Exemplary stories
Description
Even more popular in their day than Don Quixote, Cervantes's Exemplary Stories (1613) blend picaresque narrative, comic irony, moral ambiguity, and sheer mirth. A nobleman undergoes a change of identity to prove his love for a mere gypsy girl; two young delinquents discover a guild of criminals which models itself on a religious brotherhood; a jealous old man imprisons his child-bride in a house which conjures up both convent and seraglio; a law graduate goes mad and believes he is made of glass, and most fantastically, talking dogs philosophize on the foibles of human society in a ward full of syphilitics. By combining the extraordinary and the ordinary, the Exemplary Stories chart new novelistic territory and demonstrate Cervantes at his most imaginative and innovative. Cervantes's Exemplary Stories (1613) surprise, challenge and delight. Ranging from the picaresque to the satirical, the Exemplary Stories defy the conventions of heroic chivalric literature through a combination of comic irony, moral ambiguity, realism, and sheer mirth. This new translation captures the full vigor of Cervantes's wit and make available two rarely printed gems, "The Illustrious Kitchen Maid" and "The Power of Blood." - Publisher.