Introducción, HARRIET S. TURNER Y JOHN W. KRONIK . Galdós y el realismo europeo. "Fortunata y Jacinta" in the Context of European Realism, J. P. STERN. La narrativa del primer Galdós - Galdós cuentista. El artículo costumbrista y "La Fontana de Oro", MARÍA DEL PILAR PALOMO. Don Elías Orejón, el espía que surgió de la sombra, LAUREANO BONET. Los relatos breves de Galdós, ENRIQUE RUBIO CREMADES. Lectura de "Fortunata y Jacinta". Naturaleza y sociedad: claves para la interpretación de "Fortunata y Jacinta", DEMETRIO ESTÉBANEZ CALDERÓN. "Fortunata y Jacinta": el [naturalismo espiritual], FRANCISCO CAUDET. Historia y familia en "Fortunata y Jacinta", CARMEN MENÉNDEZ ONRUBIA. [Quien manda, manda]: la ley y el orden en "Fortunata y Jacinta", JULIO RODRÍGUEZ PUÉRTOLAS. Registros sociolingüísticos en la caracterización de personajes en "Fortunata y Jacinta", JOSÉ Ma NAVARRO ADRIAENSENS. La opinión de Unamuno sobre "Fortunata y Jacinta", PEDRO ORTIZ ARMENGOL. Notas sobre el manuscrito de "Fortunata y Jacinta", FRANCISCO MÁRQUEZ VILLANUEVA. Notas. Homenaje a Stphen Gilman, RODOLFO CARDONA. [Un millón de ojos]: visión, vigilancia y encierro en "Doña Perfecta", CHAD C. WRIGHT. El personaje recurrente en la obra de Galdós, MARTHA G. KROW-LUCAL. La imaginación galdosiana y la cervantina, ALAN SMITH. Diario de un viaje: las cartas de Emilia Pardo Bazán a Benito Pérez Galdós, FRANCISCA GONZÁLEZ ARIAS. Coloquio: la originalidad de Galdós. La [originalidad] de Galdós, CARLOS BLANCO AGUINAGA. El lenguaje de la rebeldía, BIRUTÉ CIPLIJAUSKAITÉ. "Fortunata y Jacinta" y la novela realista: transformación social e identidad individual, JOHN H. SINNIGEN. La modernidad de Galdós. "Fortunata y Jacinta" en el vértice de la modernidad, GERMÁN GULLÓN.

A new critical introduction to Galdos' four-part masterpiece set in Madrid in the 1870s.

This book explores how notions of deviancy and social control are dramatized in the novels of the late nineteenth-century Spanish realist author Benito Pérez Galdós. Galdós’s treatment of prostitutes, alcoholics, beggars and vagrants is studied within the context of the socio-cultural and medical debates circulating during the period. Drawing on Foucault’s very specific conceptualization of the idea of control through discourses, the book analyzes how Galdós’s novels interacted with contemporary debates on poverty and deviancy – notably, discourses on hygiene, domesticity and philanthropy. It is proposed that Galdós’s view of marginal social groups was much more open-minded, shrewd and liberal than the often inflexible pronouncements made by contemporary professional voices.

The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Novel presents the development of the modern Spanish novel from 1600 to the present. Drawing on the combined legacies of Don Quijote and the traditions of the picaresque novel, these essays focus on the question of invention and experiment, on what constitutes the singular features of evolving fictional forms. It examines how the novel articulates the relationships between history and fiction, high and popular culture, art and ideology, and gender and society. Contributors highlight the role played by historical events and cultural contexts in the elaboration of the Spanish novel, which often takes a self-conscious stance toward literary tradition. Topics covered include the regional novel, women writers, and film and literature. This companionable survey, which includes a chronology and guide to further reading, conveys a vivid sense of the innovative techniques of the Spanish novel and of the debates surrounding it.

Benito Perez Galdos (1843-1920) was a prolific Spanish realist novelist, who through a lack of good translations is virtually unknown outside Spain, though he has been compared as second only to Cervantes in Spanish literature and whose work is considered to give the deepest, truest, most comprehensive realities of Spain. Dona Perfecta (1876) was Galdos' first novel delving into the social world of middle-class Spain in the 19th century; a young liberal arrives in an imaginary cathedral city, with the intention of marrying his cousin. However the church interferes and obstructs the marriage, leading to a tragic clash between the traditional, provincial outlook and modern, liberal outlook of Madrid. Graham Whittaker's edition with Spanish text, English translation and substantial introduction aims to make this important novel widely available in English and the introduction and notes provide a comprehensive overview of the novel and Galdos' work.

Quixotic Modernists gives close readings of two novels by two little-studied writers of the early twentieth century in Spain, Felipe Trigo's Las ingenuas (1901) and Maria Martinez Sierra's Tu eres la paz (1906), in relation to the canonical Tristana by Benito Perez Galdos, Spain's greatest nineteenth-century novelist. This study shows the modern message (regarding gender), and modernist qualities of the prose of these works. Included are discussions of Quijote intertexts, proverbial language and tactics, the angel and the mujer-nina, flower, water, and animal imagery, and visual arts in relation to gender definition. Also included are contemporary responses to the novels and material about the authors' lives and Spain's social conditions in the early twentieth century. Quixotic Modernists integrates these themes into a study of the novelization of difficulties in transforming contemporary gender and class roles. In all three authors' works, this process of change in roles for both men and women becomes a quixotic enterprise, in which artists as/and characters search to reconnect with an elusive material, social body.