Purdue University Press - Innovation is our Pressing Mission

"...often stimulating reading, justifying with its originality yet another book on the methods and stylistics of Machiavelli." -- Sixteenth Century Journal

"This is an intelligent study of an important topic, one not treated in this manner and deserving of a new investigation. It brings to bear, in particular, various recent critical concepts such as 'text' and 'intertextuality' that provide a new understanding of Gide's use of myth." -- Catharine Savage Brosman

"Genova's study ... is an important contribution to our knowledge of Gide the writer and the man." -- Pierre L. Horn, Wright State University

"Professor Diaz-Balsera has written a well-argued and provocative book which challenges traditional scholarship that has kept the auto a preserve of specialists and that has failed to attract a wider readership for this genre." -- Revista de Estudios Hispanicos

"This book is the work of a mature, serious scholar. As a whole it is thought-provoking and highly readable and an important contribution to the field." Manuel Durán, Yale University

"Ricapito's scholarship demonstrates the benefits derived from examining literature and history within the same frame. Ricapito reveres Cervantes's creative abilities and loathes reducing his work to a mere mimetic realism.... Cervantistas will welcome this new approach to the study of the 'Exemplary Novels.'" Eric J. Kartchner, Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America

"There is no doubt that the scope of this work is unparalleled in the history of published studies on Galdos' greatest novel. ...a book that is also a beautifully crafted piece of writing, one that is truly worthy of the extraordinary work of art that is its subject." - James Whiston, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies

"A magnificent study, displaying all the virtues galdosistas have come to expect and admire from its author: impeccable scholarship in the sifting and evaluation of textual evidence, a descriptive and discursive style that is absorbing and elegant." -- Anales Galdosianos

This book constitutes an attempt to theorize the process of the emergence, in eighteenth-century New Spain, of a position of intellectual subjectivity differentiated from that established by the regime of Spanish imperial authority. The principal concern has been to trace how certain groups of criollo intellectuals try to construct such discourses, paradoxically, out of the framework of available European systems of knowledge and representation. In this fashion, it was sought to discern the outline of an ideological program for criollo political and cultural hegemony in the eighteenth century.

"...not only provides a superb practical base to reconstruct the aesthetics of the European Conquest of America both as an issue of literary criticism and of symbolic anthroplogy. The emphasis given to bodily materiality as a symbolic construct also establishes a most important hermeneutical stance to approach the cultural implications of human rights in a proper historical continuum." -- Hernan Vidal, University of Minnesota

"Before Hodgson...no one has single-mindedly investigated the issue [of the co-existence of lucidity and blindness] in La Rochefoucald's Maximes. Thus this book reflects an important step and commands close examination." -- David Lee Rubin, University of Virginia

"Hodgson's thoughtful study is then, a welcome addition to La Rochefoucauld studies." -- Susan Read Baker

"...his book is an engaging study that presents a clear, coherent reading of one of the most difficult authors of the seventeenth century." Michael S. Kopisch, Michigan State University

"This substantial and elegantly produced book offers an elucidation of...plays by Lope de Vega in which the honour theme is of central importance" -- Bulletin of Hispanic Studies

"...makes exemplary use of literary theory to bring new life to the study of Realism, women, and scandal." -- Aimee Boutin

"This is a well-written, cogently argued, and very engaging study. It will give added impetus to the growing movement to reexamine assumptions about the nineteenth-century canon in terms of its undeniable gender bias." -- Rosemary Lloyd, Indiana University

In The Great Chiasmus, Paul R. Olson explores the use of the chiasmus in the work of Miguel de Unamuno. The chiasmus, a reversal in the order of words or parts of speech in parallel phrases, appears on a variety of levels, from brief microstructures (“blanca como la nieve y como la nieve fría”), to the narrative structures of entire novels, and even, Olson suggests, to encompass the stages in Unamuno’s novelistic work.

