Visor de obras.

Un aspecto fundamental del proyecto feminista en el campo de la crítica literaria ha sido el (re)descubrimiento de escritoras cuya obra languideció en archivos y bibliotecas hasta la aparición de nuevas generaciones de investigadoras en los años 70 y 80. Aunque   —230→   a veces muy leídas en su época, estas escritoras estaban desvaloradas y su obra no estaba canonizada ni estudiada en ámbitos universitarios. Por lo tanto, el (re)descubrimiento de su obra también ha supuesto un cuestionamiento del cómo y del porqué de dicho canon, es decir, del proceso histórico y los valores que le han dado vida y lo han sostenido.

Este estudio de la investigadora Simón Palmer, esperado con tanto interés, por sus otras aportaciones al tema, tiene casi 2.000 nombres y 4.762 referencias bibliográficas. La excelente introducción da una visión panorámica sobre las biografías de las escritoras, los géneros cultivados y los juicios masculinos sobre su obra. Los cuatro índices (onomástico, de materias, de publicaciones periódicas citadas, de obras colectivas) serán de gran utilidad en la importante tarea comparativa (qué autoras publicaron dónde y cuándo). También hay una lista de las bibliotecas consultadas (españolas, europeas, norteamericanas) y una bibliografía. Las ilustraciones incluyen fotos, retratos y caricaturas de algunas escritoras, tanto como titulares y páginas de publicaciones periódicas.

Tal como lo explica Simón, el «repertorio incluye a las escritoras cuya primera producción se publicó entre los años 1832 y 1900, por lo que figuran algunas que viven hasta bien entrado el siglo XX. No hemos incluido a las nacidas en las aún colonias americanas, Cuba y Puerto Rico» (IX), comentario éste último, no del todo exacto, ya que figuran nombres de escritoras nacidas en esas islas (por ejemplo, Margarita Caimari, Antonia Domínguez) además de la citada excepción de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. El criterio parece ser más bien el lugar de producción de la obra. Las escritoras incluidas son de toda índole -y no sólo literatas- y de todas las comunidades del Estado español. No hay juicios de valor, necesaria omisión en una obra de esta extensión. Además, como señala Simón, esta bibliografía constituye, además de un acto de constancia de la producción de las escritoras citadas, una base, un punto de partida para futuros trabajos. Esta investigación bibliográfica se verá colmada en una futura producción crítica sobre el campo que Simón ha hecho tanto por definir.

Las referencias bibliográficas están ordenadas alfabéticamente por apellidos. Cada referencia incluye: biografía, libros, prólogos, traducciones hechas por la autora, traducciones de sus obras, colaboración en publicaciones periódicas, colaboración en obras colectivas o de otros autores, estudios sobre la escritora. Cuando ha sido posible, Simón ha señalado el lugar donde se encuentra el libro y la signatura, datos de enorme utilidad «ya que la inexistencia de catálogos publicados de las bibliotecas españolas dificulta enormemente el trabajo de los investigadores» (2).

La información biográfica es escasa, debido a la poca presencia en la esfera pública de la mayoría de las figuras. Sin embargo, la que hay arroja luz sobre la variedad de las vidas y las orientaciones ideloógicas de las escritoras (de Agar Eva Infanzón Canel, «que consagró su vida a la defensa a ultranza de los valores tradicionales de España» [355], a Belén Sarraga de Ferrero, «propagandista revolucionaria, defensora de la República» [635]) y el peso de las figuras masculinas en sus vidas, puesto que en muchos casos había que seguir y cuidar a padres y maridos, además de hacer frente a los obstáculos que se les ponía (por ejemplo, María Mendoza de Vives, cuyo padre le impidió escribir literatura). Había -los menos frecuentes- casos contrarios (por ejemplo, el conocido apoyo que brindaron sus padres al amor a la lectura de Emilia Pardo Bazán).

Tal vez la sección menos útil es la de los estudios sobre las autoras. No vienen en orden alfabético y la información es incompleta (por ejemplo, no aparece un importante   —231→   artículo de Susan Kirkpatrick sobre Fernán Caballero). Sobre Pardo Bazán aparece sólo la bibliografía descriptiva de Robert Scari, una indicación de que la tarea bibliográfica sobre los estudios es otra cosa.

Supongo que cada investigadora e investigador querrá corregir algo y, sobre todo, ampliar la información. Es normal en una obra de esta índole, que, aunque vasta, no puede ser exhaustiva. Esta importante aportación de Simón establece una base para futuros estudios, los cuales darán un mayor conocimiento sobre las relaciones entre las experiencias vivenciales y el trabajo escrito de las mujeres del siglo pasado. Estudios de este tipo, que ya están modificando la investigación y la enseñanza de ese período tan crucial en la formación de la modernidad, serán más frecuentes y mejor elaborados, debido al trabajo de Simón.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

This impressive edition devoted to studies of Galdós, with contributions from mainly established but some new «galdosistas», focuses on selected novels and the Episodios nacionales from a variety of perspectives. There is no study of any play which, in view of the recent resurgence of interest in Galdós's theatre, I found a little disappointing.

The collection opens with two revealing studies of manuscript sources relating to the first two series of the Episodios. Stephen Miller's discovery of a 28-page Montealegre manuscript in the Casa-Museo leads to some interesting speculation concerning its possible influence on the First Series. Miller argues the likelihood of Galdós having used this material «to help orient himself in the events and the feelings» (13) of those who lived through the turmoil of 1808-09 and also to lend greater authenticity to the «ecclesiastical presence» which is «often part of the Episodios» (14). Michael Schnepf's study of manuscripts of the Second Series held in the Biblioteca Nacional focuses on the creation of «the quintessential opportunist, Juan Bragas Pipaón», which was subject to profound changes. Schnepf shows how in El terror de 1824, for example, there is a clear attempt «to create a rounded, lifelike character» (22) yet, ironically, as Bragas's functional importance is subsequently enhanced, so he reverts to a more one-dimensional «prototypic character» whose significance would transcent the Episodios (28).

Catherine Jagoe's essay, «Galdós's Gloria: A Re-vision», covers much of the material I had explored earlier. Although we both quote and discuss the same material and images, however, we conclude quite differently. Jagoe sees Gloria's tragic end as negating the value of her earlier rebellious «feminist» struggle in favour of an image of woman as «suffering, redemptive victim» (37) who, in keeping with societys expectations, finally concedes: «Yo no tengo voluntad» (38). Such a conclusion, in my view, not only discounts the irony of   —232→   which Galdós was such a master, but also the admiration which he dearly held for women who exercised their «voluntad» (as evidenced in his writings and correspondence and crystallised in his play, Voluntad, inspired by his admiration of that quality in his leading lady, María Guerrero). I see the tragic end of Gloria as reflective rather than supportive of society's intolerance with regard both to religion and to gender roles.

Eamonn Rodgers's study, «Creative Asynchrony: The Moral Dynamism of Lo prohibido», traces the stages of the protagonist José María's narrative, analysing the resulting «series of chronological hiccups» (47). Rodger's stresses the dynamic nature of José María's experience, which is reflected in the asynchronous narrative structure of the novel, and concludes that «though the gap, both in time and in moral vision, between José María's direct response to experience and his narrative account of it is gradually narrowed, it is never completely closed» (54). Rodger's stresses the particularly elusive nature of narrative reliability resulting from the structure of this text and the impossibility of arriving at any conclusive moral judgements.

James Whiston examines «Trabajo y dinero en Lo prohibido» and illustrates how this novel reflects ultra-contemporary social and economic changes, which result in «la cosificación de la persona humana» (59). As in the case of Rosalía in La de Bringas, Eloísa discovers that «Su sexo es un valor de cambio» and becomes herself «una cosa en venta» (63).

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, four of the essays in this collection discuss Galdós's masterpiece, Fortunata y Jacinta, a seemingly endless source of critical inspiration. Peter Bly focuses on irony in the novel's ending in «Give and Take: Ironic Verbal Echoes in the Last Chapter of Fortunata y Jacinta». As he so aptly observes, irony is fundamental in Galdós and particularly crucial to any attempt at unravelling the text's implications. Indeed, rather than attempt to resolve, Bly seeks «to underline the essential ambiguity» in this text, particularly with regard to Fortunata's tragic end. He does this by exploring Galdós's skilful use of ironic reprise, whereby key words recur «in ever more complicated patterns of shifting significance» (82). Words of imprisonment, robbery, law and saintliness, such as «prisión», «quitar and dar», and their frequently ironic, conflicting meanings are thus used to challenge the reader «to associate, question and then reevaluate the respective contexts in which these keywords occur» (82). Blys study illustrates how the earlier verbal echoes of such words invite further reflection on the significance of Fortunata's bequeathing of her son to Jacinta and, indeed, on the bewildering complexity of life itself, which this technique serves to underline.

