In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

THE CITY AS DESIGN FOR THE NOVEL: MADRID IN FORTUNATA YJACINTA Furris Anderson earned his ΒΛ andMA. degrees at Duke University (I960 and 1962) and his Ph.D. degree from die University of Wisconsin (1968). He has been a member of the Spanish faculty of die University ofWashington, Seattle since 1967, where he was Department Chair from 1995 - 1999 and currently holds the rank of Professor. He has published numerous articles and reviews primarily in the fields of contemporary Spanish dieatre and the literature of Madrid, several transUtions of contemporary Spanish dramas, an edition of two pUys by Alfonso Sastre, a book on Sastre, and a book on Galdós's masterpiece, Fortunata y Jacinta. From 1967 to 1981 he directed the Spanish theatre program at the University ofWashington. He has abo directed numerous studyabroad programs in Spain, and is currently Executive Director of the University of Washington's program in Cadiz. According to my count, Galdós, in Fortunata y Jacinta, makes 710 passing references to the . streets, plazas, and neighborhoods of Madrid , and to buildings, institutions, and commercial establishments whose location in the city can be identified. He furthermore uses 41 locations as the settings for 145 sustained scenes of greater or lesser duration. Yet in spite of these impressive numbers , critics from ClarÃ-n on down have insisted on Galdós's reluctance to indulge in local color for its own sake, and on the fact that in the Novelas Contemporáneas setting is secondary to characterization and human conflict (Alas 17-19; Gilman, "Birth"; López-Landy 19; Risley 27; Shoemaker 113). If there appears to be a contradiction here between Galdós's obsessive evocation of the city, and a persistent critical denial of his costumbrismo, I believe it can be resolved by making a distinction between costumbrismo and the use of urban space as an organizing principle for the novel. The latter is clearly one of Galdós's major artistic resources. Strangely, it has received relatively little critical attention. Galdós's madriUñismo in general terms is, of course, a critical commonplace. No reader of Galdós is unaware of don Benito's love and knowledge of the city, his sense of its genius loci, his documentation of its physical face and social organization in the nineteenth century . But Madrid is, for Galdós, more than an object of sociological meditation or a source of sentiArizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 3, 1999 86 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies mental inspiration. It is also a source of form and a resource for generating novels. Madrid is one of Galdós's passions, but it is also a system which he methodically appropriates for the crafting of his novels. Put simply, Galdós uses the urban space of Madrid as a means of giving form to the Novelas Contemporáneas. In this systematic use of urban space, this relation between urban structure and literary form, one finds a key to Galdós's literary art.1 William Risley, in his excellent study of setting in the early Novelas Contemporáneas, refers to the period 18811885 as "a time of artistic experimentation and maturation" for Galdós (24). The accuracy of Risley's assessment is borne out by a comparison between the use of urban space in the early novels and in Fortunata y Jacinta, which was completed in 1887. Fortunata y Jacinta marks Galdós's maturity in many ways; one of the most notable is the novelist's consummate manipulation of the urban space. In the four volumes of Galdós's masterpiece Madrid attains an organic quality, a structural function , and a relation to literary form that it does not have in the earlier novels. Prior to Fortunata y Jacinta Galdós's use of Madrid as a source of novelistic organization is tentative. In Fortunata y Jacinta, however , die city that has been hovering over Galdós's fictional world acquires coherence and clarity, and is elevated from the role of background to that of organizer of the characters' experiences. Stephen Gilman, in "The Birth of Fortunata," has seen Fortunata y Jacinta as a chemin from birth to death...

pdf

Share