Cervantes And The Comic Mind Of His Age

This text relates Cervantes's poetics of comic fiction to the common framework of assumptions, values, and ideas held by Spaniards of the Golden Age about the comic and the kinds of writing which expressed it. This collective mentality underwent significant evolution in the period 1500 to 1630, and the factors which caused it are reflected in the ways in which the major comic genres (satire, the picaresque, the comedia, the novella) are re-launched, transformed, and theoretically rationalized around 1600, the moment when Don Quixote and Cervantes's most famous novellas were written Though Cervantes is universally acknowledged to be a master of comic fiction, his poetics have not been considered from that specific angle. In particular, the book sets itself to identify the differences between that poetics and the conceptions of comic fiction of his contemporaries, including Mateo Aleman. Review: Close makes a most convincing and well-grounded case that Cervantes's Quijote and other works were primarily written for comical purposes. Forum for Modern Language Studies One of the many merits of Close's book lies in showing how Cervantes's comic works of the 1600s emerge as a reaction against the comic fiction of his contemporaries ... impressive. The Seventeenth Century It is a book to be enjoyed by the non-specialist since the author has provided English translations to all his questions, and the index is very full and easy to use. British Bulletin of Publications Anthony Close's study is a ground-breaking work. It offers a magisterial survey of comedy in early modern Spain. Journal of European Studies Part two is quite brilliant ... Cervantes' poetics of comedy are formed in the cross-currents of these and many other works of the period. Few have charted these currents as knowledgeably and as subtly as Anthony Close does in this book. B.W.Ife, Times Literary Supplement Close's readings are learned, insightful, and engaging, as are his informed entries into the imagination of the writers under scrutiny. Choice