Description:
Between 1881 and 1897, Benito Pérez Gald6s, generally acknowledged as Spain’s greatest nineteenth-century novelist, composed some twenty ‘contemporary’ novels, which Geoffrey Ribbans characterizes as the peak of his achievement. This monumental study traces the evolution of the many strands that make up one of them: the long and complex novel Fortunata y Jacinta.

Ribbans examines the various stages of composition, not only the earlier, reconstructed Alpha version but also subsequent revisions in the much corrected handwritten text as well as in the printer’s galleys. He treats these tentative drafts not in isolation but as part of the process of reaching out toward the coherent definitive text.

Ribbans’s analysis of such devices as the ambiguous role of the narrator, the use of free indirect style and direct dialogue, and the construction of distinctive ideolects leads to the heart of his study, the development of Gald6s’s characters. This discussion, which is expanded to include the interaction of the characters with the society and politics of their time and their integration into the topography of Madrid, focuses particularly on the two female protagonists. Ribbans’s examination uncovers a structural pattern of contrasting, highly developed characters, all interacting and contributing to an intricate network of social involvement.


CONTENTS:

Preface......ix

List of abbvreviations......xiii

Key to Textual History of Fortunata y Jacinta......xv

Introduction......1

Chapter 1: Structure......15

Chapter 2: Representation......49

Chapter 3: Time and Space......85

Chapter 4: Characters in Family and Society......123

Chapter 5: The Positivist-Idealist Dichotomy......163

Chapter 6: Frustrations and Accommodations......193

Chapter 7: Fortunata......227

Chapter 8: Conclusion......267

Notes......285

Works Consulted......319

Index......341