A study of Galdós' Jewish characters and what they tell us about the place of Jews in C19th Spanish society and culture. Few Spanish novelists have dealt with the problem of religion and religious commitment more comprehensively than Benito Pérez Galdós. His lifelong preoccupation with man in search of transendence repeatedly led him to evaluate andcriticize the religious institutions that stifled rather than helped man in his search. In the Jews, Galdós saw a people who, though victimized by religious intolerance, managed to survive persecution and affirm an abiding faithin God. He created Jewish characters throughout his long literary career and therefore presents the most comprehensive portrait of Jews as they existed in the culture, the religion and fabric of C19th Spanish society.

Darwinian theory - the big idea of the nineteenth century - and its impact on the writing of Benito Pérez Galdós. Despite the fact that Darwinian theory was perhaps the big idea of the nineteenth century, most critics in the past have assumed that Benito Pérez Galdós would have remained unaffected by this scientific and philosophical revolution. This work contends otherwise, charting the influence of evolutionary theories on Galdós throughout his literary career. From his adaptation of the early nineteenth-century costumbristas' depiction of social species into a more sophisticated portrayal of Madrid society to his treatment of shifting social forces at a time of major socio-economic change, Galdós's outlook is shown to be deeply enmeshed in the Darwinian debate. Attention is paid not only to the hypotheses of Darwin himself, but also for instance to Ernst Haeckel's evolutionary thought, to Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism, and to the radical histology of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Galdós and Darwin discusses how Spain's greatest novelist since Cervantes imaginatively reworked these epoch-making theories and investigates the impact of science on culture as the Spanish nation approached the twentieth century. T. E. BELL completed his Ph.D. under the supervision of Professor Nicholas Round at Sheffield University.

Imagined Truths provides a twenty-first-century analysis of stylistic and philosophical manifestations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish literary realism. Bringing together the work of the foremost specialists in the field of contemporary Spanish letters, this collection offers new approaches to literary and cultural criticism and reveals how Spanish realism, far from imitative of other European movements, engaged in complex and modern concepts of representation and mimesis. Imagined Truths acknowledges the critical importance of women writers and contemporary approaches to questions of gender. The essays address the impact of economics on our perceptions of reality and our constructions of everyday life, and they argue for the importance of emotions in the social construction of individual identity. Most importantly, the essays acknowledge the post-imperial turn in literary studies. Addressing a broad range of authors, works, and topics, including the continued relevance of Cervantes's Don Quijote and the way Spanish realism moved beyond narrative to inhabit the spaces of both theatre and film, Imagined Truths comprises a series of meditations on new ways of understanding the unique place of realism in Spanish cultural history. Offering insights for specialists in a wide range of disciplines - literature, cultural studies, gender studies, history, philosophy - this collection is equally important for readers just becoming acquainted with realist narrative as a central component of Spanish literary history.

Galdos wrote prolifically in two distinct narrative modes: some twenty major 'contemporary novels' in the realist tradition and a special sort of historical novel he called the episodio nacional. The reign of Isabella II (1843-68) and the revolutionary period which followed until 1875 was a time of exceptional volatility in Spain, and Geoffrey Ribbans's comprehensive study shows how each of Galdos's two narrative modes adopts a particular technique in its treatment of Spanish history and politics. The episodio is tightly bound to historical events and timescale, though it skilfully incorporates its fictional characters into this framework; the novel on the other hand is embedded in historical reality in a constant but less systematic manner.

With the advances of Galdos scholarship over the last twenty years, the episodios are increasingly treated as works of fiction rather than as means of transmitting elementary historical facts to the ignorant; furthermore, characters' protestations are no longer always taken at face value. The present volume complements the previous study, Galdos: The Mature Thought, in which the twenty-six episodios written between 1898 and 1912 are examined in their ideological context.

Benito Perez Galdos and the Creative Process was first published in 1954. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Most critics would rank Benito Perez Galdos second only to Cervantes among the great novelists of Spain. However, in spite of the esteem in which he is generally held, Galdos has been the subject of relatively few scholarly studies. Professor Pattison, by an analysis of two of Galdos' novels, attempts to reconstruct the creative processes that were involved in the writing of these novels. This is the first time that such a critical approach has been used in the field of Spanish fiction and the resulting study is significant not only to Spanish scholars but to all students of literature seeking further insights into the fascinating and still elusive creative process. Professor Pattison analyzes the novels Gloria, published in 1877, and Marianela,which was published the following year. Both are stories of contemporary life, the former having as its theme the conflict between noble religion and the fanaticism of individual religious sects, and the latter presenting a story of tragic love interwoven with the social problem of the responsibilities of the rich toward the poor. In tracking down the sources of ideas, characters, plots, and viewpoints that emerge in these novels, Professor Pattison worked first-hand in Galdos' personal library in Madrid. From the notes and markings in the books and from other intimate observations, the scholar-detective put his finger on many of the original sources that contributed to Galdos' artistic creations and identified the prototypes for fictional characters among persons Galdos knew.

"The United States has come to know Spain, its people, and its land through its literature and, more recently, through the international distribution of many of its films. This analysis aims to probe the creative Spanish soul in greater depth through the particular prism of the cinematic adaptation." "The analysis of the Spanish novels La familia de Pascual Duarte and Los santos inocentes and their cinematic adaptations Pascual Duarte (1975) and Los santos inocentes (1984) is based on the intersection of literary and cinematic theory." "The first chapter of this study summarizes various theories whose integration forms a basis for the analysis of the cinematic adaptation. Structuralism, semiotics, deconstruction, reader criticism, and Freudian/Lacanian psychology serve both film and literary criticism in their analysis of texts. The theories examined in this chapter are inflected in later chapters into the criticism and analysis of the novels and films in question." "The second chapter provides general background information on agrarian Spain - the historical, economic, and ideological context of both La familia de Pascual Duarte and Los santos inocentes. While in most cases the texts refer only obliquely to the reigning ideology that is responsible for the plight of the rural worker, the history of the province of Extremadura, where rural poverty is and was a social and economic phenomenon, is crucial to the understanding of all four texts whose stories are set in this province."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This study examines the profound impact of Cervantes and Don Quijote on the magnum opus of Benito Perez Galdos, Spain's pre-eminent novelist of the 19th century. It aims to demonstrate how he incorporates and rewrites aspects of the Quijote.