The following two essays on Fortunata y Jacinta deal with secondary characters. Goldman, Hoff and Rice's article focuses on the roles of José Izquierdo, José Ido del Sagrario and Plácido Estupiñá and shows how «each is instrumental in the birth of thirdrate fictions» (87). The writers conclude that these are far from typical secondary characters, each living a complex life of their own whilst «deeply enmeshed in the narrative which they significantly propel» (95). Germán Gullón pursues the relationship between the text and the subtext via Izquierdo, Ido and Mauricia «La Dura», stressing the complexity underlying Galdós's «realist» novel and the need for active reader participation. This masterly study shows how, through these secondary characters, we glimpse «la otra cara del mundo normal» along with «las posibilidades latentes de la acción» (103). The major link between the characters emphasised here is their «capacidad de trastornarse, de perder el sentido de la realidad» (106). Thus, through the subtext, the   —233→   reader is offered «una dimensión donde encuentra una visión alternativa de la verdad [...] mediante esta divergencia siléptica, que redondea el mensaje del texto» (106). Gullón concludes that this «verdad vivencial en los subtextos», beyond «la verdad histórica», prepares the way for the novel's conclusion, «que si no carecería de autenticidad» (109).

Teresa Vilarós takes the Freudian look at «Ingestión, digestión y eliminación: Jacinta, Fortunata y la avidez masculina», starting, as one might expect, from the symbol of the egg. The egg offered by Fortunata is, «para Jacinta, textualmente cargado de implicaciones sexuales e inexorablemente asociado al doble par alimentación/sexualidad y excrecencia/descendencia» (114). Freudian links between sexuality and food, «hijo» and «regalo» are pursued, and Fortunata is seen to be a «comida, digerida y eliminada por todos los hombres que la rodean» (117).

In «Galdós y el arte de la prosa», Ignacio Javier López describes the mastery with which, moving away from the exaggerated tones of romanticism, «el autor hace sonar el habla cotidiana en todas sus formas y registros» and how «a esta resonancia le añade la intencionalidad de la imagen» (139).

Finally, Brian Dendle's illuminating study of «The Second Republic, the Spanish Civil War and the Episodios nacionales» reveals how editors, whether sympathisers of the Republic or of Franco, used the Episodios «with at times distortion of the texts, to support their own militant creeds» (142). Details of Republican editions published between 1931-36 and during the Civil War, an Argentinian edition of the First Series of Episodios and editions published in Nationalist Spain are compared, revealing how Republican editors stressed «Galdós's supposed support for 'el pueblo' whilst the Nationalists promoted the writer's 'patriotism'» (142).

The collection thus ends as it began, with some rigorous and valuable research into the Episodios, complemented by a range of critical approaches to the novels -some traditional, some challenging, and the majority of considerable scholarly merit.

University College of Swansea, Wales

With six studies dedicated to his novels, Galdós enjoys a privileged place in the Critical Guides to Spanish Texts series. Each of the six short books (J. E. Varey's Doña Perfecta [1971]), the first in the series; Geoffrey Ribbans's Fortunata y Jacinta [1977]; Eamonn Rodgers's Miau [1978]; Geraldine Scanlon's Marianela [1988]; and Peter Bly's La de Bringas [1981] and this Nazarín) presents a solid and straightforward description of the novel, with an emphasis on plot and character, brief, cogent references to pertinent critical studies (concern with theory is minimal), interpretation, and a bibliography. As critical guides, they provide information about the texts, tools for studying them, and through the interpretations, examples of good literary analysis. These examples   —234→   constitute significant contributions to scholarly concerns (e.g. by providing new information) and debates, as well as models for students to emulate.

Although Bly's insightful study of Nazarín also has these characteristics, it is exceptional in its organization of the material. Rather than beginning with an introduction in which some sort of overview of the novel is presented, Bly plunges immediately into a dose reading of Part I of the novel. Bly explains that the order of his study «represent[s] a break with traditional and expected formats so as to better capture the shifting perspectives of the text itself» (106). By violating expectations through the omissions of the introductory overview, this text disconcerts, just as it focuses on the first sentence of the novel, whose ambiguities point immediately to the need for reading strategies adequate to a text that «might also prove difficult to interpret» (9). Thus Bly's slightly disorientating orientation emulates the novel's foregrounding of the need for an active, critical reader. This need to confront unresolved ambiguities is the major lesson to be learned from Nazarín as seen through Bly's study.

The analysis of the novel is divided into two parts: 1. Galdós's Prologue: Part 1 as Lesson in Reading Strategies, and 2. Parts II-V The History of Nazarín. Ironies and ambiguities in Part 1 are evoked through an examination of the protagonist's name, the role of the first-person narrator and his reporter friend, the architecture and tenants of Chanfaina's boarding house, the interview with Nazarín, and the closing paragraph, which questions the sources and veracity of what is to follow. These initial ambiguities are further developed in the second part of Bly's analysis, where he describes different possible relations between Part 1 of the novel and the following four, describes and analyzes the action of those four parts, the role of the chronicler-narrator, the roles of secondary and minor characters, and centrally, Nazarín's trajectory. In dealing with Nazarín and the fundamental question of who/what does this character represent, Bly stresses discrepancies between rhetoric and actions: at times the character's actions correspond to his lofty Christian aspirations, although more frequently they do not: «The point surely is that the spoken or written word, when not accompanied by corresponding action, lacks conviction [...]» (51). Secondary and minor characters (examined through examples selected from each part) serve to further this thrust, and the totality «alert[s] attentive readers [...] to the multifaceted perspectives of which human actions and words are always capable» (88). These sections are filled with the excellent textual analysis and explanations of subtle details one has come to expect from Bly.

Following the analysis of the novel are chapters on sources and successors («The Pre-History of Nazarín» «The Post-History of Nazarín: Halma and Buñuel's Film»). Along with previous novels by Galdós, (La desheredada, the Torquemada series, La Incógnita and Realidad, Gloria), Bly also examines a variety of other texts -journalistic accounts, the New Testament, Christian mysticism, Tolstoy, Don Quixote, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, Ibsen, Palacio Valdés's La fe, the Catalan priest, Verdaguer- «a surprising number of literary and historical sources in a bewildering pastiche» (90), further contributing to the complexities and uncertainties of the novel. Likewise, Halma, especially through its metafictional treatment of Nazarín as intertext, and Buñuel's enigmatic film reproduce, each in its own way, the confrontation with confusion. I would have liked to have more than one long paragraph of analysis of the film, its multiple contexts (Buñuel on Galdós in the late 50s in Mexico, locating the action in the   —235→   Porfiriato) and ideological and aesthetic interrogations, especially since, in the age of video, teaching the film along with the novel is quite viable.

In his conclusion Bly reviews his method and intentions and makes what he recognizes to he a debatable claim that Nazarín is a great novel. The bibliography, as is customary in the series, includes a useful one sentence description/evaluation of each study cited, including, happily, several dealing with Galdós and Buñuel.

My disagreements with this convincing, well-written book are, basically, two. First, I would have liked Bly to have drawn more attention to the social context of the production of the text, especially since this guide orients students to approaches and resources necessary for analyzing the novel. In the bibliography, for example, there is no section on the historical background, although such a section does appear in Bly's earlier contribution to the same series on La de Bringas. In that book Bly includes significant references to the tumultuous events of 1868 in his discussion of the novel. It is unfortunate that the emphasis on matters of textuality in Nazarín has seemed to bring with it a downplaying of the role of the crisis-ridden social conditions of Spain in the 1890s as an important component in the analysis of this novel. Second, there is a certain tension between Bly's emphasis on ways in which the novel foregrounds the ambiguities of language, on the one hand, and his moral and psychological judgments, which seem to treat characters more as people than as linguistic constructs, on the other. For example, Nazarín's experiences in prisons are judged to «lead to his greatest development as a person» (37); «he is a man who cannot see his own contradictions» (53); after praising the assistance Nazarín has provided in Villamantilla, Bly argues that: «it is all the more regrettable that subsequently he reverts to his more usual dreaming of hardship» (46). This anthropomorphic discourse seems to fit uncomfortably alongside the dominant, metaliterary concerns explored so fruitfully in the book.

