Essays on the Literary Baroque in Spain and Spanish America Book

I somehow decided this would be a good book to teach to my students, which is probably not entirely accurate. I think the book is, in places, a little too academic for classroom purposes-- there's a lot of building arguments from arguments made elsewhere and I think some of that might go right over my students' heads. And it's tricky stuff, this genre business.....

What I did is isolate three chapters-- three, five, and six-- that I think are most teachable, and while I'll review that decision this summer, that's where I'm at now. It's good that those chapters, and really, most of the chapters in the second half of the book are mostly more or less standalone. In my memory, you couldn't say that about the first two chapters, which were the toughest in the book for me to get through.

I think the intro makes claims for the reach of the book and the profound implications of genre that Frow never really lives up to. But on the other side of things, there's a really great glossary at the end that never gets mentioned everywhere that, from my cursory investigation, really does offer lucid and jargon-free explications of the language. I didn't even find it till I came to the end, but if you're reading the book, I think you might like to know it's there-- Frow's interests and reading is wide-ranging, and I think the glossary helps for following those areas of his argument where you might not be so strong.