Julio Baena offers a new analysis of Cervantes's last and most controversial novel, Los trabajos de Persiles y Segismunda. Baena's particular focus on the first chapter of this allegorical text, which he sees as a microcosm of the entire novel, allows him to explore the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm in Cervantes's allegorical text. Placing this work within the intellectual context of its era, Baena uses poststructuralist methodologies to develop the existential implications of Persiles's central cosmological metaphor.