Includes bibliographical references (pages 166-177) and index.
Figure and function in Hispanic-American literature -- Pérez Galdós : mortality and the Gilded Age -- Octavio Paz : the circumstances of poetry -- On picaresque progress -- Ortega y Gasset in Argentina : the exasperating colony -- Circling the Aleph : short-story perspectives -- As the fly spies : Hispanic-American essays -- Spain's edgy generation (1898) -- In and out of time : Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Borges, García Márquez -- Martí, Vasconcelos, Mistral : commitment as art