This critical guide will take its place among Peter Bly's many important contributions to Galdós studies. It will assist students in dealing with this complex novel, and it will help other critics clarify their agreements and disagreements with his persuasive argument.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

In her «Introduction» Francisca González-Arias declares that her two aims in this book are to shed light on Pardo Bazán's «intellectual development» and to «study the evolution of Doña Emilia's art by analyzing four of her novels», thereby rendering «a   —236→   cohesive picture of the author's artistic trajectory» (xi). The four novels at the heart of this monograph -La tribuna (1883), Insolación (1889), Memorias de un solterón (1896), and La quimera (1905)- span a period of just over two decades. These years witnessed, at least in the Spanish context, the high-point of the overheated debate on Zola and Naturalism, the increasing interest in psychological or internal Realism, and the gradual influence of Aestheticism/»Modernismo»/the Decadent movement. Perhaps more than any other Spanish writer of the period, Pardo Bazán was willing to engage polemically and artistically with these various developments. In her study González-Arias indicates, often in a fascinating way, the significance and extent of this engagement.

This work has, at its core, some well developed and perceptive textual (and intertextual) assessments of the four novels selected for analysis and illustration. The two most stimulating chapters are those dealing, principally, with La Tribuna and La Quimera. Although I have one or two reservations about González-Arias's approach to the former novel, including the fact that she several times refers to it as a «historical novel», and without any kind of comment or consideration on this point, her study of this work -particularly on patterns of imagery in the novel and on La tribuna as a response to Zola's L'Assommoir- is a forceful and persuasive analysis.

In the following chapter (3), González-Arias focuses on the literary side of the Galdós-Pardo Bazán relationship, suggesting the importance of La Fontana de Oro, the early Episodios, and La desheredada for the style and content of La tribuna. Here, too, Insolación is presented as a response to Fortunata y Jacinta. Finally, there is another stimulating intertextual study, this time proposing Memorias de un solterón as a reply to what Pardo Bazán saw as the artistic shortcomings of Tristana. Although, from time to time, some of the ideas in this chapter do seem a trifle underdeveloped, they should, nevertheless, provide the starting-point for further studies to confirm, or otherwise, a number of interesting assertions made here.

The final chapter concerns itself with La quimera as «the culmination of doña Emilia's creative evolution» (149). Here the author's approach is again largely intertextual, proposing the Goncourts' Manette Salomon and Madame Gervaisais, as well as Flaubert's La Tentation de Saint Antoine, as key influences in Pardo Bazán's final phase, and particularly with regard to the composition of La quimera. At times the author's treatment is detailed, and at others a little sketchy. Nevertheless, the overall effect is stimulating.

This is an important book, which generally delivers the critical goods promised in the author's introductory remarks. However, it is a work that is also marked by a number of unsustainable assertions concerning critical reactions to the novelist and her fiction, as well as a tendency to be fiercely protective of Pardo Bazán. Thus, to suggest that «until only just recently», Pardo Bazán «was perceived either as an interloper, or as a masculine woman» (32) is nonsense. This is an observation that would have had some validity in the 1880s and 1890s and perhaps, sporadically, even up to the 1920s. But in recent times? Also, for example, González-Arias talks of «the previously consecrated view of Pardo Bazán as principally a Naturalist writer» (148). Once again, the guilty parties are not identified. Certainly, some of the writer's contemporaries jumped to the conclusion that she was a Naturalist -but largely because they did not understand Zola's Naturalism and/or, presumably, had not bothered to read (carefully) La cuestión palpitante.   —237→   Unfortunately, the waters are a little muddied by the fact that Pardo Bazán became a trifle confused from time to time. In her «Russian» lectures she refers to «realismo, naturalismo o verismo» as if the terms were synonymous, and elsewhere, she used the term «naturalista» to describe herself. But the important point is, of course, that Pardo Bazán roundly rejected the Determinism at the core of Zola's Naturalism. Zola himself recognized that the Spanish author, as a believing Catholic, could not be a Naturalist. Certainly, Pardo Bazán consciously incorporated some of the descriptive techniques, and some of the tone, of Naturalist writing in her earlier works (and occasionally in some of her later ones). And while such relatively recent terms as «Catholic Naturalism», «attenuated Naturalism», «spiritual Naturalism», are not very helpful (substitute the noun «Atheism» to see the fragility of such terminology), I cannot think of a single modern critic who has claimed that Pardo Bazán was a Determinist. González-Arias does not help things by referring to the author's early «Naturalistim» novels (170, 196).

Finally, mention must be made of González-Arias's protective and altogether idealized view of Pardo Bazán. Thus the Galician writer is presented, amongst other splendid things, as a saintly intellectual with a «respect for other people's opinions which was to last throughout her life» (8); a scientist who managed to «refute» Darwinist theories (13) (in fact, in the article cited Pardo Bazán accepts some of Darwin's ideas); an individual with a «thorough background in contemporary literature and philosophy» (18) (yet La cuestión palpitante is also interesting for the significant gaps it reveals in Pardo Bazán's knowledge of nineteenth-century European fiction); the discoverer of the Russian novel (69). On this last point in particular, González-Arias appears to overlook the fact that Pardo Bazán's Ateneo lectures on the Russian novel were, to put it politely, highly derivative. Certainly, when the lectures were published (1887) the novelist revealed her critical sources. However, it was not until the publication of Francisco de Icaza's Examen de críticos (1894) that the disturbing extent of Pardo Bazán's reliance on her sources (especially Vogüé) came to light. To be sure, Pardo Bazán was a literary phenomenon: she was an extremely talented novelist and short-story writer, and also a perceptive literary critic -her literary criticism is far more acute, and fair, than that of Clarín. But to present her in almost hagiographical terms serves no useful purpose. Having said all this, I would reiterate that at the heart of González-Arias's book there is a good deal of excellent textual and intertextual criticism which should not be lost sight of because of the distractions I have mentioned or because of what is, unfortunately, a poorly proof-read and somewhat clumsily produced book.

University College, University of London

Ignacio Javier López's excellent edition of what is possibly Pardo Bazán's finest novel is a welcome companion to the still relatively few scholarly editions of her fiction. Indeed, this edition could serve as a model for any potential editor (and publisher) aiming to produce a text that includes the very best in scholarly observation and information, elucidation of linguistic difficulties, and attractive lay-out.

The thirty-eight pages of the «Introduction» contain a brief but useful biographical essay on the Galician writer, a thoughtful look at the Spanish literary scene in the 1880s (here the term that causes me to frown is «naturalismo cristiano»), and then some twenty pages dealing, first with the relationship between Los Pazos de Ulloa and its sequel, and subsequently, in a very perceptive manner, with La madre Naturaleza itself.

For his text the editor wisely uses the first (1887) version of the novel, but with the   —238→   necessary orthographical modernization and adjustment of the sometimes wayward punctuation. Two subsequent editions of La madre Naturaleza (1892, 1910) were published during Pardo Bazán's lifetime, and variants are indicated in an appendix. But what is most striking about the critical apparatus deployed here is the abundant (although not frivolously excessive) use of explanatory footnotes. Here the reader will find a wealth of exegetical commentary as well as an array of references to the observations of other critics. There are also valuable explanations (particularly useful for students) of historical and cultural allusions found in the novel.

La madre Naturaleza is, linguistically, perhaps the richest novel that Pardo Bazán produced. In a series of margin notes the editor explains obscure or antiquated words and phrases, Galician words and expressions, and the occasional bit of Latin. All in all, this is a superb edition of an outstanding novel. Ignacio Javier López and the publisher are to be congratulated.

University College, University of London

No es hipérbolico hablar del rapto que experimenta el lector que se sumerge por primera vez en las páginas de Fortunata y Jacinta. No se trata solamente de una lectura tan fascinante, una ficción tan «perfecta» que nos seduce y nos hace co-partícipe de sus trampas. Es mucho más: la gran novela de Galdós, como la de Cervantes y muy pocas más, tiene la especial virtud de aunar en su plasmación de la realidad un simulacro perfecto de la verdad y una estructura moral de vastas proporciones. O sea, que aquí, mejor incluso que en Misericordia, el lenguaje que da vida a la Madrid de 1867 a 1876, crea simultáneamente una visión moral (política, psicológica, espiritual) inseparable del asunto, del conjunto de lo que se dice en la novela.

El libro de Harriet Turner es, hasta la fecha, el único que ha podido articular claramente este carácter fundamental de Fortunata y Jacinta. En un acierto desconocido hasta ahora, Turner ha sabido presentar la novela en una brillante serie de páginas sobre costumbrismo, y trasfondos socio-económicos, tejidos genealógicos. Siguiendo la ruta señalada por Pedro Ortiz Armengol en su gran edición conmemorativa de Fortunata y Jacinta, Turner sienta unas firmes bases literarias, históricas, políticas y espirituales para nuestra mejor recepción del texto mismo. A diferencia de Ortiz Armengol, Harriet Turner nos hace ver, desde luego, hacia dónde va todo esto, por qué lo tenemos que saber, cómo funciona la presentación como elemento integrante del análisis.

