 and its consequences (Schokkenbroek, Daultrey, Hogueras and SanPio); and at the reflection of the Armada in the myths and literature of the time (Fernandez-Armesto, Calvar, the editors). The editors also translate and annotate de Cuéllar's remarkable first-hand account of sailing with the Armada.

A study of the relationship betwen court festivity and theatre in 16c Spain.Dr Ferrer Valls studies the relationship between court festivity and theatre in the sixteenth century, placing special emphasis on staging. She argues that throughout the reign of Philip II court spectacle perpetuates the complicated staging of traditional performances, but with greater emphasis on their dramatic aspects and on the use of music and song. In the first two decades of the seventeenth century, and above all in specific plays by Lope de Vega, court spectacles come to reflect also the influence of Italian staging techniques.

An account of the critical reception of Góngora's Soledad primerain the 17c.Luis de Góngora completed the first version of his Soledad primera in the spring of 1613. Immediately his poem became the centre of a vigorous literary polemic. The writings of his detractors and of his supporters marked the beginning of a period of intense literary criticism in Spanish letters. The corpus of these writings has yet to be properly listed, edited and analysed in its totality.Approaching the problem of the obscurity of Góngora's writings by way of the reception of the Soledades in the seventeenth century, the author has been able to determine why his contemporaries found difficulty with the poems, and to study the significance of literaryobscurity, its sources, causes and consequences and the new emphasis lent to it by Góngora. On the basis of this new interpretation the critic reconsiders and reviews various long-held assumptions in Gongorine criticism.The work includes a preface by Robert Jammes, of the Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail.JOAQUIN ROSES LOZANO lectures in Spanish at the University of Córdoba.

Essays on motifs employed in women's novels from Spain and Latin America between 1936 and the present.An analysis of the use made of five structuring devices, or motifs - the Bildungsroman, the patriarchal prison, the fairy tale, sexual politics and gender trouble -in a selection of representative women's novels from Spain and Latin America written between 1936 and the present.STEPHEN M. HART is Reader in the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies at University College London.

A study of letter-writing in Renaissance Spain.The subject of this book is the art of letter-writing in the Renaissance period, which, particularly in the case of Spain, has been unjustly neglected. The first part examines two major sixteenth-century treatises on letter-writing, Erasmus's Opus de conscribendis epistolis (1522) and Juan Luis Vives's De conscribendis epistolis(1536), concluding that the two were composed independently, rather than one being derived from the other. The author goes on to look at two important collections of letters, Fray Antonio de Guevara's Epístolas familiares and St Teresa's Epistolario, showing the vital differences between them.Professor JAMILE TRUEBA LAWAND is Professor of Spanish at Berry College, Georgia,USA.

Seminal studies of Spain's greatest dramatist on his fourth centenary.Dr Pring-Mill is one of the most eminent Calderón scholars, and this volume demonstrates the development of his critical thinking over a period of some forty years. The essays, collected in one volume for the first time, and fullyrevised and updated, include his classic exposition of the critical method for which he coined the term `análisis temático-estructural', and his comparison of Calderón's approach to the different media of auto and comedia. As a whole, the volume makes a major contribution to the study of Spain's greatest dramatist on the eve of his fourth centenary. Spanish language.Dr R.D.F. PRING-MILL is an Emeritus Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford, and the author of numerous studies on Hispanic literature, ranging from Ramón Lull to Cardenal and Neruda.

A study of the work of the Spanish poet Luis Cernuda (1902-1963).The works of the twentieth-century Spanish poet Luis Cernuda (1902-1963) are characterised by their fragmentary and disunified nature, with a wide range of complexities and contradictions. Concentrating on the well-known La realidad y el deseo, Dr McKinlay considers the poems from the perspective of the widespread loss of faith in God, exploring the tension between Cernuda's perception of chaos and desire for order, which co-exist in dialectical opposition.NEIL C. MCKINLAY is college lecturer in Spanish at New College, Oxford.

A reappraisal of Lope's literary career, bringing out the complexities of his dramatic texts.This book offers a radical re-evaluation of Lope's theatre, which will affect the way in which the comedia in general is read. It spans Lope's literary career, discussing (pseudo-)historical, tragic and peasant plays in order to show Lope's texts as complex negotiations between author and public, between conservatism and subversion, between representations of the ideal of kingship and its political reality, in a period of social and political change. Drawing on contemporary Spanish political philosophy, McKendrick shows that far from glorifying monarchy and advocating absolutism (the orthodox view in the Hispanic world), Lope's political plays constitute an informed critiqueof kingship; she also challenges the received wisdom that the comedia was an instrument of stage and that its playwrights were the conscious propagandists of an aristocratic elite. With the help of insights and models provided by the speech act theory, the stratagems and techniques utilised by Lope to follow the path of prudence between the acceptable and the unacceptable in political commentary in the commercial theatre are scrutinised, illustrating how richly nuanced texts produce not an ideologically monolithic and complacent drama but one which is at once politically anxious and probing. MELVEENA MCKENDRICK is Professor of Spanish Literature, Culture and Societyat the University of Cambridge.

