Okay, let's proceed with table three.
Indeed, we continue with Spanish myths in the 19th century.
The first presentation will be given by Juan Carlos Bayo, from the Madrid Theatre
Institute.
Juan Carlos Bayo is a professor of Spanish Literature at the Complutense
University.
A long research career linked especially
to the study of the Song of Mio Cid.
He has published various articles in journals such as
La Crónica, Modern Lenguaje Review Bulletin of Hispanic
Studies, as well as a critical edition of the
Cantar in the Castalia publishing house.
Among his works are also various approaches to the literature
of the Golden Age and to the Theatre of the 18th and 19th centuries,
with attention, for example, to the adaptations of the work of Calderón de la
Barca.
Today he presents an intervention, a presentation entitled
Song of Exile, The Itinerary of El Cid in the Operatic Repertoire.
Juan Carlos, whenever you want.
in the edition of the Cantar de Mio Cid published by Castalia.
Isn't that an abomination?
Where my work was destroyed and I really disown it,
although sometimes I put it to fill out resumes and add
bulk to those mafia-like societies like ANECA and that kind of place.
Anyway. Uh, having made that clarification.
Continuous.
Well, the thing is...
Well, first of all, I want to thank the organizers of the symposium for inviting
me to speak at it.
And well, my presentation does not exactly coincide with my main
research or with the theme of the Congress, but I think it has some
relation to both.
Well, it is a well-known thesis that the popular novel did not fully
develop in Italy due to the taste for melodrama.
Well, musical theatre as we would say in Spain, and well.
And there is no doubt that both genres are closely related, particularly in
their historical genre and some of their treatments.
Rodrigo Díaz, El Cid Campeador in the 19th century are
very close to what we could call a historical novel, set to music.
But well, he's a hero who has had less success on the
operatic stage than in other areas.
and well,
Of course, the Cid was sung about in medieval epic
poems, later in old ballads, and in the first half of
the 17th century he was also established as a theatrical
figure, especially thanks to the Cid's youth by
Guillén de Castro in Spain and by CONAI in France.
And well, and in that way he became available
as a protagonist hero for that new form
that was opera, which at that time was
emerging in Italy and even in this genre.
They developed over time.
Trends to recover medieval
Castilian elements, including
the Cantar de Mio Cid.
And looking back at history, it is quite surprising
that so many operas have been produced about Rodrigo
Díaz, some of them composed by, well, by great
figures in the history of music, and also, well,
not only composers, but also by the great divas of each era.
However, none of them have become a
benchmark in the repertoire.
In other words, it's a kind of exile.
Hence the title of the presentation.
So, well, my presentation isn't going to have, let's say,
the depth of the previous ones, but I'm going to give you a
kind of general overview of those not entirely successful
attempts to incorporate El Cid into the operatic form.
And I'm not going to be exhaustive because, because.
Well, given the time constraints, I'm simply going to focus on the
main trends that developed in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the first current it appears within that of Italian opera seria.
It would be around 1,715,802.1
peak around 1773.
And it is during this time that El
Cid enters the operatic stage.
And this happens in part within a general trend of Italian
opera to assimilate elements of French tragedy and thus give itself meaning.
And at that time five Italian librettists
produced texts that were ultimately derived
from Cornell's and at least 12 composers
produced operas, mostly during that period, in 1715.
And we have Il Gran Cid.
It is the one that begins the series with text by Giovanni
Jacopo, Albor Gatti, also known as Gildo Merello, the name
he had as a member of the Arcadia Academy and with music by
Jean-Baptiste Stuck, which was performed in Livorno.
The score has apparently been lost, but
oh well, the text was printed. Hmm.
Well, the basis is Corneille's
piece adapted to opera seria.
And so, well, it has some changes.
Substantial
to the bulletin and reduced the number of acts
and characters and well and above all developed
despite that simplification, on that part,
uh the plot with the opposition
between Jimena Jiménez in her.
In her version and the Infanta.
And well.
And the thing is that this libretto, uh, was set to
music with its modifications by other composers,
especially Francesco Gasparini, the great chef,
uh, which was performed in Naples in 1717 and then
by Leonardo Leo in another opera, the chef, uh,
which was performed in Rome in 1727. Mhm.
So.
Well, then we have all those works based on the libretto by Álvaro Gatti.
We have a second script. Jiménez on the character.
Many times the central figure becomes Jimena.
It's great that it was written by the jurist and writer Benedetto Pascual.
And well, the name.
In the academy it was Merino Cesario and how wonderful
that it was first performed in Venice in 1721.
And once again the music has been lost.
Then there was a third script by Chocano Pizzi.
The name in the academies, again different in Do Mauricio,
which is good because he put it to music in Niccolò Pichincha,
in the Gran Cid, for the first time in Naples in 1766, was
performed and then turned over by Frankie in the Gran
Chile of Rodrigo, in Turin, in 1768.
Later by Francesco Bianchi in Iran, Chile in Florence, 1673.
It was the premiere and later by Antonio Rosetti, a composer better known than the
previous ones.
In the crocheted version performed in Naples in
1781, an alternative version of that libretto was
used by Antonio Sakini in the Chile, which was the
first of his three operas about El Cid.
And well, that first one in Chile was
performed in 9769 and then it was developed
and performed in Lisbon in 1773.
So, well, Pizzi's work was also the starting point.
Oh, sorry, I forgot.
I can see it.
I see two slides.
There's a good one, sorry.
Eh, from that 4th libretto by De Giovanni
Alberto, I'll throw the book away. Mhm.
It was so good. And it was good.
It's a script.
Bilingual?
Because, well, it's for voting and.
It was based in London and provided texts for operas
performed at the 15 Theater in the High Market.
So.
Well, the thing is, the booklet was printed in Italian and English.
Okay. It's a bilingual edition.
And well, he added music to it.
As I have already said, Sakini was his second opera about El Cid.
And well.
And the English premiere was not just, let's say, a premiere
for him, but also for Giuseppe Milico, who was the star.
Mhm. That she sang the main role.
So.
Well, although that production has been
completely forgotten today, it was a success in 1773.
Very considerable, which even provoked a
renewal of interest in serious opera.
And well, the performances were witnessed by
Barney Hall, who is the leading music critic
in Britain at the time, and well.
And she also took her daughters to Susan, which, well, has something very
interesting and good.
And he was very impressed, wasn't he?
Then we.
If I manage to read it properly.
Well, there's the passage about, uh.
From Charles Barney's General History of Music.
And well, I always translate it like this, just roughly, you know?
With those two passages he says In January
1773, the first opera by Sakini.
For our scenarios, Chinese was represented and in.
And in May.
The next Tamerlane.
The two admirable productions, full of
taste, elegance and knowledge of stage
effects and the main singers of those works were milico and girly.
So. Okay.
And later in the 19, he brings up the
question again, says Antonio Sakini from Naples, eh?
He arrived in England in 1672, having composed for
all the great theaters of Italy and Germany
with increasing success. Huh?
And here he not only confirmed the high reputation
he had on the continent, but also defeated the
natural enemies of his talent in England.
And these operas, in short, and Tamerlane were equal
to, if not superior to, any musical drama I
have ever heard anywhere in Europe.
Well, James Barney, most famous in this musical history,
about his musical travels through Europe, no.
Even translated into Spanish, it's a significant compliment.
Once again, the score has been lost.
But a selection, mostly of Arias, eh, was
published, printed and there it is.
Huh? Apparently, the singer was a military man,
huh, who was mainly the one who promoted having
the same script set to music again by Giovanni and Cielo in Iran.
Crochet was once exhibited in Florence in 1775.
And that text of I Will Vote in Paris, also taken
into account for the last Italian opera about
the end of the 18th century, which was an elaboration
of the libretto by Pascual Higo y Jiménez, set
to music by Fernando Bertoni for whomever.
3683.
The scripts are continually recycled after.
We have the 5th Italian libretto, which is by Antonio
Simeone Grassi, who wrote "El Chile del España,"
which was set to music by Giuseppe Farinelli. Mhm.
Well,
Now, he was a composer sponsored by the famous
theater, and the thing is, they paid
for his education and adopted him.
Is that the last name? Okay.
That opera, which was performed in Venice in 1802, was the last
of that line initiated by Al Volquete and Stuck.
And that book was no longer used by later composers.
