SOURCE: Spires, Robert C. “Violations and Pseudo-Violations: Quijote, Buscón, and ‘La novella en el tranvía’.” In Beyond the Metafictional Mode: Directions in the Modern Spanish Novel, pp. 18-31. Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984.

In the following essay, Spires examines the early precursors of Spanish metafiction: Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, Francisco de Quevedo's Historia de la vida del Buscón, and Benito Perez Galdós's “La novela en el tranvía.”

As I begin this examination of the precursors of the Spanish metafictional mode with works of Cervantes, Quevedo, and Galdós, I confess to a certain inhibition upon entering such well charted waters. I feel compelled to emphasize, therefore, that my analyses of the Quijote and Buscón will be limited to those episodes featuring the metafictional mode; only in the case of the Galdós short story do I attempt anything resembling...