This book explores the fluid boundaries between realism and romanticism, while considering this oscillation between discourses as the legacy of the <i>Quijote</i> to the nineteenth-century Spanish novel. Furthermore, there are studies of characters who act as authors in Benito Pérez Gald&#243s's first series of <i>Episodios nacionales</i>, Pío Baroja's <i>La lucha por la vida</i>, and Leopoldo Alas Clarín's <i>La Regenta</i>. For many realists, romanticism has negative associations: quixoticism, exaggeration, impracticality, and femininity or effeminacy.