So, well, if not to give a brief summary of
this movement, the scores of these productions
in general seem to have been lost or only
partially preserved. Attempts at recovery,
well, have been minimal.
There aren't, let's say, major critical editions, nor have the
things we have been recorded in their entirety, huh?
I have some doubts that they will become popular
in Spain, and thus the logical place to revive
them, because as is usual in the heroic roles
of opera serials in the 18th century, the part
of El Cid is assigned to the first musician,
that is, the main castrato.
Eh stars like the aforementioned military man.
So I don't know if the Spanish public accepted the national
hero embodied by a castrato or, as it was said in Castilian
Spanish, a singing capon, which is the term used by Francisco de Cascales and
others.
So.
I don't see, let's say, a bright future for
this recovery of the works in Spain.
But, uh, some areas that have been preserved from those
operas have been recorded in the 21st century.
On the other hand, there are tenors who I know who specialize
in that type of repertoire and have recorded outside of
Spain. But hey, I think that someday a Spanish
countertenor will do it, right?
I switch to a second stream pretty quickly, huh?
It's a good thing it was cut short due to social
circumstances, as it's the first opera.
Represented in France about El Cid, which
is from 1783, which was semen, eh?
Whose? From a compound I've mentioned before.
Antonio Sakini, who first performed in 183 at the
Palace of Fontainebleau before Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette, and it was Sakini's second French opera.
Or well, or as a street was called, which is
the base name of the more accurate one.
And well, as I said, it's Sakini's third opera.
Uh, about El Cid after two Italian women.
And at first he began to work.
On a text called Simeon Rig, written
by a Hellenist, Guillaume de Rochefort. Mhm.
It's the one that's, let's say, well, on the left. Mmm.
But then he had his doubts because for him it was a very important work.
They were trying to ingratiate themselves with him.
With Marie Antoinette, to obtain
her sponsorship, her patronage.
And well, the point is that he ended
up commissioning a librettist,
Nicola Afonso, who had already
provided the libretto for Iphigenia in Tare by Gluck.
Some great masterpieces of the era.
So, well, the point is that, even using
that last booklet, which is the one on the right, eh?
The two of them went on to print both based on Corneille.
And well, there was a lot of competition at
that time between Sakini and Virginie.
It's good that there was one.
Fairly
previously performed a historical
opera there based on the story of the
Queen of Carthage, Dido, and
it had been a triumph in both am.
I don't know if you can hear me well; if at any point the sound is lost, please
tell me.
The point is that both operas had
starred a very famous soprano.
At that time she was Antoinette Verdi,
that's there
and that it was clearly the
star
Jimeno and his.
His role is much more prominent than Rodrigo's.
It's good that he was represented by me, by this
tenor of a name, let's say, so curious.
Well, uh, she's called Lene, but she also wrote
it as "bien bueno" in French, maybe it's also
pronounced Lene, but Inés and well and well, we
even have, let's say, in that, in that publication
from the time I was there, David's theater channel, uh?
We have him represented in the
costume from the performances, right?
That Jiménez de Sakini, Bueno, was completely overshadowed
by the triumph of Virginia, although she later performed
it again with relative success.
But oh well, it happens.
The thing is, lyric tragedy, which is a genre that really
doesn't forget the French Revolution, which was just
around the corner, well, it's a line perhaps cut short,
but it's interesting because it's also, let's say, the
first opera or the earliest opera about El Cid, which has
been recovered after having disappeared from the stage
for more than two centuries, uh, a production of.
There is an alkali production in Paris in thousand.
In 2017, the 21st century, huh?
The third way or current would be
that of El Cid in the opera of the
Bel Canto era, which would go more
or less from 1814 to 1853 and that's good.
And these are plots based on Corneille, in Nuevo
Bueno, one of the librettists, especially
remembered for having supplied texts to Rossini
and Giovanni Smith, is Silvina Jiménez, to
which Tomaso put music with Salvo and Bueno and
performed it for the first time in Naples in 1814.
Isabela, with great.
And also, as I say, it was Manuel García and Smith
returned later to rework the text for Rodrigo
with music by Antonio Sapienza, performed for
the first time in 1823 in Naples, with a famous
tenor who was Giovanni Bautista du Bini.
Also, uh
Another librettist who is somewhat well
remembered, especially for the works he wrote
for Rossini and Donizetti, was Jacobo Ferretti,
the author of the libretto of La Kinselle, who
wrote Il Chile for the composer Luigi Sadi.
And that opera was first successfully premiered in 1834.
And then we have.
We still have another work composed by Giovanni
Mazzini and with a libretto from here of the
seven again performed again at La Escala in Milan in 1853.
But the thing is, those works from that period of
Mazzini's life, which were relatively vulgar in their
time, were later completely overshadowed by the contemporary work of Verdi.
So, well, it's one of the relatively interesting things
about this, uh, about this current of operas about El Cid.
And the thing is, well, the most legendary singers of
the time who really defined it as they are, like Manuel
García or Rubín, were involved in the performances of operas of El Cid.
But the thing is that none of the heavyweights among the composers
of the period, who are still, let's say, more in the repertoire
of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi.
He did nothing about the issue.
So, well, we don't have a Cid from the time of the
Bel canto.
A third, quite important trend would be, say, the introduction of El Cid, eh?
In
in the operatic stages of German-speaking countries, which
would be a trend that already existed from 1821 to 1885.
It's great that it also incorporates El Cid a little while later.
And well, that is a trend that developed from
1821 to 1885, which every 20 years had, let's
say, its peak around the middle of the 1860s.
I will always limit myself to mentioning
some facts about the initial phase.
We have a Rodrigo, eh, a Ximénez, eh.
The name Jimena is adapted in each country as
represented by BBC Mundo and that in 1821 it is an
opera by Johann Kaspar and Vikinga that is based on
a libretto by Johann Jakob Ignat Sender, who was a prestigious writer and
academic.
But it's good that it received a rather cold reception.
Hmm, well, nowadays it's still difficult to get
the sheet music, but you can easily find reviews
in the periodical press of the time.
Then there's Jiménez, uh, by Jacob
Wagner, uh, performed in Dansa of 1821,
libretto by Christian Bale, which
adapts Guillaume's libretto for Sakini. Uh?
After Heinrich's saying to Damned, performed in
Frankfurt in 1843, with a rather lukewarm reception
based on a libretto by Carl Goldsmith and Carl Goldsmith.
Well, we have that, let's say, in his memoirs.
He first offered that libretto to Giacomo Meyer Berg and Felix Mendelssohn.
It would be great if they had accepted, because perhaps we would be somewhere
else.
But hey, it's an opera.
Excellent
The repertoire was not established either.
And then we have Luis del Michel's "The Avenger of Reja," right?
Based on a script.
Then a rather famous and prestigious playwright,
another forgotten one, well that's it, first
time in Pest and then many other cities.
And then we have another one by Emil Maya, Don Rodrigo Díaz, I was
going to say, performed once in Linz in 1848 in Austria, which was
less successful than the previous one and was based on a libretto by Karl Joseph
Smith.
Eh El.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the German
tradition is that for the first time it was influenced
by scholarship on the Sirian subject.
Then the director composes this poet, composer, poet.
Cornelius
He wrote a book called The Artist,
which he set to music, and well...
And the point is that he shows knowledge of the biography
of Rodrigo Díaz written by Víctor M.
Judah
It's good that the point is that, well, he has those two works.
Juba is about yes, the first, let's say one is a
story he elaborates from various sources, and
the second is a Spanish edition of the chronicle
of the famous knight Ciro y Diez Campeador,
which is the chronicle of Juan López de Belorado. Mhm,
that one that
Because of that Hispanic habit of changing the title without really
knowing why, it's going to be called the Cid's Particular Chronicle.
But hey, that's more of a special flame.
Well, I don't have time to explain the absurdities
of the title changes in Hispanic Philology.
It would take me, let's say, the whole hour.
So.
Well, getting back to our topic, well, there's that
important scholarly work in Germany by Cuba.
But anyway, the point is that Cornelius there I would go, let's
say, the presentation could easily be just about Cornelius's
work and a doctoral thesis could be followed on it, let's say.
The point is that he took elements from a variety
of sources, but used them very, very freely.
So, well, he ends up using Jimena's prayer, the song of Mio
Cid, the grandmother's prayer in German, and puts it in the
mouth of the bishop of Burgos at the beginning of the third act.
