Visor de obras.

  —89→  
  —[90]→     —91→  

That María Guerrero played a central role in Galdós's dramatic career is well-established. She ignited the flame of his theatrical success, creating the leading role in four of his first six plays, launching three new plays in the following decade, and appearing in her last «estreno» in 1914. As the actress who carried fully one-third of his dramas to the stage, not only in Madrid but on tour, Guerrero was the dominant embodiment of his theatrical vision as well as a major factor in shaping the public reception of his works. It is the thesis of this new book that, as the first actress with whom Galdós worked, Guerrero had a significant impact on the development of his early plays and on his success in the theatre.

Carmen Menéndez Onrubia's book makes available the extant correspondence between Galdós and Guerrero (1891-1895) and the later letters to Galdós from her husband, Fernando Díaz de Mendoza (1899-1915), along with Guerrero's Postcards from the couple's foreign tours. In all Menéndez Onrubia has dated and annotated extensively some 106 items from the Casa-Museo Pérez Galdós that document the shifting author-actress relationship over a 25-year period. Fully two-thirds of Galdós's letters (at least 37 items), including the one that initiates the correspondence, are missing (but, the author suggests, perhaps still extant), while all but two of the actress's replies survive. The early epistolary exchange elucidates both the actress-author axis and the actress-theatre axis, and provides a glimpse of Galdós's evolving perception of the world of the theatre. The full range of letters charts Guerrero's path from rising star to doyenne of the Spanish theatre.

Menéndez Onrubia reads the gender dynamics of the Guerrero-Galdós exchange as a niece's affectionate respect for an infatuated uncle. As the actress matured and gained in stature, she developed a «tono entre maternal y despótico» towards an infantile, worshipful Galdós (211). But the correspondence also reveals the conflicting pressures on the two parties: the actress's immediate need for a completed script and the dramatist's urgent requirement of more time to finish his play. Galdós attempted to negotiate this conflict by veiling his own demands in verbal seduction and deflecting humor, while Guerrero used coquetry, weaving together reports of the current play's success, admiration for Galdós, and her own interests. The result was an attempted mutual seduction that necessarily failed because their personal goals (theatre reform, for Galdós, and control of her own company, for Guerrero) were incompatible.

But this ambitious and multifaceted book offers a good deal more than the transcription of previously unpublished correspondence complemented by detailed notes.   —92→   While scholars have tended to read Galdós's plays in terms of their social themes, their similarity to his novels, or their project of regenerating the theatre, Menéndez Onrubia brings a very different approach to his theatrical career. She draws in illuminating detail the broad panorama of the contemporary theatre, assigning Galdós his place in it. She reconstructs in precise detail essential components of that world: the dates of seasons, the composition of companies, the careers of actor-managers, the itineraries of urban and provincial tours, and the pool of actors (some six hundred). The result is an impressive grid of data that lays the foundation for all future research in this field. Furthermore, she uses her reading of the letters to revise the chronology of Galdós's plays. As in her previous book, Introducción al teatro de Benito Pérez Galdós (1983), she privileges the date of a script's initial version, rather than the first performance, so the date of La de San Quintín in its earliest form is now given as Fall 1891, that is, well before the «estreno» of Galdós's first play, Realidad, in 1892.

Almost half the book comprises four interpretative appendices which trace the individual careers of the three correspondents as well as the history of acting companies during this period. Since the format of these appendices is frequently parallel rather than sequential, there is a certain amount of repetition and consequent blurring of argument. This psycho-biographical exegesis is less satisfying than the thorough and carefully-drawn chronological documentation of the theatrical scene. By categorizing historical figures according to single trait types, Menéndez Onrubia reduces them to a predictable, inflexible set of reactions. By then identifying these figures as the models for Galdós's literary creations, she turns his characters into textual transpositions of real people. She presents Guerrero, for example, as a mixture of qualities inherited from her mother («nobleza, apasionamiento y arrojo neorromántico» [15 and passim]) and from her father (pragmatism, initiative and arrogance [220]). It is Menéndez Onrubia's thesis that Galdós misreads Guerrero's character as a synthesis of idealism and pragmatism, failing to grasp her relentlessly aggressive self-interest. His «neorromanticismo de formas naturalistas» (15) manifested itself in a paternalistic infatuation with the actress that led him to center his plays on his idealized perception of her. The author faults Galdós for «inmadurez psicológica y paternalismo» (189-90) in his relationship with Guerrero, attributing both characteristics to his «herencia canaria» and «carácter flemático».

Galdós's female characters, Menéndez Onrubia affirms, also reflect certain features of Concha-Ruth Morell and Emilia Pardo Bazán. It is the former who initially drew Galdós into the theatre, but it is in Guerrero that he recognized a successful version of Morell's failed quest for economic independence. From Augusta (Realidad) to Isidora (Voluntad) he fashioned Morell's idealism and Pardo Bazán's strong will into roles that matched Guerrero's own passive-dominant character. When these two models passed out of his life Galdós's first period of writing for the theatre came to an end and with it his early dependence on his initial leading lady. This privileging of biography also leads Menéndez Onrubia to treat Voluntad as Galdós's misreading of Guerrero's marriage to Díaz de Mendoza and Mariucha as his rectification of this error.

In such deviations from the biographical record, Menéndez Onrubia detects Galdós's erroneous idealization of Guerrero. But if his image of the actress is shattered by his realization of her crass manipulation, as the author argues from her reading of the letters, nevertheless he continued to write plays that centered on idealistic young women of strong will who work to shape the future. Although Menéndez Onrubia contends that Guerrero was incapable of embodying the qualities his roles required,   —93→   she identifies the actress's lingering impact on plays written as late as 1918 (192). This assertion would belie not only the consonance between Guerrero's character and her acting range but also Galdós's dependence on live models for his characters. Perhaps it is an idealized vision of woman as the agent of social reform and not that of any real woman in particular that his plays embody.

For Menéndez Onrubia Galdós's misreading of Guerrero's character is a major flaw that undermines his attempt to reform the theatre. To this misplaced enthusiasm for the young actress she attributes his first theatrical failure, the Madrid «estreno» of La loca de la casa, and the public's later rejection of Los condenados, which was written for Guerrero before she severed her connections with Emilio Mario. The actress's subsequent decision to form her own company precipitated the degeneration of the Spanish theatre. Her subsequent marriage to the aristocrat Díaz de Mendoza only tipped the scales in favour of an elitist theatre, negating Galdós's attempts to open up the Spanish stage to democratic currents. This thesis seems an excessive burden to be placed on the shoulders of even such a consummate actress as María Guerrero. It is too facile to suggest that, if she had not separated Galdós from the actors and audience Emilio Mario offered him, and if Galdós had not misconstrued her character, his projected reforms would have succeeded.

Despite her deterministic approach to character study, Menéndez Onrubia, not surprisingly, takes Galdós's side in what she clearly perceives as a contest of wills in which a weak man loses to a manipulative female. Fortunately, by transcribing the complete correspondence, she leaves the door open for the readers to interpret the relationship for themselves within the context of her invaluable supporting documentation, Theirs is, after all, a doubly «theatrical» dialogue, and Galdós «authors» himself in his letters as surely as Guerrero «plays» roles in hers. The fascination and freshness of this remarkable exchange lie in the clear-sighted, if carefully camouflaged, self-interest of two dissimilar but interdependent players in the Spanish theatre. If the sea of facts and interpretative commentary appended to the letters tends to overwhelm the dynamic that propels this flirtatious as well as professional relationship, it is because Menéndez Onrubia has cast her net wide and gathered in enough material for more than one study. That she succeeds in filling out so many dimensions of the theatre of Galdós's day with the raw data of scholarship makes this book the essential starting point for all future studies in the field. If a superb index enhances the volume, a curiously alphabetized bibliography, along with a regrettable number of errors (13, 16, 39, 174, 191, 201, 228, 302, 324), are an annoyance.

