Gald?s and the Irony of Language (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780521673327)

Benito P rez Gald s was the foremost Spanish novelist of the nineteenth century. His novels are frequently compared with those of Dickens and Balzac, and considered examples of nineteenth-century realism. In a speech before the Spanish Academy of Language, Gald s himself declared that the novel is 'an image of life'; scholars have often considered that image to be an uncritical reflection, or even a biased misrepresentation of the Spanish society of the time. This book shows, by detailed analysis of Gald s narrative techniques, how his novels display a much more skeptical and ironical attitude toward the ability of language to represent reality, than has previously been recognized. Rather than attempting to judge the accuracy of Gald s' image of life the author analyzes the linguistic means by which the novels recreate life in their own image. With close and discriminating attention to detail the author illustrates Gald s' narrative irony with examples from the serie contempor nea, the most highly acclaimed period of his writing. She analyzes the ironic possibilities under three main headings: depiction of characters, description of places, and the narrative voice. A final chapter describes the fusion of these devices in the novella Torquemada en la hoguera. This clearly argued study, structuralist in approach and sensitive to nuances of style and language, will appeal to students of modern critical theory and comparative literature as well as to Hispanists.

Author: Diane F. Urey
ISBN-10: 0521673321
ISBN-13: 9780521673327
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/30/2005
Pages: 148
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.34d