Anyway, that opera, which the author called
a drama, was successfully performed in
Weimar in 1865, but afterwards it has been
recovering somewhat sporadically, in a
rather sporadic, erratic way.
In any case, it is the German opera, surely
the most interesting about El Cid, and it is
the only one that has been recorded for a
To be
Commercially sold, it exists,
let's say, it came out back then.
Well, uh, that work of Cornelius
in El Cid is the reason he gave
to his friend Richard Wagner
for not going to the first
performance of Tristan and
Isolde, in which Tristan and
Isolde had Ludwig, not Charles,
as the main singer, the most
famous, the heroic tenor of
the time when he died.
A few weeks later, according to legend.
Because, well, because of the great effort it took him to sing the role of
Tristan.
And well, if that's true and someone doesn't like Wagner,
then he can also be blamed for the fact that we don't have
a German Cid in the repertoire, because it wasn't
expected that he would play the Cid in a new opera called
El Cid Bueno, from the archives, composed by Luis
Theodore Cubi and which had to be performed in 3D.
And in fact, well, uh?
Gaby arrived and delivered the complete score.
We have the complete score and good.
And it was performed for the first time in the 21st century.
And well.
Well, it got to the point
It became, let's say, available on some
German radio websites. Italy is still around somewhere.
in it.
In what are the wild web pages.
But anyway, that's the point.
Another interesting work.
I could talk about a few more, but well, the point is that
German opera developed a significant tradition about El Cid.
And well, the point is that the most interesting work is that of
Cornelius, which involves the incorporation of the work of evolution.
Then, as the 5th and final stream, huh?
I am going to discuss a period in French opera,
which would be roughly between the 1870s and the 1890s.
And a distinctive feature of the French of that period is that they try to
incorporate typical Spanish elements, moving away somewhat from Cockney
to give color to their treatments, but they do not resort to scholarly works, as
Cornelius has said.
Okay, then.
Well, that's quite curious, because, well, the thing is that even then
in France some important works had been produced on the Cantar de Mio Cid,
in particular the recording of Nada más y nada, and it was published in 1858, eh?
And once again we are faced with the work
of central composers of the era.
The first one would be Joss says that well, in fact it is that.
A friend of his, Ian
Batis Folk, was.
The great diva
The baritone of the Paris Opera had the idea that the opera.
Above all. Don't say I had to go with the idea that.
Well, he's someone from Castro, let's say.
They're looking for the original century, but it seems that
for them.
That's in Guillen de Castro.
We never go any further.
So, well, the script was written by Luis Galois and Eduardo Blow.
And well, we have in the Memoirs of Wales that
passage in which Bizet speaks.
Then he says, "This is what I want to do."
I declare myself with enthusiasm.
It's not the Cockney Cid, it's the original twist with its Spanish flavor.
And there is a scene, the beggar scene, which is wonderful.
Look.
I am sure the loving, filial, Christian, heroic, triumphant
El Cid will be happy; what more could one wish for?
Well, the point is that, cutting quickly, the
beggar scene is the central one of the work.
In The Question Is That He Says, he worked on that opera about the end,
at the same time as on Carmen, and in fact he took it to sing in its entirety.
In 1873, the opera about El Cid in Wales was
accompanied on the piano by a score that only contains the
The vocal part, but it has been preserved completely.
But a few days later, the Paris Opera burned down.
Hey, Carmen, who finished earlier, was not successful, even though she
is recognized as one of the great pillars of the repertoire.
But it was the discouragement that succeeded. I somewhat warned of encores.
He died and that's where the project kind of ended.
Those same scriptwriters Galway, Blog, eh, along with
another one from Neri, produced a new script, eh?
It served him well.
And again, well, the thing is, they turned more to Cockney than
to someone from Castro, contrary to what Bishop had suggested.
And well.
And the thing is, they're following
the opera tradition. Mhm.
And well.
And the fact is that the premiere was a success in 1865 for
Machine and went on to continue the repertoire continuously until 1919.
It is perhaps the most successful opera
about El Cid, and largely so, of course.
Well, it was also really because of the cast that
included Ian Derek, like I said, after gays like
Don Diego and by plan they're like the Count of
Gormaz, so well, it's an opera that's still
performed occasionally and then just to add one last name and finish, eh?
There is also an attempt worthy of consideration,
which is in 1890, when Willy's young club began
to compose music for a Rodrigues Jiménez with a
libretto written by a Wagner enthusiast who
was the Parmesan poet Caryl Méndez.
The thing is that Debussy, as he progressed with the work, kept refining
the theme.
So he didn't finish it, and that opera has since been recovered.
A century later it was completed by a musicologist,
Richard Hammersmith and a composer, and made
a Denisov for a first performance in Lyon in 1993.
The point is that it is still a product, a somewhat problematic ending.
But the quality of the music in some
passages is very remarkable in all of them.
Well, it has even been released on CD, and some
singers have even added it to their repertoire.
So, well, the point is simply that,
well, this latest French trend has
produced a more prominent presence
of cinema than the previous ones, and well, the more in.
I believe that to the extent that there are tenors interested
in reviving that part of the French repertoire, I think it will continue to
survive.
And then I think it's also a matter of time until someone,
maybe some lunatic, artificial intelligence or something
like that, ends up producing a version of the song because,
like I said, the vocal score is complete, right?
So, well, something similar to what happened in the 90s with Rodríguez
Jiménez could happen again.
And well, that would be all.
Perhaps as a final reflection, having already rehearsed a bit,
what are, let's say, the obstacles that each of these traditions
encountered or has in order to be incorporated into the political
repertoire.
And then there's the fact that cinema is an epic creature rather than a theatrical
one.
In fact, there are only two major theatrical works about the legend, the
case of the Cockney skin, in contrast to a figure like Don Juan.
It's great that he was born on the stage and has continued to
experience the stage with Tirso, Molière, Goldoni, Pushkin,
Zorrilla, Matrix and of course, the opera Don
Giovanni, which was a great help to Ponte.
But well, I think that CIDE's journey has been
somewhat bumpy, and that's a good thing, isn't it?
And it hasn't been introduced, but it's not for lack of trying.
of trying.
Thank you very much, Professor Ballo, for this
academic and enjoyable journey through these
paths and currents from the 18th century. Gildo
Merello will vote for the idea of ​​playing.
Well, there are all the French ones, the scripts.
I believe there will then be room in the debate and
discussion to raise some interesting issues.
I think the only thing missing to complete this
is a national classical radio program.
and with.
Continuing with the interventions of this third table,
Javier Muñoz de Manuel Galiana, I don't know if you're
connected, if I'm here, well, while you're here you can
share, are you listening now? Yes Javier, no need to use a presentation this time.
OK.
Well.
Javier Muñoz de Morales Galiana is a professor of Spanish Literature
at the University of Ghent, Belgium, with a postdoctoral contract.
He holds a doctorate in Arts and Humanities from the University
of Cádiz and is primarily dedicated to researching the novel
in Spanish Romanticism, a subject on which he has published
more than 50 works including articles in journals, books,
chapters and modern editions of several literary works, among
which the condestable don Álvaro de Luna, published in
Renacimiento 2021 or the Ferry de Ven a este par stand out.
In 2024 he published in Iberoamericana Verbo ser el resucitador de
la novela española, a biography of the nineteenth-century writer
Manuel Fernández González. He has participated in more than 30
academic congresses and is currently in charge of a research project
on free and unacknowledged translations of novels
during the Spain of the 18th and 19th centuries.
He has also organized events on the Romantic movement, including a virtual
congress and the two editions of the International Seminar on the Novel in
Spanish Romanticism that took place in Cadiz and Ghent, respectively.
Javier Muñoz de Morales It's a pleasure to have you here; you can start whenever
you want.
Well, thank you very much for the presentation and for inviting me to this
Congress.
In this presentation I am going to talk about a matter that seems
somewhat relevant to me, especially to avoid certain confusions
that have been occurring for a long time in Spanish literary
history and related to the novel of the 18th century,
which are the topics that interest me most, eh?
Specifically, this whole idea of ​​whether there was really a historical
novel
in the 18th century or whether it's something that started in the 19th
century,
or whether there's a pre-Romanticism that incorporates the historical novel, or
whether I think it stops.