Efectivamente, entre el primer capítulo («Social and Historical Contexts of a Changing World») y los dos siguientes («Characters and Configurations» y «Metaphors of Mind») no se nota el menor reajuste, el menor cambio de enfoque. No es cuestión de pasar del trasfondo al asunto: es todo uno. El acierto de Turner en este aspecto de su libro   —239→   se debe indudablemente a su procedimiento de hacer que los personajes y los accidentes de la novela entren funcionalmente en un capítulo que, de haber salido de otro espíritu menos perspicaz, habría sido preliminar en toda la extensión de la palabra. Los capítulos 2 y 3 no están cosidos burdamente al 1. Se trata de una tela sin costuras.

Ya se sabía que Harriet Turner tenía un don muy especial para hacer análisis literario. Los resultados de una lectura llevada a cabo sin indebidas interferencias teóricas se combinan en ella con una sensibilidad lingüística que resulta en la habilidad de decir clara y originalmente lo que todos sentíamos (pero sólo dentro y de forma fragmentaria) sin poderlo articular. Dicho de otra manera, la lectora total es también la intérprete infalible. A veces uno tiene la sensación de estar leyendo una nota puesta al pie de la página por el mismo don Benito.

Al comenzar a leer el capítulo 2, el lector supone que va a pasar un rato examinando la disposición y configuración de los personajes. ¡Ah, sí: triángulos y tensiones! Eso ya lo conocíamos. Pero no. Turner, lejos de hacer dibujos estáticos (tampoco dinámicos), ve y configura el funcionamiento de todos los personajes de Fortunata y Jacinta dentro de una perspectiva global que parece simultánea. Que yo sepa, ningún crítico anterior ha logrado esta visión de conjunto, que no puede ser sino el resultado de un control del texto a la vez minucioso y totalizador, un dominio de toda la gama de tensiones explícitas e implícitas. Sirva de muestra el primer párrafo de este capítulo 2:

The entrepreneurial energies of the age appear to build character as Galdós assembles the novel in four parts and juxtaposes titles and subtitles to reflect a dialectic within the patriarchal consciousness that dominates the times. The names of the two protagonists, unattached to married surnames, show how Fortunata and Jacinta preside over the novel, whereas the four parts correspond to the introduction of four male characters, whose presence initially places the two women in the background. Once the story starts, however, imagistic progressions create a female mode as the birdegg motif mounts up, culminating in the birth of the child. The two main organizing principles -four (male) divisions and the bird-egg motif (female)- which build the unity of the four parts, converge in the child who resolves the dialectic by reconciling the two women.

(50)

En ninguna parte como aquí hemos visto un análisis tan fino y certero de la creación y el funcionamiento de Mauricia «la Dura» y Guillermina «la Santa». Turner les toma el pulso a las dos en todas sus intervenciones, haciendo que veamos el largo alcance y la interdependencia de las dos con respecto a los demás personajes. En efecto, no hay aquí ningún análisis que otorgue «independencia» a este o el otro personaje. Brillantes párrafos, por ejemplo, sobre Manuel Moreno-Isla, tan fácil de considerar como «isla». Y al tratar los casos de los demás personajes, Turner adopta el mismo procedimiento totalizador.

El capítulo final (el 3) se titula «Metaphors of Mind». Aquí Harriet Turner realiza su más fino análisis del funcionamiento creador del lenguaje en sí. Metáfora, evasión, indirección, analogía, matrices ocultas, asociación, paradoja, moral implícita: estos aspectos, y otros muchos más, son tratados por Turner no como técnicas sino como lecciones de una «ficción» que ya no se ve como tal. Quizá el párrafo final del libro nos dé el mejor resumen:

Galdós's genius lies precisely in his ability to make the artistically complex appear artless and available. Novel-writing appears as natural as breathing, as easy as drinking a glass of water. Valle-Inclán's disparaging remark that all in a Galdós novel is as plain as a plate of beans fails to   —240→   recognize the real news that this novel contains. In Fortunata y Jacinta, Galdós's masterpiece, the ordinary and obvious become problematic, and, as little Maxi shows, what is ordinarily real always remains innocent of what it carries to the stars. (117-18)

El libro de Harriet Turner será una lectura obligatoria para cualquier estudioso de la gran novela. Pero es también, y a la vez, una presentación ideal de Fortunata y Jacinta para los que la leen por primera vez. El sano y escueto aparato histórico y bibliográfico sirve, en justa medida, los requisitos del lector novato o comparatista, y para los demás representa un acierto de concisión y de exactitud.

Un rico estilo personal, individual; una visión exacta y fiel del texto; una imaginación que vuela en libertad sin traicionar las realidades del texto: esto es la buena (y muy rara) crítica literaria. Esto es el Fortunata y Jacinta de Harriet Turner.

Dartmouth College

Galdós y la novela histórica, a collection of nine essays previously published in article form, is a welcome addition to the recent corpus of criticism on Galdós and history. The articles in this collection focus on the representation of history in Galdós's novels, from El audaz (1871) to the last three series of the Episodios nacionales (1898-1912). As usual, Dendle's scholarship is marked by a thoughtful and meticulous investigation of literary, journalistic, and historical sources, upon which he bases his understanding of Galdós's vision of history and ideological leanings at specific moments in the writer's literary trajectory.

In the first chapter, El audaz is shown to manifest a tension between Galdós's ideological critique of history, on the one hand, and, on the other, his proclivity for «romantic» plots based on the popular literature of the times. For Dendle, the novel's strongly ideological vein, which stands at odds with the traditional notion of «realism», sets a pattern that repeats itself later in the episodios. Aside from the short chapter 7 on La desheredada, which points to the possible historical sources of two episodes, the other sections of Dendle's study centre on the problem of history in Galdós's Episodios nacionales.

In Dendle's discussion of the episodios one senses a tension between the critic's desire to find a coherent (and even «objective») vision of history and the recognition that these novels are imaginative works whose symbolism sometimes «impide cualquier ilusión de 'realidad'» (31). In an attempt to resolve this tension, Dendle appears to consider some of the more self-consciously literary techniques of these novels to be defects that somehow prevent Galdós and his readers from achieving a coherent vision of history. In Chapter 2 («Las dos primeras series de episodios nacionales»), for example, Dendle notes   —241→   the attention given to the act of narration in Gabriel Araceli's fictional autobiography, which distances us from history and leads, instead, to a world of fantasy (32-33). In Chapter 4 («Cabriel Araceli y la primera serie de los episodios nacionales»), the critic calls attention to Galdós's supposedly limited and fragmentary historical vision and incapacity to establish a historical context (42). In Chapter 5 («Historia y novela en dos episodios nacionales»), Dendle pursues a similar line of thought. In his view, the multiplicity of narrative perspectives and the «descripción excesivamente literaria» of the Battle of Trafalgar in the First Series disorient the reader and remove her/him from the historical context (52-53). In his discussion of the later series of the episodios (Chapters 8 & 9), Dendle sees the literary imagination of the novelist as almost completely supplanting Galdós the «historian»; Galdós's final episodios are viewed as abstractions, impressionistic visions, and even ideological distortions.

Despite Dendle's view that self-consciously literary elements undermine Galdós's role as «historian», one could argue that these elements serve to heighten our awareness of the contingency of Galdós's historical vision -of any historical vision- on representational modes and on language, which are, in the end, ideological constructs. Dendle himself perceptively reconstructs the class and gender ideologies in Galdós's novels, and from his analyses it is clear that Galdós does, indeed, present a coherent vision of history. To recognize history as a linguistic, cultural, and ideological construct does not necessarily constitute a negation of historical vision.

Dendle's collection of essays should be applauded for stimulating thought on these and other complex issues surrounding history and historical representation in Galdós's novels. The collection should prove to be useful for «galdosistas» and for all nineteenthcentury scholars.

