El arte narrativo de Francisco Ayala by Dr. Keith Ellis, and: Mazo de la Roche of Jalna by Ronald Hambleton (review)

HUMANITIES 407 guised ideas'." Gold adds to this something about humanism which I have di£liculty in understanding: "Like 'Humanism' itself, or any other strongly held religious conviction, Faulkner's belief is based on faith" (my italics). His later moralizing, allegorizing stance may result from "the Baptist, revivalist, evangelistic tradition in the South, with which he must surely have come into contact." On the basis of this simple O.T.-N.T., metaphor-discourse distinction, Gold proceeds to examine a selection of Faulkner's fiction, with long passages of synopsis. In the process another basic assumption emerges: "plot" and situation in fiction should be realistic and credible; the "artificial contrivance of plot or myth that characterizes Requiem for a Nun, Intruder in the Dust, or 'The Bear'" is highly suspect. (One wonders how Gold manages with The Faerie Queene or The Naked Lunch.) In line with this attitude, the chapter on 'The Bear" ends: 'The 'wider ranges of meaning' should be a result of the writer's having written movingly of the world as he sees it. When a 'message' is the impulse, the fiction drags limply after." In all this there is very little sense that Gold has seen Faulkner's vision in panoramic terms. He is considerably farther away than Michael Millgate from grasping the pattern that informs Faulkner's great trilogy, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion, and he does not recognize that Faulkner usually becomes somewhat stagey and artificial when he leaves the world of Yoknapatawpha. In a final chapter on The Reivers Gold rightly finds that Faulkner is again in his "metaphorical" mood; but at this point we have left the thesis far behind. Surprisingly neither Millgate nor Gold seems to have read William Van O'Connor on Faulkner, or Millar MacLure's important article in Canadian Forum and his review article on The Reivers. But these articles suggest another kind of Faulkner study. There will be more fables for Faulkner. (HUGO MCPHERSON) The purpose of Dr. Keith Ellis' EI arte narrativo de Francisco Ayala (Biblioteca Romanica Hispanica, Editorial Gredos, S.A. Madrid, 1964, pp. 259)- a dissertation for the doctorate in Letters-is to point out the structural techniques and the stylistic and narrative devices that furnish proof of Ayala's contribution to tl,e contemporary Spanish novel. Dr. Ellis accomplishes his task conscientiously, devoting the greater partfive out of seven chapters-of his work to the elucidation of his thesis. After a brief profile of Francisco Ayala, and a general discussion of 408 LETTERS IN CANADA his works, a detailed analysis is made of his literary art to situate him within a particular moment of Spanish history and within the various cultural and artistic movements that have affected the Spanish novelist in the different epochs of his literary production. It is by the utilization of the chronological and critical methods applied to works like Cazador en el alba, Tragicomedia de un hombre sin espiritu, Los usurpadores, etc., that Ellis succeds in uncovering Ayala's efforts to perfect his narrative techniques until after 1949, when he reached the summit of his career as a novelist with La cabeza del cordero, Histaria de macacos, and particularly with Muertes de perro and with El fonda del vasa. From 1930 to 1949, Ayala's narrative prose seemed to prefer the external artifice, but his art gained as he illustrated in exact relief, through the appropriate means of linguistic expression, the ideas that occupied the minds of his contemporaries and caused deep concern to intellectuals the world over during and after the Spanish civil war. Ayala's preoccupation with the tormented world in which we live, and his desire to explicate the writer's role within it, are particularly obvious in his El escritor en la sociedad de las masas. El arte narrativo de Francisco Ayala is, in the opinion of this reviewer, meticulous and exhaustive and may very well serve as an incentive to other young scholars. It shows perception, critical sense, and an uncommon acquaintance with Spanish fictional literature. It has accumulated, furthermore, all the bibliographical data which relate directly and indirectly to the field. There is a point, however, to which I should like...