To understand this, it is quite important
to fully understand the role of media in
18th-century Spanish literature, which
is something that is often overlooked,
ignored, or not fully understood.
Generally, when we talk about romanticism, we
can find countless definitions, and trying to
find a definition of what the romantic moment is, is just confusing.
And many of these definitions are somewhat contradictory.
Personally, I really like Mors Peckham's, particularly
the English version he wrote; it seems quite accurate,
but it's not relevant to this conference because, as far
as literature is concerned, the story of the novel is so specific, eh?
The connotations are quite different and for practical
purposes, that is, none of the most essential features
that I see or that I at least have been seeing, is the
context in which the novelistic genre developed in
romanticism once it was nominally consolidated, once
the Spaniards, well, the rest of Europe too, but in the
specific case of Spain, when the authors began to say
we are romantics, we have had a romantic literature.
Et cetera, et cetera Once that context was given.
With that terminology, then novels began
to appear, successively, a genre that in the
18th century had been somewhat fossilized,
not disappeared, but certainly
in decline, so to speak, right?
It had become something rather marginal, or rather, accessory,
and something that was not taken very seriously, especially
since the neoclassical poetics of the century.
People think that it was mostly many topics that have been carried
over from the history of literature, that at the end of the 18th century
the pre-romantic era had begun, but there was never a formal break
with neoclassicism, as there would be in the 19th century.
And from controversies like the beloved Calderón and Ana.
Quite the opposite.
There were authors, such as the playwrights of the School of Comedy,
who did not fit entirely into the neoclassical molds and therefore
received criticism from, for example, Moratín.
But it had nothing to do with whether they were more or less romantic or simply
with not being present.
It was a rather elitist movement, and not everything fit in there.
The elitism that existed in the 18th century seems quite significant to me.
Something that must be highlighted to understand this whole context,
because novels, indeed there were many novels, but the social
consideration they had, especially the artistic consideration that
a novel could have in the 18th century was minimal in Lucian's Poetics,
for example, which was a reference text on how literature should be.
In 1918, novels were not discussed.
It's curious because no one talks about the novels, but they do talk about
Cervantes.
They say that Cervantes' Don Quixote is immortal, huh?
But no, no, no, he doesn't dedicate a chapter to the novel; he dedicates
chapters to theater and
poetry, especially in chapters where he says that Góngora and Lope de Vega are
very bad and that one should not limit oneself.
But he doesn't dedicate anything to the novel.
It's curious that Cervantes acknowledges that he is an immortal author.
But no, I didn't dedicate anything to the novel.
Therefore, the novel was held in low regard.
But it's curious because there were many imitations of Cervantes,
there were many in the 18th century, not only imitations of Don
Quixote, which are the most obvious, but also imitations of profiles
such as the works of Narciso in the style of Mela de Martínez, Colomer
or imitations, even of Galatea, imitations and continuations up
to the continuation of Galatea that Trigueros made, that is, the
pastoral novel, Byzantine novel in the Quixotic one.
These genres were relatively common in the 18th century, but not because there
was so
much appreciation of the novelistic genre, but because there was also an
appreciation
of Cervantes as a figure, and he was not understood so much as a novelist, but as
a brilliant author.
It's about appreciating what the novel was.
There were novels like that, but as something that didn't exist.
It was something quite marginal.
In the 19th century all this changed, especially in the
first decades from 1820 onwards, and particularly from 1830.
Although there were precedents, in the 1820s there was an almost national
concern that the country had no novels at a time when the novel was
blossoming. Well, there was some doubt, but...
But it was, uh, becoming much more popular among the
intellectual elites of the rest of Europe.
That's why there was an urgency to want to imitate Walter Scott and to want to
imitate everything.
This whole style of historical novel, well, it was
appropriate for a time of such turbulent social change.
A time when the concept of nation and national sovereignty was so hotly
debated.
And well, that nineteenth-century context was very relevant to making, uh,
countless imitations of Scott, especially a trend of the historical novel
that was not the only novelistic trend that emerged, but which is generally
the one that appears in the manuals of Spanish literature
when the subject of the novel in the 19th century is discussed.
How did they start in 19?
It seems that everything is an imitation of Scott, but that wasn't the
case. Many other works differed greatly from Scott, and even within the
same rhetorical text, there were works that, although similar to Scott,
diverged greatly in different aspects and were even parodies of Scott.
What always strikes me is the fact that what has long been considered the
first Spanish historical novel is Los mandos de Castilla by the Soler family.
Hmm. It's not so much an imitation of Scott, but
a parody of Walter Scott, a parody that takes
texts from Scott himself, but certainly does
not share the nationalist or traditionalist
ideas that underlie Ivanov's work.
In all these texts.
We're not in the 19th year and we need to talk.
It's the 18th, huh?
This context of a fashion for historical novels could be attributed
to a romanticism abroad that favored the production of novels and everything else.
As I said, in 1918 it didn't exist, it didn't exist.
This does not mean that there were no novels set in the past.
Then I knew it, but there are novels set in the past
and in the 18th, and in the 17th and in the 16th.
In all those centuries, can you find a single novel
set in the past or the Middle Ages? Huh?
Specifically, I'm here to talk about the Middle Ages because that's what causes
the most confusion.
Many times I haven't found much in many articles, or
monographs in general, that they say there is already
one, one, that is, there is already romanticism.
In the 18th century, because that novel is set in the Middle Ages, right?
As if the fact that it was set in the Middle Ages meant something that the
Romantics did indeed understand.
One of their main demands was that they
preferred the medieval to the classical.
That style was opposed to the neoclassical ones.
And of course, if we reduce this to the most and most
simplification, it can lead us to see any text that has any
medieval aspect or indication and we can say, come on, it's romantic.
Well, it doesn't make any sense, because as I say, throughout the
18th century there were texts set in the Middle Ages and in fact many
of those texts are not only neoclassical, but are the most
representative texts of what neoclassicism is in Spain and outside of
Spain.
If we go to AA1A1, such an important genre of the neoclassical
movement as tragedy, then we go to tragedy in European
neoclassicism and we will surely think of Walter's Muhammad.
Voltaire's Muhammad is set in the Middle Ages.
And if we go to Spain, perhaps the most famous, most important,
most representative text of neoclassical tragedy is Raquel by
García de la Huerta, which is curiously also called The Middle Ages.
Spanish neoclassical tragedies, huh?
While in the Middle Ages there are many, we can go to Guzmán,
the good Moratín, Father, we can go to the sons of Asturias, of
Vargas Ponce, to the Pelayo of Jovellanos and a whole bunch more.
It's not something, it's not something strange, it's not something romantic.
We are talking about authors who were very elitist and who staunchly
defended neoclassicism and who did not even consider something like
romanticism, therefore, that they are set in the Middle Ages.
These works are not made more romantic, they are made more romantic,
just as many romantic works are not less romantic for not being there.
While the Middle Ages is not a conditio sine qua non, it is.
Isn't this idea that romance is linked to
the Middle Ages a bit simplistic?
Well, Romanticism has to do with breaking a little of the limitations of
Neoclassicism, and
that could lead to imitating certain models that were not in classical
antiquity, but in the Middle Ages.
But the medieval setting, the atmosphere, is something
that classicism contemplated without any problem.
And in this context of Neoclassicism and such an elitist,
limiting causalism, it seems that it makes no sense to talk about
novels or that all the novels that emerged were outside of
Neoclassicism. The Cervantine novel, which is most of the
novels of the 18th century, certainly emerged outside of
classicism; that is, with Cervantes you cannot put him in classicism no matter
how much you want to.
He is an author who is completely resistant to such rigid parameters.
However much Antonio de los Ríos insisted on showing that Don
Quixote was an imitation of the Iliad, which, well, the theory he
puts forward makes sense, but I think it's a bit
reductionist with respect to what Don Quixote is, eh?
Therefore, they showed on one hand the Cervantine novel and
what historiography has traditionally identified as romantic
novels or historical novels, or even romantic
novels in the 18th century, if that makes sense.
They are another type of novel that emerged, especially in Spain, from a very
specific date.
It is 1778.
Well, I'd say even before 1778.
Before 1778 something very curious happened in which the
neoclassical moment was the neoclassical references
and it is a work that was quite referential within what is
poetry and epic poetry, and it is the Telemachus of De León.
I have here Telemachus from Penelope.
