The Descriptive Simile in Galdos and Blasco Ibanez

AS with most sweeping classifications of literary figures, a question ble picture is produced by lumping all the Spanish novelists of the last half of the nineteenth century together under the banner of Realism, with its connotations of underlying similarity and even uniformity in values. Valera and Pardo Bazin, for example, reflect two brands of esthetics which would tend to place them closer to opposite poles than together as harmonious members of a literary fraternity. Nor can the joining of two such disparate names as Gald6s and Blasco Ibifiez appear a natural comparison, not only because of the singular bigness of the former but also because the Valencian novelist himself is something of a special case both chronologically and stylistically. But here we should like to take advantage of an apparent coincidence between the two, in the use of a certain rhetorical figure, precisely for the practical end of underscoring a contrast between these two representatives of the advanced realistic period. The reader of La barraca and the reader of Fortunata y Jacinta will discover in both authors a reliance on similes which may acquire the proportions of a veritable vicio. But he will sense a difference. And a comparative analysis confirms that: (1) the intrinsic nature and the function of the device are more fundamentally antipodal than similar in the two authors; (2) the simile throws new light on specific aspects of two markedly divergent modes of novelwriting. The fundamental relevance of the simile in the novel of this period is not hard to discern. In addition to that backbone which we might sum up as narrative, which runs through all Spanish novelists from Fernin Caballero through Blasco Ibaifiez, the basis which is most broadly common to them all is perhaps the mimetic intent, no matter what varying dosages of idealization, exaggeration, irony, etc., might distinguish one from another. In their efforts to simulate realities it is not surprising that the simile should crop up in moAt or all of them as a recurring device: it is a sign of the novelist's desire to instil vigor into particular characters, scenes or events by means of the explicit-although unstudied -introduction of a comparative item. In theory, at least, this second element is in itself subordinate and functions only to illuminate the original one. But the degree of efficient rebound or distraction which it effects is one of the main indices by which to measure the nature of a given novelist's manner of handling his material. Again, in theory, one would not expect an author pursuing that ideal of pure documentation which is associated with the Naturalistic

Art · Epithet · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Realism · Rhetorical question · Similarity (geometry) · Simile · Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism · Early Modern Spanish Literature · History · Philosophy · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies