Donald Gilbert-Santamaría's first book is a worthy addition to the body of scholarship that examines the production and consumption of literature in the period described by Marxism as the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Gilbert-Santamaría prefers a non-Marxist thesis that the consumerist culture in which we live functions according to a mechanism first found in Golden Age Spain as purchasers ... Read moreof a commodity, had become the arbiters of meaning and artistic quality [...] This is a book worth reading, gracefully written and subtly argued, full of useful insights as well as corroboration, from a new perspective, of some received truths. One may disagree with some of Gilbert-Santamaría's hypotheses and conclusions, but almost everythingin his book is stimulating and thought-provoking. We scholars cannot aspire to more.
Carroll B. Johnson
University Of California, Los Angeles, Modern Language Quarterly, September 2007
[Santamaría's] 'new historical perspective' is an insightful and unique contribution to the study of Golden Age literature, and the impact that the emerging consumerist culture had upon its authors.
Renaissance Quarterly Vol. 59, Spring 2006 [Santamaría's] " 'new historical perspective' is an insightful and unique contribution to the study of Golden Age literature, and the impact that the emerging consumerist culture had upon its authors."
Renaissance Quarterly Vol. 59, Spring 2006 "Donald Gilbert-Santamaría's first book is a worthy addition to the body of scholarship that examines the production and consumption of literature in the period described by Marxism as the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Gilbert-Santamaría prefers a non-Marxist thesis that the consumerist culture in which we live functions according to a mechanism first found in Golden Age Spain as purchasers of a commodity, had become the arbiters of meaning and artistic quality [...] This is a book worth reading, gracefully written and subtly argued, full of useful insights as well as corroboration, from a new perspective, of some received truths. One may disagree with some of Gilbert-Santamaría's hypotheses and conclusions, but almost everything in his book is stimulating and thought-provoking. We scholars cannot aspire to more."
Carroll B. Johnson
University Of California, Los Angeles, Modern Language Quarterly, September 2007
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