131
William Empson, in his Seven Types of Ambiguity (3rd ed., New York, n.d.), p. 1, in which he analyzes poetry, gives the following definition of ambiguity: «I propose to use the word in an extended sense, and shall think relevant to my subject any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language». (N. del A.)
132
César Barja, Libros y autores modernos (2nd ed., New York, 1964), p. 345. José F. Montesinos, in his Galdós (Madrid, 1968), I, pp. 183, 184, 186, makes a very similar judgment of the novel. Affirming the value of the caricaturesque element of the novel, Michael Nimetz, in his Humor in Galdós: A Study of the Novelas contemporáneas (New Haven and London, 1968), p. 144, makes the following statement: «But these caricatures are not a defect of the book; they are its greatest asset. Whether or not the reader has had dealings with a Perfecta or an Inocencio is totally beside the point; Galdós wanted to write a polemic and he did. Judged as such, Doña Perfecta is a powerful work». Joaquín Casalduero, in his Vida y obra de Galdós (2nd ed., Madrid, 1961), p. 54, has emphasized the novel's ideological implications affirming at the same time the humanity of doña Perfecta. Stephen M. Gilman in his «Las referencias clásicas de Doña Perfecta», NRFH, III (1949), 359, points out the difficulty of viewing the negative characters as replicas of human beings: «Siendo estudios negativos, no logran que el lector los toque ni sienta. Podrá este comprenderlos, interesarse profundamente en ellos, viviéndolos como representantes de ciertas fallas de la vida española; pero no puede concebirlos como malvados a quienes haya que odiar o temer. La reacción del lector es más bien de disgusto que de emoción». Rodolfo Cardona in his «Introduction» to Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós (Madrid-New York, 1974), pp. 31-32, 45, 47, insists emphatically that the novel is abundantly concrete, that the characters are placed in human situations, and that the characters themselves are human. See also Antonio Regalado García, Benito Pérez Galdós y la novela histórica española (Madrid, 1966), p. 96 (n. 19). (N. del A.)
133
Richard A. Cardwell, «Galdós' Doña Perfecta: Art or Argument?», AG, VII (1972). (N. del A.)
134
Another critic who has especially emphasized the humanity of the characters is Richard A. Mazzara, «Some Fresh perspectivas on Galdós' Doña Perfecta», Hispania, XL (1957), 49-56. Ricardo Gullón, in his Técnicas de Galdós (Madrid, 1970), pp, 23-56, has commented at length on the various levels of meaning, including the human level. William H. Shoemaker, in his «Cara y cruz de la novelística galdosiana», Estudios sobre Galdós (Madrid, 1970), pp. 245-246, makes the following statement about the verisimilitude of doña Perfecta: «Porque ni es Doña Perfecta enteramente mala ni Benina [Misericordia] la bondad sin mancha. No son personificaciones abstractas ni siquiera increíblemente exageradas». And Ángel del Río, in his Estudios galdosianos (New York, 1969), p. 74, reconciles the novel's individual and abstract elements: «Los personajes alcanzan categoría de símbolos sin perder su contenido humano». (N. del A.)
135
Cardwell, p. 34. (N. del A.)
136
Ibid., p. 44. (N. del A.)
137
Peter B. Goldman, «Galdós and the Aesthetic of Ambiguity: Notes on the Thematic Structure of Nazarín», a paper presented at the Modern Language Association, Chicago, III. Dec., 1973 (AG, IX, 1974, 99-112), Goldman refers to his initial use of the phrase in a previous paper: «Galdós and the Nineteenth-Century Spanish Novel: The Need for an Interdisciplinary Approach», read at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, Lexington, April 1973 (AG, X, 1975, 5-18). (N. del A.)
138
Wilhelm Worringer, «Empathy and Abstraction», A Modern Book of Esthetics, ed. Melvin Rader (3rd. ed., New York, 1960), p. 386. (N. del A.)
139
The term «psychical distance» was first used and explained in 1913 by Edward Bullough in his «'Psychical Distance' as a Factor in Art and an Esthetic Principle», Rader, 394-411. (N. del A.)
140
Ibid., 410-411. (N. del A.)