Galdós and the Irony of Language

by Diane F. Urey

• ISBN13: 9780521673327
• ISBN10: 0521673321
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Benito Pèrez Galdòs was the foremost Spanish novelist of the nineteenth century. His novels are frequently compared with those of Dickens and Balzac, and considered examples of nineteenth-century realism. In a speech before the Spanish Academy of Language, Galdòs himself declared that the novel is 'an image of life'; scholars have often considered that image to be an uncritical reflection, or even a biased misrepresentation of the Spanish society of the time. This book shows, by detailed analysis of Galdòs narrative techniques, how his novels display a much more skeptical and ironical attitude toward the ability of language to represent reality, than has previously been recognized. Rather than attempting to judge the accuracy of Galdòs' image of life the author analyzes the linguistic means by which the novels recreate life in their own image. With close and discriminating attention to detail the author illustrates Galdòs' narrative irony with examples from the serie contemporènea, the most highly acclaimed period of his writing. She analyzes the ironic possibilities under three main headings: depiction of characters, description of places, and the narrative voice. A final chapter describes the fusion of these devices in the novella Torquemada en la hoguera. This clearly argued study, structuralist in approach and sensitive to nuances of style and language, will appeal to students of modern critical theory and comparative literature as well as to Hispanists.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vi
Introduction	1	(4)
1 The irony of portrait	5	(42)
Isidora Rufete
Rosalia de Bringas
2 The setting of irony	47	(17)
La de Bringas
Torquemada y San Pedro
Nazarin
Misericordia
3 The narrator of irony	64	(31)
The historical chronicle, the novel within the novel, and Don Quijote: Nazarin and Halma
'Phantom chapters': Angel Guerra
First-person narrators: El amigo Manso and Lo prohibido
The epistolary novel: La incógnita
The dialogue novel: Realidad
4 The texture of irony	95	(27)
Conclusion	122	(7)
Notes	129	(5)
Bibliography	134	(3)
Index	137