An important contribution to the understanding of the theatrical output of major figure of Spanish literary canon.Drawing on anthropology, psychoanalysis, and literary theory, this book uses the image of the trickster to argue for a fresh and original reading of García Lorca's plays, highlighting androgyny, male fantasy, masochism, masqueradeand the carnivalesque. The study includes detailed textual analyses of Amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín, Así que pasan cinco años and El público, as well as extensive examination of La zapatera prodigiosa and Bodas de sangre; in addition it makes reference to the lesser known El sueño de la vida, Retablillo de Don Cristóbal, Dragón and El loco y la loca, together with a relevant selection of Garcia Lorca's drawings and prose. Dr SARAH WRIGHT lectures in Hispanic Studies at the University of Hull.

A study which highights the ironic intrusion of novelistic elements in Persiles y Sigismunda, subverting its categorization as pure romance fiction.The lengthy Byzantine romance Persiles y Sigismunda, which Cervantes completed only days before his death in 1616, has conventionally been considered a relatively pure example of romance fiction. This study of genre in thePersiles questions that view by analysing the novelistic or realist aspects of the work. An extensive comparison with examples of Byzantine romance from its Greek origins to its Renaissance evolution highlights the degree to which Cervantes departs from the established canon, notably in the characterisation of the heroine and the significance of the protagonists' wedding, where Cervantes upsets the reader's expectations of a conventional happy ending by consistent use of an ironic mode typical of the work. Multidimensional characters, contrasting perspectives and ironic manipulations produce a kind of 'generic hybridisation' which exposes the fallacies of this type of fiction. MARIA ALBERTA SACCHETTI holds a doctorate from University College London.

The master of the realist novel of nineteenth-century Spain, Benito Pérez Galdós, is the subject of these new studies.The master of the realist novel of nineteenth-century Spain, Benito Pérez Galdós, is the subject of New Galdós Studies, offered in memory of John Varey, author of Galdós Studies, the foundational text for contemporary Galdosian scholarship. Eamonn Rodgers describes Galdós's early readership and reception; James Whiston illustrates Galdós's creativity in Lo prohibido; Rhian Davies explores the enrichment of the novelist's language in Torquemada en la Cruz; Teresa Fuentes Peris demonstrates Galdós's radical critique of dominant social assumptions in Fortunata y Jacinta; Alex Longhurst deals with the representation of poverty in Misericordia while Lisa Condé detects a feminist intention in Tristana; Eric Southworth finds rich cultural and spiritual allusion in the same work; Nichols Round relates the deaths of children in the Torquemada novels and Angel Guerra to end-of-century ideological concerns.

Approaches to the playtext applied to the works of Calderon and his contemporaries.The focus of this book falls less on performance and more on how the playtext may be approached from a theatrical viewpoint. In the theatre, the playtext, addressed traditionally to the theatre professional rather than the averagereader, is usually read by the company at an initial stage in the production of a play. The process by which this type of reading "opens" the text differs from a literary reading of the text. The result of such an analysis givesnew insights into the theatrical text and the playwright's coded directions as to how to translate its content from page to stage.The theoretical premises explored here may be applied as much to a reading of the plays of Calderón's European near-contemporaries as to Calderón and his contemporaries at the birth of the commercial theatre in seventeenth-century Spain: indeed, the book makes frequent reference to Shakespearean playtexts and their bibliography.ISAAC BENABU is a professor of theatre studies at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

