The corpus of literary works shaped by the Renaissance and the Baroque that
appeared in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had a
transforming effect on writing throughout Europe and left a rich legacy that
scholars continue to explore. For four decades after the Spanish Civil War the
study of this literature flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, where many of
the leading scholars in the field were based. Sadly, this particular ‘Golden
Age’ was followed by a decline for many years in the numbers of academics and
postgraduates teaching and researching in this field, but recently there have
been signs of a significant revival, both in numbers and in publications. The
present book seeks to showcase the latest research of established and younger
colleagues from Great Britain and Ireland on the Spanish Golden Age. It falls
into four sections, in each of which works by particular authors are examined
in detail: prose (Miguel de Cervantes, Francisco de Quevedo, Baltasar Gracián),
poetry (The Count of Salinas, Luis de Góngora, Pedro Soto de Rojas), drama
(Cervantes, Calderón, Lope de Vega), and colonial writing (Bernardo Balbuena,
Hernando Domínguez Camargo, Alonso de Ercilla). There are essays also on more
general themes (the motif of poetry as manna; rehearsals on the Golden Age
stage; proposals put to viceroys on governing Spanish Naples). The contributors
are all associated with universities in England, Scotland and Ireland, and
their essays, taken together, offer a representative sample of current
scholarship in these islands: the main areas in which research is being
pursued, the kinds of problems being considered, and the various approaches
being adopted to resolve them