It was a very influential work, because although it is true that it remains
within the parameters that it is.
Classical or neoclassical epic, well, it's a text, uh, prose,
it could practically be considered a novel, and a novel that
was largely limited to this idea that you can make an epic poem
in prose, well, it was something that stood out quite a bit in
the 18th century because, uh, the authors could be within the
parameters of epic, but without needing to rhyme or without
needing to give rhythm to the compositions.
One way to create epic poems in prose, which we could say is
contradictory, and from current literary theory we could
say that they are not epic poems because they are in prose.
In any case they are novels, not this type of novels that I have come to
call epic novels, because they have a lot of epic influence and formally
they are very similar to epic, but with the only difference being that
they are in prose and specifically a very influential one in terms of the use of
the Middle Ages.
During the 18th he was the happy man of Father Teodoro de
Almeida, which I have here in the most current vision there
is, I am told published by a religious publisher that it seems
that this has not been published again since the 90s.
I think that this edition is a translation they use
from Portuguese because it's a Portuguese work. The
author was very important in Portugal, and this very
recent edition is based on an 18th-century translation,
I think from the early 19th century, but in any case,
from that era. It's a novel that follows the model of
Telemachus, which was published in 1778.
And it was enormously, enormously disseminated.
It was very successful in Spain, it is not good in Spain and in the
colonies, because if one reads the Periquillo Sarmiento by Fernández del
Jardín.
One thing that really caught my attention is that the protagonist,
Periquillo Sarmiento, is assigned it as mandatory reading in school, in the man.
Felipe: Not at all.
It was a very well-known work, especially because it had a lot of educational
value, or rather, whether it had educational value from current standards
is questionable.
At the time, at least, it was considered to have some educational value.
The work, as I say, is based on the model of Telemachus.
The author confesses in the prologue that he wanted to compose an epic poem,
but that he was not very good at rhyming, at stringing verses together.
And he said, well, in the end I'm going to do it in prose, but it's a prose
thing about an idea that was originally going to be in verse.
It probably resembles epic poetry, and especially didactic
epic poetry, in the style of Telemachus by Leon, which was also
in prose and the only difference is that in this case it was also in the Middle
Ages.
Especially because the.
The fundamental idea of ​​this book was to be able to
react in some way to the waves of irreligion
that were periodically emerging.
As the most radical Enlightenment progressed in the 18th century.
In other words, all this feeling of universal anguish, of universal
annoyance that Meléndez Valdés said, the Goldschmidt who doesn't
pronounce himself German but is so dull, existential to the point of pouring.
So, above all, what is criticized here in the man in the happy
name of the Father, the miracle that is considered to come from
a lack of religiosity and that the best way to combat that is,
well, by remaining very stoic, very Christian and with absolute trust in God.
To do this, the author divides two characters.
One of them is extremely religious and has absolute faith in
the divine, and the other is so passionate that he ends up committing
suicide, right?
Then all this exaltation of passions is shown, something that is nevertheless
portrayed as bad, as something morally reprehensible.
And the real protagonist, uh, is the counterexample of that.
A medieval Christian knight who always remains faithful to God.
And with all this appeal to the medieval world, especially to
the chivalric romances, but with a didactic background.
The didactic background of Thomas is not so explicit.
It is mentioned mainly in the dialogues.
There are moral reflections from the characters, but it is above all an
adventure novel that is quite easy to read.
Honestly, for the 21st century, this is still
readable and much more enjoyable, huh?
In other words, it is a much more enjoyable read than many other novels
that I will discuss below.
It is a novel, as I say, of adventures, which intended
to offer a moral example, eh, that would serve as a
reference for that new century of disbelief in God.
And of course, that's what they want to do.
In that sense, the author, the Portuguese one, chose to refer to a
historical figure, a historical figure, but not a very well-known
one, because that would prevent him from creating adventures and
developing a series of fictional episodes that take place in a specific
context. Escogido is a Ladislaus III of Poland, who is, well, right?
I don't know if he's a very well-known historical figure
nowadays, but he certainly wasn't in 18th-century Spain, and
since he wasn't known, well, it allowed people to invent all sorts of nonsense
about him.
This novel, as I say, is more like the chivalric
romances of the Middle Ages than any historical
novel of the 19th century.
Well, the topic of history.
In general, fantastic beings appear, demons appear, spirits of darkness
appear, and all that, and the character fights against all these demonic beings.
And well, it's more fantasy than anything else; it's more of a fantasy
novel with Christian moralizing, and above all, because of its moral
advice and that desire to remain stoic in the face of all the world's
adversities, it was something that was very popular with the
sensibilities of 18th-century Spain, which were rather conservative,
rather reactionary, rather prudish, if you will.
This was something I liked quite a lot, although not everyone liked it more.
There were some critical voices, such as Mor de Fuentes in La Serafina,
who said that this book was very good because it allowed you to save yourself a
2000 lire syrup.
No? Huh?
The same could be said of Serafina de Fuentes, but oh well.
No, I'm not going to get into that discussion right now in general
knowledge.
It was a book that was very well received in Spain.
There were certain detractors, some of them like De Fuentes, whom I just
mentioned, and another, Father Andrés Merino, of Jesus Christ. Uh.
Because although he was also a rather pious author, like Teodoro
Almeida, also religious, he saw a certain problem in this kind
of literature such as The Happy Man, which although in the 18th
century there had been a common agreement that the
Did literature have a didactic role, did it have to teach?
Well, one problem that could arise from literature teaching
or being didactic is that, uh, works like that included
a lot of historical nonsense, uh?
There is no respect for historical events and the number
of fictional or fantastical episodes is numerous.
So, if literature was supposed to teach, and it was supposed to teach
about the Middle Ages, well, this wasn't going to teach us much. It
could teach me a lot on a moral level, but not that much.
And well, on a moral level I was somewhat upset because this idea that
people should be independent, uh, could be controversial.
The original title was The Happy Man, Independent of the World and of Fortune.
And since this is all well and good for men, but trying to apply this ethic to
women
for whatever reason, Father Andrés Reino de Jesucristo was not too happy about it.
This led her to publish a novel in response to the
happy man entitled Eh, in 1786 The Happy Woman,
the Happy Woman, dependent on the world and fortune.
Yes, the happy man was independent of the world and of fortune.
A happy woman is dependent on the world and on fortune.
It is a continuation of The Happy Man.
It is a critical combination with the happy man and above all, critical.
In the prologue with the theme of historical events.
In other words, in The Happy Man there is a series of historical absurdities
about Poland, about a dislocation and so on, which only serve to hinder people.
And in this novel we're going to try to stay true to history.
The Middle Ages, and well, uh, the truth is that in terms of
erudition about the Middle Ages, The Happy Woman is a pretty comprehensive
novel, uh?
It is a long, very long novel, quite unbearable in many aspects, because
it consists of long moralizing lessons, much less entertaining than The
Happy Man. Although it is true that it has a novelistic plot that is quite
well crafted and that could be salvaged if an anthology were made.
But the important thing here is that it takes place in the Middle Ages, in the
Middle Ages with moralizing purposes.
It has nothing to do, absolutely nothing to do with what would later
become the Romantic novel, the historical novel, also romantic
for the stockings, because, for example, the interest in national
customs is nonexistent, it does not take place in Spain, it takes
place in Poland and in countries in that area, not in Spain, in very
distant countries, precisely in order to give greater allegorical
value to everything that is being talked about.
But the customs of Spain at this point are of very little interest.
And well, later, in 1792, another very similar novel appeared,
which is Valdemar or Martínez Colomer Martínez, who had previously
written some imitations of Cervantes, imitations of the exemplary novels.
It is proposed today, 792, to make an imitation of the happy man that is
Valdemar, a work that has perhaps been given too much importance because
it was not known that it was an imitation of the happy man.
But anyone who reads The Happy Man or reads Valdemar will see that it's more of
the same.
Everything that can be said about the happy man, I can accept at the Valdemar.
The only difference is that while in The Happy Man we are talking about two
characters, one who is a counterexample of the other, in Valdemar we will talk
about a character who at first was passionate about what he wants to commit
suicide.
In fact, the first scene is him trying to commit suicide, but you will see the
moment
when a Christian hermit stops him, saying, "Don't commit suicide, God loves
you very much," I don't know what else.
