La historia de España en Galdós: análisis y proceso de elaboración de los ‘Episodios nacionales’ by Dolores Troncoso, Salvador García Castañeda, and Carmen Luna (review)

Despite the fact that an increasing number of scholars have been turning to Benito Pérez Galdós’s historical novels as a rich source of information to help understand the complex cultural events that shaped nineteenth-century Spain, many readers still find the Episodios nacionales as a whole an intimidating challenge. Together, the forty-six novels paint a portrait of Spanish history beginning with the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and ending in the 1880s with the Bourbon Restoration. Galdós grouped the Episodios into five separate series, each addressing a span of years corresponding to Spanish political history (i.e., the War of Independence in the First Series and the reign of Fernando VII in the Second.) Yet the individual novels successfully stand alone in their depiction of specific historical events that play out amidst the convincing portrait of social life. This interplay between the broad historical overview of the series and the literary artistry of each novel, combined with the sheer number of volumes, has led many readers to consider the Episodios nacionales too vast of a critical undertaking. In this much needed new introduction to the Episodios nacionales, however, Professors Troncoso, García Castañeda and Luna adroitly manage to navigate between the presentation of a national historiography and the detailed focus on the events and characters of a single novel to provide an introduction to the Episodios nacionales that will serve both specialists and general readers alike as they explore Galdós’s literary recreation of a critical period of Spanish history.

The book is divided into seven chapters, five of which are reprints of the introductions that appeared in the 2005–2010 critical edition of the Episodios nacionales, edited by Professor Troncoso and published by Editorial Destino. In addition to the chapters that address each one of the five series, the book contains a succinct and useful introduction to the Episodios as a whole and a concluding chapter detailing their print history. It is worth noting that this is the first general introduction to the novels since the studies by Diane Urey and Brian Dendle in the 1980s and the general introductions by José Montesinos, Hans Hinterhäuser and Alfred Rodríguez in the 1960s. This new book builds on these former studies and includes new perspectives that have grown out of cultural studies and new historical approaches to nineteenth-century Spain.

Chapter One, co-authored by Professors Troncoso and García Casteñeda, introduces the Episodios as works which reflect Galdós’s belief that an understanding of Spain’s historical past would help the nation face its current challenges. It also notes Galdós’s awareness of the realist models of other European writers, most notably Charles Dickens, that shaped his approach to narrating his nation’s history. The introduction also notes the connections between the period of history presented in the novels and their moment of production ––the first and second series between 1875 and 1879 and the final three series between 1898 and 1912–– and mentions the shifting narrative perspectives that Galdós employs as he moves chronologically in time from events early in the century to those that he himself later witnessed as a young adult when he moved to Madrid in 1863. While noting that these novels are a rich source of historical, sociological and political information, the authors never lose sight of the fact that they are works of literature and, as such, evidence all of Galdós’s skills as a writer of fiction.

Chapters 2 and 3 address the first and second series, respectively, and are written by Professor Troncoso, a noted Galdós specialist. In her discussion of the first series...