Indiana University

Pedro Ortiz Armengol es el «doyen» de los «fortunatayjacintistas». No hay ningún galdosista actualmente vivo que conozca mejor ni en más detalle a Fortunata y Jacinta, habiéndose dedicado la mayor parte de su tiempo libre durante muchos años a   —94→   investigar todos los aspectos de la obra maestra de Galdós. Por eso, la editorial Hernando acertó bien al seleccionarle como el encargado de la edición de lujo que sacó a luz en 1979 para conmemorar el sesquicentenario de la fundación de su casa editorial. Para que tuviese una aceptación más amplia, la introducción a la edición, ya ligeramente revisada, se reproduce en las páginas 11-83 de este nuevo libro de Ortiz Armengol. En ella se presta especial atención a los personajes tanto principales como secundarios, su interrelación, algo paródica a veces (por ejemplo, Ido del Sagrario o Moreno Isla), y su simbolismo. En todas las páginas, le rezuma a Ortiz Armengol el entusiasmo, mejor dicho, la pasión por esta novela, aunque a veces, ésta le puede conducir a hacer comentarios algo tangenciales o reiterativos (39). De otra parte, nadie le disputará a Ortiz Armengol el cómputo de la cifra de personajes mencionados en Fortunata y Jacinta o la de los amantes de Fortunata. Entre otros aspectos tratados en esta Introducción se incluyen la historia, la toponimia, y las valoraciones que han hecho de la novela varios críticos desde Alas hasta el Lord Snow. Al final del libro se adjuntan seis apéndices que contienen tablas genealógicas y cronológicas, además de listas de personajes ficticios e históricos y sitios geográficos. Pero el meollo de este libro de Ortiz Armengol consiste en las casi mil cuatrocientas notas que ocupan las páginas 85-536, y que, según su autor, «podrían ser menos, pero también podrían ser más, y más extensas» (87). Aunque quizás tuviera más sentido y más pertinencia su inclusión al pie de una edición del texto completo, donde se pudieran consultar con más facilidad, el formato utilizado en esta compilación de Pedro Ortiz, de presentarlas una tras otra, dentro de la parte y capítulo correspondientes, tiene la ventaja de que se pueden consultar en cualquier hora, no importa qué edición de la novela esté a mano. Estas apostillas, cuya extensión puede ser una sola frase o dos páginas enteras y que contienen muchísima información sobre personajes ficticios e históricos, edificios, frases del texto, fechas del calendario y sitios geográficos, todas salpimentadas de observaciones respecto a otras facetas de la novela, o de la obra y vida de Galdós, se incluyen con el fin de ayudar a los lectores de Fortunata y Jacinta a comprender mejor el texto y a disfrutar más de su lectura. En su totalidad constituyen un digno testimonio de la investigación minuciosa y diligente que siempre ha practicado Ortiz Armengol en sus estudios de la obra galdosiana.

Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.

Josefina Acosta de Hess's premise is that adultery in literature is a «representación mimética de la rebelión de la mujer en contra de la esclavitud que se le imponía» (13). She contends that, in comparison with other «classic» representations of adultery, Galdós's novels are feminist texts. After surveying a range of authors including Calderón, Cervantes, Eça de Queiros, Alas, Tolstoy, Goethe, Machado de Assis and Flaubert, she turns to the sociohistoric context as a prelude to her analysis of Fortunata y Jacinta and four shorter novels by Galdós. The scope of this book is so   —95→   large that it does not properly belong in the short monograph format of Pliegos's series. In comparison, however, to other works on the European novel of adultery, notably Tony Tanner's superb Adultery in the Novel -referred to merely as «otro interesante trabajo» (15)-, Galdós y la novela de adulterio appears very flimsy.

A major flaw of this work is that, despite advertising itself as a feminist reading, it is insufficiently versed in recent feminist critical theory. Feminist criticism encompasses a multitude of different and by now well-documented perspectives and methodologies; yet this book virtually ignores three decades of debate and definition in the field. As a result, it is somewhat naïve in its construction of the relationship between authors, texts, and readers. One of the underlying assumptions of Galdós y la novela de adulterio is that «feminist» texts are those in which the author consciously creates «good» feminist role-models among the female characters. Thereby it unconsciously privileges intentionality and a prescriptive kind of criticism and ignores the feminist possibilities in texts with no feminist models or in those whose authors were actively antifeminist. The book does not pause to examine the implications of its own critical practice.

Chapter One, «El adulterio en la literatura», summarizes, in sixteen pages, the plots of numerous works by Galdós's predecessors and contemporaries. There is no close reading of the texts. Acosta de Hess frequently makes reductive generalizations, for example, that the religiosity of both Ana Ozores and Fermín de Pas is «falsa e hipócrita» (30, 31). She privileges a monolithic view of women's victimization in literature that feminist critics, following Nina Auerbach, have identified as ultimately disempowering. The works of Tolstoy, Alas and Flaubert, for example, are much less one-dimensionally unambivalent about women's position than the author implies (88, 92). The eventual silencing of the heroines -which occurs in Galdós's texts too- does not necessarily mean unswerving acceptance of patriarchal ideology throughout the novels.

Chapter Two, «Contexto sociohistórico», offers a brief survey of political events in the second half of the nineteenth century, but does not connect them either to the history of the novel or to women's history. The second part of the chapter, on the legal position of women, suffers from chronological vagueness, such as the failure to date the Código Civil (42). As a result, it is difficult to gain any sense of the development of legislation affecting women during the century.

Chapter Three, «Galdós: Las novelas breves», is a discussion of La incógnita, Realidad, Lo prohibido, and La de Bringas. It develops -oversimplistically- the book's central thesis that Galdós's representation of women is feminist. Acosta de Hess suggests that the novelistic representation of adultery is a way of satisfying a female readership's desire for an «escape a [la] realidad opresiva» (69). If so, it puts both characters and readers in the insoluble double bind of being predestined to failure, for rather than have his heroines openly discuss and live out feminist ideals of fulfilled independence, Galdós, according to Acosta de Hess, has his female characters rebel against patriarchal oppression by falling in love with the men. Creating heroines who temporarily transgress bourgeois society's dictates, but not very radically, or for very long, would appear to be more a way of titillating male ambivalence about bourgeois society's power than of satisfying female needs for escape. There are undoubtedly feminist moments in Galdós's work, but they are qualified and ambiguous.

In her analysis of Fortunata y Jacinta Acosta de Hess argues that Fortunata is different from, and implicitly better than, other heroines of novels of adultery (85,   —96→   89). She observes, insightfully, that Fortunata struggles against the sexual double standard and the angel/prostitute dichotomy (79). She suggests that Fortunata y Jacinta constitutes Galdós's strongest critique of patriarchal society's treatment of women (84). However, while she argues that Galdós has created in Fortunata a new model of emancipated woman (87), she also notes, paradoxically, that Fortunata is «inauthentic» in de Beauvoir's terms (82), because she is a «prototipo de la esencia femenina, que se realiza plenamente a través de la maternidad» (87). In general, the author does not pay enough attention to contradictions such as these, which are essential to Galdós's representation of women, allowing his novels to be interpreted, in part, as proof of the inconsistencies and gaps in patriarchal ideology. Also, even though she mentions in passing Galdós's «continua evolución ideológica» (33), she gives the impression that the whole of Galdós's novelistic output is seamlessly «feminist». This is much less true of the novels outside the purview of her study, which is largely confined to the decade of the 1880's.

A lack of editorial attention is evident in the preparation of this book. The connections between paragraphs are poor, the paragraphs themselves are often too short, and statements are advanced in an either over-hesitant or an over-obvious way, for example, «es sabido que el matrimonio monógamo es una farsa» (13). Furthermore, the book is so plagued by typographical errors that even the author's name is misspelt on the backflap. While Galdós scholars may find that Acosta de Hess's study lacks sufficient depth for their purposes, it could, nevertheless, serve as a good, accessible introduction to the subject for undergraduates.

Northern Illinois University

William Shoemaker was a distinguished Hispanist whose many books and articles on Galdós included the important three-volume study, The Novelistic Art of Galdós. In his final monograph Shoemaker argues that God is both present and active precisely in those novels of Galdós which might be judged «the least likely to contain a significant role for God and His religion» (9). To prove his point, Shoemaker selects four novels from «la primera época» including the anti-clerical and anti-fanatical ones, and eight from the Naturalistic period in the «serie contemporánea». He deliberately excludes the more idealistic later novels of this series, whose religious content has already been extensively analyzed.