Washington University, St. Louis

The vicissitudes of Spanish history have played their part in the location of Galdós's manuscripts in various parts of Spain and abroad. A future Galdós conference in Las Palmas could probably devote a session attempting to trace the history of the movement of his manuscripts, the reasons for their present location, the collation and synthesis of the current state of information concerning the location, condition, conditions of consultation of the many manuscripts of Galdós that are lying waiting to reveal their still largely hidden treasures to new generations of «galdosistas». This thought was prompted as I read the introduction to Mercedes López-Baralt's book, in which she tells us of her visits to Harvard University in order to study the Fortunata manuscript, and then to Las Palmas for the corrected proofs of the novel. The triangular pattern was no doubt completed in the University of Puerto Rico, where the author is a Professor in the   —242→   Departamento de Estudios Hispánicos. The thousands of kilometres thus consumed have been richly vindicated by this publication. Professor López-Baralt either had the inestimable advantage of travelling to Boston and Las Palmas knowing beforehand what aspects of Galdós's creative process she wished to examine, or else she was fortunate enough to be able to spend the requisite time in both places in order to enable her to undertake the kind of detailed work that we encounter in the book. A veritable treasury of Galdós's developing artistic thoughts has been uncovered here in the «Alpha» and «Beta» manuscripts of Fortunata y Jacinta and in Galdós's corrected galleys of the novel.

The general thrust of the book's main title is an examination of what the author sees as the four stages of gestation of Fortunata y Jacinta: elements from Lo Prohibido, the two manuscript versions of Fortunata itself and the galley corrections. For this reviewer, however, the author's thesis is convincing only with regard to the last three stages. Seeing Lo prohibido as an «ensayo fallido que prefigura el acierto narrativo más rotundo [Fortunata y Jacinta] de su autor» (20), at least as far as Lo prohibido is concerned, will just not stand up to scrutiny. Let us begin at the end of Lo prohibido where Professor López-Baralt, following Stephen Gilman, quotes one of the novel's last sentences in order to demonstrate how Galdós moved on, for the better, from Camila to the figure of Fortunata. The sentence describes the narrator's meeting with a writer, and perhaps publisher: «Hoy ha venido el tal a verme, hablamos, le invito a escribir la historia de la Prójima, de la cual yo no he hecho más que el prólogo, a lo que me contesta que aunque ya no le hace caso Pepito Trastamara, ni tiene esperanzas de ser duquesa, bien vale la pena de intentar lo que yo le propongo» (Lo prohibido, ed. J. E Montesinos [Madrid: Castalia, 1971], 486). Professor López-Baralt comments: «no podemos leer literalmente el 'testamento' de José María, que encarga la continuación de la novela a Galdós en una segunda parte dedicada a la Prójima. Nada resultaría más aburrido que leer las sosonas peripecias de la vida de casados de Camila y Miquis» (19). How can the sentence from Lo prohibido possibly refer to Camila? She is never described as «la Prójima» in Lo prohibido, except when Medina says of her «que no quería prójimas en su casa» (435). Eloísa, on the other hand, is called «la Prójima» on at least ten occasions and is pursued by Pepito Trastamara, raising flickering hopes that she might marry him and become a duchess. Thus Stephen Gilman's and Mercedes López-Barait's thesis fails on a basic point of factual information in the text.

Other comparisons between Lo probibido and Fortunata, mostly unfavourable to the former, are also wide of the mark, in my view. The comparison between Constantino and Juanito -their idleness, their interest in riding on horseback around Madrid- flies in the face of other evidence that distances enormously the presentation of these characters from each other. Five pages after Camila's comment on Constantino's idleness, quoted by Professor López-Baralt, the narrator informs us that he arranged a position for Constantino (for his own devious purposes) in the Ministerio de la Guerra, and he continues: «Temí que en vista de su inutilidad le pusieran en la calle; mas no fue así. Él era naturalmente torpe; pero se aplicaba, ponía sus cinco sentidos en el trabajo y concluía por vencer su rudez» (395). The horse-riding example is also inadequate as a negative marker of Constantino's character, because in the penultimate chapter Camila tells the narrator: «Constantino ha vendido [...] el caballo que le regalaste» (471) in order to help save the narrator from financial ruin.

  —243→  

Comments of the type that I am about to quote are also always dangerous to make about principal characters in a Galdós novel, even one regarded by Professor López-Baralt as a «novela pobre» (91):

la propia Camila, a la vez modelo de virtud y lección moral para José María Bueno de Guzmán, no puede ser más simple;

(17)

Carrillo sólo sirve para acentuar la amoralidad de José María;

(36-37)

Al final de las dos novelas el señorito -en ambos casos amigo de Jacinto Villalonga termina derrotado en su lid, la del amor».

(29)

These three main characters in Lo prohibido cannot be reduced to such simple terms. Surely there is enough evidence from Montesinos, Terry, Scanlon, Rodgers, myself and others to require critics who see little good in Lo prohibido to tread with caution at least.

The other three stages of what Professor López-Baralt calls the gestation of Fortunata y Jacinta constitute the most successful part of the book. The examination of a Galdós manuscript at times places the critic in something of the same frame of mind as José María in Lo prohibido when attempting to make sense of Eloísa's garbled financial accounts: «¿Y quién entiende este maremagnum?» Even allowing for the fact that she had Diane Beth Hymads transcription of the manuscript at her disposal, the interpretations given here -of changes in emphasis, of the development of greater depth through the extraordinary portrayal of consciousness- display an enviable ability to uncover patterns out of false starts, false trails, discarded material, several endings. The chapter on Galdós's corrections at the galley stage is also an object lesson in the way that manuscript material can be used for the ends of literary criticism.

The book's sub-title, which at first glance might appear to refer to Galdós's revision, and hence «re-escritura» of his own work, has more to do either with Galdós's «rewriting» of ideas on behaviour by psychologists or psychiatrists, or else is concerned with ourselves the readers, re-reading -or «re-writing»- the Galdós text through a reading of those practitioners or theorists of psychology who wrote after the publication of Fortunata y Jacinta. Professor López-Baralt handles the novel's manuscript and printed text with great assurance in these contexts. In particular, the use of Jung, to show how dreams advance the narrative of Fortunata y Jacinta in a premonitory fashion, is superbly achieved. My only real reservation concerned the chapter in which patterns of Jungian theories of the «ánima» and the «persona» are discovered in the author, narrator and characters of Fortunata y Jacinta. For this, characters as diverse as Feijoo, Barbarita, Baldomero, Doña Lupe, Maxi, Guillermina and Jacinta are grouped together as representatives of the social conformity of the «persona» (173). Such a grouping irons out too many nuances for too little gain in our understanding of some of the psychological processes in the novel.

To sum up: using Fortunata y Jacinta as a stick with which to beat Lo prohibido has not been a fruitful approach. The attempt to illuminate the text of Fortunata y Jacinta through the readings of psychologists has been generally successful, and the journeys to Harvard and Las Palmas have certainly paid handsome critical dividends for the writing of this book.

Trinity College, Dublin

  —244→  

Este excelente ensayo es el volumen inicial de un estudio, que llegará al año 1930 y la vanguardia, de lo que es la «novela moderna». En esta primera etapa Gullón la examina en el período desde 1885, «vértice de la modernidad de la novelística española» (56), con la publicación de Fortunata y Jacinta y el primer tomo de La Regenta (no considera Los pazos de Ulloa, publicada el mismo año), hasta 1902, auténtico «annus mirabilis», cuya denominación es plenamente justificada por la publicación de obras tan nuevas como Camino de perfección, la primera Sonata, Amor y pedagogía, y La voluntad.

Fruto sabroso de una lectura y una reflexión entusiastas, este análisis demuestra una capacidad demasiado poco frecuente para entregarse a la novela. En lugar de encasillarla y hacerla encajar dentro de clasifaciones cómodas, Gullón se coloca por encima de la crítica escéptica y no siente sonrojo al sumarse al placer generado en el puro lector por las máximas creaciones de los años indicados en su título. Su análisis brota de una visión amplia y absorbente de la evolución de la novela en un momento cuando pululaban ideologías de toda clase, pero cuando este género, desde que cayera en manos de Galdós y «Clarín» («escritores modernos y premodernistas», [52]), desbordaba los sistemas intelectuales y se sentía, como Fortunata y Ana Ozores, obligada a liberarse de todas las restricciones consagradas. Para conseguirlo, se otorgaba la misión de irse reformando de acuerdo a una nueva sensibilidad de lo que era la interioridad de la persona y del lector, y de cómo la palabra podía ser el instrumento para comunicarla: a los novelistas modernos «les interesa lo que nosotros leemos: el argumento hecho verbo» (201). La tesis tiene su base en la generosa aceptación de las novelas como son, y de ahí que Gullón pueda examinarlas sin soñar con lo que pudieran haber sido si los novelistas sólo hubieran hecho lo que requiere la crítica. Subraya la continuidad, especialmente dentro del cambio. Por eso declara, con gran perspicacia, que «El modernismo son los textos que lo componen, ellos conforman lo que sea el modernismo, y no un sistema de valores precedente» (17).

