If you want to know the thoughts of a great reformer and know the bases of the Reformed Churches, you should read "The Institutes" by Calvin. He really gave us a sytematic view of our faith. It is really worth reading.

By the end of the nineteenth century, when naturalism was the current trend in literature, Spanish author Juan Valera wrote many essays that attacked this new style. Valera believed that the main purpose of art was beauty, and beauty can only be achieved only by showing the beauties of the world. This is why Juanita la Larga is strange to the contemporary readers. It is true that the author strives to recreate accurately the scenery of Andalusia, South of Spain, and the novel is clearly more realistic than romantic. But the readers still might feel strange that everyone is happy and smiling in this region, that almost every building is beautiful, that the feasts there are always splendid, etc. This may be more enjoyable than the endless suffering in Zola's novels but for me this everything-is-beautiful feel seems a little bit too much. The author shows certain tenderness towards each character, even bad guys in the book are more likely to be represented as ridiculous than frightful. The atmosphere of the book might come as a fresh air to those who are tired of the pessimism-soaked literature of the twentieth century but for me is too fairy-tale-like. Especially the ending is not very convincing when Juanita, the protagonist falls in love with the other hero, a nice, middle-aged man, the alter-ego of the author, who also married a young girl in an old age. This starting idea could generate a splendidly bizarre twentieth-century novel, but it is clear that Valera had written this book to sweeten the pill to the audience of the age. With his approach, the story misses the psychological dimensions that could make the final marriage credible. To me, it seems as unreal as the always smiling Andalusian people.

La novela original es mejor, pero para una persona quien esta comenzando aprender la lengua, es buena. Este cuento que habla del amor es a veces un poco aburrido, pero al lector le encantaria las palabras hermosas del don Luis. Si quiere aumentar su vocabulario y practicar leyendo, compre este libro.

'Pepita Jimenez', once considered the great 19th century Spanish novel, now lies neglected by most readers and critics. Neither Penguins, Everyman nor Oxford, the pre-eminent publishers of 'Classics', have ever produced an edition, and I only became aware of its existence by accident on the net.

Having just read - and loved - the novel, I can see some reasons for its decline in popularity. for a start, unlike most 19th century novels, it is not realistic or naturalistic; it does not portray a society with voluminous detail. The hero, Don Luis de Vargas, the son of an Andalusian squire and an aspirant to the priesthood, is prone to use the high-flown, ecstatic and orotund language of the spirit, which, though set up by Valera to be undermined, can irritate the reader with its verbosity. The translation, by Valera himself, needs to be updated for the tastes of a modern readership - the famed beauty of the original can appear washily sentimental in unforgiving English. Most importantly, the novel's sunny benevolence, its attempt to reconcile the totems of Spanish conservatism - the Church, the Aristocracy, the Family - with less tractable forces such as Love and Nature, is not fashionable with critics who historicise Spain as a country with violent divisions, and who want their fiction to conform to this vision.

for those willing to take the chance, however, 'Pepita' has something for everyone. Its story of a theologian and his attempts to repress a growing love for the title character, a young widow and the intended of his rakish father, has all the abundant romanticism, terrible tension and potential tragedy of 'Wuthering Heights'. From the novel's first page, when Don Luis describes to his uncle and mentor the Archbishop his first meeting with Pepita, we know what will happen - the interest lies in the unfolding of the inevitable and the psychology of the characters, especially Luis, whose sacred and profane raptures spring from the same source (in its relentless focus on an unstable and delusive psychology, 'Pepita' is closer to the works of Prevost, Constant and Stendhal, than later 19th century realists).

Though not a realistic novel, the book is full of indelible set-pieces of Andalusian village life (trade, social occasions, rites, customs, night-life, festivals, in which the Christian and the pagan are indistinguishable, just as they are in Luis' imagination); and the overwhelming natural beauty, the latter made to serve and reflect the claustrophobic visions and passions of the characters (in its limited focus, in its conflation of spiritual and romantic ideas and language, its slippery allegorical possibilities and its proto-Expressionism, 'Pepita' could be considered the Spanish Nathaniel Hawthorne).

For post-modernists, the novel's straightforward, simple narrative is contained in an elaborate framework, more familiar from Gothic fiction. Parts 1 and 3 consist of letters to the archbishop from his nephew and ward Luis, and his brother, found on his death with his effects. Part 2 consists of a 'paralipomena', a 'fictional' third person narrative continuing the story. The officious editor of these papers speculates in vain on the provenance of this fiction. His own conjectures, interpretations and asides throughout, his alarming tendency to 'edit' the material without explaining his procedures, together with Valera's profound irony, sensual displacement of sexuality and unexpected humour, casts doubt on the novel's seeming optimism, without once diminishing its nerve-wracking immediacy.

Don Luis, un joven que tiene aspiraciones de ser sacerdote, regresa a la casa de su padre después de pasar doce años con su tío en el seminario. Durante su ausencia, su padre se ha hecho pretendiente de Pepita, una viuda joven y hermosa, y a Don Luis le llega todo tipo de chismes sobre la mujer antes de que la conozca, enterándolo de toda su historia. Cuando por fin la conoce, empieza un trastorno moral dentro del pecho del pobre joven y se siente turbado, arrancado entre la lealtad hacia su padre, su vocación al sacerdocio y el deseo fuerte que le provoca Pepita. La novela se trata del psicoanálisis que resulta de este dilema y hace que el lector se cuestione a sí mismo: ¿Qué haría yo?

Como toda obra de Valera, Pepita Jiménez está lleno de lenguaje hermoso que refleja su alto ideal estético. Vale la pena leerse, aún para el estudiante (aunque avanzado) del castellano.

Part of the 'Critical Studies of Spanish Texts' series, James Whiston's study of Juan Valera's once-famous and now relatively forgotten 1874 novel 'Pepita Jimenez' about an aspirant to the priesthood and his love for a beautiful young widow, is itself something of a dinosaur. Written in 1977, around the time French theory was becoming ubiquitous in the humanities, it is a thoroughly conventional study - Background; Composition; Thematic Structure; Tone. so while it is mercifully free of the linguistic and ideological contortions that have blighted literature studies in the past two decades, it also lacks the intellectual energy and genuine insights structuralism et al can sometimes offer.

Whiston is most concerned with the theme of conciliation. Written and serialised during the second Carlist war, a time of violent division in Spain of the kind re-enacted during the Civil War, Valera's aim was to reconcile the various factions and temperaments of his time - the Church, the aristocracy, the middle and working classes; deep spiritual feeling and sexual human nature. Whiston effectively describes how Valera's irony works to harmonise these tensions. He also discusses the book's elaborate narrative structure, without remarking how this might destabilise the superficial harmony; and the powerful influence of Nature on characterisation.

The problem is that Whiston too often takes Valera's public pronouncements on the novel, and on literature in general, at face value, without taking note of the various compromises and strategies artists had to employ to sell themselves in the 19th century.