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Francomano reviews the scholarly debate on the "sentimental" genre over the past decades in order to suggest that the search for a conclusive definition is a chimera. An appreciation of these fictions as intentionally mixed works written by men who were steeped in erudite, rhetorical, literary, legal, and religious traditions, and who seem to have been well aware of the effects of playing around with poetic conventions and horizons of expectation, reveals that genres are not only invitations for particular sorts of interpretive engagements but also vehicles for shaping knowledge. The "sentimental" novelas/ficciones/romances have much to teach us about genre in the fiftheenth and sixteenth centuries.
