151
See Edward C. Riley, Cervantes's Theory of the Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 205-212.
152
In an illuminating article on Galdós' experiments with the autonomy of his protagonist in El amigo Manso, John Kronik has also touched upon the fictional self-recreation of don Lope. «El amigo Manso and the Game of Fictive Autonomy», Anales Galdosianos, 12 (1977), p. 74. Riley makes the general observation that «the autonomous characters of Pérez Galdós... are anticipated by Quixote and Sancho» (op. cit., p. 47).
153
Doña Josefina inverts don Quijote's tendency to transform prosaic windmills and peasant girls into castles and princesses. Instead, she confuses her theatrical passions with mundane landlords or furniture movers (p. 354).
154
Tristana thus offers yet another example of a familiar Galdosian type, the writer of «folletines» who believes in the reality of his own formulaic text.
155
Raphaël, op. cit., p. 20.
156
Sinnigen, op. cit., p. 286. In a recent study, Peter Bly has similarly noted with surprise an «indifference to the political/historical frame of contemporary society» in Tristana. Galdós's Novel of the Historical Imagination, Liverpool Monographs in Hispanic Studies, No. 2 (Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1983), p. 165.
157
Praising the novel's ending in which Tristana capitulates to the role of housewife and «beata», Clarín wrote that it was «lo más natural de veras» through its representation of «un alma como hay muchas en nuestro tiempo». «Tristana», in Galdós (Madrid: Renacimiento, 1912), p. 252. It is likely that Galdós incorporated elements of Clarín's own tragicomic vision of adultery into Tristana. The Calderonian honor theme, of course, had been ironically recast several years earlier in La Regenta, where it was both called to mind and subverted by the figure of Víctor Quintanar, a Calderón enthusiast who finds his innocent theatrical passion manipulated into a real-life duel and fatal shooting.
158
Harry Levin, The Gates of Horn: A Study of Five French Realists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 56.
159
Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero, trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), p. 38.
160
Pérez Galdós, Obras completas, V, ed. F. C. Sáinz de Robles (Madrid, 1950), 1545. All references to Tristana are to this edition.