This volume rethinks the opposition between "canonical" and "noncanonical," opting instead for understanding the literary canon as a segment of the larger archive of literature. Beyond what is presently regarded as canonical, this archive includes previously valued works that have been forgotten, as well as an indefinite supply of works as yet unconsecrated or unknown. Drawing from an eclectic array of theoretical sources - from Stanley Fish, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, John Guillory, Pierre Bourdieu, and Itamar Evan-Zohar to Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida - Wadda C. Rios-Font re-reads nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish texts and authors who have tested the boundary between high and low culture, repositioning them within Spanish literary history and criticism. Through these self-reflexive readings, the book explores how the definition of literature has changed in more than two centuries of modernity in Spain, as well as the critical, institutional, and cultural negotiations behind this change. Wadda C. Rios-Font is Associate Professor of Spanish at Brown University.