The Spanish Novel of “Ideas”: Critical Opinion (1836–1880)

PMLA ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 531-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherman H. Eoff
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Marked Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Spanish Novel ◽  
The Common ◽  
Fernan Caballero ◽  
Critical Writings

The rebirth of the Spanish novel in the nineteenth century is commonly identified with Galdós, Valera, Alarcón, and Pereda in the decade 1870–80, while the costumbristas and Fernán Caballero are looked upon as precursors of this rebirth. The purpose of the present study is to present, for some four or five decades and with attention to the novel, a prominent phase of critical tastes in Spain. Some critics looked upon the renaissance of the Spanish novel as fortunately having taken place in the novel which gave emphasis to ideas, or, as they were wont to describe it, the “philosophical” or “transcendental” novel. But the Spanish terms filosofía, trascendencia, and even trascendentalismo were very loosely used. Thus, the novel which dealt with ideas of social, moral, religious, or political significance was commonly called filosófica and trascendental, especially in the 1870's: The novel of thesis, sometimes called novela tendenciosa, was a notable manifestation of this type of “philosophical” novel. The importance attached by critics at this time to ideas of trascendencia in the novel was for the most part in keeping with the critical tastes of the preceding decades; certain novels of Galdós, Valera, Alarcón, and Pereda, praised by contemporary critics for their trascendencia, seemingly were the fulfillment of an aspiration on the part of earlier critics that the novel treat of important ideas underlying society. On the other hand, the attitude toward the propagation of ideas shows a marked change in its development. In this survey of critical writings on the novel, I shall attempt to present a consensus of views on the novel which stressed ideas, to show how the common attitude developed. Much of the criticism under consideration is of little intrinsic value; it is often influenced by religious and political prejudices and shows a level of mediocrity in critical thought, particularly for the reign of Isabel II. But, considered as a whole, it reveals common traits indicative of a trend in literary tastes,—a trend which becomes of interest when viewed in the light of certain tendencies in the novel.

Ironic Reprise in Galdós' Novels

PMLA ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monroe Z. Hafter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
The Other ◽  
Separate Study ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Spanish Novel ◽  
Artistic Representation ◽  
The Rich

A recent article of Leon Livingstone rightly calls attention to the importance of Pérez Galdós' assimilation of Cervantine irony as a forerunner of the concern of modern Spanish novelists about the autonomy of their characters. The unreality of rationalism, which Livingstone holds to be the germ of El amigo Manso, the imagination's capacity to create reality at the heart of Misericordia, lead to the even bolder experiments in the artistic representation of reality undertaken by Unamuno, Azorín, Valle-Inclán, and Pérez de Ayala. Anomalous for his time yet so pervasive in his work is Galdós' employment of “interior duplication” that a separate study would contribute to our fuller understanding of his art as well as to our measure of the advances in the Spanish novel of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The present essay focuses on Galdós' developing skill with internal repetitions from La Fontana de Oro (publ. 1870), through the rich complexities of the novels written between 1886–89, to their almost stylized simplicity in El abuelo (1897). Always related to Cervantine irony, the variety of verbal echoes, the mirroring of one character in another, the unconscious illumination each may offer the other, underscore the increasingly intimate wedding of form and matter with which Galdós came to unfold his narratives.

Fielding and Richardson

PMLA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 381-388
Author(s):  
William Park
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
General Type ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Tom Jones ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

But the Discovery [of when to laugh and when to cry] was reserved for this Age, and there are two Authors now living in this Metropolis, who have found out the Art, and both brother Biographers, the one of Tom Jones, and the other of Clarissa.author of Charlotte SummersRather than discuss the differences which separate Fielding and Richardson, I propose to survey the common ground which they share with each other and with other novelists of the 1740's and 50's. In other words I am suggesting that these two masters, their contemporaries, and followers have made use of the same materials and that as a result the English novels of the mid-eighteenth century may be regarded as a distinct historic version of a general type of literature. Most readers, it seems to me, do not make this distinction. They either think that the novel is always the same, or they believe that one particular group of novels, such as those written in the early twentieth century, is the form itself. In my opinion, however, we should think of the novel as we do of the drama. No one kind of drama, such as Elizabethan comedy or Restoration comedy, is the drama itself; instead, each is a particular manifestation of the general type. Each kind bears some relationship to the others, but at the same time each has its own identity, which we usually call its conventions. By conventions I mean not only stock characters, situations, and themes, but also notions and assumptions about the novel, human nature, society, and the cosmos itself. If we compare one kind of novel to another without first considering the conventions of each, we are likely to make the same mistake that Thomas Rymer did when he blamed Shakespeare for not conforming to the canons of classical French drama.