Las fechas escogidas permiten la consideración de la novela «convencional» o «decimonónica», a la que Gullón atribuye toda clase de respetos, así como la reconsideración de obras transicionales y, por lo tanto, mal comprendidas, como Paz en la guerra y Los trabajos de Pío Cid, que, precisamente por escaparse de las clasificaciones críticas al uso, son las que definen su época y la sensibilidad emergente. El análisis hecho por Gullón logra dar coherencia y luminosidad a la tan polémica noción del «modernismo»: «un cambio de sensibilidad respecto a la percepción del entorno, llevado a cabo desde el yo» (32). De repente, el debate ha dejado de ser estéril, y coloca a los críticos, teóricos e hispanistas en el banquillo por no haber sabido evaluar con inteligencia la reorientación que se efectuaba en aquellos años, ni haberse atrevido a demostrar -y no sencillamente afirmar- que la novela moderna española no es de ninguna manera una creación artística o intelectualmente inferior a la francesa, inglesa o norteamericana.

  —245→  

Gullón establece la genealogía de la novela que nace en Cervantes y pasa por Flaubert para llegar a Galdós y Alas (a quien Gullón dice que hay que equiparar con Henry James, [39, 52-53]). Éstos -cada uno a su manera, pero con importantes puntos en común- hacen que el género sea la expresión idónea de la sensibilidad naciente. Sigue la bifurcación (más importante para los críticos que para los lectores) entre el interés por la técnica o la autorreflexividad de la forma (Alas, Ganivet), y el interés por lo sentido y el esfuerzo por captarlo en palabras (Galdós, Unamuno). Desde luego, no son éstas tendencias exclusivistas, ya que coexisten en todas las obras sometidas a examen, y es en esta combinación de sensibilidades y técnicas que se fragua el próximo tramo en este recorrido. Lo constituyen Azorín, Baroja, Valle, y otra vez Unamuno, pero ahora el de Amor y pedagogía, en que «la ficción española alcanza su mayoría de edad modernista» (168). Lo previsto y presentido por Galdós y Clarín alcanza una primera y asombrosa culminación que confirma el genio de los dos antecesores que intuitivamente concedían sus plenos derechos al «yo», no siempre limitado a su relación con la sociedad.

Como lo demuestra Gullón, sólo reivindicando el goce de la lectura es posible comprender hasta qué punto Galdós y Alas, auténticos pioneros y visionarios de lo que sería la novela posterior, habían aprendido en Cervantes que el placer de la novela es lo que le da la permanencia y la capacidad para saltarse por encima de ideologías para entrar en íntima comunicación con el lector actual. La fragmentación, la yuxtaposición, el discurso sincopado, el juego entre el diálogo y el monólogo vienen a ser instrumentos que abren el género -una vez más- a nuevas potencialidades. La intimidad del personaje es el drama y Fortunata, Ana Ozores, Fernando Ossorio, Pachico Zabalbide y Antonio Azorín, entre tantos otros, fascinan al lector por plantear la pregunta de cómo sienten, relegando a un segundo plano la preocupación por lo que les pasa. Aunque Gullón prefiera hablar del «sentir individual» (137), quizá en este contexto fuera preferible hablar del sentir «personal». El ejercicio de Gullón no consiste en demostrar cómo estos novelistas corresponden a una idea preestablecida, sino en comprender cómo lograban crear obras que encarnaban sensibilidades absolutamente actuales y con las que el lector podía identificarse en lo más íntimo de su propia sensibilidad.

El estilo de Gullón es fluido y ameno, pero el libro revela prisa, no en su concepción, sino en su expresión y composición. Abundan las erratas, así como las frases incompletas o incoherentes. La puntuación es arbitraria, y la sintaxis es frecuentemente defectuosa (89). Tampoco es fácil sentir entusiasmo por usos como «autoconcienciándola» (62), o «discursivización» (117). La nota en la página 125 corresponde a la página 127, mientras que en otras ocasiones falta la información bibliográfica exacta (140, nota 12; 142, nota 13), la referencia es incorrecta o incompleta (152, nota 5), o sencillamente inexacta: por ejemplo, en Camino de perfección la abuela no coloca un escapulario debajo de la almohada (147, 190; y en el prólogo de La nave de los locos, Baroja no habla de la novela como «saco roto» (37, 139). La bibliografía no recoge todas las referencias que aparecen en notas a pie de página.

McGill University

  —246→  

The tide of Mary Lee Bretzs study may suggest a certain awkward hybridism of purpose and content. But while the title is misleadingly cumbersome, the book is not. This is a very worthwhile rhetorical and ideological discourse analysis of how one particular kind of writing, the late nineteen-century Spanish essay devoted to the question of Naturalism, evolved in response to changing historical and cultural circumstances. Bretz begins by stressing a basic tenet of her study: her rejection of a purely formalist approach to the essay as a genre and her espousal of a contextual examination of a specific form of the essay. For Bretz, following Foucault, Baklitin and Barthes, essayistic writing by the second half of the nineteenth century in Spain demonstrates the breakdown of an older, heavily centralized authority and the emergence of competing voices seeking to authorize themselves. This Baklitinian notion of plural, dialogic voices allows Bretz to focus on the essay as argumentative discourse used as a vehicle «for the expression and production of ideology» (8).

Before plunging into the richly complicated world of nineteenth-century Spain, she gives a good outline in Chapter 1 of the rhetorical structures and devices of expository and argumentative writing. Synthesizing the ideas of Walter Mignolo, Baklitin, and other theorists of discourse and the essay, Bretz zeroes in on a fundamental trait and movement inherent to the essay form; for, as she says, «essayistic discourse invests a tremendous amount of energy into constructing its own authority [...] There is a constant movement of assertion and then denial of authority, of deference to the reader followed by the affirmation of authorial identity and will» (20). This internal fissuring arises in part out of the tension between speech and writing produced in a historical context which denies the presence of a final, single authority. The essay as a genre must then seek other, frequently self-referential, ways to be persuasive; a variety of «text speakers» -distinct from the author-, Bretz suggests, must be invented to express the plurality of competing «I's» speaking in the text. Larras multiple speakers -as in the servant-master exchange in «La nochebuena de 1836»- are paradigmatic of the genre.

In subsequent chapters, Bretz singles out two cultural contexts through which essayistic discourse was both filtered and produced. One of these contexts centers on nationalism and the other on the changing role of women in nineteenth-century Spain. In the first case, Bretz sees in the violent and fractious Cantonalist movement of the 1870s reasons for a renewed accent on harmony, avoidance of extremes and of politics in discussions concerning Naturalism. Nevertheless, this «silenced political subtext» (was it always «silenced»?) is heard indirectly in the very omissions and echoes put into dialogic interplay. In the second -and revealing- context, it was Emilia Pardo Bazán's increasingly visible role in the institution of Spanish literature that in part provoked the unease and hostility toward Naturalism.

Thus issues of political divisiveness and the status of women not only get projected   —247→   onto the debate over Naturalism; they also serve to define the contours of the Spanish Naturalist movement and, in turn, produce a national dialogue or larger text «that is multilayered, contradictory, and symptomatic of the tensions, collisions, and paradoxes that exist in late nineteenth-century Spanish culture» (129). Bretzs book offers a healthy corrective view of the period, a far more nuanced vision of a debate that is all too often still posed as only «literary» and split into facile, misleading oppositions between liberal (=pro-Naturalist) and conservative (=anti-Naturalist). Her careful analyses of selected texts of the period show that this simply is not so.

Readers may find that she has placed too much importance on the Cantonalist uprisings as a prime motivating force of this «discourse», perhaps isolating it too much from the larger meaning of «discourse» as «a historically, socially and institutionally specific structure of statements, terms, categories, and beliefs», as Joan Scott puts it (see «Deconstructing Equality-vs-Difference: Or the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism», Feminist Studies 14 [1988]). But admittedly, as Bretz notes (8), her use of the term «discourse» largely refers to a specialized spoken or written language (which, in her study, can also include the entire debate, specific exchanges, and individual texts). These reservations aside, this is an extremely useful and intelligent study, which suggests further work along similar lines.

