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Pérez Galdós's four-part Fortunata and Jacinta (1886-7), the masterpiece among his almost eighty novels tells the turbulent story of two women, their husbands, and their lovers in the Madrid of the 1870s. In this new critical introduction, Professor Turner provides information on the history and social life of the times, and analyzes Pérez Galdós's theory of realism and his rich narrative style. The book contains tables illustrating the complex family relationships within the novel and a summary of the plot, as well as a detailed guide to further reading.
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Landmarks of world literature Benito Perez Gald6s FORTUNATA AND JACINTA
Landmarks of world literature General Editor: J. P. Stern Dickens: Bleak House - Graham Storey Homer: The Iliad - Michael Silk Dante: The Divine Comedy - Robin Kirkpatrick Rousseau: Confessions - Peter France
Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther - Martin Swales
Constant: Adolphe - Dennis Wood Balzac: Old Goriot - David Bellos Mann: Buddenbrooks - Hugh Ridley Homer: The Odyssey - Jasper Griffin Tolstoy: Anna Karenina - Anthony Thorlby Conrad: Nostromo - Ian Watt Camus: The Stranger - Patrick McCarthy Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji - Richard Bowring Sterne: Tristram Shandy - Wolfgang Iser Shakespeare: Hamlet - Paul A. Cantor Stendhal: The Red and the Black - Stirling Haig Bronte: Wuthering Heights - U.C. Knoepflmacher Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago - Angela Livingstone Proust: Swann's Way - Sheila Stern Pound: The Cantos - George Kearns Beckett: Waiting for Godot - Lawrence Graver Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales - Winthrop Wetherbee Virgil: The Aeneid - K.W. Gransden Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude -
Michael Wood Cervantes: Don Quixote - A. J. Close
Celine: Journey to the End of the Night - John Sturrock
Boccaccio: Decameron - David Wallace Wordsworth: The Prelude - Stephen Gill Eliot: Middlemarch - Karen Chase
Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Dale Kramer
The Bible - Stephen Prickett and Robert Barnes Flaubert: Madame Bovary - Stephen Heath Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal - F. W. Leakey Zola: L yAssommoir - David Baguley Boswell: The Life of Johnson - Greg Clingham Pushkin: Eugene Onegin - A.D.P. Briggs Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov - W. J. Leatherbarrow Galdos: Fortunata and Jacinta - Harriet S. Turner Aeschylus: The Oresteia - Simon Goldhill Byron: Don Juan - Anne Barton Lawrence: Sons and Lovers - M.H. Black
BENITO PEREZ GALD6S
Fortunata and Jacinta HARRIET S. TURNER University of Nebraska-Lincoln
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP 40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Victoria 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1992 First published 1992 Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Press Limited, Melksham, Wiltshire A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Turner, Harriet S. Benito Perez Gald6s, Fortunata and Jacinta / Harriet S. Turner. p. cm. - (Landmarks of world literature) ISBN 0 521 37262 3 1. Perez Galdds, Benito, 1843-1920. Fortunata y Jacinta. I. Title. II. Series. PQ6555.F73T87 1992 863\5 - dc20 91-40089 CIP ISBN 0 521 37262 3 hardback
WG
To James Ross Turner In memory
Contents
A cknowledgments List of abbreviations Chronology Chronological table of main events in "Fortunata and Jacinta" Genealogical tables
page IX X
xiii xviii XX
Introduction Benito Perez Galdos (1843-1920) Fortunata and Jacinta (1886-1887)
1 1 10
1 Social and historical contexts of a changing world History, politics and private life History-turned-story Family tree and social class