The Italian composer of operas, Giuseppe Verdi, relied heavily on plays of the Romantic Era as sources for opera librettos. Three such plays were from the Spanish Romantic School: El trovador and Simon Bocanegra by Antonio Garcia Gutierrez, and Don Alvaro o la fuerza del sino by Angel de Saavedra, el Duque de Rivas. The operas which Verdi composed using these plays as sources--Il trovatore, Simon Boccanegra, and La forza del destino--range in popularity from near zenith (Il trovatore) to near nadir (Simon Boccanegra). The study attempts to assess the suitability of the three Spanish dramas as source material for operas, and to determine if this suitability is correlated to each opera's popularity.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of analyzing and evaluating selected dramas and novelas of Juan Perez de Montalban. This study concludes that Montalban was not a writer of original works, but his familiarity with and utilization of certain literary devices, stereotyped situations, cliches, and popular themes, along with his notable talent in portraying women and rulers allowed him to produce works which met with great acclaim in his lifetime.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the techniques through which Julio CortSzar presents and explores the literary concepts of temporal, spatial and identity displacement. The author's radical departure from the more traditionally structured view of these notions is certainly one of the most perplexing and controversial aspects of his literary style.

Stéphane Mallarmé, 1842-1897, was driven by a yearning for the ideal, and felt an immense despair when his human attempts to reach up to it, through his poetry, fell far too short. The void (le Néant) into which he fell is the subject of the present study. Sources used were the writer's poetry, as well as all critical works which seemed pertinent to the study of this poet whose symbolism is so wonderfully and yet frighteningly deep and meaningful.

The purpose of this investigation is to characterize the dramatic characters of Federico García Lorca as realists or idealists. Lorca wrote a total of fifteen plays, and the majority of them are considered in this study. Additional source materials include the works of such critics as J. Alberich, María Teresa Babín, Alfredo de la Guardia, and Francisco Umbral.

This thesis looks at the two idological phases of Armando Palacio Valdés' writings as manifested in his novels.