Shoemaker emphasizes that God and «His» religion are not to be equated with any set of dogmas or institutional church, for it is well known that Galdós did not adhere to an orthodox system of belief. Nevertheless, the novelistic world of Galdós is replete with religious references and themes that constitute an undercurrent, or even create a counterpoint, in those texts which criticize clerical influence or religious fanaticism.

The book is divided into twelve chapters of very unequal length, with one chapter   —97→   allotted to each of the selected novels. The texts are discussed in chronological order and Shoemaker uses a method of close reading and interpretive comments which draws on his broad knowledge of relevant Galdosian criticism. Although he does not engage in direct dialogue with the critics to whom the book is addressed, he does refer to those scholars whose position corroborates his own, and he acknowledges in particular the classic work of Correa on religious symbolism.

The longest and most carefully developed chapter is the one on Fortunata y Jacinta. Here Shoemaker is at his best in his careful commentary on each major character in the novel and in the detailed explication of each reference to religion. The chapters on Tormento and Miau also provide a nuanced evaluation of the role of God in those texts.

In contrast, some of the other major novels are dealt with in a cursory manner: Doña Perfecta and Marianela are dispatched in two pages each; La familia de León Roch and Gloria, in three. The chapter devoted to Gloria is, by the author's own admission, «a brief summary of what has already been made well known» (15) and the analysis of Doña Perfecta recapitulates the conclusions of Varey and Hall. These chapters seem to have been included simply to round out the study.

Some of the evidence Shoemaker uses is incontestable: Benina's charity, Leré's mysticism, and Nones's devotion to duty are convincing examples of a religious outlook. The tabulation of the number of interjections that use the name of God or the saints, however, is hardly proof of God's presence in the novelistic world. Many references to the influence of the Catholic Church or to the presence of religious objects also seem to be mere examples of cultural aspects of nineteenth-century Spanish daily life rather than indications of a deeper spiritual intent on the part of Galdós. Shoemaker is aware of this objection and tries to justify his compilations by saying that they exemplify «Godly language», which has a cumulative effect on the reader and supposedly reveals the pervasiveness of God's presence.

Among the minor flaws in the book, there is one factual error in the use of the Bible: Barabbas was not the thief crucified next to Christ (32). Sometimes the use of flippant slang is irritating, as when the author speaks of «bad guys and gals» (12), «the 'crazies' in the Leganés insane hospital» (26) and upbraiding «like a 'Dutch uncle'» (45). Occasionally, he switches from English to Spanish within a single quotation from Galdós (26, 63, 97). Although a few uncorrected typos appear (27, 43, 81, etc.), only one garbled sentence seriously disturbs the reader (57).

What Shoemaker does achieve is his stated objective of marshalling a large quantity of evidence for the presence of God and Godly language in many of the apparently least religious of Galdós's novels. His book can serve as a summary of much previous scholarship and a compendium of nearly all the textual references to God and of semantically related concepts in Fortunata y Jacinta and a few of the other selected novels. Readers will be disappointed if they look for a new or in-depth interpretation of Galdós's concept of God, an analysis of the evolution of his spiritual values, or a synthesis of his religious beliefs.

Missouri Southern. State College

  —98→  

This slender volume reminds one of the popular saying: «good things come in small packages», because, with the exception of Joseph Schraibman's critical edition-cum-article, «Variantes de 'La novela en el tranvía'», (La Torre) and the version of this same story published in Anderson, Davison, and Smith's anthology, Lecturas intermedias: prosas y poesía (Harper and Row), both of which were published in the sixties, Galdós's cuentos were only available in their original newspaper and magazine versions, or a supplemented edition of Torquemada en la hoguera in 1889, or the so-called Obras completas published by Aguilar. Consequently, this little edition is certainly a welcome addition to Galdosian bibliography.

The book is divided into three major sections: a prologue, a principal section containing the eight stories and several illustrations by the contemporary artist, Santiago Alemán Valls, and an annotated bibliography of secondary sources. The prologue contains a justification, a short biographical sketch of Don Benito, a brief discussion of the history of the nineteenth-century short story, a four-page essay on Galdós's views and practice of the «cuento», and a few notes.

Izquierdo Dorta's biographical sketch provides little more than a few basic facts and a number of rather trite observations about Galdós's energy, career direction, private life, stylistic tendencies and thematic concerns. His one-page history of the short story in the nineteenth century is not really his but rather a brief summary of Mariano Baquero Goyanes's ideas on the short story as found in El cuento en el siglo XIX and «Qué es el cuento». It is, nonetheless, well done and provides an excellent overview of the reasons for the short story's ascendency during the nineteenth century. Izquierdo Dorta's discussion of Galdós's ideas on the short story is based primarily on the latter's discussion of short prose fiction in the prologue he wrote for Fernanflor and in his essay entitled Madrid. Secondary sources are Marcie G. B. Schulman's 1982 dissertation and Rodolfo Cardona's prologue to his 1966 edition of La sombra. While Izquierdo Dorta ably documents Galdós's apparently negative opinion of his own short stories, he fails to suggest the possibility that Galdós's self-deprecating remarks are tinged with irony, and thus he misses a chance to focus the reader's attention on the stories as legitimate, serious works rather than as «divertimientos, juguetes, ensayos de aficionado» (3) as Galdós himself says in his prologue to the 1909 edition of La sombra.

Of the twenty or so short works of prose fiction that might qualify as «cuentos», the eight included in this anthology were selected by Izquierdo Dorta according to two criteria: variety and brevity: «El primero como muestra más de la riqueza creativa de este canario universal, y el segundo, para que el libro resulte fácilmente manejable en los niveles escolares a los que va dirigido» (19). The selection offered generally meets the first criterion: the stories included span a wide range of techniques and themes and clearly show their author's creative talent. It could be argued, though, that by leaving out an example of the metafictional stories («La novela en el tranvía», «Un tribunal literario», and «El artículo de fondo»), Ocho cuentos fails to include an essential short prose variant.

  —99→  

The second criterion, however, gives rise to most of the book's limitations. Even the longest of Don Benito's «cuentos», «La novela en el tranvía», covers only 15 pages in the Aguilar edition. So, while the stories in this new anthology are, in fact, brief, brevity does not seem to be a particularly meaningful criterion. Furthermore, the stories' brevity is no guarantee that students will find them suitable, especially if they are students at the secondary level. With the exception of «La conjuración de las palabras», the stories in Ocho cuentos present much the same technical and thematic difficulty found in the rest of Don Benito's work and are no more suited to serve as the «primer escalón para ascender al [...] conocimiento, por parte de nuestros estudiantes, de ese mundo de ficción» (20) than Doña Perfecta or El abuelo.

The aim to give a complete bibliography of secondary sources is not really fulfilled. Among the important studies not included are: Luis Fernández Cifuentes, «Signs for Sale in the City of Galdós», Modern Language Notes 103 (1988): 289-311; Walter Oliver, «Galdós' 'La novela en el tranvía': Fantasy and the Art of Realistic Narration», Modern Language Notes 88 (1973): 249-63 and Robert Spires' treatment of «La novela en el tranvía» in Chapter I of his book Beyond the Metafictional Mode: Directions in the Modern Spanish Novel (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984).

If Ocho cuentos is, in fact, intended for a student audience, its presentation of the stories is seriously flawed, for they contain many cultural, historical, political, and mythological allusions, as well as various linguistic and technical complexities, that would clearly be beyond the average student's reach. Yet no glossary or explanatory material is provided. However, since the texts of the stories have been very accurately edited, this collection should be welcomed as a useful addition to the corpus of Galdosian primary texts.

California State University, San Bernardino.