scholarly journals “I am rather strong on Voyages and Cannibalism”: The other Dickens and other Victorians in Richard Flanagan’s Wanting

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-177
Author(s):  
Bożena Kucała
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Image ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Critical Attitude ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
Public Persona

Abstract This paper analyses Richard Flanagan’s novel Wanting (2008) as a narrative informed by a revisionary and critical attitude to nineteenth-century ideologies, which is common to, and, indeed, stereotypical in much neo-Victorian fiction. Drawing on the biographies of two eminent Victorians: Charles Dickens and Sir John Franklin, Flanagan constructs their fictional counterparts as split between a respectable, public persona and a dark, inner self. While all the Victorian characters are represented as “other” than their public image, the focus in the novel, and in this paper, is on Dickens’s struggle to reconcile social propriety with his personal discontent. Flanagan represents this conflict through Dickens’s response to the allegations that starving survivors of Franklin’s ill-fated Arctic expedition resorted to cannibalism. The zeal with which the Victorian writer refuted such reports reveals his own difficulty in living up to social and moral norms. The paper argues that the main link between the different narrative strands in the novel is the challenge they collectively pose to the distinction between the notions of civilization and savagery.

Pain of Privacy

2020 ◽  
pp. 110-132
Author(s):  
Susmita Roye
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gradual Rise ◽  
Prescriptive Authority ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
Western Imagination

If the rite of widow-immolation fired Western imagination at the turn of the nineteenth century, then purdah (life in seclusion) held captive the West’s attention at the turn of the twentieth. Purdah took on a special connotation especially during the British Raj. With the gradual rise of the novel ideas of nationhood across religions, languages or cultures of the subcontinent, purdah became more than the sceptre of male prescriptive authority for upholding religious/cultural precepts of a community. It became further charged as the confrontational ground of conflicting authority—for one race to rule and for the other to forge its identity as a self-ruling nation. Not only is women’s representation of purdah in their writings considered more authentic but they also often challenge the stereotyping of a purdahnashin and reject the broad-brushed, mono-toned portrayal of their existence. Although Hindus too practised purdah of a sort, this chapter focuses on two Muslim women writers (Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Iqbalunnissa Hussain).

Two Treatments of a Subject: Proust's “La Regarder Dormir” and Valéry's La Dormeuse

PMLA ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 900-909
Author(s):  
Henry A. Grubbs
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Present Status ◽  
The Other ◽  
Recent Survey ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Figure Of Speech ◽  
Late Nineteenth

A critical cliché often heard today is that Proust was fundamentally a poet rather than a novelist. The historians of literature and the critics do not put it quite as crudely as that, but their remarks frequently permit such an assumption on the part of the reader. Thus the Castex and Surer manual, in its twentieth-century volume, finds in “toute l'œuvre [de Proust] un climat d'intense Poesie” (p. 82). And Georges Cattaui, in his recent survey of the present status of Proust, though he does not in so many words call Proust a poet or his novel a poem, does say that Proust is above all the heir “de Nerval, de Baudelaire, de Mallarmé,—de ces poètes qui lui ont enseigné l'art de transfigurer les choses, l'art de délivrer la beauté prisonnière … ” Now all this is true if it is merely taken as a vivifying figure of speech, if it merely means that Proust was not a realistic novelist, and that he shows the influence of the great French poets of the late nineteenth century, or that, to use a convenient term, he was a symbolist, like his contemporaries, Claudel, Gide, and Valéry. But it has so often been said in our time that the twentieth century has seen the breaking down of the distinctions between the novel and poetry, that it seems to me useful to demonstrate, by studying two treatments of the same subject, one that of a novelist, Proust, the other that of a poet, Valéry, that there remains a fundamental and profound difference between the intent and the method of prose fiction and of poetry, at least the type that is today called “pure” poetry.

scholarly journals Participating is more important than winning: the impact of socio-economic change on commoners' participation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Flanders

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
TINE DE MOOR
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Resource Use ◽  
The Other ◽  
Willingness To Participate ◽  
Registration System ◽  
Regulatory Documents ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTIn this article the participation profile of commoners of a Flemish case-study is reconstructed in order to identify their individual motivations for using the common, in some cases even becoming a manager of that common, in some cases only just claiming membership. Nominative linkages between membership lists, book-keeping accounts and regulatory documents of the common on the one hand and censuses and marriage acts on the other allow us to explain the behaviour of the commoners. It becomes clear why some decisions were taken – for example, to dissolve a well-functioning cattle-registration system – and how these affected the resource use of the common during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The analysis explains how internal shifts in power balances amongst groups of active users and those who did not have the means or willingness to participate could jeopardize the internal cohesion of the commoners as a group.

