Names for Things: The Discourse of History in Galdós’ O'Donnell
1986; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 63; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1475382862000363033
ISSN1469-3550
Autores Tópico(s)Galician and Iberian cultural studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: EPISODIOS NACIONALES [B. PÉREZ GALDÓS]HISTORICAL NOVEL/THEATRE [IN SPAIN & SPANISH AMERICA]O’DONNELL [B. PÉREZ GALDÓS]PÉREZ GALDÓS, BENITO (1843–1920)SPAIN — HISTORY — 18th–19th CENTURIESSPAIN — LITERATURE — 18th–19th CENTURIES — PROSE Notes 1. See Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, trans. Wade Baskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966). 2. All quotations are from Benito Pérez Galdós, Episodios nacionales, 4 vols., Obras completas, ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles, primera edición, 3a reimpresión (Madrid: Aguilar, 1979). All the passages quoted here are from O'Donnell in the third volume, which is cited by page numbers only. 3. Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. P., 1978), 129. 4. I have discussed this problem in other episodios in ‘Isabel II and Historical Truth in the Fourth Series of Galdós’ Episodios nacionales’, MLN XCVIII (1983), 189–207 and in ‘Linguistic Mediation in the Episodios nacionales of Galdós: Vergara’, Philological Quarterly LXII (1983), 263–71. 5. White, 98. 6. Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 20, identifies codes as ‘a kind of network, a topos through which the entire text passes (or rather, in passing, becomes text)’. Barthes suggests that the structure of this network nonetheless admits a ‘multivalence’ and ‘partial reversibility’ of its terms in the text. This essay explores instances of such reversibility. For further discussions of the nature of codes see Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1975), 202–37 and On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1982), 32–34. 7. Brian Dendle's discussion of the historical events of this period in Galdós: The Mature Thought (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1980), 117–21, is most useful. 8. Geoffrey Ribbans, ‘“La historia como debiera ser”: Galdós's Speculations on Nineteenth-century Spanish History’, BHS, LIX (1982), 267–74, writes that Teresa decides at the end of O'Donnell to be ‘kept in relative opulence by Manuel Tarfe’, 267. However, it is not Tarfe that will be her next lover, as he says to her himself: ‘¿Cómo has de ignorar tú que alguna persona de grandísimo poder y de riqueza desmedida te solicita …, vamos, pide tu mano para llevarla al altar que no tiene santos?’ (1052). Tarfe goes on to suggest that Teresa accept an official rich lover, and keep him unofficially: ‘Teresa, ¿no podrías conciliar la ambición y el amor? Ello es sencillísimo: aceptas lo que los ricos te dan, y me quieres a mí. La riqueza mía es corta … No puedo satisfacer tu ambición …’ (1053). But Teresa rejects this proposal: ‘Rebelóse Teresa contra la profunda inmoralidad que esta proposición envolvía’ (1053). The suggestion at the very end of the novel is that Teresa's next lover is to be the financier Salamanca: ‘Teresa se metió por un callejón que, a su parecer, debía conducirla … al mismo sitio donde estuvo sentada con Tarfe. Pero se había equivocado … y … fué a parar junto al palacio de Salamanca, cuyo grandor … contempló largo rato silenciosa, midiéndolo de abajo arriba y en toda su anchura con atenta mirada’ (1057). 9. See my discussion of this term with respect to other characters in the Fourth Series in ‘Isabel II and Historical Truth’. 10. Alfred Rodríguez, An Introduction to the Episodios Nacionales of Galdós (New York: Las Américas, 1967), recognizes these paradoxical parallels, but finds in them a resolution that this essay rejects. He writes that Teresa's ‘decision to take on a rich lover … constitutes the most honest solution to the materialistic vocation of the period, ethically superior, without question, to economic matches and their subsequent adulteries, however discreet and palatable to a corrupt society’ (145). 11. Rodríguez, 165, writes that ‘the suicide of captain Villaescusa, … exemplifies the nature of military solutions’. See note 10 above. 12. See my discussion of Benina's ironic transcendence in Galdós and the Irony of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1982), 60–63. 13. The cycle of favours here is interesting: Teresa asks Tarfe to obtain jobs for Centurión and others; Tarfe ‘dirigió sus tiros contra doña Mañuela’ (1047) instead of her husband himself. She in turn convinces O'Donnell to grant the favours, after receiving various ‘folletines nuevos’ from Tarfe who ‘sacrificaba por las noches sus más agradables ratos de casino y teatros para leerle a doña Mañuela pasajes de febril interés’ (1048). The sequence of male/female and words/jobs merits further consideration. 14. Both Dendle, The Mature Thought, 120–37 passim., and Ribbans ‘“La historia como debiera ser”’ have particularly illuminating discussions of Santiuste.
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