The Johns Hopkins University

The second book covered in this review -Galdós, novelista- is a key collection of essays by one of the prime movers of Naturalism in Spain, Leopoldo Alas/Clarín. Adolfo Sotelo Vázquez offers a solid, documented introduction (iii-xlii) to the essays, as well as an «Índice y procedencia de los ensayos y artículos» (inexplicably reproduced twice). This anthology includes all the articles published in Galdós from the aborted Obras completas, vol. 1 (1912), plus uncollected newspaper articles on Doña Perfecta, Gloria, El amigo Manso, El doctor Centeno, Lo prohibido, Torquemada y San Pedro, Nazarín, Misericordia, and De Oñate a La Granja. Although a few pieces had appeared previously in classic collections, like Botrel's Preludios de Clarín (1972) and Beser's Leopoldo Alas. Teoría y crítica de la novela española (1972), there is an undisputed value in having all these Clarinian commentaries together in one volume. All told, according to Sotelo, ten of the articles have never before been published in book form. It would appear that Alas reviewed all of Galdós's novels (leaving aside the question of the episodios nacionales for now) except La de Bringas, La Incógnita, and Torquemada en la hoguera. Sotelo also includes as an appendix two more pieces dealing with Galdós, a «Palique» (from La Publicidad, 20 August 1882) and Part V of «Del estilo en la novela» (from Arte y Letras, 1 December 1882).

In comparison with Mary Lee Bretz's culturally situated study, Sotelo's «Introduction» falls mostly into the more traditional formalist approach, but with the distinct advantage of also tracing Alas's evolving posture toward Galdós, Naturalism and other movements, and viewing the essays within the specific literary moment. For Sotelo, Clarín's «estudios galdosianos sirven para desentrañar las leyes que rigen la novela española en el último cuarto del siglo XIX, así como, sin caer en sociologismo de guardarropía, mostrar la dimensión social de esa forma literaria que, en carta a Galdós del 8 de abril de 1884, [Alas] calificaba de 'cambio profundo que echa por tierra muchos axiomas estéticos de los más admitidos'» (x).

In sum, both these volumes are welcome additions to the field of nineteenth-century Spanish Studies.

The Johns Hopkins University

  —248→  

The present volume is part of a new series, Modern Literatures in Perspective, intended to give, primarily to non-specialists, but also to interested specialists, an evolutionary sample of the criticism directed at the work of particular authors down through the years. This is a tall order in the case of Galdós, a highly prolific writer whose work has been subjected to evaluation by a wide variety of theoretical schools. Not every feature of the present volume is bound to interest the specialists, and not all of the samples of criticism are going to prove comprehensible to the non- specialist who has not read a large enough sample of Galdós's writing. The book begins with a significant overview of Galdós's work, the social and literary context, and subsequent interpretative tradition. This is followed by a table laying out events from Galdós's life and literary production, the European novel, and Spanish history on a year-by-year basis. The editor then provides abbreviated English versions of five contemporary documents about Galdós's novelistic art, three of which are theoretical statements by Galdós himself, and two of which are reviews by Clarín and Pardo Bazán. Each of these documents is preceded by an excellent critical introduction by the editor. Finally, there is a selection of ten, sometimes complete and sometimes abbreviated, studies of Galdós novels that are alleged to be representative of important critical trends. Each of these is prefaced by a brief essay pointing out what the editor believes to be the new and the hackneyed features of the piece. The critical selections originally appearing in Spanish have been ably translated into English by Nick Caistor, who is also responsible for the excellent translations of the contemporaneous theoretical documents.

The overview of Galdós's work, social and literary context, and subsequent critical attention is very uneven and sprinkled with errors. The assertion that Spanish literary criticism is excessively conservative is now largely obsolete, except with regards to the glaring shortage of hermeneutically -and dialogically- based studies. The discussion of film versions of Galdós's fiction leaves out the two productions of Fortunata y Jacinta, and the assertion that no episodio has been translated into English is patently false, when there are at least five already available. No mention is made of the 1989 translation of La Fontana de Oro. The list of English translations brought out simultaneously by British and American publishers frequently fails to mention the American collaborator. The Ohio University Press is incorrectly listed as being located in Columbus, Ohio. Unamuno's concept of «intrahistory» is distorted to fit the editor's own needs in discussing Galdós. Above all, there is the unbelievable assertion about Galdós's technical virtuosity to the effect that «it is Spaids backwardness with regard to Europe that gives his work its modernity» (2).

On the positive side, the overview provides the non-specialist with the following features: a surprisingly lengthy, though annoyingly fragmented, discussion of translations (finally unified in the bibliography); an excellent definition of Krausism; provocative statistics pointing out who Galdós's readers really were; outstanding generalizations about Galdós's views on key social and political matters; a very carefully considered appraisal of Galdós's stance -fictional and biographical- on womeds issues; and a much-needed   —249→   plea for some control over the river of metafictional studies being poured out on Galdós's novels over the past fifteen years.

The selection of critical readings includes work by Gilman, Gillespie, Bly, Sinnigen, Goldman, Kronik, Urey, Blanco Aguinaga, Valis and Jagoe. It will be obvious from this list that Labanyi has decided to exclude the work of such luminaries as Shoemaker, Pattison, Montesinos, and R. Gullón. While the focus by some of the latter on manuscripts and compositional strategies may justify their exclusion from the present anthology, certainly Gullón, with his narratological consistency and non-academic approach, has had few equals in regaling both specialist and non-specialist readers. It will perhaps come as no surprise to admirers of Labanyi's own sophisticated work that three of the ten studies have a decidedly social and historical focus. To some extent, though, one can get an erroneous view of an individual critic's work by what is presented here. Bly is represented by a piece on spatial perspectives, when he is just as well known for a measured historical focus. Blanco's article is an outstanding example of his emphasis on historical determinism, but the mistaken impression is given that his othec studies are as user-friendly and aesthetically-conciliatory as this one. While some of the articles included vaguely echo semiotic and deconstructionist perspectives, the volume includes no rigorous examples of these successfully utilized approaches to the author's work. All of the studies included are very good ones, and some (Kronik, Urey, Jagoe) are outstanding. Nevertheless, the specialist or even serious student of Galdós will get a better overview of Galdós studies by dedicating a few carefully planned hours to Percival's aging Galdós and His Critics.

Ohio University

The nice, and certainly intentional, ambiguity of agency in Hazel Gold's title -the reftaming of realism by whom?- draws attention to the ingenuity of her booles design, a design which occasions moments of breath-catching enlightenment. For Gold the frame has many uses and many guises. Not the least of its uses is its serviceability as a «mode of problem solving», the problem in this case being the timeless one of a perceived need for thematic or theoretical coherence. Six of the seven chapters that make up the body of Gold's book represent an accumulation of critical essays, published separately between 1985 and 1988, on some of Galdós's best known novelas contemporáneas -La de Bringas, Fortunata y Jacinta, Torquemada en la hoguera, Tormento, El doctor Centeno, La desheredada, Lo prohibido, and others. Gold's «a posteriori» application to these essays of a superstructure of «frame theory» is generally very successful, even if in several chapters the original material proves somewhat resistant to integral reconceptualization. I am thinking particular of Chapter 6, «Reading and the Frame-up of El doctor Centeno»,   —250→   whose claim on the frame is largely based on a pun, and of the masterly final essay «Criticism and the Framing of the Canon», whose broadly philosophical treatment places it at a distance from the other chapters, with their focuses on individual texts and their fundamentally structuralist premises.

Hoary with tradition as the concept of narrative framing might seem, Gold reintroduces it here with refreshing novelty. Her informants on the subject are an intriguing assortment of philosophers of aesthetics, perceptual psychologists, linguists, and artificial intelligence experts, as well as some more predictable veterans of structuralism and textual theory. While asserting repeatedly that «frames are everywhere present in human life and art as a means of organizing perception», Gold remains mindful that modern notions of text and textuality «in many ways [make] obsolete the traditional critical frame that encapsulates the poem or the narrative sequence as a discrete unity». Frames, with their validating, authorizing, and perpetuating concomitants, are a given, but this booles declared purpose is to «examine those facets of Galdós's fiction that gesture toward breaches in the frame» and in so doing to track his «search to extricate himself from the traditional realist impasse» of representation. Gold's readings of Galdós's novels thus set about refraining realism by refraining the frame, a reconstructive mission which leads to such wonderful insights as, for instance, that the «naugural frame» of La de Bringa's famous hair picture is a framed emptiness that begins the novel disconcertingly «With a pause» (Chapter 1); or that embedded frames in Fortunata y Jacinta reveal an «out work», a literal and figurative «hors d'oeuvre» of food tropes that function as metaphors for reading (Chapter 2); or that museums serve as metaphors for nineteenth-century materialism and as a «metaframe» for «realism's curatorial aesthetic» (Chapter 5).

