Los Lunes de El Imparcial, 26 de junio de 1882. Ortega Munilla reviews «las tres novelas que se han publicado durante la anterior semana»: El amigo Manso (Galdós), El sabor de la tierruca (Pereda), Lázaro (Jacinto Octavio Picón).

«El amigo Manso, nivola galdosiana», Técnicas de Galdós (Madrid: Taurus Ediciones, 1970), p. 66. Reprinted from Mundo Nuevo, Nº. 4 (1966), 32-39 and Nª. 5 (1966), 59-65. All further references to this article are cited parenthetically by page number in the text.

Realidad, ficción y símbolo en las novelas de Pérez Galdós (Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1967), pp. 100, 105. All further references to this work are cited parenthetically in the text by page number.

Cartas a Galdós, p. 214.

Montesinos, p. 29. For example, Eamonn Rodgers, in «Realismo y mito en El amigo Manso», Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Nº. 250-252 (1970-71), 430-44, notes the ambiguity implied by Manso's relationship to the author, and shows how the ensuing irony endows the novel with a complex and shifting, hence more truthful, portrayal of reality. Peter G. Earle, in «La interdependencia de los personajes galdosianos», Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Nº. 250-252 (1970-1971), 113-34, discusses the paradoxical effects of Manso's self-awareness as fictio. Earle rightly construes Máximo's «Yo no existo» as a «punto de partida, la proclamación vital de uno que apenas se inicia en la vida» (p. 124). Nancy A. Newton, in «El amigo Manso and the Relativity of Reality», Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 7 (1973), 113-25, investigates the nature of Manso's autonomy and its ambiguities as these are related to shifts in point of view: «[I]n El amigo Manso an individual travels an emotional trajectory and thus interprets a single reality differently. And it is precisely this change in perspective, this shift from objective to subjective viewpoint, which proffers Máximo Manso substance and depth: it is a dynamic act of autocreation» (p. 122). Since the completion of my essay two articles on El amigo Manso have recently appeared: H. L. Boudreau, «Máximo Manso: The molde and the hechura», Anales Galdosianos, 12 (1977), 63-69 and John W. Kronik, «El amigo Manso and the Game of Fictive Autonomy», Anales Galdosianos, 12 (1977), 71-94. Commenting on the real and metaphoric dimension of names in Galdós' novels, Boudreau explores the meanings of manso and mansedumbre, skillfully pinpointing the multiple ambiguities disclosed by the concept in order to relate them to the problem of Manso's autonomous character. Kronik also discusses Manso's autonomy and the intriguing questions it raises vis-à-vis the relationship of art to life. He sees El amigo Manso as a «metanovel... a novel that investigates the nature of the novel, art about art» (p. 73), and advances some of the same points raised in my essay, though from a different orientation and often elaborated in structuralist terms. I wish to express my thanks for his careful reading of this essay when it was first subinitted for publication.

Berkowitz, p. 157.

Thre issues are set forth in two essays by Manuel de la Revilla: «La tendencia docente en la literatura contemporánea» (1877) and «El Naturalismo en el Arte» (1879), reprinted in Obras de D. Manuel de la Revilla (Madrid: V. Saiz, 1883), pp. 137-168.

B. Pérez Galdós, «Observaciones sobre la novela contemporánea en España», Revista de España, 15, n.º 57 (1870), 164.

B. Pérez Galdós, «La sociedad como materia novelable», Discursos leídos en las recepciones públicas de la Real Academia Española, serie Segunda, IV (Madrid: Gráfica Ultra, 1948), p. 322.

For example, «when asked once if he was partisan of 'art for art's sake,' he [Galdós] answered with energy: 'No, jamás. Creo que la literatura debe ser enseñanza, ejemplo. Yo escribí siempre, excepto en algunos momentos de lirismo, con el propósito de marcar huella. Doña Perfecta, Electra, La Loca de la casa, son buena prueba de ello. Mis episodios nacionales indican un prurito histórico de enseñanza. En pocas obras me he dejado arrastrar por la inspiración frívola'» (B. Pérez Galdós, Doña Perfecta, ed. Paul P. Rogers [Boston: Ginn and Co., 1950], pp. xxvii-xxviii).