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The sense in which Spanish authors in the Baroque period employ the word ‘labyrinth’ presupposes an evolution, from ancient understanding of it, which the present article aims to outline. For Classical authors the word had the physical sense of a ‘complex construction’, although it could also be used metaphorically. But already in certain texts (Virgil, Ovid), the narration of the Cretan myth invited a moralizing interpretation which is given further prominence in late medieval and Renaissance texts. A further elaboration sees the labyrinth converted into a theological symbol representing deceit, offering an erroneous path which the Christian must avoid. Once these and other parallel lines of development have been traced, it becomes possible to see how complex is the use Calderón makes of the concept in El laberinto del mundo. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The presence of Xenophon in Don Quijote goes beyond a passing mention of the Athenian writer included in the prologue to the first part. After tracing the reception of Xenophon in the West, with particular attention placed on his role in Renaissance culture and on the translations of Xenophon into Spanish done during the 16th Century, this paper focuses on two passages from Don Quijote --one, a description of hunting and the other, a description of the path of virtue-- to demonstrate the possibility of a direct influence of Xenophon on Cervantes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay develops some thoughts about the much discussed issue of the genre of Buscón, as treated in several editions and studies, that show the necessary dialogue of ecdotics and hermeneutics. The purpose of die essay was not to review all critical or scholarly editions published during die last decades. Only the ones that were chosen that reveal, directly or indirectly, the interdependence of literary theory and criticism, as it manifests itself in the changing interpretations of Quevedo's fictional autobiography attributed by its author to an imaginary rogue, Pablos of Segovia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a letter to Sandoval dated on March 1635, Quevedo told him that he had finished «a long, political and ethical» work, titled Teatro de la Historia. This work was among those listed as not returned to our author after he was liberated according to Pablo Tarsia. Yet although Quevedo keeps trying to recover other confiscated texts in 1639, he does not talk of Theatro after 1643. Instead in his report to Felipe IV, Chumacero refers to a certain Desengaños de la historia, that could have been the same work, though designated with a different title. It is possible to conjecture, however, that both were former versions of Quevedo's last Menippean satire, La Hora de todos. Had he been able to get another manuscript copy, it would have been unnecessary to continue asking for this particular work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]