ABSTRACT

In this study, I have sought to illustrate the prototypical, typical and atypical features of the miscellanies of the Spanish Golden Age, in order to construct a viable interpretative model for this most exible of genre traditions. Beginning with the problematical terminology of the genre, vexatious to the modern critic and malleable to its few contemporary users, but which ultimately underlines the thematic, formal and stylistic variety of the miscelánea, as well as revealing its humanist pre-history and intellectual aims, we have then observed the core conceptual characteristics and the formal permutations, of a macro-and microformal sort, which dene the Spanish miscellanies as a recognisable genre and which lead to its success, both in best-selling individual books and as a cumulative tradition. This task has been undertaken principally by means of the analysis and contextualisation of primary texts which present signs of miscellaneity; we have constructed a provisional corpus of misceláneas through the study of such texts’ preliminary materials, in which authors often adumbrate a rudimentary ‘poetics of miscellaneity’ or some part thereof, and through the examination of the body of these works, beyond whose surface differences are frequently perceptible commonalities which permit the placement of these in a single grouping, whether their authors were fully aware or not of their belonging within such a category. To this distinct but never rigidly taxonomised set, new texts will be added as the framework is applied to potential Golden Age miscellanies; these additions will serve to clarify further the evolution of the tradition and will themselves allow for greater renement of the model through these works’ embrace of conventional features and contribution of less usual characteristics.