The first and only guide in English to the influential body of Catalan literature, from the middle ages to the present day.This book is the only one of its kind in English. Part literary history, part literary criticism, it is above all a personal assessment of a rich and important body of work which is still not widely known outside Catalonia. Catalan literature, one of the three major Peninsular literatures, reached an impressive level of excellence in the middle ages, beginning with Ramon Llull and the chronicles, and culminating in the two great fifteenth-century writers,the poet Ausiàs March and Joanot Martorell, the author of Tirant lo Blanc, one of the landmarks in early prose fiction.After three centuries of relative eclipse, the nineteenth-century Renaixença produced a distinctive version of Romanticism with notable achievements in poetry, theatre and the novel. More recently, Catalan writers have successfully assimilated a number of international tendencies, from Symbolism to Surrealism, while remaining deeply aware of the possibilities of the Catalan language itself. After the cultural disruption caused by the Civil War of 1936-39 and its aftermath, Catalan literature has once again shown its capacity for self-renewal, and the present literary scene is one of great interest and originality.The book does not presuppose any knowledge of Catalan; all quotations and book titles are translated, and a list of works translated into English is included.ARTHUR TERRY is Emeritus Professor of Literature at the University of Essex.Este libro queda sin paralelo en inglés. Una combinación de historia y crítica literarias, es ante todo una valoración personal de una literatura rica e importante que todavía queda poco conocida fuera de Cataluña. La literatura catalana consiguió un nivel de excelencia impresionante en la Edad Media y, a partir de su restablecimiento a principios delsiglo diecinueve, ha demostrado una capacidad extraordinaria de autorenovación que todavía persiste hoy en día. Este libro no presupone saber catalán; cada cita y título de libro queda traducido, y se incluye una lista de obras traducidas al inglés.

Valle-Inclan considered as actor, director and playwright, with bibliography of his plays.Daring, innovative, controversial, often satirical, a dramatist ahead of his time, Ramón del Valle-Inclán (1866-1936) was one of Spain's 'Generation of 1898', and an influence on such later movements as the Theatre of Cruelty and the Theatre of the Absurd. Lima's study first examines Valle-Inclán's day-to-day involvement with the theatre as actor, director-dramaturg and playwright. This is followed by an account of Valle-Inclan's full-length and one-act plays, which demonstrate the foibles and follies of human behaviour, and are discussed here under a variety of thematic headings.There follows an up-to-date bibliography of the plays, from editions contemporary with the author through those published posthumously; it includes translations of the dramas into many languages, as well as a worldwide selection of critical studies.ROBERT LIMA is Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Comparative Literatures, The Pennsylvania State University.Ramón del Valle-Inclán (1866-1936) era un dramaturgo muy innovador, miembro de la Generación del '98, pero también una fuente de inspiración más tarde para el Teatro de la Crueldad y el Teatro del Absurdo. La monografía de Lima empieza por examinar el rol desempeñado por Valle-Inclán como actor, director, y dramaturgo. Concluye con un análisis detallado de los dramas de Valle-Inclán, tanto los grandes como los menores, enfocándose en la manera en que el dramaturgo español crea una visión penetrante de los errores y debilidades de la conducta humana; la obra dramática se analiza en varias secciones temáticas. Esta monografía también incluye una bibliografía exhaustiva sobre los dramas de Valle-Inclán, incluyendo traducciones y estudios críticos.

New readings of 20th-century literary cinematic texts are presented here in historical context, informed by cultural theory.New readings of literary and cinematic texts are presented here in historical context, informed by cultural theory. In her survey of the history of Spanish cinema in the dictatorship and democratic periods, the author argues thatstudies of adaptations must simultaneously address questions of 'text' - formal issues central to the study of film and literature - and 'context' - ideological concerns crucial to late twentieth-century Spain. She examines threethemes of particular importance to contemporary Spanish culture - the recuperation of history, the negotiation of the rural and the urban, and the representation of gender - and considers the related stylistic issues of the affinities between cinematic expression and nostalgia, the city and phallocentrism. The study concludes with an analysis of the formal question of the narrator in film and literature, through an assessment of Buñuel's previously unacknowledged stylistic debt to Galdós as manifested in his adaptations of Nazarín and Tristana.SALLY FAULKNER is Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Exeter.

Interviews, with contextual critical material, with nine celebrated contemporary Hispanic novelists.Nine of today's most celebrated Hispanic writers reveal themselves and their concerns, and how the latter are reflected in their work. The writers are Ricardo Piglia, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Juan José Millás, José María Merino, Enrique Vila-Matas, Quim Monzó, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Pedro Zarraluki and Ray Loriga. The interviews allow readers closer personal acquaintance with the subjects, their fiction and their cultural circumstances, in the process touching on major intellectual issues of today - the definition of reality, the role of art and the challenge of otherness. Each conversation is introduced by an essay commenting on the main themes in the author's works. The book contains a detailed bibliography and an extensive general introduction, which presents the intellectual context for the issues discussed.Entrevistas con Ricardo Piglia y ocho eminentes escritores españoles: Antonio Muñoz Molina, Juan José Millás, José María Merino, Enrique Vila-Matas, Quim Monzó, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Pedro Zarraluki y Ray Loriga. Son extensas conversaciones sobre la narrativa de cada escritor, abordando los problemas máss en ella. Pero las conversaciones no sólo permiten conocer a fondo a los escritores y entender mejor sus ideas sino también contienen gran variedad de comentarios sobre los temas más polémicos de finales del siglo XX - el carácter de la realidad, el papel del arte y la importancia de la otredad. Las entrevistas van precedidas de ensayos que se centran en la obra de cada autor y de una introducción general, donde se presentan los temas tratados, y las acompaña una bibliografía detallada. KATARZYNA OLGA BEILIN es profesora de español en la Universidad de Wisconsin en Madison.

