111
Montesinos (cf. «Nota Preliminar» and section of DP) readily admits his bias in favor of the Restoration and the Liberals. He is remarkably, and admirably, honest about his aesthetic and political preferences. But the fact is that his position (as in an earlier essay against Valle-Inclán) leads him not only to condemn Doña Perfecta, which is legitimate, but also to impose rules en it, which is not. Cf. Rodríguez-Puértolas, op. cit., pp. 58-59 for a different approach, where he considers Doña Perfecta as the beginning of Galdós' radicalization, «una prehistoria típica de radicalismo burgués». A. Regalado (Benito Pérez Galdós y la novela histórica española, Ínsula, Madrid, 1966, pp. 93ff) agrees with Montesinos that Doña Perfecta is not among the better novels of Galdós but, unlike Montesinos, he finds Galdós defending the status quo and his novel «al servicio de los ideales de unidad nacional». (N. del A.)
112
Delivered as a colloquium at Wesleyan University's Center for the Humanities, Connecticut, on November 22, 1976. (N. del E.)
113
[El aparato de notas del original aparece al final del artículo, en las páginas 68 y 69. (N. del E.)]
114
R. G. Collingwood, The Historical Imagination. An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 28 October 1935 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), pp. 4, 13. (N. del A.)
115
«Mariclío, musa galdosiana», Papeles de Son Armadans, VI (yr.), XXI (vol.), lxiii (iss.). p. 239. (N. del A.)
116
M(anuel) Milá (y Fontanals) was not the only nineteenth-century Spaniard who praised Sir Walter Scott to the skies, because «el orden, la razón y la justicia dominan en [él] sobre el caos de los acontecimientos» («Moral literaria. Escuela escéptica. Walter Scott», in Album Pintoresco Universal, I, September 1841, p. 108). This, despite the fact that in more recent times Scott is frequently praised for contrary reasons. (N. del A.)
117
A similar point of view is adopted by Alfred Rodríguez (An Introduction to the Episodios Nacionales of Galdós, New York, Las Américas, 1967, p. 197): «The Episodios nacionales are historical novels; yet no 'a priori' definition of that literary 'genre' can satisfactorily include all forty-six volumes. These may only be classified therein if the term 'Historical Novel' is broadened to include their special characteristics. But one finds, however that the necessary process of classification blurs the most essential differences that might be thought to exist between Galdós' historical novels and the rest of his novelistic production». (N. del A.)
118
Matilde Carranza, in the first chapter of her book El pueblo visto a través de los Episodios Nacionales (San José de Costa Rica, Imp. Nacional, 1942), hints at this concept while giving a resume of the sources to which Galdós had recourse for his series of Episodios. (N. del A.)
119
References are to the Rodolfo Cardona edition (Long Island City, New York, Anaya-Las Américas, 1974); in this instance, to pp. 98-99, specifically. (N. del A.)
120
Ibid., p. 203. (N. del A.)