{"product_id":"knowing-fictions-9780812252613","title":"Knowing Fictions","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eEuropean exploration and conquest expanded exponentially in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and as the horizons of imperial experience grew more distant, strategies designed to convey the act of witnessing came to be a key source of textual authority. From the \u003ci\u003erelación\u003c\/i\u003e to the captivity narrative, the Hispanic imperial project relied heavily on the first-person authority of genres whose authenticity undergirded the ideological armature of national consolidation, expansion, and conquest. At the same time, increasing pressures for religious conformity in Spain, as across Europe, required subjects to bare themselves before external authorities in intimate confessions of their faith. Emerging from this charged context, the unreliable voice of the \u003ci\u003epícaro\u003c\/i\u003e poses a rhetorical challenge to the authority of the witness, destabilizing the possibility of trustworthy representation precisely because of his or her intimate involvement in the narrative.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThose familiar with Fuchs’s previous scholarship will not be surprised that \u003ci\u003eKnowing Fictions\u003c\/i\u003e is seasoned with lucid and highly fecund arguments, but they will surely relish the penetrating and often dazzling parallels that she draws both within her objects of analysis and across texts, genres, and geographic locales. Scholars of early modern Spain will find in this study a refreshingly new take on the picaresque, while those working in other disciplines, eras, and national traditions will discover a trove of original insights to enrich their work farther afiel —value propositions that not even the most skeptical reader can deny. * Modern Language Quarterly *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKnowing Fictions\u003c\/i\u003e makes an original, sophisticated and timely contribution to the fields of \u003ci\u003esiglo de oro\u003c\/i\u003e and early modern studies. Barbara Fuchs builds on exquisitely contextualized close readings of a series of canonical and non-canonical first-person biographical and pseudo-biographical narratives and witness accounts to advance a new theory of the picaresque as a self-conscious or 'knowing' narrative form that educates readers in the art of critical media consumption. * David Castillo, University at Buffalo *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroduction\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 1. Imperial Picaresques: \u003ci\u003eLa Lozana Andaluza\u003c\/i\u003e and Spanish Rome\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2. Picaresque Captivity: The \u003ci\u003eViaje de Turquía\u003c\/i\u003e and its Cervantine Iterations\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 3. \"O Te Digo Verdades o Mentiras\": Crediting the \u003ci\u003ePícaro\u003c\/i\u003e in \u003ci\u003eGuzmán de Alfarache\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 4. Cervantes' Skeptical Picaresques and the Pact of Fictionality\u003cbr\u003e Postscript. The Fact of Fiction\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49405744873815,"sku":"9780812252613","price":40.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/knowing-fictions-9780812252613","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}