La novela y el espíritu de la caballería

Knowing about Europe and its culture requires coming into contact with two very significant realities: the novel and the spirit of chivalry. In this long-missing book, José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec, one of the most prestigious current medievalists, demonstrates this to us through a wonderful exploration of that narrative phenomenon, highly integrated into our cultural tradition and of undeniable weight and validity: that spirit of the chivalry that seeks to understand a vital meaning, the reasons for our existence in the face of death and how to act in the face of difficulties. To capture this spirit and its sensitivity, Ruiz-Domènec proposes a literary journey through the last eight centuries through an interpretive reading of the novels that have spoken of the ideals of chivalry and that, from the 12th century to the 20th century, They have dedicated themselves to understanding the reasons for the fragility of the family order (a topic of capital importance in Western fiction throughout that time). From Chrétien de Troyes to Nabokov, passing through Froissart, Martorell, Ariosto, Cervantes, Sterne, Novalis, Scott, Woolf, Perutz, Calvino and Pynchon, the essay traces the physiognomy of the art of the novel as a literary form to understand the spirit of chivalry, that is, the passion of every man to seek happiness and the meaning of life.