Literature and the Image of Man: Sociological Studies of the European Drama and Novel, 1600-1900

This volume’s predominant theme is bourgeois mentality and its historical development. The works of Lope de Vega, Calderón, Cervantes, and Shakespeare, among others, are analyzed within the historical framework of the decline of feudalism and the rise of the absolute regimes. Those of Moliére and Goethe are set against the background of an evolving and consolidating bourgeois society in Western Europe.