This thesis is a study of the treatment of avarice, religious intolerance, and pseudomysticism in the Novelas Contemporaneas of Benito Perez Galdos.

This work is a translation of López Portillo y Rojas's novel, La Parcela.

It will be the purpose of this thesis to comment upon the five novels by Gironella published to date, with special consideration given to the religious aspects which are found in them. Gironella's attitude toward the Catholic Church and its representatives will also be examined, particularly in regard to the role which the Church and its priests played in the Civil War.

The succeeding chapters of this present investigation seek to establish a classification of stylistic devices employed by Valle-Inclan in the four Sonatas, with emphasis, not only upon imagery, but equally upon the author's use of regional and natural phenomena, supernatural elements, the arousing of human emotions through sensory appeal, and finally, upon purely rhetorical patterns and organizational elements.