Scanlon's «Introduction» leaves little doubt that her guide has been shaped in accordance with the in-vogue critical formula that treats Galdós's novels principally in terms of historical contexts. First she reviews events and circumstances that produced the intellectual and ideological climate in which Galdós wrote Marianela: the mid-century introduction of Krausism; the Revolution of 1868; the ensuing six years of political instability; the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy and the attendant disillusionment of liberal intellectuals like Galdós; the introduction of positivism; and the debates of the 1870s over the relative merits of (1) Krausism and Positivism as foundations for progress and (2) Idealism and Realism as canons of aesthetics. Finally, minimizing the value of the search for Marianela's sources as well as the interpretation of its symbolism, she effectively dismisses from her considerations these two approaches, which, as she acknowledges, are those that have dominated   —100→   criticism of the novel and which, precisely for that reason, would find an important place in a more broadly based study.

In Chapter 2 the concern for the regeneration of Spain evident in Marianela is set against the background of controversy over Krausism and Positivism, and especially the value that their respective adherents placed on science as a basis for progress. The social and ethical implications of these two philosophies are linked in Marianela to ambiguities in character portrayal and scenic description, which are seen as products of the attempt to counterbalance idealist and materialist elements. Scanlon's conclusions about the attitudes of Galdós toward science, industry and progress, which are cloaked in these ambiguities, are based on a consideration of the significance of Pablo's passage from blindness to sight, Teodoro's attitude toward science, and Galdós's intention in contrasting pastoral and industrial settings.

In Chapter 3 attention is focused on the relationship between Marianela and contemporary views of the social question, in particular the condition of the lower classes. Public discussions on education as a necessity for social stability and progress are proposed as influences on Galdós's creation of Marianela as a representative of the uneducated, defenseless, abandoned child. Of special interest are: (1) the analyses of the roles of Teodoro, Sofía, la Señana, Don Francisco, Don Manuel and Florentina in the development of the theme of society's failure, through ignorance, self-interest and insensitivity, to meet Marianela's material, spiritual, intellectual and emotional needs; (2) the presentation of Marianela, the Centeno family (especially Celipín), and the Golfín brothers, in relation to the topic of individual responsibility for self-advancement; and (3) the reference to similarities between the educational and ethical reforms proposed by Galdós and the Krausist view of the social question, particularly as it was presented by Azcárate.

In Chapter 4 the romantic realism of Marianela is traced to the literary traditions established by romantic and post-romantic writers like Goethe, Hugo, Sue, Nodier, Dickens and Balzac. The structure of Galdós's novel is described as climactic, with tension and suspense created through the use of mystery and enigma, the gradual limiting of narrative options, an initial slowness of pace followed by acceleration, and foreshadowing. Cited as further indications of romantic realism are the contrasting of poetic and prosaic presentations of settings and the balancing of poetic and verisimilar character portrayals, in which irony and humour are frequently employed to moderate extremes in the description of good and evil qualities. To the mixture of romantic and realistic dialogue are ascribed the varying degrees of appropriate diction according to the characters' social position. The romantic realism of Marianela is also attributed in part to the presence of an omniscient narrator who gives background information, relates the fictional world to the real world, and interjects his own, often didactic, commentaries,

In her «Conclusion» Scanlon returns to the subject of idealism and realism in Galdós's novel, highlighting the defense of realism that is implicit in the account of discrepancies between the facts of Marianela's life and the fanciful reports about her that circulated after her death. She underscores the novel's relationship to the contemporary debates over Idealism and Realism and deduces that for Galdós realism was not a product of mimesis alone but was instead a product of interaction between external reality and the consciousness perceiving it. To this approach and to Galdós's attention to contemporary ideological concerns and aesthetic principles she assigns the success of Marianela.

  —101→  

The appended «Bibliographical Note», which contains fifty-nine items, lists eighteen works of general criticism dealing with Galdós and twenty-two studies on Marianela, most of which are mentioned in the main body of the text or referred to by their numbers. This section is convenient and useful, although among the initiated there will undoubtedly be diverse opinions with respect to the annotations, which, if they conformed to more informative and less evaluative norms, might better serve the objective, self-directed investigator.

Although an ample number of footnotes providing collateral information and references to differing opinions are evidence of Scanlon's desire to give an in-depth, balanced evaluation of Marianela, the view that ultimately emerges is necessarily limited by the selectivity of her critical approach. In short, eschewing the considerable body of research about the sources and symbolism of Marianela, Scanlon focuses on an appreciation of the significance of the novel as a reflection of particulars of nineteenth-century history, literary conventions and social reality.

Fredericksburg, Virginia

Ángel Berenguer and his team of students from the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares prepared this hefty but handsome volume for the 1988 Galdós exposition, «Madrid en Galdós. Galdós en Madrid», held in the Retiro's Palacio de Cristal. It is a compilation of first-run reviews of Galdós's plays from the newspapers in the Hemeroteca Municipal de Madrid. The book's attractive format and photographs of Galdós and his plays, apparently photocopied from the newspapers, give it the look of an exhibition catalogue and belie its value as a scholarly reference tome. The new work complements the 1982 bibliography of Galdós's theatre prepared by Theodore Alan Sackett, Galdós y las máscaras (reviewed in Anales Galdosianos 18 [1983]). Whereas Sackett had synopsized articles, chapters and books on Galdós, as well as including reviews, Berenguer limits his scope to the latter. The larger number he has assembled -some 324 compared to Sackett's 89- includes second reviews of a play by the same critic and reviews from a wider range of almost 100 periodicals.

Acknowledging Sackett's previous work, Berenguer incorporates documentation on the reviews only summarized or cited by Sackett. This replicates the latter's procedure with regard to his predecessors, with the significant difference that Berenguer reproduces in full all major opening-night reviews and all reviews not cited in the earlier book. Evoking the full flavour of the times, Berenguer uses his volume's ample margins to insert other newspaper reports, such as brief notices and telegrammes, on the plays and the playwright. In all, by Berenguer's calculations, he reprints the complete text of some 250 reviews. Despite Berenguer's utilization of Sackett's model, some confusion arises when one attempts to coordinate the data in the two volumes; Sackett, for example, alphabetizes his entries by the critic's real   —102→   name (although he appends a list of pseudonyms), whereas Berenguer cites the pseudonym.

In his twenty-page introduction Berenguer uses his broader data base to revise Sackett's more negative conclusions about Galdós's career as a playwright (thirteen plays were successes, five, partial successes [«éxitos dudosos»], and four, failures.) In contrast, Berenguer takes into consideration both the public's response, as reported by the critics, and the critics' own evaluations of the plays. From his expanded corpus of reviews, he concludes that the public responded favorably 80% of the time, and critics wrote 77% positive or rave reviews, with only two plays badly received (Gerona, La fiera) and a single rotund failure (as expected, Los condenados). Berenguer's introduction also contains (in slightly less accessible form) two of the appendices found in Sackett plus a useful chronology of opening nights. He also offers a somewhat different list from Sackett of the Galdós novels turned into dramatic scripts by other hands. Two indices based on the chronology of the «estrenos» make the tome more user-friendly: a list of critics, including the periodical and date of their reviews, and a periodical index with a list of the plays reviewed in them.

Berenguer's survey of responses to Galdós's plays confirms what we already knew: that the plays occasionally met with a hostile opening-night press and that at times the audience received the plays more warmly than the critics. His thesis is that, far from experiencing an uneven and unrewarding career in the theatre, as some critics have assumed and Sackett seems to confirm, Galdós aroused almost unflagging public enthusiasm and saw his plays enjoy relatively long runs both in Madrid and in the provinces. Perhaps scholars have tended to accept too literally the dramatist's own expressions of frustration with the theatre. In the throes of completing Voluntad, for example, he wrote in a letter of 22 June 1895 to María Guerrero: «odio el teatro, el público y el cráter y a los cómicos y cuanto con el teatro y ese arte se relaciona». Disappointed that the audience does not carry his vision of social regeneration beyond the doors of the theatre, he lambasts the public as «casi siempre compuesto de imbéciles» and «cada día más tonto y más infantil». These pained outbursts suggest a view of his dramatic career very different from that given by the reviews or his own statements of satisfaction at other times.

Furthermore, the reviews themselves are not free from problems of interpretation. By convention, contemporary reviewers almost always report a positive audience response. Nor can the personal vendettas and tribal conflicts of the literary world be overlooked. Sackett and Berenguer both fail to address these complicating factors as well as the subjective nature of their own quantifications of the reviews. They treat «success» as an absolute rather than as a variable whose value is determined by the criteria they use to measure it. Nevertheless, Berenguer's recognition of the need for a more broadly-based reassessment of Galdós's theatre-career and his attempt to initiate that task deserve our applause.

