Comparative in scope, this volume in the Cambridge Companion series presents the development of the modern Spanish novel from the seventeenth century to the present. Drawing on the legacies of Don Quijote and the traditions of the picaresque novel, the collected essays focus on the questions of invention and experiment, of what constitutes the singular features, formal and cultural, theoretical and philosophical, of the novel in Spain, and how the emergence of new fictional forms articulates the relationships between history and fiction, high and popular culture, art and ideology, gender and society, literature and film.

Three major concepts have guided the theme and structure of the volume: the role played by historical events and cultural contexts in the elaboration of the novel; the development of a reflexive, and at times parodic, stance toward writing and literary tradition; and the conviction, either expressed or implied, that ambiguity and the lived experience of time, filtered through memory, have defined human lives in transition, as scene and setting, characters and events become recreated through the diverse, dialogical modalities of the Spanish novel.