Illustrating Pereda: Picturesque Costumbrismo in El sabor de la Tierruca

Illustrating Pereda: Picturesque Costumbrismo in El sabor de Ia Tierruca Toni Dorca (Ph.D., University of California, Davis, 1993) is Associate Professor of Spanish atMacahster College . After publishing his doctoral dissertation, "Los albores de L· crÃ-tica moderna. José del Perojo, Mantielde L· Revitta yL· 'Revista Contemporánea'" (Universitas Castelae, 1998), he has written extensively on nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Spanish narrative. He is currently completing a hook on the idyllic chronotope in Spanish realist fiction which includes authors such as Fernán Caballero, Juan Valero, José MarÃ-a de Pereda, Benito Pérez Galdos, NarcÃ-s Olier, and Emilia Pardo Bazán. The fact that José MarÃ-a de Pereda remained impervious to the debates on Realism and Naturalism for much of his career has finally caught up with his place in the canon. His literary creed, rooted in a eulogy for the traditional patriarchal values soon to succumb to capitalism, seems indeed so outdated as to arouse little interest among the specialists in nineteenth-century fiction . Vis-à -vis the depiction of an increasingly problematic reality on the part of the Spanish master novelists of that time—Galdós, Pardo Bazán, and ClarÃ-n—Pereda portrays his native region as an idyllic, pastoral locus devoid of social conflict. ' As a result of this ideological stance, our appreciation of his novels has declined considerably in spite of the impressive work by critics like CossÃ-o, Montesinos, Clarke, González Herrán, Bonet, GarcÃ-a Castañeda, Miralles, or Germán Gullón. His linguistic proficiency notwithstanding, Pereda's reliance upon an authoritative narrator presiding over a static world no longer satisfies the imperatives of change and moral relativism vindicated by the Realist canon. Even the institutionalization of regional literature in Spain's autonomies has not turned the tide of public indifference to figures who, like our author, have long ceased to speak to a modern sensibility. Perhaps irremediably, Pereda has lost appeal among the majority of readers who approach literature in search of what he cannot offer: a timeless, global interpretation of human experience. No small part of Pereda's discredit lies in the inability to blend harmoniously his penchant for the cuadro de Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 6, 2002 98 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies costumbres with the richness of plot and characterization common in the Realist novel.2 As much as I may agree with those who attribute his shortcomings to a misunderstanding of what the art of the novel is all about, I would like to argue nevertheless for a re-examination of his fiction in a more embracing perspective. As we know, scholarly trends in the last two decades or so have been active in removing the text from its isolation by highlighting the role mediations play in the production , distribution, and reception of what we designate now as cultural artifacts. It is my contention, then, that one willing to suspend temporarily his or her artistic beliefs might derive important advantages from exploring critical paths within an interdisciplinary frame. After all, we are living in a time of transition—and confusion —in the humanities, when even so a established institution as Aesthetics has to reckon with a mounting number of discontents. The type of analysis I advocate here will hopefully explain Pereda's adherence to his literary principles not so much as a stubborn divergence but rather in its relationship to the cultural constraints of his age. In the first part of this essay I purport to show how the alliance of painting and narrative throughout the 1800s originated in a lively debate on the picturesque that took place in England at the end of the eighteenth century. A subsequent stage in this alliance arrived in Spain during the Romantic vogue for the articuh de costumbres, which owed much of its popularity to the transformations brought forth by the illustrated press. With the aid of lithography and other engraving techniques, costumbrismo succeeded in exposing the nation's idiosyncratic variety from the periodical page to collections such as Los españoles pintados por sÃ- mismos (1843). The juxtaposition of text and image extended its domain to Realism as well, the presence of illustrations...