Los estrenos teatrales makes a valuable contribution to Galdós scholarship by providing complete texts of a large number of early reviews, thereby offering a welcome alternative to searching out the originals in deteriorating library collections. Omissions, such as the lack of documentation for the marginal item on page 322, appear to be minimal. It is unfortunate, however, that Berenguer seems unaware of Carmen Menéndez Onrubia's recent studies of Galdós's theatre, on which he might have drawn to enrich his introduction.

Indiana University

  —103→  

En palabras de la propia Alicia Andreu, Modelos dialógicos quiere «presentar al lector con un modelo de lo que la crítica entiende por intertextualidad y de demostrar la aplicación de este modelo a un grupo de novelas escritas por Benito Pérez Galdós» (xv-xvi). El objetivo propuesto se cumple con eficacia. Modelos dialógicos presenta un estudio de las voces discursivas en cinco diferentes textos galdosianos -Tormento, Doña Perfecta, La incógnita, Realidad y Fortunata y Jacinta- a partir del modelo dialógico proporcionado por Mikhail Bakhtin.

La precisa y nítida delimitación de objetivos permite lo que de otra manera podría ser percibido como una selección arbitraria de las novelas de Galdós. También permite la posibilidad de lectura independiente de los diferentes capítulos, dedicados sucesivamente a Tormento, La incógnita y Realidad, Doña Perfecta, Fortunata y Jacinta y Mauricia la Dura. Aceptando las premisas y objetivos explícitamente declarados, Modelos dialógicos ofrece excelentes estudios críticos de los textos mencionados. Tanto el análisis sobre Doña Perfecta como los dos estudios sobre Fortunata y Jacinta destacan y anotan de forma convincente la importancia de la multiplicidad discursiva y textual presente en estas novelas. Son tales estudios, correspondientes respectivamente a los capítulos 4, 5 y 6, parada obligatoria para toda persona interesada en la narrativa galdosiana. De particular agudeza son, por ejemplo, las conclusiones a las que llega Andreu respecto al discurso de Fortunata [«[e]l texto de Fortunata es el texto del silencio y es también la vertiente lingüística adonde van a desembocar las otras voces textuales en su deseo de llenar los espacios en blanco creados por el silencio de sus protagonistas» (83)], o respecto al cierre novelístico de Doña Perfecta [«al concluir Galdós su obra con [...] la carta de Cayetano Polentinos 'a un su amigo', sin nombre que lo distinga, [...] niega la narrativa de Galdós las diferentes funciones que los discursantes han querido asignarles a sus propios discursos y al negarlas exterioriza su artificialidad. Al igual que los personajes al final de Doña Perfecta, 'que parecen buen[o]s y no lo son' (p. 502), la palabra carnavalesca en la narrativa de Benito Pérez Galdós parece ser lo que no es y es lo que no parece ser» (62-63)]. El análisis sobre Tormento, si bien acertado, resulta a mi juicio excesivamente tímido y poco comprometido.

También particularmente estimulante resulta el estudio sobre el personaje de Mauricia la Dura, uno de los más complejos salidos de la pluma de Galdós, aunque, paradójicamente, uno de los menos estudiados por la crítica. El análisis del aspecto carnavalesco presente en el entramado lingüístico que envuelve y en el que se envuelve Mauricia es preciso, convincente y nos enfrenta a una nueva lectura. La conclusión a la que llega Andreu de que «[l]a risa mauriciana [...] va desmoronando la santidad del recinto lingüístico donde ha morado, hasta entonces, la autoridad textual» (98) es especialmente atractiva, sobre todo si tenemos en cuenta el lenguaje del silencio de Fortunata estudiado más arriba. Por su parte, el excelente capítulo tercero, dedicado a una lectura complementaria de La incógnita y Realidad, requiere discusión aparte.

Es este capítulo uno de los más logrados. Andreu se expone aquí críticamente en preguntas cruciales. En este capítulo tercero, Andreu cuestiona, con ayuda del modelo dialógico, la dicotomía entre subjetividad y objetividad en que la crítica galdosiana en general había tradicionalmente clasificado a las dos novelas. Sus preguntas sobre el   —104→   tejido textual de ambas novelas, sobre el funcionamiento y desplazamiento del lenguaje, sobre la relación discursiva intertextual son preguntas urgentes y urgidas por los textos mismos. El modelo crítico bakhtiniano escogido por la autora se utiliza aquí de forma estupenda como engranaje de un pensamiento literario que abre nuevas y fascinantes posibilidades de lectura. En la exploración de estas nuevas avenidas, Andreu muestra un excelente juicio crítico que destaca por su pronta intuición y osadía literaria. Especialmente sugestiva es la extensión que hace Andreu de la palabra de Viera a la palabra galdosiana: «[L]o que él [Viera] denomina como invención no es otra cosa que un nuevo sistema de combinaciones textuales, de donde proviene una nueva palabra -no ya sólo la vierana- sino también, y especialmente, la galdosiana. Detrás de esta palabra 'inventada' no se encuentra, ni se podrá encontrar nunca, la verdad de una realidad concreta sino más bien una serie de verdades pero vinculadas a su propio sistema de significaciones discursivas» (46). El análisis pareado que de La incógnita y Realidad nos da Andreu debe contarse como uno de los mejores ofrecidos últimamente por la crítica literaria galdosista y desde luego uno de los más estimulantes sobre las dos novelas.

Como he indicado más arriba, Modelos dialógicos explicita con nitidez sus propósitos y a ellos se atiene con éxito. Sin embargo, es ahí donde reside lo que yo veo como debilidad del libro. Los objetivos propuestos quedan restringidos a un espacio crítico de aplicación que ahoga hasta cierto punto una lectura crítica expansiva, un pensamiento reflexivo que permita extender y conectar los diferentes textos escogidos. Al terminar Modelos dialógicos, «la pregunta de si la narrativa galdosiana contiene el principio carnavalesco descrito por Bakhtin en su obra crítica» (xv) queda contestada, y bien contestada, de manera afirmativa. Sin embargo, falta en el estudio de Andreu el salto crítico que relacione la constatación de esa presencia con un proyecto amplio de lectura de las diferentes novelas. Modelos dialógicos es un excelente ejercicio crítico que no puede sino ser bienvenido en los estudios galdosianos. Pero al no ofrecerse como aventura especulativa amplia, impide que muchas de las conclusiones, sugerencias y/o afirmaciones que la autora ofrece a lo largo de su recorrido crítico lleguen al final de su periplo a textualizarse como cuerpo discursivo cohesionado.

Por causa de la propia delimitación del objetivo crítico, Modelos dialógicos queda como estudio parcelado de varias novelas que no llegan a relacionarse entre sí más que desde la constatación de la conciencia metanarrativa y metadiscursiva de la escritura de Benito Pérez Galdós. Pero es por otra parte injusto quizá juzgar Modelos dialógicos por lo que no ofrece cuando desde el prólogo mismo queda honesta y precisamente delimitado el propósito del libro. Desde el espacio crítico propuesto, Modelos dialógicos cumple desde luego con su objetivo. En todos los capítulos, los estudios dialógicos de las novelas de Galdós escogidas abren nuevas perspectivas de lectura, nuevos caminos críticos no tocados con anterioridad por la crítica especializada y ofrecen nuevo pensamiento.

En resumen, Modelos dialógicos aporta a los estudios galdosianos un excelente y meditado análisis crítico de varias novelas de Galdós. Si algo debemos lamentar es el que no se hayan explorado en más profundidad varias de las cuestiones abordadas en la conclusión referentes al entramado textual de cohesión en el que Andreu sitúa las novelas. Esta queja, de todas formas, queda fuera de los objetivos de un libro que, indudablemente, debe formar parte de toda biblioteca galdosiana.

