Alonso J. de Salas Barbadillo and the Collections of Metafictions in the Spanish Golden Age

Abstract

This paper analyzes the problems caused by the terms “novela corta” and “colecciones de novela corta” to designate a literary genre of the seventeenth century that it’s known by these names. Based on three Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo’s works (Corrección de vicios, Casa del placer honesto and Fiestas de la boda de la incasable malcasada), we show that these baroque collections neither contain exlusively nor predominantly novels. Therefore, we propose a new terminology, especially for those works that contain more than one literary genre interpolated as secondary fiction inside a framework: “colecciones de metaficciones”, wich is efective not only for this Salas Barbadillo’s works, but also for other works that are difficult to classify, such as Cigarrales de Toledo by Tirso de Molina, or Fiestas del jardín by Alonso de Castillo Solórzano.