Threads of Transmission in Muḥammad Barrāda’s Luʿbat al-nisyān

2019 ◽  
pp. 141-158
Author(s):  
Hoda El Shakry
Keyword(s):  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
Narrative Time ◽  
The One ◽  
Critical Writings

Literary critic and novelist Muḥammad Barrāda’s (b.1938) experimental 1987 Luʿbat al-Nisyān [the Game of Forgetting] is considered the Arabic postmodernist novel par excellence. The “nuṣ riwāʾī” [novelistic text] oscillates between historical, narrative, and meta-narrative time, as well as between diegetic and meta-textual narrators. Rather than aligning its authorial decentering and rhizomatic narrative structure with the collapsing of theological discourse as a totalizing force, this chapter reads Luʿbat al-Nisyān through Qurʾanic narratology and intertextuality. It situates the novel, on the one hand, in relation to Barrāda’s extensive critical writings on literary experimentation [tajrīb] and translation of Mikhail Bakhtin. On the other, it theorizes the work through narrative and formal modes and inflected by the Qurʾan—such as iltifāt, or rhetorical code-switching. Moreover, Luʿbat al-Nisyān’s use of multiple narrative perspectives and genealogies critically interrogates the hermeneutical practices surrounding the documentation, verification, and transmission of the apostolic tradition of hadith.

The Promoting and the Financing of the Suez Canal

1956 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Werner Baer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
World History ◽  
Suez Canal ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One ◽  
Professional Fields

This timely account of the hunching of the Suez Canal project reveals both sides of the coin of innovation. It is, on the one hand, a study of the character and methods of one of the most famous innovators of the nineteenth century. Ferdinand DeLesseps was not a politician, a financier, an engineer, a promoter (in the common sense of the word), or a businessman. Yet he succeeded brilliantly in a venture requiring consummate mastery of all these professional fields. On the other hand is revealed the waterway itself — vital to one civilization, useless and neglected in another, and then of transcendent importance as world history marched on. Realization of the grand scheme envisaged by the Pharaohs came at last when economic and political factors momentarily aligned in a pattern of opportunity for a unique set of entrepreneurial qualifications.

scholarly journals Iterative approximations of common fixed points with simulation results in Banach spaces

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashis Bera ◽  
Ankush Chanda ◽  
Lakshmi Kanta Dey
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Points ◽  
Iterative Scheme ◽  
Common Fixed Points ◽  
Iteration Scheme ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Weak And Strong Convergence ◽  
Analytic Proof ◽  
Convergence Results ◽  
The Common

In this article, we propose the Abbas-Nazir three step iteration scheme and employ the algorithm to study the common fixed points of a pair of generalized $\alpha$-Reich-Suzuki non-expansive mappings defined on a Banach space. Moreover, we explore a few weak and strong convergence results concerning such mappings. Our findings are aptly validated by non-trivial and constructive numerical examples and finally, we compare our results with that of the other noteworthy iterative schemes utilizing MATLAB $2017$a software. However, we perceive that for a different set of parameters and initial points, the newly proposed iterative scheme converges faster than the other well-known algorithms. To be specific, we give an analytic proof of the claim that the novel iteration scheme is also faster than that of Liu et al.

scholarly journals Потенциал иронии в творчестве Людмилы Петрушевской (на примере романа Нас украли. История преступлений)

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Юлия Брюханова
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Significant Element ◽  
Philosophical Aspect ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

Many researchers of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya’s works draw attention to the irony which is the significant element of her prose, drama and poetry. It is important that the ironic principle manifests itself not only as an artistic technique but also as a philosophical aspect. Irony demonstrates the ambivalence of reality. On the one hand, it ridicules and profanes everything. On the other hand, irony gives the certitude of the ontological status of reality. We can see a good example of this function of irony in the novel Nas ukrali. Istoriya prestupleniy (2017). This novel shows the common features of Petrushevskaya’s works – the unity of ironic potential and language. In this case, language is not only the style but first of all the ontological element. This is why the language becomes almost a character in Petrushevskaya’s novel. Irony opens the vital potential of the linguistic personality. As a result, one of the heroes imitates foreign speech but doesn’t speak a foreign language. Irony also helps to reveal the ambivalent nature of life. It shows that our “umora” in Sanskrit and in ancient Indian is “humour” and “death”. So, the game and profanity not only reduce the status of the hero, the image, or the reader’s expectations but, first of all, fill the gap between words, ideas, feelings, and people.

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