Duke University

  —105→  

The Introduction to this edition is far more on Galdós's links with Santander than on Cuarenta leguas itself (23 pages as compared to 8). This may be to the good, since Galdós's involvement with Santander's literary personalities and his extensive use of Santander source material in his novels are still not as widely known and appreciated amongst scholars as they should be (despite the volume Benito Pérez Galdós: biografía santanderina by Madariaga). After Madrid, Santander and Cantabria provided Galdós more richly with sources than any other part of Spain, and the neglect of the Santander dimension in earlier criticism must rank as one of the major literary distortions of the period from Galdós's death to the 1960s, just as the Canarias side has only been elucidated in detall in recent years.

Supremely interesting, I believe, for the literary scholar is the drag or hindrance that Galdós feels on his descriptive flow when he is constrained by the conventions of the «libro de viajes» or «género turista». To compare his descriptive mode in Cuarenta leguas with that of, say, Ángel Guerra or the early pages of Nazarín, is to compare hobbled «apocamiento» with joyful creative flow, and yet the authentic volce of Galdós comes through, intermittently, as it does in his «Excursión a Portugal» (Viajes y fantasías) some ten years later. Certainly Galdós was unhappy with what he had written: «he dejado la descripción pesada. Es del género turista, género cursi, totalmente insulso [...] De veras le aseguro a V. que me avergüenzo de que mi firma vaya al pie de una cosa tan mala», he writes to Pereda in November 1876. Worse still, he confesses to having muddled the topographical information Pereda had helped him with and seems to be washing his hands of the proofs when he gives his friend a free hand to change whatever he thinks fit: «Ojalá la dejara V. en tal estado, que no la conociera el padre que la engendró». Pereda, from a very different perspective, thought that what Galdós had written was «de lo más salado y chispeante que ha salido de su pluma» (this was December 1876, after all, and their friendship was at a relatively early stage).

Nevertheless, taking into account the fundamental differences of approach and tone between Viajes and descriptive writing centering on place and Nature in the novels, Cuarenta leguas has an intrinsic value as a document revealing Galdós's artistically sensitive reaction to Cantabria at a specific stage. The description of Santillana stands as the supreme literary expression of that elusive and improbable «villa», superior to anything that Ricardo León or subsequent writers could produce. Sr. Madariaga is to be congratulated not only on providing an informative and balanced introduction and notes, but also, quite simply, for making a new edition of Cuarenta leguas available, the first since the Ediciones Giner edition of 1975. The few misprints noticed are easily negotiated; titles of books given in different forms and some arbitrary abbreviations are off-putting but do not seriously mar a practical and useful edition.

University of Birmingham

  —106→  

The bulk of Semiótica when critics approach the texts of the expressive realists that dominate our ideas about nineteenth-century literature, they tend to accept the humanist assumption that narrative expresses -more or less faithfully, completely and engagingly- lived experiences that common sense tells us are incredibly complex and unique. Eberenz does not worry all that much about mimetic accuracy but he does assume that the best writer of stories is not only the one who achieves a structural density, narrative cohesiveness and unity of expression (28) that distinguishes him from the less gifted, but also the one who manages to get inside his characters. In this sense Semiótica is a very traditional, safe look at the Naturalist story that holds very few surprises for modern readers. By framing its evaluations with a conventional inside/outside dichotomy, it ignores the heated debates regarding referentiality and realism that characterize late structuralist narratology and it reaches no conclusions that have not already been passed down to us from earlier critical evaluations of the Naturalists.

A is a detailed analysis of the formal narrative techniques of Naturalist short fiction, based on the premise that, since both discourse and plot determine textual meaning, they should be studied in tandem. Predictably, given his goal to take stock of the reciprocally related «fondo y forma» (259), Eberenz focuses on structural and anecdotal oppositions, contradictions, antitheses, redundancies, paradoxes, coincidences, inversions, and any of the many bipartite elements that have enthralled narratologists until recently. As a neo-structuralist survey, it is very comprehensive and well-informed by the work of Greimas, Jolles, and Genette, among others. I missed, however, a dialogue with more recent semioticians, notably Roland Barthes, whose S/Z (not to mention its dozens of subsequent commentators) is strangely absent from the discussion. Also, since Eberenz argues what has already been so thoroughly demonstrated, namely, that late nineteenth-century Naturalists wallowed in binary logic, he should have made a better exploration of what historical factors explain this binary mindset. This could have been done in Chapter Five («Algunos temas y personajes») that looks at the «fenómenos de la civilización concreta» (113) which the Naturalist writer incorporated into his or her writing.

Eberenz's project is not explicitly to hierarchize the writers whose Naturalist stories he examines, but with his conventional and formalistic approach to narratology, it is nor surprising that he uses Clarín as the benchmark against which to measure less talented writers. He argues that Clarín is both structurally more complex and thematically more transcendent than Emilia Pardo Bazán, and, especially, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. The latter situate themselves outside their characters, reflecting on human problems from a distance, while Clarín gets inside his subjects's «propios supuestos ideológicos y afectivos» (145). Because Clarín privileges character over plot his subjects give the impression of living a very personal destiny (165) that allows them to escape the superficiality and archetypicalness of «costumbrista» convention, and consequently, «las figuras clarinianas discurren, sienten y actúan espontáneamente» (142). Clarín transcends direct visible reality (260), translating the most acute human truths regarding man's sufferings and weakness: «sabe poner al desnudo   —107→   el interior de sus figuras» (260). In brief, although the author might not care to admit it, his claim is that Clarín's stories are more real.

To bolster and reconstruct this favoured fiction, which has come down to us from a prestigious line of Clarín's devotees and critical insiders, Eberenz relies on a series of clichés, especially about Pardo Bazán's fiction, that have enjoyed a wide currency: Pardo Bazán's conventionalism contrasts with Clarín's innovativeness (65); her plots rarely transcend the purely anecdotal and she misses the profoundly human note of Clarín's fiction (118); her «inquietudes emancipatorias» consist primarily in emulating masculine ideology; she doesn't attempt to valorize the «auténticamente femenino» (132); she displays an irritating ideological ambiguity (255) (maybe that's the «truly feminine» discourse Eberenz wishes Pardo Bazán had valorized?). Although several times he takes Pardo Bazán's earlier detractors to task, he supports his own less flattering remarks about her that I have just paraphrased through a detailed comparative analysis of the discursive practices of Clarín and Pardo Bazán that are the necessary preamble to his conclusion. The eulogistic ending of Semiótica is yet another justification of Clarín's reputation as Spain's best nineteenth-century writer of stories:

La resistencia que estos textos oponen todavía a la interpretación por un lector moderno, la riqueza de facetas que se descubre dentro de una temática deliberadamente reducida, el placer renovado y acrecentado que proporcionan la segunda y la tercera lectura son acaso los mejores indicios de la calidad artística de los cuentos de Clarín.

(261)

State University of New York at Stony Brook

How do contemporary critics view the role of Spanish Naturalism? This nineteenth-century literary current, a subject of significant interest during previous decades, has perhaps received less scholarly attention during the age of Derrida and Postmodernism. Thus, a timely reexamination of Naturalism is the topic of this special issue of Letras Peninsulares, which comprises eight articles, six of which discuss some aspect of nineteenth-century Spanish Naturalism.

Adolfo Sotelo Vázquez in «La descripción como revelación del personaje en la novela realista: Ana Ozores y la insignificancia», addresses the role of detailed description in the realist-naturalist novel, focusing on Alas's La Regenta. Sotelo concludes that passages in which the narrator painstakingly delineates people, places, and objects are far from superfluous; rather, these descriptions cultivate the central themes of the novel: «En el texto realista la descripción deviene el lugar donde el ser humano es revelado por el mundo de las cosas y de los objetos». On the other hand, Gilbert Paolini stresses the modifications of French Naturalism in Spain in «Palacio Valdés y el naturalismo ideal en La alegría del capitán Ribot». De-emphasizing the pessimism and the determinism of Naturalism, Valdés, according to Paolini, seeks a balance of positivism and spiritualism in the protagonist Ribot, a compromise not unexpected from a novelist who «se considera en el deber de escribir para ennoblecer la vida».

