La teoria de la novela en Espana (1850--1900): La vision de los novelistas. [Spanish text].

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Barbieri, Marie E.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

Spanish

Subjects (All):

Romance-language literature.

0313.

Local Subjects:

0313.

Physical Description:

287 pages

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 51-01A.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

This dissertation studies the theoretical writings of seven novelists--Fernan Caballero, Pereda, Alarcon, Valera, Pardo Bazan, Galdos, and Palacio Valdes--chosen for their devotion to both the theory and practice of the novel. These writers, together with Clarin, form a group, rethinking the genre during a critical period of its development in Spain. But it is not merely their centrality to the development of the novel that unites them. These authors, sometimes unwillingly, often polemically, were known to construct their criticism and even their novels in response to each other; they often attacked, counter-attacked, wrote novels, created characters, and situations in response to one another's ideas. Older criticism, accepting without question labels such as the "idealists" versus the "realists," failed to appreciate that they constituted a group, divided by their conceptions of the novel but united by their dedication to the genre and their disputes over it. Examining the ideas espoused by these novelists in this new context offers a more complete view of the theory of the novel of the period than could a study of any one writer alone.

Each of the authors in question write novels as well as theoretical pieces that included prologues to their own and other novels, essays, newspaper articles, and other journalistic endeavors. Some of these writers, such as Valera, made their theories of the novel fairly explicit; others, such as Alarcon, made far fewer direct references to theory, any such statements being virtually ignored by literary critics. Drawing on rare primary sources such as prologues to first editions and little-known newspaper articles, this study attempts to synthesize and analyze their ideas about the novel. Each chapter focuses on a different author; the topics discussed vary from novelist to novelist and include: the novel as genre, the process of fictionalization, language and style, characters, plot, narrative techniques, the reader, the author. None of these writers can be said to have arrived at a complete theory of the novel. Taken together, however, their ideas show us the vision that key novelists of the period had for the genre they cultivated so well.

Notes:

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-01, Section: A, page: 0175.

Supervisor: German Gullon.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1989.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175.

Access Restriction:

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