Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, a seventeenth-century writer and native of New Spain, so excelled at the craft of writing "comedias" that he is recognized as one of the great writers of early modern Spain. In his personal life Ruiz de Alarcón struggled with a significant bodily impairment, a large hump on both his back and front, which made him…

This paper focuses on an advanced Spanish literature seminar I taught at Kansas State University dedicated entirely to Cervantes's "Don Quijote de la Mancha." In an effort to appeal to twenty-first-century students in rural Kansas, I designed my seminar to explore traditional questions of authorship, translation and reading, metafiction,…

"La gran Cenobia" deals with the war between Queen Zenobia of Palmyra and the Emperor Aurelian. Calderon de la Barca draws most of his information from historical sources; the dramatist, however, changes history and adapts it to his own dramatic purpose. The theme of Fortune gives unity to the play. Aureliano is portrayed as a tyrant who, to prove…

Awareness of a new and altered method of teaching literature, similar to that described by Adrienne Rich, grew from the experience of teaching a small introductory course in twentieth century Hispanic women writers to students with diverse language, cultural, and economic backgrounds. Although about half the students were native Spanish speakers,…