"...presents a compilation of several treatises on theater, including important ones by d'Aubignac, La Mesnardiere, Chapelain, Pierre Corneille, and Racine. A book for specialists in French classical tragedies..." - Choice

"Put simply, this is a brilliant book - one of the most significant contributions to Spanish epic studies in a long time indeed." -- Revista de Estudios de Hispanicos

"There is little doubt that Harney's book is a very important addition to PMC scholarship, opening yet new horizons in our perceptions of the poem's multifaceted aspects." --Modern Language Review

Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is Brazil’s greatest writer and the most important Latin American writer of the nineteenth century. His subtle criticism of cherished institutions is evident to all readers, and critics have often mentioned his skepticism. In Machado de Assis, the Brazilian Pyrrhonian, however, a philosopher seriously examines Machado's philosophical position for the first time.

Jose Raimundo Maia Neto traces Machado's particular brand of skepticism to that of the ancient philosopher Pyrrho of Elis and reveals the sources through which he inherited that line of thought. He then shows how Machado's own philosophical development follows the stages proposed by Pyrrho for the development of a skeptical worldview.

"Hinds's study makes an important contribution to studies on the early-seventeenth-century novel. His analysis of the two novels is carried out in two broad and important contexts: sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century French literature in general (Baroque esthetic theory, the literary controversies of the time, etc.) and modern critical theory (Bakhtin, Kristeva, Benjamin, Foucault, etc.). The author brings all of these elements together in a coherent, intelligent, and thought-provoking manner." --Richard G. Hodgson, author of Falsehood Disguised; Unmasking the Truth in La Rochefoucauld

One of contemporary Italy's best-known writers, Dacia Maraini has often been a figure of controversy as author and as cultural critic. Though she is a recipient of numerous literary awards, Maraini's work has not received the sustained critical attention commensurable with its stature. Working and creating "dalla parte delle donne" (on the side of women), she had been effectively excluded from the Italian critical canon.

The Pleasure of Writing is opened with Maraini's own analysis of women's writing. There follow 14 essays by an international group of Italianists, utilizing a wide spectrum of interpretive perspectives, form semiotics to psychoanalysis, to treat the full range of Maraini's production as novelist, playwright, poet, and filmmaker.

"This is a well-conceived, thought-provoking and informative collection of essays on one of Italy's most original and influential contemporary writers... It is impossible to do justice to all fifteen essays in this volume in the short space of a review. Suffice it to say that all essays are of consistently high quality and interest." --Joann Cannon, University of California/Davis

"This collection of lucid and thoughtful essays is a 'must have' for scholars of Maraini, as well as those interested in feminist and cultural studies." --Laura A. Salsini, University of Delaware

"Plotting the Past stands out as a serious work marked by sharp analytical skills and an unusual breadth of subject matter encompassing questions of genre and ideology that are central to present-day critical discourses." -- Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Italian

"...Coletta has given us a book that is engaging, challenging, and astute. For its mature historical sense and theoretical refinement, Plotting the Past deserves high praise." -- CLIO

In French literary history Nicolas Boileau (1636-1701) has enjoyed legendary status as the great codifier of French classicism, the discerning critic who could demolish or elevate several generations of French poets. This view of Boileau's role has lead to an emphasis on his poetics, not his poems, which in turn has generated general disdain for his poetic art.

Robert Corum dispels these misconceptions about Boileau by focusing rigorous critical attention on Boileau's first nine Satires and the accompanying "Discours au Roy" composed between 1657 and 1668. His reading takes into account a number of factors, including sources, genesis, relation to one another, coherence, and continuity of argument. This examination reveals Boileau to be a gifted poet, not just a talented versifier or a strait-laced mouthpiece for French classical doctrine.

Signs of Science: Literature, Science, and Spanish Modernity since 1868 traces how Spanish culture represented scientific activity from the mid-nineteenth century onward. The book combines the global perspective afforded by historical narrative with detailed rhetorical analyses of images of science in specific literary and scientific texts. As literary criticism it seeks to illuminate similarities and differences in how science and scientists are pictured; as cultural history it follows the course of a centuries-long dialogue about Spain and science.

