Metacritical approaches to Miguel de Cervantes's prose, poems, and plays are nothing new. Lingering in the shadows of the great literary questions that have given form to the field of Cervantes studies,2 metacritical concerns have always been a formative factor in our understanding of the author, his work, and the state of modern genres such as the novel. Despite their lack of direct visibility over the last four centuries, scholars and lay readers of Cervantes have pondered metacritical questions about what his works mean at any given moment in a diverse range of cultural contexts, why they have taken on that meaning, how they impact and constitute the reality of our experiences, and what can be done with these cultural artifacts moving forward.
This is a collection of ten articles from world-renowned and emerging Hispanists. The articles provide diverse examples of metacritical approaches to Cervantes and his works. This book is number 42 in the series Documentación cervantina «Tom Lathrop» from Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs.