In this thoughtful, well-structured study, Stephen Rupp combines historical fact, rhetorical practices, and genre development to contextualize and analyze Miguel de Cervantes’s writings on bellic events and characters. Rupp begins by explaining the foundational questions that will guide his study: how changes in combat technology and strategy altered perceptions of heroes and heroism from classical to early modern times, how rhetorical norms regarding soldiers and war adapted as a result, and how Cervantes’s eclectic mix of genres exemplifies this overall pattern of changes in historical perception and literary expression.

Rupp’s bibliography is broad and deep, his discussion of genre developments is comprehensive, and his close study of Cervantes’s texts is particularly keen. In chapter 1, “Warriors: Epic and Tragedy,” Rupp neatly synthesizes sources from Cicero, Sallust, and Livy to David Quint on epic, Northrop Frye on the tragic hero, Michael Armstrong-Roche on the Persiles, José Antonio Maravall on Spanish history, and many more, to discuss classical and early modern representations of empires, soldiers, and heroes. He then analyzes Cervantes’s La Numancia against this well-developed backdrop, highlighting adaptations of epic and tragedy in the play with solid examples of both rhetorical strategy and plot design, as well as the expression of related moral and ethical values. The chapter ends with a close reading of the character Cipión’s speeches that leads to further thought-provoking conclusions on the representations of fame and heroic conduct.

In chapter 2, “Defenders: Pastoral and Satire,” Rupp contends that, for Cervantes, “pastoral enables both critical reflection on heroic themes and satirical comment on the causes and persistence of violence in human affairs” (65). Three scenes from the Quixote are used to illustrate the author’s combination of pastoral, epic, and chivalric romance. Here Rupp contrasts Cervantine adaptations of those generic models with earlier variations on the form, and highlights differences such as the inclusion of “martial concerns” (68) through violent characters who wreak havoc in the peaceful pastoral landscape. He demonstrates the modulation from chivalric romance to epic discourse in Don Quixote’s description of the armies of sheep, emphasizing the character’s “unbridled hyperbole” (83) and noting how Cervantes follows “Ariosto’s eclectic approach” (85) to the generic conventions, but then takes that model a step further into the realm of satire by unleashing epic violence against working shepherds who, in turn, defend themselves with pastoral weapons: slingshots and rocks (86). A nice contrast is drawn with the episode of the brayers in the 1615 Quixote (2:25–27), in which Don Quixote uses just-war theory and principles of duels to try to contain violence rather than instigate it.

In chapter 3, “Captains and Saints: Lyric and Romance,” Rupp studies El trato de Argel, Los baños de Argel, and the captive’s tale from the Quixote (1:39–41) through the lens of his ever more complex generic texturing. With an excellent eye for Cervantes’s language, Rupp demonstrates Cervantes’s different rhetorical strategies for referencing pain: in warfare with metaphorical distancing, but in tales of captivity with direct, immediate imagery. With each point addressed, Rupp provides textual corroboration, incorporation of earlier critical studies, and judicious, effective study of structure and plot, as well as language to substantiate his arguments.

Chapter 4, “Soldiers and Sinners: Picaresque,” adds, as the title indicates, the picaresque to the genre mix. Following Peter Dunn, Rupp reads the picaresque broadly to analyze certain details in El casamiento engañoso and El coloquio de los perros, as well as character Ginés de Pasamonte in the Quixote. This particular generic connection seemed forced. Deceit, dishonor, and fortune do figure in picaresque novels, but they are also features of many other Golden Age writings. Tying in Ginés de Pasamonte to the Quixote’s scenes in Barcelona merely because Don Quixote and Sancho visit galley ships seems a stretch to make the theory fit the text. This minor quibble aside, other aspects of the chapter were germane and provocative: details from contemporary soldiers’ tales, for example, added a welcome layer of understanding to the Cervantine texts. In all, Rupp’s book is a very solid, innovative, and intriguing study of Cervantes’s contributions to advances in genre development through the lens of a specific and very relevant topic that proves quite elucidating.