Frequent and complex representations of jealousy in early modern Spanish literature offer symbolically rich and often contradictory images. Steven Wagschal examines these occurrences by illuminating the theme of jealousy in the plays of Lope de Vega, the prose of Miguel de Cervantes, and the complex poetry of Luis de Gongora.

In the early seventeenth century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a book. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from reading too many books of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That book, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history. Cervantes did more than just publish a bestseller, though. He invented a way of writing. This book is about how Cervantes came to create what we now call fiction, and how fiction changed the world.

Don Quixote - Cervantes

Here are two renditions of well-known novel, Don Quixote, by Cervantes. Both of them are highly reliable. The earlier translation by John Ormsby has a classic tinge, accompanied by Gustave Doré's fine illustrations, and of course takes you much more time to peruse (but the pleasure you get out of this engagement is surely worth it!). The second translation is a modern and more easily digestible one by Edith Grossman, which has been highly praised. This rendition is prefaced by prolific literary critic Harold Bloom

Due to the embedded illustrations in Ormsby's rendition, the size of the files is rather large. 

Cervantes's "Novelas ejemplares" rival "Don Quijote" in complexity and significance. This book analyzes all twelve novelas, seeking to illuminate the inherent tensions between the usually affirmative resolutions and lessons proposed by Cervantes's narrators, on the one hand, and the inescapable socio-cultural dissonances and ironies of story and language, on the other. This reading of the entire collection reveals the richness and complexity of many of the less-studied novelas as well as the striking modernity (or postmodernity) of the final text.