"It (The Subject of Desire: Petrarchan Poetics and the Female Voice in Louise Labe) is a tribute to the intrinsic value of Louise Labe's literary output...She (Deborah Lesko Baker) is generous in her acknowledgement of previous studies...her intelligent reading of the texts and her interpretation of Labe's reworking of Petrarch are convincing and produce a much more feminine picture of the poetess than in previous portrayals..." -Modern Language Review

"... highly informative and a pleasure to read. No serious study of Labe's writings can henceforth be undertaken without recognizing these values and benefiting from them by reading Baker's The Subject of Desire." - Book Reviews, Modern Philosophy

In a world of increasing conformity, the modern eccentric can be seen as a contemporary hero and guardian of individualism. This study defines the modern eccentric in twentieth-century French literature and compares the notions of the eccentric in nineteenthand twentieth-century French literature by tracing the eccentric’s relationship to time, space, and society. While previous studies have focused on the notion of eccentricity in purely formal terms, The Sunday of Fiction delineates the eccentric as a fully fictional character. This work also completes prior criticism by exploring twentieth-century fictional eccentrics in works by authors such as Raymond Queneau, Jean-Echenoz, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, and Georges Perec, and by filmmakers such as Jacques Tati and Pierre Etaix. Notions of eccentricity since the nineteenth century shift from rather foppish, outlandish representations of aristocratic eccentrics towards a more popular, discreet figure who is uniquely in tune with vanishing spaces of daily life: amusement parks, cafes, grand movie palaces. While the modern world around them is obsessed with speed, technology, and innovation, modern French eccentrics view daily life as a sort of holiday to be savored. In this way, The Sunday of Fiction details the various means modern eccentrics employ to successfully transform the humdrum into the marvelous, or rather Mondays into Sundays.

"In a manner that Michel Tournier might well appreciate, Krell maintains a salutary 'lightness' in his analyses through an impressive attention to detail...Tournier Elementaire does not purport to discover new elements or motifs, but offers instead the most extensive analysis to date of certain structuring devices that appear with obsessive regularity in practically all of Tournier's texts." -- South Atlantic Review

"This book increases our understanding of Tournier's works by combining scholarly precision with a clear explanation of the themes." -- Susan Petit

Through the analysis of six Spanish novels, one for each decade from the 1940s through the 1990s, Rodríguez proposes a new concept of the novel of feminine development and emphasizes the importance of the voicing of women's sentiments, passions, desires, and opinions that have not been expressed before in the literature of Spain. The study begins with Nada by Carmen Laforet, and continues with La playa de los locos, by Elena Soriano, La placa del Diamant, by Mercè Rodoreda, two stories from Te dejo el mar, by Carme Riera, Los perros de Hécate, by Carmen Gómez Ojea, and Efectos secundarios by Luisa Etxenike.

In these texts, "la mujer española" of the Franco period's official discourse - woman as wife and mother as the most desirable possibilities of realization and development - is deconstructed into a multitude of vital, affective, and sexual options that confront this domestic image. These novels highlight the diversity of the feminine experience in the twentieth century and encourage us to question models of development that are monolithic and dogmatic.

"...it is likely to alter permanently the way its readers read, think about, and teach the comedia." -- Barbara Simerka

"The work consists of a series of intriguing, insightful and ... convincing readings of five comedias...the overall result constitutes a useful bridge between the ground-breaking work of scholars...and the more demanding application of deconstruction" -- Bulletin of Hispanic Studies

The term anamorphosis, from the greek ana (again) and morphe (shape), designates a variety of perspective experiments that can be traced back to the artistic developments of the 1500’s and 1600’s. Anamorphic devices challenge viewers to experience different forms of perceptual oscillation and uncertainty. Images shift in front of the eyes of puzzled spectators as they move from the center of the representation to the margins, or from one side to the other. (A) Wry Views demonstrates that much of the literature of the Spanish Golden Age is susceptible, and indeed requires, oblique readings (as in anamorphosis).