The Aesthetic Turn in Cervantes

The Aesthetic Turn in Cervantes broadens our understanding of this transformative period. Susan Byrne examines a little-known legal treatise published in 1600 that defended artists’ rights and served as a rallying cry for writers in Madrid. The book investigates early efforts to define creative writing as “good,” “human,” or “polished” letters, foreshadowing the mid-seventeenth-century French concept of belles lettres. Byrne closely analyses Cervantes’s exploration of key aesthetic themes, ...