The invention of the sequel: Expanding prose fiction in early modern Spain

This study identifies and examines the Golden Age narratives that invented the Sequel and the narrative genres that the Sequel in turn invented. It also defines the Sequel's forms and functions, thus filling a major gap in literary theory in general and Peninsular literary studies in particular.;Throughout I take the position that the Sequel develops first and foremost in Early Modern Spain, an unacknowledged and unexamined contribution to Western letters. I limit my study to continuations of closed prose narratives based on products of individual authors' imagination, since different notions of authorship and originality obtain in drama, epic poetry and works based on religion, history or myth.;The first chapter locates the seeds of the Sequel in Fernando de Rojas's Celestina (1499/1502), examines the work's explicit and allegorical commentary on the means and motivations of the continuator and enumerates its strategies of closure. I complement this reading with an examination of the contemporaneous continuation of Diego de San Pedro's Carcel de amor (1492) by Nicolas Nunez (1496).;The second chapter turns from the Celestina as sequel to the sequels to the Celestina, highlighting Feliciano de Silva's genre-making resurrection of character and re-opening of chronicle in the Segunda Celestina (1534) as well as his prior and parallel work with Amadis de Gaula.;The third chapter demonstrates how the Segundo Lazarillo (1555) defines the Picaresque by contrast with the chivalric novel, and argues that it played a key role in the former genre's formation, a role it allegorizes in the transformations of its central aquatic episode.;The fourth and fifth chapters consider the responses of the first originating authors to strike back against allographic sequelists by reclaiming exclusive rights of continuation, specifically Mateo Aleman and Miguel Cervantes in the 1604 and 1615 second parts of Guzman de Alfarache and the Quijote. Cumulatively, these readings suggest a new lens for understanding sequels and for using sequels to understand "original" texts.