Museums are a continuing interest of Gold's, as their recurrence in several of the essays indicates; and some of the most enduring pleasures of this book come from its author's own espousal of «the curatorial aesthetic», her scholar's delight in gathering, classifying and exhibiting information. Francisco Bringas's cenotaph inspires a digression on the history of the «memento mori» and its popularity in the Victorian period; collectionisrn in several of the Novelas produces an excursus on the relationship of museology to pictorial and prose miscellanies; Tormento's theatricality correlates with the sociology of role-playing; Galdós's anticlericalism finds a subtext in French revolutionary theology; and critical attitudes toward the realist novel, expressed in Spain's periodical press of the 1870s and later, generate a full chapter on realism's historical and continuing canonicity. Elegant, impressively researched, and subtly reasoned, Gold's concluding essay on the canon is the arching historical digression that overspans the rest, its sweeping vision lending epistemological authority to all the foregoing historiographical observations. Though one should probably refrain from saying so, such a model of historical acumen and critical farsightedness richly deserves to survive and become «sclerosed» in the literary-critical canon of the future.

Many-faceted history is, in fact, this critic's embedded narrative. Thoroughly trained in the old historicism, Gold is also judiciously cognizant of the new, a fact which emerges most clearly in the essay on Torquemada en la hoguera (Chapter 3). Citing with abundant, well-analyzed detail an 1834 pamphlet by the French religious activist, Hugues-Félicité Lamennais, as the model for the fatuous rhetoric of Torquemada's apostate cleric, Bailón, Gold spins this encounter with a single «political intertext» into a broad assessment of Galdós's transformative approach to traditional realism. The «colloidal mixture» of styles   —251→   and attitudes that characterizes Lamennais's writings is also the keynote of the charlatan Bailón's chameleon-like character, which in turn becomes symptomatic of the slippery ideological pluralism of the time. Galdós's ironic rejection of irrational ideological orthodoxies becomes analogous to his defiance of literary realism's «doubly hierarchical system», and the overpowering of hierarchy with complexity thus becomes the new orthodoxy of nineteenth-century realism: «the integration and disintegration of [Lamennais's] thought in Torquemada is [...] exemplary of the complexity of narrative structure and textual politics that characterizes the realist novel». Old and new discourses of history play off against each other here, the historiographer's concern with information against the new historicist's concern with the «zeitgeist», as the critic makes her statement about realism by provocatively compounding two kinds of historical positions.

A less provocative and more provoking corollary of the theoretical eclecticism in this book -and surely also a consequence of the publisheis cost-cutting- is the homogenizing effect of the decision to render all but the very shortest foreign quotations in English translation alone. The one exception is a double-columned appendix showing the similarities between Bailón's rhetorical style and Lamennais's. The absence of Galdós's own voice in the essays becomes increasingly noticeable and might indicate to some readers a purposeful (Foucaultian or new historicist) program for decentering the author, a program which would be quite inconsistent with a critical study that is less about theoretical abstractions than about epochal tendencies and the structuring of texts. This expressive absence and the irritating omission of a bibliography for rapid consultation are my only real quarrels with The Reframing of Realism, and they are two defects which almost certainly result from author-publisher negotiations. Without appealing to the intricacies of modern translation theory to make an argument for polyglot diversity in books of foreign criticism, I would simply suggest that it is possible to include foreign language quotes sparingly and thereby to minimize the doubling-up of space that any of the quotation-translation formats require, and that our zeal to make the literature we admire universally available should not prompt us to denature that very literature. Gold's spirited style and lexical inventiveness will be a source of constant enjoyment to the readers of this fine book. The same qualities in the author she principally writes about will have to be enjoyed at a remove, framed, as it were, by the well-intentioned reinterpretations of the critic.

Mount Holyoke College

Clara Eugenia Hernández Cabrera's monumental critical edition of Galdós's second novel in dialogue form, El abuelo (1897), published by Ediciones del Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria in its «Biblioteca Galdosiana» Series, is a careful, scientific examination of   —252→   the various manuscript phases leading up to the definitive published versions of this work. Hernández Cabrera is a professor at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and the present edition represents the publication of her doctoral thesis (1991). Like most dissertations converted into books, this one would have benefitted from some considerable tightening and pruning of examples and data.

This lengthy tome is divided into two parts. The first is a painstaking examination of the distinct phases in chronological order of the creation of this novel, with an analysis and interpretation of the variant elements (17-239). The second is the critical edition of the novel itself (243-699), with the definitive published version above, and footnotes below identifying all of the variants in the phases of manuscripts leading up to the final novel. Like the published studies of other Gaidosian manuscripts-definitive works by Pattison, Weber, Cardona, and Smith, the unpublished disserations by Hyman and Gil, and the research on galleys by Whiston and Arencibia, the chief purpose of this investigation is to examine the nature of Galdós's creative process by analyzing the effect of the changes made in the multiple manuscript versions leading up to the final published work. While secondary criticism concerning El abuelo is documented in the footnotes and lengthy bibliography (231-39), the reference to the present book as a «critical edition» is somewhat misleading, since the principal aspect of the novel that is of interest to the investigator is the matter of its creative process. The lengthy introductory study does not treat in an organized fashion such important critical questions as the relationship between this dialogued novel and the later play based on it, its comparison to the other dialogued novels by Galdós, the numerous intertextual elements of this novel, or the socio-historical facets which underlie it. The actual «critical edition» which constitutes the second part contains no footnotes dealing with any of the above mentioned literary and historical aspects of the work, only a presentation of the variants culminating in the definitive version.

Chapter 1 of the analytical Part One explains the complexities of the different manuscripts, on reverse sides of the same document, and presents the scholar's method of determining the complex chronology of the distinct versions. Even the so-called definitive published version is really a composite of three printings of the novel: the first in 1897 in Madrid, the second in «folletín» form in the newspaper El Imparcial, and the third in the 1912 edition, also published in Madrid (45). Chapter 2 treats the variants in the segments of the novel's composition, including Galdós's ultimate utilization of the term «jornada» for the five acts of the novel versus the term «acto» for the same divisions in the theatrical work of 1902, the number and length of scenes, and the purpose of the elimination of some of them in the definitive version, their transformation or the addition of new ones. The same procedure is applied to the stage directions and the speeches of the characters.

Chapter 3 deals with the variants of the stage directions, indicating how descriptions of spaces and customs are eventually reduced or eliminated in order to reduce the traditional elements of Realism and achieve a tauter structure (e.g. 82), how others are suppressed in order to avoid social controversy (84-85), and most interestingly, how the stage directions develop in a manner that reincorporates editorial comments on the characters by the narrator in an indirect manner (90). There follows a series of detailed sections dealing with changes in lexicon and grammatical transformations.

  —253→  

Chapter 4 presents the variants in the speeches by the characters, revealing in the successive changes the manner in which the novelist arrives at his definitive characterization of each one (e.g. el Conde, 115-2 5). The character who is transformed the most in the course of Galdós's creative procedure is D. Pío Coronado, the grandaughters' teacher and D. Rodrigo's friend. Senén is perhaps the best example of how the novelist arrives at a definitive characterization principally by means of the manner in which the personage speaks (149).

One of the most interesting chapters from a liteary point of view is Chapter 5, on the modifications of proper names in the novel. Here the author touches on the symbolism and intertextual elements of names, such as D. Rodrigo's connections with el Cid (204), the name of the town where the actions takes place (Jerusa-Jerusalén) and the Calle de Potestad, later changed to the Calle del Siglo XIX (211). Chapter 6 deals with changes in the important «Prologue» to the novel, in which the novelist defends the amalgamation of the genres of novel and drama.

The final chapter (7) of Part One contains the conclusions regarding the significance of the study of manuscript variants. One of the most significant deals with the seldomstudied question of the influence and echoes of Galdós's homeland, the Canary Islands, on his works. Hernández uncovers a persistent clash of regional versus Castilian norms for pronouns, reflected in this novel (221). The difficulties of deciphering the novelist's handwriting and the fact that the backsides of manuscript pages do not always contain materials from the same version, are explained (221-22). Lamentably, the important galley phase of production is lost, so an important stage of the creative process cannot be examined (223). Many of the changes in text concern Galdós's efforts not to reveal until the end the identity of «el Abuelo's» true granddaughter (224). In the absence of traditional third-person narration, aside from occasional editorial characterizations in the stage directions, the chief mode of constructing character identity is through the theatrical device of character speech. The author's final conclusion after examining all of the types of variants is that her study proves that Galdós subjected his novel to an elaborate process of stylistic refinement and elaboration (229).

A great deal of effort and care went into the research for this critical edition, and much useful information and many good critical insights are to be found in the analyses of Part One. It is to be regretted that a firm editorial hand was not available to shape this material into a more concise, organized exposition, which would have been of greater utility for Gaidosian students and scholars.

University of Southern California