  —108→  

Similar to Paolini's analysis of Palacio Valdés is that of Jorge Febles's discussion of Alfonso Hernández Catá, who also attenuates a central feature of Naturalism: the Spanish-Cuban writer rejects the objective point of view. In his exegesis of two of Catá's short stores, «El crimen de Julián Ensor» and «El testigo», Febles convincingly demonstrates that the third-person, omniscient narrator condemns in both cases the perceived moral weaknesses of the stories' protagonists with «una actitud censoria anticientífica» and an approach which Febles finds very distant from the typical naturalist novel: «las huellas zolescas resultan apenas detectables».

In the first of three articles on Emilia Pardo Bazán, José Manuel González Herrán investigates the reliance of the Countess in La cuestión palpitante on Zola's Les Romanciers naturalistes. González Herrán notes a similar presentation of Madame Bovary in both works as well as Pardo Bazán's dependence on Zola for her discussion of Daudet. In all, González Herrán maintains that his goal is not to criticize Pardo Bazán's evident failure to acknowledge her scholarly sources but rather «a entender y valorar uno de los libros más representativos en el debate español acerca del naturalismo».

The remaining two articles offer a unique reading of Pardo Bazán's best-known novel and two of her short stories. Mary Lee Bretz in «Masculine and Feminine Chronotopes in Los Pazos de Ulloa» observes a subtext that «subverts the belief in sexual determinism and offers a comic, tender, hopeful vision of the possibilities for a deconstruction of the male-female polarity». Employing Kristeva's theory of the semiotic and especially Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope (or the «time-space» of the novel), Bretz acknowledges that she is furthering the non-traditional interpretation of Los Pazos de Ulloa by Carlos Feal Deibe and Elizabeth Ordóñez. Through the continuous tension between male and female space and time, Bretz asserts, prevailing masculine social conventions are called in question, allowing the reader a glimpse of the future in which a rigid patriarchy has relinquished its authority.

Similarly, Carolyn Richardson Durham, in «Subversion in Two Short Stories by Emilia Pardo Bazán», maintains that the Countess is a skilled writer who knows how to present controversial topics «covertly, submerging her subversive ideas in a text that made them somewhat inaccessible». Durham notes that the fantastic short story «Posesión» -about a woman possessed by the devil- is really about how the female protagonist is unable to sublimate her sexual drives. Similarly, «Los pendientes» (a story in the grotesque genre) depicts society's failure to recognize that spirituality and sexual desire can exist within the same woman.

Although readers might have preferred to see at least one article concerning the naturalistic novels of Galdós in this issue, the present selection of essays offers an acceptable spectrum of current thought on Spanish Naturalism. Especially commendable are the comments of Bretz and Durham, whose feminist readings of certain texts of Emilia Pardo Bazán call in question the tragic tone and the determinism usually associated with Naturalism. In addition, Letras Peninsulares will permit this issue and other issues of special topics to be ordered by instructors for use in the classroom, an important benefit which will bring contemporary critical thought directly to students and teachers. In all, «Reaproximación al naturalismo español - Spanish Naturalism Reconsidered» is an excellent first effort by a new and promising journal in the field of Spanish letters.

California State University, San Bernardino

  —109→  

As its title suggests, Stephanie Sieburth's analysis focuses on the structural complexity of La Regenta, ultimately concluding that the work is a «writerly text», irreducible to any fixed or monolithic interpretation. In reaching this conclusion Sieburth examines various levels of the novel's construction from what she describes as a «predominantly poststructuralist point of view». The two principal categories which inform her analysis are narratorial discourse and textual structure, which finally interact to produce the work's plurality of meanings. Her theoretical perspective appears to be shaped largely by the ideas of Barthes, Bakhtin and reader-reception theory. She applies these ideas intelligently and convincingly, and she succeeds in arguing her case for plurality.

Within the category of narratorial strategy Sieburth analyzes the ways in which the narrator undermines his own reliability by engaging in «duplicitous discourse». She begins by examining the collective discourse of Vetusta, which according to her analysis, is not meaningful, but rather consists of quotations from two types of sources: «classic Spanish literature» and the French serial novel or «folletín». Although the clichés of Golden Age honour plays and Romantic theatre dominate in the public posturing of Vetustans, it is the conventions and world-view of the «folletín» which have provided them with the «literary competence» to create their own «folletín», the life of Ana Ozores. Sieburth applies aptly Campagnon's theory of quotation to support her argument for the fundamental dislocation of signifier from signified in Vetustan discourse. The classic/«folletín» opposition also emerges in the relationship between the narrator and the Vetustans who are his subjects. Using Bakhtin's theory of the double-voiced word, Sieburth argues that the narrator engages in an essentially unreliable or duplicitous strategy of both direct narrative discourse and free indirect style. This discursive duality undermines narratorial authority and, therefore, a fixed interpretation of the text. By studying techniques such as focalization and interior monologue, which manipulate the reader's identification with, or alienation from, the novel's characters, Sieburth illustrates how narratorial ambivalence manifests itself in the shifting representations of Ana Ozores and in the tension between the narrator's voice and those of the protagonists.

In the book's second principal division, the author studies the entropic or «quixotic» structure of the narrative itself. Sieburth's analysis of intertextuality is limited but insightful. Despite the author's insistence that La Regenta cannot be read as a naturalistic novel, Madame Bovary cannot be ignored as an important subtext. It is more than a little surprising, then, that it receives no mention in the study of intertextuality, or, for that matter, in any other section of the book, except for a passing reference in the Introduction. Her study of the relationship between the text of Ana Ozores, and its classic subtexts (Santa Teresa's Vida, Don Juan Tenorio, Don Quijote) reinforces her argument that La Regenta «portrays the fictionalization of experience as an inevitable characteristic of human existence». Sieburth's analysis of the text of Ana Ozores and Santa Teresa's Vida reiterates Compagnon's ideas on a different level. Ana's futile imitation of Santa Teresa's autobiography three hundred years   —110→   later results in the «reification» of the classic text, transforming it into a series of empty formulas, much as the Vetustans' mouthing of classical clichés converts words into meaningless signifiers.

Intertextuality is, according to this viewpoint, just one example of the «mise en abîme» or textual doubling which provides this novel with its writerly or self-reflexive character. The final chapters of the book are devoted to illustrating how the text is «a vast number of segments in dialogic interplay with one another, with no central, overriding authority». As occurs throughout the study, a large number of detailed examples are adduced as evidence of this fragmentation, many of which, as the author informs us, are not explicit, but rather require a code-focussed reading. Yet the structural entropy which results from self-reflexivity in no way impedes a mimetic or plot-focussed reading. Rather, the two levels (mimetic and structural) interact to produce «a literary masterpiece» with a plurality of interpretations.

For the most part, Sieburth's conclusions are solid, based on a close reading of both plot and structure. She uses examples which are well-chosen and support her case. As occurs in many books which began as doctoral dissertations, there is a tendency to provide a surplus of evidence, and at times this abundance of detail makes it possible to lose sight of the larger vision of the novel. Sieburth is always careful, however, to draw our attention back to the principal ideas and conclusions and to show how they all contribute to her characterization of the novel as writerly. She has certainly achieved her stated goal of illustrating the way in which literature permeates every level of its structure. In so doing she illuminates many previously unexamined aspects of the novel's construction (the relationship between Santa Teresa's Vida and Ana Ozores's text is an important example). Her book is a valuable contribution to Clarín studies.

Miami University of Ohio

Aunque hayamos tardado algún tiempo, debemos manifestar nuestro júbilo con la iniciación de una «Biblioteca Galdosiana», por el Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria, cuyo principal objetivo es la publicación de los textos auténticos, base de la ediciones críticas de las obras de don Benito Pérez Galdós, así como otros aspectos fundamentales de su vida y de su obra. Ahora se inicia esta serie galdosiana con la edición crítica del episodio nacional, Zumalacárregui, presentada por la profesora Yolanda Arencibia, que, además, va precedida de un prólogo, que es un verdadero y profundo estudio de este episodio, primero de la tercera serie. Desde la primera página hasta la última, nuestra investigadora realiza un detallado y acertado trabajo sobre el significado y sentido, sobre la composición y finalidad de los episodios dentro de la producción novelística galdosiana, que unas veces, son más novelas que historia, y otras, más historia que novelas, pero, sea como sea, Galdós compuso con estas narraciones «más historia verdadera que la historia». Lo que no estamos muy de acuerdo es que esté   —111→   justificada la separación de las series de los Episodios nacionales de las demás novelas de la Serie Contemporánea, porque aquéllos se «confirman en un todo homogéneo», pues como la misma investigadora reconoce, es «inútil intentar una separación absoluta entre Episodios y Novelas», pues la estructura de estas obras relaciona su acción y sus ambientes con la realidad contemporánea tanto en uno como en otro género, dotando a ambos, como ha visto Casalduero, de sentido creativo, imaginativo y simbólico.