And well, from there a novel unfolds that aims above all to provide a
series of moral principles, of Christian virtue, although it takes
place in the Middle Ages and in very distant kingdoms that the average
person in the 18th century didn't usually know much about.
It was the most successful novel by the author Martínez Colomer.
And well, as I say, so much so.
The happy woman of Andrés de Jesucristo and the Valdemar
of Martínez Colomer stay in that line of EH of Telemaco
and of Father Almeida of works that are really mmm
novels, but that live off epic poetry, that is, epic novels.
It still has very little to do with the historical novel of the 19th century; the
historical
novel of the 19th century will be much better structured, it will give much more
importance to what the mediocre hero is, eh?
It's a good thing I haven't read Lukács' book on the historical novel.
He'll know.
The historical novel, in the Scott style, is not about great historical
figures, but about mediocre heroes, or about characters who are invented
or who lived in a specific era and embody the values ​​of that era, but who
represent the common people, not specific historical figures, right?
These works depict great princes, great kings, great dukes
or counts who are used as examples of virtues.
And well, the brown bucket of 1792 and 1793 is perhaps
the novel that has generated the most controversy,
the most controversy in the sense that it has allowed
for a series of judgments to be made, which I agree
with, and it is Rodrigo de Monte in 1793, The Origin of the Problem.
Alberto lists an article by Alberto Lista in the early days of
Romanticism that said that the origins of the romantic
historical novel were already in Monte Gon in the 18th century.
The only one who says that Huntington's problem is that he didn't know how to
write Spanish well.
I don't know what they mean by this, or to what extent.
Lists of those who write better Spanish, who put all their effort into judging it
in this way.
But the point is, uh, I think the comparison that Lista made makes no sense
because it implies a complete lack of understanding of this whole trend,
uh, of the 18th century, of the epic novel, of the influence
of Telemachus and the influence of Sleeping Peter.
It is, uh, this work is totally decontextualized and to believe
that it is romantic because it is a work set in the middle.
But then, by that logic, all neoclassical dramas in the 18th century,
which are set in the Middle Ages, starting with García de la Huerta's
Raquel, should be romantic. I think it makes no sense to compare this with the
19th century.
This.
This edition by Guillermo Carnero in the lecture hall insists that it is already a
historical novel in the style of Romanticism.
And if you search for articles online you'll see that many say it's a
historical novel.
Era published an article in the Romantic style in which I believe I give
sufficient
reasons why I consider it a bit of an exaggeration to compare this to
historical novels in the Romantic style. And here I reiterate that point.
I think it's a work that draws heavily from epic poetry in particular.
It perhaps imitates Tasso's Jerusalem Conquered a lot, because he had
a lot of contact with Italian culture, but it has nothing to do with what would
later become Romanticism.
You only have to read the prologue.
In the prologue the author says that what he intends to do is an epic
poem, but that he has not finished rhyming, just as happened to Teodoro,
to whom he offers us a first draft of what would later become, uh, his
epic poem The Loss of Spain that he would publish in the 19th century.
He wanted to write an epic poem.
I wanted to do an essay first, a draft, and I tell you this that it is in
prose, of course, but on a formal level it is much more like any epic poem.
The character is King Rodrigo.
He's not a mediocre hero in the Scott way.
It is more of a collective tragedy.
It is very similar to Spanish neoclassical
tragedies set in the Visigothic era.
I say this, and I stand by it.
I don't think it's a work that has anything
to do with the romantic novel genre.
It's more of an epic novel, isn't it?
I argue that we should use the term "epic" because it seems much
more accurate to me and because it fits better with this whole
trend of imitations of Nelson and Father Almeida.
And in this case, we would be dealing with yet another erotic novel.
The same is true of Javier. The novel.
Javier: Yes, sorry for the interruption.
Five minutes, please. But I'm sorry, okay.
Another novel he published that same year, huh?
Belisarius's daughter, another epic novel that in this case also focuses
on education, just like The Happy Man, but on the education of women.
Just like the happy woman appealing to Belisarius's daughter, huh?
Therefore, it was also approved in the Middle Ages.
I won't have much more because I'm a bit short on time.
But I also wanted to mention the case in 1797, of a novel
that I think is very important because it was one of the
first to use the label historical novel and it is easy,
easy historical novel by Pedro Maria de Oliveira.
This novel has gone completely unnoticed by literary historiography because
it was considered to be a translation of a text by Paco al andar, right?
And it's true.
He himself says that he has based it on what he has written, but it is not a
literal translation of what he published.
Was it a play, a drama called exactly that? But what
it does is, on the same plot of the drama,
compose a totally original novel, huh?
And set in the Middle Ages.
But it has nothing to do with the historical novel of the 19th century
either.
In this case, the most interesting thing is that it's a gothic novel.
It takes place in a dark and gloomy castle
where utterly abominable events occur.
There is a mad, tormented Castilian man who forces
his wife to devour the heart of her lover.
A huge drama, a tremendously gruesome thing, and a rather heartbreaking ending.
The most interesting thing about that novel is that it anticipates the Gothic
novel.
There will be a conference tomorrow.
Miriam López Santos has spoken to her about this.
The first Gothic novel to date that had been recognized as such was Cornelia
Bronquial 1801.
We'll be talking about the fact that there's an earlier one in 1797.
Is it easy to write a completely Gothic novel, not a novel with Gothic elements,
huh?
Fangirl in 1797, labeled a historical novel, before she died there was another
historical novel.
The thing is, I'm not going to talk about it because it's about Alexander the
Great, and I think it's a
historical novel called Alexander the Great, a historical novel, but it doesn't
take place in the Middle Ages.
I'm not going to discuss the topic, but it's very interesting because it's an
adaptation of a French translation of an ancient Persian poem about Alexander
the Great, such an interesting subject, but better for another time as I don't
have the time.
The last thing I want to talk about is Olavide Olavide, one of the most
important
novelists of the 18th century, if not the most important, who published in the
19th century, but who composed almost all of his novelistic work himself, and
who even wrote a novel set in the time of the Catholic Monarchs, entitled The
Sun of Seville, which is included in this anthology of novels by La Fuente
that you can find at the Verbum publishing house.
That novel, Sol de Sevilla.
This one is a little closer to our idea of ​​a historical novel, but it
doesn't at all align with the concept of the romantic
spirit of the people, of the customs of the people.
None of that, huh?
Quite the opposite.
It is a novel that exalts the Catholic Monarchs and exalts ideas of the world
that have little or nothing in common with the ideas of national sovereignty
that were so prevalent in the nineteenth-century historical novel.
Huh? This novel, on the contrary, reflects something throughout almost the
entire novel.
It's not a mindset you live with, huh?
Completely, totally reactionary and anti-enlightenment and
very contrary to the revolutionary ideas of the French Revolution,
which was one of the biggest critics of the French Revolution
and all these ideas of national sovereignty.
In no other context.
Well, I hope I haven't gone over the time limit.
It's a topic you can discuss much more, but I don't want to dwell on it.
Regarding time,
if there are any details or clarifications, I prefer to address them
during the question and answer session.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you very much Javier for all the references you have provided,
which we have certainly taken into account, and we have also noted
many interesting considerations, for example, regarding the continuity of
periods.
Many times.
Well, what I was referring to was that Spanish
novel that was fossilized in the 18th century.
Well, if there is room for debate or
discussion afterwards, then so be it.
We'll take advantage of that, we're a bit short on time, so let's move on to the
next intervention.
Thank you very much, Javier.
The following speaker is Carlos Mata Indurain, a tenured
professor accredited by ANECA and a professor accredited by Catalonia.
He is a researcher and academic secretary of the Griso Golden
Age Research Group at the University of Navarra.
His academic work stands out especially in the field of Golden
Age literature and the work of Miguel de Cervantes.
Although he also plays a prominent role in the research of the historical novel.
In fact, his doctoral thesis was titled Francisco Navarro
Villa, isolated 1818 to 1895 and his historical novels.
Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Carlos.
When you think it's the right thing to do.
Well, thank you very much for the presentation.
Many thanks to the organizers.
Antonio Israel, Azucena, thank you for this invitation that allows
me to speak again about the historical novels of Cervantes and Manuel Fernández
González.
Although the real expert on Fernández and González here is the
person I just spoke about, not Javier with his doctoral thesis
from 1992 and the monograph derived from it that was mentioned in his
presentation.
