Product Description

Composed throughout Cervantes’s writing life and mentioned in Don Quixote, his Exemplary Stories are among the first and finest Spanish short stories: ranging from traditional tales of love to incisive moral fables. In The Little Gipsy Girl, an Italianate romance, the nomadic life is idealised through a love affair between the beautiful Preciosa and a nobleman who agrees to live as a gipsy to win her heart. Elsewhere, the intricacies of love are further explored in tales such as The Jealous Extremaduran, while the picaresque Rinconette and Cortadillo, depicting the friendship between a card-sharper and a pickpocket, presents a very different insight into the lower classes of seventeenth-century Spain. Widely regarded as one of Cervantes’s greatest stories, The Dogs’ Colloquy brilliantly captures Spanish conversation and society in its depiction of a discussion between two dogs mysteriously granted the gift of speech.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #460049 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-25
• Original language: Spanish
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Miguel de Cervantes Saaverda's (1547-1616) life was occupied with a struggle to earn a livelihood from literature and humble government employment. As well as Don Quixote, he wrote a number of plays and a collection of highly accomplished short stories, Exemplary Tales (1613). Translated with an introduction by C. A. Jones

Customer Reviews

Unlikely Tales
Miguel Cervantes collection of short stories translated by Lesley Lipson are well recommended. The stories are exemplary in the sense that they are meant to be a good example for the reader as well as edifying and educational though I suspect Cervantes, a mischievous writer if there ever was one, has his tongue firmly in his cheek when he named them.

The stories are not quite as brilliant as Don Quixote; though they are earthy, lively, bawdy and deal with the day to day reality of the times as well as such fantastic themes as the two ruminative canines of the last story in the collection "The Dialogue of the Dogs". Mostly they are funny: ha-ha and peculiar, and leave a vivid impression after reading reminiscent of Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. If you like your fiction slightly strange or are a fan of Cervantes classic Don Quioxte you will enjoy this.