Böcker i Studies in Romance Languages-serien

In the long history of European prose, few works have been more influential and popular than Amadis of Gaul.

The last of four novels that preceded Machado de Assis's famous trilogy of realistic masterpieces, Iaia Garcia belongs to what critics have called the Brazilian author's "romantic" phase.

Les Soeurs Vatard, described by its author as a "lewd but exact" slice of life, was J.-K.

The later novels of Machado de Assis -- notably Dom Casmurro and Esau and Jacob -- are well known in this country, but the earlier novels have never been translated.

The Nouvelles Recreations et Joyeaux Devis of Bonaventure des Periers are here translated for the first time into modern English. The translators have been successful in retaining the vitality of this important French Renaissance satirist, turning his colloquial sixteenth-century French into equally colloquial and lively American.

This volume is a sequel to Four Comedies of Calderon (1980), which was hailed by reviewers as superb, faithful, and actable. The three comedies in the present volume are generally counted among Calderon's masterpieces: Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar (A House with Two Doors Is Difficult to Guard);

The Book of the Knight Zifar (or Cifar), Spain's first novel of chivalry, is the tale of a virtuous but unfortunate knight who has fallen from grace and must seek redemption through suffering and good deeds.

Don Juan Manuel, nephew of King Alfonso X, The Wise, knew well the appeal of exempla (moralized tales), which he believed should entertain if they were to provide ways and means for solving life's problems.