A history of Latin American cinema, with detailed analysis of the twenty-five best films.Latin American cinema has seen major developments in the past half-century, and some of the most exciting work in contemporary film now originates there. This Companion traces its development from the mid 1890s, with particular attention to the early period when it was dominated by foreign film makers (or foreign models such as Hollywood), through the 1960s when as a genre it found its feet - the New Latin American Cinema movement - and beyond. Detailed analysis of the best twenty-five films of Latin America follows: cast and crew, awards, plots, themes and techniques. The 'Guide to Further Reading' includes important books, articles and Internet sites. FILMS:Que viva México Los olvidados Dos tipos de cuidado Orfeu Negro Memorias del subdesarrollo Lucía El chacal de Nahueltoro Yawar Mallku La batalla de Chile La última cena Pixote: a lei do mais fraco El Norte CamilaLa historia oficial Cartas del parque La tarea Yo, la peor de todas La frontera El viaje Fresa y chocolate Como agua para chocolate Central do Brasil Amores perros Y tu mamá también Cidade de Deus. STEPHEN M. HART is Professor of Hispanic Studies, University College London, and Profesor Honorario, Universidad de San Marcos, Lima.

Carpentier was one of the first novelists to introduce a version of magical realism and the neo-baroque into Latin American fiction.This study focuses on one of the first novelists to introduce a version of magical realism and the neo-baroque into Latin American fiction. Original research colours eyewitness accounts of Alejo Carpentier's travels through Spainbefore and during the Spanish Civil War and the inspiration that he drew from the Baroque architecture he encountered there. The origins of Carpentier's uniquely 'baroque' style are found in his endeavour to create a period ambience in his historical fictions through descriptions of visual arts and architectural settings, and parodies of the literary style of Spanish Golden Age writers. 'Medusa's gaze' is used as a metaphor for the petrifying power of theBaroque as a weapon of European dominance. By wielding the same weapon in an act of postcolonial defiance, Carpentier enabled a reassertion of Latin American culture, and laid the foundations for the 1960s 'Boom' in the Latin American novel.STEVE WAKEFIELD is Visiting Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Australia

The first book-length study of modern Peruvian narrative and its resurgence in the 1990s, focussing on Jaime Bayly, Iván Thays and Jorge Eduardo Benavides.This book provides the first look at the dynamic resurgence of Peruvian narrative since the late 1990s. Talk-show host Jaime Bayly's seven novels have scandalized Lima's society with their treatment of homosexuality and haveattracted record sales throughout the Spanish-speaking world with their exciting re-creation of Lima slang and focus on McOndo themes. University lecturer Iván Thays has vigorously opposed this light narrative by providinga "high" cultural alternative. His three novels have played an important role in the regeneration of Peruvian culture since the fall from power of President Alberto Fujimori. Madrid-based Jorge Eduardo Benavides' narrative has offered an aesthetically challenging and explicitly politicized alternative. His marrying of aesthetics and politics stands in importance alongside Mario Vargas Llosa and José María Arguedas in terms of the mediation between cultureand politics in Peru since the 1930s..ROBERT RUZ completed his PhD at Cambridge University under the supervision of Geoffrey Kantaris.En este libro se ofrece la primera perspectiva del dinámico resurgimiento que ha experimentado la narrativa peruana desde finales de la década de los noventa. Las siete novelas de Jaime Bayly, presentador de televisión, han escandalizado a la sociedad limeña debido al tratamiento que en ellas se da al tema de la homosexualidad y han generado un récord de ventas por todo el mundo de habla hispana debido a su apasionante recreación del argot limeño y a su concentración en los temas del grupo McOndo. El profesor de universidad Iván Thays se ha opuesto firmemente a esta literatura light, ofreciendo en su lugar una alternativa culta. Sus tres novelas han desempeñado un importante papel en la regeneración de la cultura peruana desde la caída del poder del Presidente Alberto Fujimori. La narrativa de Jorge Eduardo Benavides, radicado en Madrid, ha presentado una alternativa estéticamente estimulante y explícitamente politizada. Por lo que respecta a la mediación entre la cultura y la política en el Perú desde la década de los años treinta, la labor de unificación de la estética y la política de Benavides se halla, en cuanto a importancia, al nivel de Mario Vargas Llosa y José Marí

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.

