Fray Gerundio de Campazas

This volume of the BCRAE offers the History of the famous preacher Fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes, in which, through the critical gaze of Father Isla, a part of the political and ideological projects of cultural reform addressed by governments come together. of the time. Articulated as a mockery of the sacred oratory inherited from the Baroque and a proponent of a new education, the novel nevertheless goes beyond that satirical and didactic framework and delves into many other territories, with proposals for concrete political reforms or the claim of a place for Spain. in the literary Republic. In this edition, the first that can be described as critical in thirty years, Miguel Figueras has exhaustively reviewed the textual tradition of the work, paying attention to both the first edition and the autograph of the Second Part, as well as the tangle of editions produced in Isla's life, marked by the prohibition of the book and the vicissitudes of the expulsion of the Jesuits. The study and copious annotation clarify, down to the smallest nuance, the political, religious and literary meaning of a work that can well be considered an encyclopedia of a time and a culture.