Can you hear me okay?
Just for me, perfectly.
Okay, perfect.
Well, in my case I had already dedicated a couple of previous
works to Fernández and González, specifically to their
novels that address the Cervantine theme, but I was very
keen to focus my attention on this one entitled The Captives
of Algiers, which presents a very peculiar editorial problem or
circumstance.
We do not know the text of this story from a 20th-century
edition, Editorial Tesoro, which is part of the
mythical Capa y Espada collection, but we do not
know if it was published in the 19th century as a
standalone book or through the delivery or pamphlet format.
I will return to this issue a little later.
Love, adventure and intrigue in the chivalrous and romantic
setting of our history constitute the motto
of our unique swashbuckler collection.
This is what that collection, which publishes titles in the mid-20th century,
promised.
And indeed, the novels of Fernández and González
certainly provide such elements to clarify the picture a little.
I will begin by recalling that Fernández y González, a true professional
of the serial novel, which is published in installments today,
wrote several works that are related to Cervantes.
Thus we have The Battle of Lepanto, which is an
epic poem awarded in 1850 at the Floral Games
of the Lyceum of Granada and published that same year in Granada.
Next comes The One-Armed Man of Lepanto, subtitled
Episode in the Life of the Prince of Wits, Miguel de
Cervantes, Madrid, Muñoz Printing House
and Red 1874.
This is a medium-length novel centered on certain love affairs
of the writer that end with his enlistment as a soldier and his
participation in the famous naval battle of 1571 against the
Turks, the captives of Algiers, which is presented as a
continuation of the previous one, but of which I have already
said that we do not have the 19th century text, we only have the 20th century text.
Madrid, Editorial Tesoro, 1954.
And finally, the Prince of Wits, Miguel
de Cervantes Saavedra, Barcelona.
Espasa Hermanos Publishing House, a typographic establishment without a year,
has no foot.
The imprint does not indicate the
year, but it could be around 1,876,878.
This is a much longer novel, as it has
no less than 1,300,300 pages.
This is one volume, this is the other volume.
Here are the 1300 pages that make up that very
long novel about Miguel de Cervantes.
Well, all these stories, well, the epic poem, which is also a
story in some way, and these novels certainly don't have great literary
quality, but they are.
Perhaps Javier might disagree here because he argues that,
of course, within Manuel Fernández de González's vast
output, there are good works, but these, in my opinion, lack
great literary quality. However, they are very interesting
for understanding the path taken by Cervantine recreations
during the Romantic period in the 1870s, when Cervantes
was becoming a canonical writer, the quintessential
author of the Spanish language.
Well, I have already mentioned that I have not been able to determine whether
there
was an independent edition in the 19th century of the captives of Algiers, as
there was of the Manco de Lepanto.
The novel that precedes it might be assumed to be so, but
neither the specialized bibliography on Fernández y
González, nor the catalogs and reference works in use make
any mention of it, to refer to a classic that was mentioned
this morning, the famous catalog of Spanish novels and
novelists of the 19th century, by Juan Ignacio Ferreras,
both in the old edition of 1979 and in the revamped one of
2010, mentions a series of novels by Fernández de González,
published in the mid-20th century by Editorial Tesoro.
Ferreras says, among which are some not listed in any catalog.
And there he gives a list of these problematic novels for which we do not
have a 19th-century text, and among them is The Captives of Algiers.
For her part, María Teresa de Préstamo Landín, in her doctoral
thesis The Constable Don Álvaro de Luna and his court in the context
of the popular novels of Manuel Fernández González, mentions
in her catalogue The Captives as a variant of the Manco de Lepanto
and then in the bibliography, since she limits herself to citing
what is known to be the 1954 edition of Tesoro.
Nor has consulting bibliographic databases allowed me to
locate the record of that hypothetical exempt edition.
It existed, and not only is there a single copy
left, but not even a bibliographic record of it.
The Captives of Algiers was published in installments or
newspaper pamphlets and no one has located this text.
I even wanted to consult with the interlibrary loan service at my
university, because sometimes librarians handle resources that are beyond the
reach of researchers.
And there has been no way to locate this hypothetical
19th-century exempt edition either.
However, the text published in 1954 by Tesoro de algún sitio had to be released.
And what I can affirm is that the plot of
The Captives of Algiers coincides, but
mind you, not entirely verbatim with the
text of The Prince of Wits, the 1300-page novel of around
1,876,878.
So, does The Captives of Algiers constitute a
summary of the longer novel, or is it rather an
abridged earlier version that would have had to
be published as a serial book or in a serial novel around 1874-76?
Lacking more precise editorial data and the absence of that text
from the 19th, I am not in a position to give a definitive answer.
What is clear is that many of the allusions made by the
captives refer to and cannot be understood without the
context of the outlandish and extensive 1300-page story.
It remains to be determined, then, what the exact production
process of The Captives of Algiers was, whether it was extraction
and abbreviation of the long text or whether this was already a
previous text that was later expanded by the novelist to take
advantage of a narrative story full of stories, intrigues, secondary characters,
etc.?
Okay, going back to the 1954 edition, which is the
only text we can handle well, the flap contains a
very interesting informative text where it talks
about piracy and how Fernández González offers
us a magnificent picture describing the life of
the captives in the Algerian baths and also the
disappointments and hardships suffered by Miguel de Cervantes.
That flap also tells us the price of the novel:
Paperback, 25 pesetas; Clothbound, 35 pesetas.
The second flap also has informative value, as it contains a
list of works that are part of this collection.
This includes 31 titles by Fernández and González themselves,
eight by Ortega and Frías, two by Parreño, one by Richard
Brandt and one by Fenimore Cooper.
All for 25 pesetas.
Except for the double volumes, which cost twice as much, they cost 50.
Continuing with the paratexts or texts that are not yet
the text of the novel, I want to mention a note that appears
on the credits page under the heading "important" in
capital letters and signed by the editor.
It says: Contemporary historical criticism has dispelled darkness and
undone errors and misunderstandings surrounding the immortal figure of Miguel
de Cervantes.
A century ago, when Don Miguel Fernández González, where Don
Manuel Fernández y González wrote this work, many of the novelistic
adventures and love affairs included in it were still attributed
to the Complutense gentleman, and we trust that the reader's
good judgment will be able to discern them.
Well, I think the instruction is very clear, isn't it?
Fernández González exaggerates, invents, lets his imagination run wild,
and the discerning reader will be able to distinguish what is real from what is
invented.
This important detail came up in one of the presentations this morning, didn't
it?
When we evaluate a 19th-century historical novel, we have to take
into consideration what the state of historical science was at
that time, which did not have the rigor or the level of knowledge that it does
today.
That is why I always say that when judging these novels from a historical
point of view, we should not compare them with what we know today, in
this case about the life of Cervantes and his time, but with what was
known according to the historiography of that time.
Nor should we forget the freedom of the historical novelist who, as a
creator of fiction, can take liberties that the historian cannot.
Therefore, when we find an incorrect or inaccurate fact or an anachronism
in these works, we should not always think that it is due to the author's
ignorance, that he has made a mistake, that he knows nothing, but that
many times it is the adaptation of those facts that he handles to his
discursive strategy, always from the point of view or from the plane of
fiction.
Well, I had a quote and an anecdote about the author here.
The quote was an assessment made by Javier Muñoz de
Morales Galiana, of the joint production of Fernández and González.
But it more or less says what I've already said, that in such an extensive
body of work
it's normal to have ups and downs, with better works, worse works, and so on.
What I do want to remember, and please excuse me Javier, is that I'm not reading
the quote right now.
What I do want to remember is, uh, the anecdote that Hernández
Herval recounts in his fabulous, fabulous in the sense that he makes up many
things, uh?
Biography of Fernández and González.
And I find this anecdote very revealing. Don't you think?
It says that someone affectionately allowed him to
publish books unworthy of his talent and fame.
Fernández y González, who had a solution for everything, would reply: "When a
publisher comes to commission a book from me, I set up my loom and ask the
bookseller what kind of book you want."
A white-collar story or a tale of bandits?
Do you want cane, mallet, or fine silk?
And according to what he wants, which is regulated by what he pays.
Is this how I work, making fine silk or cane?
Mallet.
Well, I think it's one.
A very revealing quote. Don't you think?