This study in the interdisciplinary field of law and literature analyses the representation of law in the work of twentieth-century Spanish writer Carmen de Burgos (1867-1932).This study in the interdisciplinary field of law and literature analyses the representation of law in the work of twentieth-century Spanish writer Carmen de Burgos (1867-1932). Drawing on Anglo-American legal theory and Spanish historical practice, it argues that her narratives of legal critique were used as a means of political propaganda, in which she introduced the question of women's rights into the public domain. Burgos can be considered one ofthe most important proponents of the feminist movement in the lead-up to the Second Republic and presents a particularly interesting case study, since she combined her writing career with a political agenda. Given the remarkable similarities between de Burgos's critical analysis and recent feminist legal theory, her writings are still disturbingly relevant today. This study also explores the relationship between melodrama as a genre of manichean worldviews and law as a system of binary oppositions and discusses de Burgos's subversion of the former as a means to criticise the latter.Anja Louis is a lecturer in the Department of Spanish at the University of Sheffield.

By highlighting features common to the Gothic classics and the works of Adelaida García Morales, this monograph aims to put the Gothic on the map in Hispanic Studies.The Gothic as a literary mode extending well beyond its first proponents in eighteenth-century England is well established in English studies but has been strangely under-used by Hispanists. Now Abigail Lee Six uses it as the paradigm through which to analyse the novels of Adelaida García Morales; while not suggesting that every novel by this author is a classic Gothic text, she reveals certain constants in the work that can be related to the Gothic, evenin novels which one might not classify as such. Each of the novels studied is paired with an English-language Gothic text, such as Dracula, Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and then read in the lightof it. The focus of each chapter ranges from psychological aspects, such as fear of decay or otherness, or the pressures linked to managing secrets, to more concrete elements such as mountains and frightening buildings, and to keyfigures such as vampires, ghosts, or monsters. This approach sheds new light on how García Morales achieves probably the most distinguishing feature of her novels: their harrowing atmosphere. ABIGAIL LEE SIX is Professor of Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London.

El papel de las ropas en la construcción de la identidad en neuve autobiografías ficticias e históricas del Siglo de Oro.Este libro examina el significativo papel de las ropas y de los adornos corporales en la construcción de la identidad en nueve autobiografías ficticias e históricas del Siglo de Oro: Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzmán de Alfarache, Guitón Onofre, El Buscón, La pícara Justina , Vida del soldado español Miguel de Castro , Discurso de mi vida de Alonso Contreras, Vida i sucesos de la Monja Alférez de Catalina de Erauso y Comentarios del desengañado de Duque de Estrada. En estas obras las vestiduras proyectan una compleja visión externa de la personalidad que sustituye la falta de introspección y de descripción del cuerpo características de estas narraciones. Este estudio considera la representación verbal de la ropa como un sitio donde confluyen dialécticamente el sujeto escindido en busca de unidad ficticia y de distinción personal y el individuo enfrentado a las estructuras y discursos que lo configuran. El análisis tiene en cuenta el significado filológico, económico, político, moral y artístico del vestido en el período pero sigue diferentes metodologías,las teorías de Bakhtin, Mulvey, Freud, Lacan y Kristeva, para explicar la subjetividad particular de cada Vida. ENCARNACIÓN JUÁREZ ALMENDROS es profesora de español en la Universidad de Notre Dame.

The extent to which contemporary rhetorics of nation and kingship reflected the realities of social, economic and cultural life in Habsburg Spain.Early modern Spain's insistent rhetorics of nation and kingship, of a monolithic body of shared values and beliefs, especially in respect of racial and gender stereotypes, and of a centralized and ostensibly absolutist legislativeapparatus did not map unproblematically onto the complex topography of everyday life. This volume explores the extent to which these rhetorics and the ideology they helped to construct or underpin reflected or failed to reflect the realities of social, economic, and cultural life. It sets against their typically exorbitant claims the lived, messy, and sometimes contradictory experience of Spaniards across a broad social spectrum, both at the centre and atthe margins, not just of peninsular society, but of the Hispanic world overseas. Confronting ideology were questions of economic pragmatism, executive feasibility, jurisdictional competence, and, above all, the social and political complexity of the Spain of the period.RICHARD J. PYM is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London.Contributors: TREVOR J. DADSON, MARGARET RICH GREER, BARRY IFE, ALISTAIR MALCOLM, MELVEENA MCKENDRICK, RICHARD J. PYM, HELEN RAWLINGS, ALEXANDER SAMSON, JULES WHICKER