A sustained analysis of the reception of the Aristotelian golden mean in early modern Spanish literature. Studying works of three canonical authors--Garcilaso, Calderón, Gracián--it argues that the ethical credo of moderation was an important part of the classical inheritance on which Golden Age authors frequently drew.

Richard Rabone is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Warwick. He holds a degree in Classics and Modern Languages and a doctorate in Spanish literature from the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the literature and culture of early modern Spain, with particular emphasis on the reception of classical authorities.

• 1: Aristotelian Wisdom? The Doctrine of the Mean à la mode


• 2: A Protean Moral? Aristotelian Metamorphoses in the Figures of Icarus, Daedalus, and Phaethon


• 3: Remedia amoris? Love and the Problem of Excess in the Poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega


• 4: Speculum prudentiae? Means of Kingship and the Functioning of Tragedy in Calderón's El médico de su honra


• 5: Trivial Pursuit? Extremes, Resolution, and the Search for Happiness in Gracián's El Criticón


• 6: A modo de conclusión: Imitation and the Future of the modus