Picaresque Literature

In the early eighteenth-century the household accountant was traditionally female, they were also associated with literary and narrative accounting, inherent in diaries and letters. This text examines the development of the early novel.

Today, a multiplicity of feminist approaches has become an integral part of the fields of German literary and cultural studies. This comprehensive reference provides a much needed synthesis of the contribution women have made to German literature and culture. In entries for more than 500 topics, the volume surveys literary periods, epochs, and genres; critical approaches and theories; important authors and works; female stereotypes; laws and historical developments; literary concepts and themes; and organizations and archives relevant to women and women's studies. Each entry offers a concise identification of the term, a discussion of its significance, and a bibliography of works for further reading.

"This index is a veritable who's who of the greats of Western literature. . . . The Board recommends it for every collection whose users conduct analytical studies of literature." Reference Books Bulletin

The Endless Text is the first study to trace the history of chivalric fiction in Western Europe, from the earliest Celtic tales to the conflict between romance and realism in Don Quixote. A set of specific rhetorical devices are traced through the development of medieval romance in the works of Chretien de Troyes, and a surprising number of these devices survive in Don Quixote: the troubled relationship between narrator and hero, the consistent image of the hero in contrast to the fluctuating portrayals of women, and how problems of retelling the story became part of the story itself.

An integral part of this rhetorical migration was the unstable referential value of the lexicon: for example, fish platters became holy chalices, and gods became heroes while goddess and Otherworld women became evil enchantresses. It was this linguistic revolution that created the "hermeneutics of romance" and forced readers to interpret the unstable signs embedded in the text. Fear of how this played out in the reader's consciousness was the basis for the condemnation of romance by church and state. Ultimately, this critical approach provides a new formula for rereading Don Quixote, one that reinterprets the questions of what makes or unmakes a hero, what is free will in relation to destiny, and how the language of women differs from that of men.

This book brings together the portraits and autobiographical texts of six 17th-century Latin American women, drawing on primary sources that include Inquisition and canonization records, confessional and mystic journals, and legal defenses and petitions.