Por otra parte, en la tercera serie, de temple romántico, coincide la variedad engendradora de personajes como Calpena, Beltrán de Urdaneta, Santiago Ibero con el transcurrir del río de la intrahistoria, que, según la doctora Arencibia, sobrepasa la significación de novela histórica y pasa a ser «psicología nacional» (17), que tiene en este episodio significado pleno con dualidad de personajes o pareja historia-ficción (Zumalacárregui-Fago) o de ficción-historia (Fago-Zumalacárregui). Su máximo sentido, como observa acertadamente, se alcanza con la muerte del caudillo carlista, como símbolo del carlismo, que significa, no sólo la muerte de un héroe, sino la terminación de todo un estilo de vida y de concepción del mundo, que, en resumen, representa en gran medida todo el siglo XIX, con lo que, sin duda, tiene que ver la fecha en que este episodio fue escrito, el año 1898, con todas sus connotaciones históricas y culturales.

Centrada la doctora Arencibia en el estudio de la naturaleza del episodio objeto de esta edición, y en la figura del héroe, y después de señalar algunas fuentes de dicho episodio, afirma que «Nos hallamos ante un novelista cuidadoso de la historia, que pone buen cuidado en transportar con toda fidelidad a su Episodio los datos numéricos, las fechas, los topónimos que sus fuentes señalan» (23). En cuanto al papel de Galdós como narrador de su propia obra, sigue la doctora Arencibia a algunos autores como a Ricardo Gullón, quien dice que don Benito como narrador implícito es «un narrador no imparcial [...] irónico y socarrón, escéptico y apasionado a la vez», que, según nuestra autora, es un «narrador dolorosamente conmovido ante la realidad que narra, que mantiene a los lectores siempre en primera línea de los hechos narrados» (25-26). Pero esto es lo que ocurre en la mayoría de, si no en todos, sus episodios y novelas, y mucho más cuando el autor-narrador está en tercera persona, donde actúa de narrador-personaje. Pero ¿cuál es la visión personal que este autor-narrador nos da en Zumalacárregui como obra literaria? La respuesta la encuentra nuestra investigadora después de aplicar el método basado en «el estudio interpretativo», o sea «analizar mostrando», cosa que ella realiza también concienzudamente, tanto en el significado de los personajes principales y secundarios, como en la disposición y recursos de la estructura narrativa. Acertada nos parece su conclusión de que el personaje Fago es «la mejor de las creaciones de este episodio» pues es la personificación de la dualidad, de la oscilación, de la ambigüedad, es decir, la síntesis de las características de esa guerra civil, tanto para los carlistas como para los isabelinos, a nuestro juicio. Pero también su personalidad, según la doctora Arencibia, se ve simbolizada en dos acciones o impulsos: la milicia y el amor, personificadas en sus dos admiraciones: Zumalacárregui y Saloma. En este sentido, concluye, Zumalacárregui y Fago son la cara y cruz de una misma moneda» (33).

Pero todavía podríamos encontrar otro paralelismo antitético entre la primera y la tercera serie, centrándonos en los personales ficticios y simbólicos de Gabriel Araceli y de Fago, antihéroe de Zumalacárregui, que buscará a Saloma inútilmente, hasta morir cerca de ella, sin encontrarla nunca, mientras que Araceli, el héroe del pueblo que lucha por su identidad, busca su ideal patrio y su amor, hasta salir triunfante en   —112→   ambos objetivos. Ambos, pues, son símbolos de dos épocas de la historia de España, ya bien conocidas y determinadas. Por otra parte, la doctora Arencibia señala muy bien que la tercera serie es la proyección literaria del tema de las dos Españas, donde «las preocupaciones de índole religiosa son básicas en la configuración de los personajes a lo largo de toda producción creativa de Galdós» (51). Y pensamos que, en el caso de la creación del episodio Zumalacárregui, se puede recordar que la fecha de su redacción fue el año clave de 1898, en torno al cual se llevó a escena Doña Perfecta en 1896 y se compuso La fiera, donde se representaba claramente el enfrentamiento del fanatismo religioso con la ideología liberal, que llegaron a su máxima expresión pública con Electra (1901) y con la novela dialogada Casandra (1905). Después de examinar la doctora Arencibia, con su acertado método intuitivo e inductivo, al autor en su episodio, a los personajes, históricos y ficticios, en sus relaciones humanas en sus niveles particulares y sociales, las ideologías, los puntos de vista del carlismo y de su «cruzada», las «gentes de España» y sus clases y hasta sus alimentos, para concluir su estudio dedica su último apartado a exponer las técnicas narrativas, la lengua y el estilo de Galdós en este episodio.

Ese apartado es uno de los más interesantes y fundamentales de esta obra, y se basa en el cotejo que, pacientemente, ha realizado la doctora Arencibia, entre las galeradas (incompletas) y las tres primeras ediciones del episodio Zumalacárregui publicadas en vida de su autor. Los resultados de ese cotejo tienen su réplica en la obra de nuestra autora sobre La lengua de Galdós (1987) donde, como ella misma dice en su prólogo, «Observaremos a lo largo de nuestra exégesis cómo las variantes galdosianas responden a muy variada intención y son de muy diversa índole significativa». Su importancia está clara al afirmar que esas galeradas forman un segundo texto «resultado de las recurrencias a que el autor acude para confirmar su lenguaje de manera más ajustada a sus ideales formales o conceptuales». Todo ello le permitirá llegar a nuestra escritora a conclusiones válidas, tanto para determinar las estructuras narrativas como sus recursos retóricos, tanto por medio de la concepción clásica como por el método estructuralista, y establecer las correlaciones o temáticas según las formas de la expresión como las del significado, y su sentido último, como hemos apuntado en algún caso. Al final de todo este exhaustivo estudio de las correcciones introducidas en las galeradas de Zumalacárregui con sus finales resultados, nos encontramos con uno de los exámenes más científicos de la lengua de Galdós, si no en su totalidad, en el estado que se encontraba en uno de sus momentos culminantes, cosa que le permite afirmar que «En el narrador de Zumalacárregui reconocemos los caracteres bien conocidos del narrador galdosiano: tono amistoso, rico en expresiones coloquiales», y confirmar que «El estilo de Zumalacárregui es el propio del autor: llano, sencillo, directo, coloquial; también rico en flexiones, sugestivo por sus cualidades rítmicas y a la vez sobrio, preciso y certero» (65). No se puede decir con más precisión y claridad las cualidades y rasgos del estilo galdosiano, independientemente de que en otros textos de otras épocas del mismo autor haya variaciones, como es de esperar en toda amplia obra y larga vida del escritor.

Para corroborar lo dicho y para dar un testimonio de primera mano a lo dicho en este apartado sobre el estilo y la lengua de Galdós, y al mismo tiempo animar a nuestra investigadora a examinar los manuscritos y galeradas de los Episodios nacionales que existen en la Casa-Museo de Las Palmas, que ella ya conoce, ofrecemos un párrafo, donde el propio don Benito nos habla, en una carta dirigida a su amada Teodosia Gandarias, sobre la redacción y corrección del que sería su último episodio, sobre el que   —113→   escribe: «Cánovas está concluido: no faltan más que algunos toques o pinceladas sintéticas para dar vigor al final, y eso pienso hacerlo hoy o mañana. Lo que me abruma es el sin fin de pruebas que van y vienen; pero esto con un poco de paciencia se despacha sin dificultad» (10 de agosto de 1912).

Universidad de La Laguna