Okay, to contextualize the captives of Algiers, I'm going
to briefly gloss over the content of The Prince of Wits by
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, a story I've studied at
another time and which is completely unreasonable to fill those 1300 pages.
Fernández de González invents secondary characters who have adventures,
in which they meet other characters, whose adventures are also recounted.
And so, through accumulation, he manages
to fill those 300,300 pages.
Let's remember that he was paid per sheet of paper and
per line, and therefore had to fill out paper, right?
Good, huh?
In this novel, is the narrative material studied, stretched,
excuse me, everything, everything possible, huh?
Is there this trend that Ferreras called a "stuttered
style," a technique I've called "abuse of paragraph
breaks," not with dialogues like "Hello, hello, how are you?"
Okay. You arrived either at 12, no, at one.
And so each of those replies was a line. Right?
Eh, Fernández y González has no qualms about including in these
1300 pages all the documents of the information from Algiers,
from Cervantes, the Cervantine poem of the stasis to Saint Teresa
and even, to include, he includes his entire epic poem The Battle
of Lepanto of 1850, saying, "Why am I going to describe the Battle
of Lepanto again, if I already told it in my epic poem?" and he includes them.
I think that's 100/8 of that epic poem, right?
Okay, so what's the content
of this thick novel?
The first volume, which occupies 668 pages,
is divided into Book One, Cardinal Aguaviva,
60 chapters, Book Two, from Rome to Lepanto,
47 chapters and Book Three, Lepanto, 12 chapters.
The second volume, which occupies pages 669 to 1300.
The numbering is sequential.
In both volumes, Book 4, "The Captivity
in Algiers," has 69 chapters.
Book 5, Esquivias, 21 chapters; Book 6, the
Mayor of Argamasilla, 13 chapters.
Book 7, The Daughter of Cervantes, 35 chapters
and a conclusion of 14 chapters.
Well, if we compare the content of the long novel with
the short story of the captives of Algiers, we find
that the captives of Algiers coincide.
The content coincides with the entire second volume of the
long novel, but obviously with abbreviations.
Everything is explained in a much more succinct way. Isn't it?
Yes, the second volume of the extensive novel
consisted of 632 pages divided into 152 chapters, all with their own titles.
The novella reaches 275 pages divided into
24 untitled chapters and an epilogue.
Chapters 1 to 16 of the short novel, mmm, narrate
Cervantes' captivity until his release in 1580.
That is to say, they are equivalent to what were 69 chapters
in the longer novel; chapters 17 to 24 of the captives deal
with Cervantes' marriage in Esquivias with Catalina de Salazar.
His crush on Atentos Aldonza Lorenzo, huh?
And Cervantes' relationship with his natural daughter, Isabel.
That is, everything covered in the extensive novel
throughout three books, the 5th, the 6th and the 7th,
with 21, 13 and 35 chapters, respectively.
Finally, the epilogue of the novella, which
occupies two pages from 268 to 70, 275,
corresponds approximately to the 14 chapters
that formed the conclusion in the 1300-page novel.
Cervantes' commissions for Andalusia, his economic
hardships despite the triumph of Don Quixote in 1605, the
Veleta episode in Valladolid and the ending in which he
refers to how his sister Magdalena and his natural daughter
Isabel enter the Trinitarian convent.
And here the text of the captives of Algiers ends somewhat abruptly.
The rest of Cervantes' life is not included or
summarized, including the final years, the
writing of his profile, and his death in 1616.
I cannot stop because I want to stick to the allotted
time to minimally summarize the plot, as I say,
of what is the second volume of the long novel and
what is the plot of the captives of Algiers.
Don't include any adventures, backstabbing, or
intrigues; all the women who fall in love with Cervantes,
the Jewish Abigail Noemí, the obese wife of Hassan,
the King of Algiers who also falls in love with Cervantes. Right?
But all this, the historical data known about Cervantes'
captivity, which is even there at some point Fernández
González handles, or rather, cites the sources he uses,
such as Father Haedo, not about Algiers, etc. Well, the
escape attempts, the fact that he was never punished,
even though escape attempts were punished with the
death penalty, etc., etc. All this, which more or less
corresponds to the official biography of Cervantes,
is conveniently seasoned with the corresponding
amount of internal rebellions in Algiers.
Battles and knife fights, kidnappings, storms at sea,
boarding actions, and the existence of a curious Brotherhood
of the Tiger, whose secret leader is none other than Doña
Magdalena, an old lover of Cervantes, who is also around.
Through Algiers, eh?
And what is it, huh?
Well, it reappears there. No, I can't refer to this whole plot
point about Cervantes's loves and affairs, because ultimately
we're recovering information from the longer novel, and
what we're saying here is that Cervantes is a genius, and
geniuses have the freedom to fall in love, to bleed themselves
dry, to be in love with three or four women at the same time,
which is what happens in these novels.
In the long one I'll explain it in more detail, and in the short one, more
succinctly, I'm going to.
I'm going to finish up now with
a few small details, right?
Hmm. Which one is the portrait of Cervantes?
At the very least, I'll say it telegraphically: throughout
the main part about the captives of Algiers, which obviously
corresponds to the captivity in Algiers, there is a highly
idealized portrait of Cervantes as a hero who organizes
all the escape attempts, and when those escape attempts
are thwarted, he takes all the responsibility and absolves
or exonerates his companions, etc., etc. And all that
character of magnificence, of greatness, of soul, etc.,
is conveniently underlined both by the main
characters and by the narrator's voice!
There's even a providential vision, isn't there?
God is saving Cervantes from dying in Algiers because He
destines him for something great in the future.
I don't read all the quotes I had
here, and even in both.
In both the long novel and the short novel, it is recounted that Cervantes
has a plan to seize Algiers because there are 25,000 Christian captives
there, and therefore, they are well organized and well coordinated.
They can seize the city and return it to Christendom, huh?
To win it for, for, for religion,
for God, etc., and for the king.
That, as I say, is the idealized portrait that appears throughout
1/1 of the captives of Algiers and in the last
chapters, because in reality the novel could end.
Could the short novel end when Cervantes is freed
by Friar Juan Gil in the eight added chapters?
There, a completely different image appears.
It's the mature Cervantes, whom nobody pays attention
to, who can't go to America, who has to barely make a
living with his commissions in Andalusia as a gentleman,
as a collector of back taxes, etc., etc., with problems
paying his rent, etc., etc. And it's a completely sad image.
Negative, right?
Of an unrecognized genius.
Finally, a brief note on history and fiction.
And that's it, right?
Let's not forget that we're dealing with a historical novel, and
therefore, we're talking about fiction, right? Fernández and
González try to show what Algerian society was like at that time.
At least it tries to be faithful through the use of a coherent
onomastics through the inclusion of Arabic words.
Or are you bringing Cádiz closer, etc., right?
That give, from a linguistic point of view, that local touch or that local
flavor, etc.
There are even some curious indications such as that the.
The couscous of the Moors is similar to rice pudding.
Well, I don't know if this is exactly the case, maybe not in terms of
physical appearance, but not in terms of taste and other aspects.
And some historical data is used or known historical data is entered.
For example, the fact that Cervantes carried letters of
recommendation from Don Juan of Austria increased his value as a ransom captive,
etc.
And regarding the image of Algiers.
And with that I conclude.
Although descriptions are not abundant because in Fernández de González's
novels almost everything is subordinated to action and dialogue.
There isn't much room for a lengthy description.
Yes, at times, because he tries to describe the Alcazaba
of Algiers, the streets, etc. And of course, the atmosphere
of the baths, of those prisons, of the Christian captives.
It's an interesting story.
The Captives of Algiers, more than for its literary quality, I believe
stands out for something that has also been said this morning: the
construction of an imaginary world, in this case around the figure
of Miguel de Cervantes, and it is one more link in the long chain of
Cervantine recreations that are in very good health.
By the way, even to this day. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Carlos.
We'd have to see what Alejandro Amenábar thinks about the work of De Fernández and
González.
Thank you so much for that microhistory exercise as well, right?
Speaking of the prices of paraphrases, those quotes that
help us to always understand a work well, right?
Okay, let's put the debate aside for a bit.
The discussion will be left until the end for the sake of time.
Thank you very much to all the participants of this third table
and we will now move directly to the conference that will close the day.
More time passes this afternoon with Gonzalo.