Robert C. Spires-Beyond The Metafictional Mode - Directions in The Modern Spanish Novel-University Press of Kentucky (1984) PDF

STUDIES IN ROMANCE LANGUAGES: 30
John E. Keller, Editor

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BEYOND THE
METAFICTIONAL MODE
DIRECTIONS IN THE
MODERN SPANISH NOVEL
Robert C. Spires
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

Copyright© 1984 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky
Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0024
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Spires, Robert C.
Beyond the metafictional mode.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
I. Spanish fiction-20th century-History and criti-
cism. 2. Fiction-Technique. I. Title.
PQ6144.S648 1984 863'.64'09 84-7565
ISBN 978-0-8131-5469-5
To Jeffrey R. and Leslie Ann
Contents
Preface 1x
Introduction: The Metafictional Mode
1. Violations and Pseudo-Violations: Quijote, Buscon,

and "La novela en el tranvia" 18
2. Fiction on a Palimpsest: Niebla 33
3. Codes versus Modes: Locura y muerte de nadie and

La novia del viento 45
4. Rebellion against Models: Don juan and Orestes 58
5. Process as Product: Juan sin Tierra 72
6. Reading-into-Being: La colera de Aquiles 89
7. Product Preceding Process: El cuarto de atrds 107
Afterwords 125
Notes 129
Bibliography 141
Index 149
Preface
Although my interest in metafiction was inspired by contemporary

novels, when I began this study I found I had to establish some
kind of historical view before attempting to deal with present-day
metafictional works. As others have already pointed out, the term
metafiction invaded our critical vocabulary around 1970, yet the
textual strategies involved in turning fiction back onto itself can be
traced to at least the sixteenth century. The discrepancy between
the earlier examples of what we now call metafiction and the recent
coining of the term perhaps can be explained by the complemen-
tary evolution of textual strategies and reader expectations. That
is, the opposition between the first expression of the mode and the
expectations of readers was so great that a long process of reception
was required. But just as the initial readings were continued and
enriched through further receptions from generation to generation,
so the strategies fed on one another. The whole process has culmi-
nated, from our present perspective, in the current obsession with
novelistic self-commentary. This book, then, chronicles such an
evolutionary process in the Spanish novel from the beginning of the
seventeenth century up to the 1980s; it analyzes the development of
the metafictional mode into the recent self-referential Spanish
novel.
The sources for my theoretical/critical project are somewhat
eclectic, and, although there is probably a predominance of names
associated with structuralism and semiotics, they include repre-
sentatives of poststructuralism and hermeneutics. The references
in the text identify who these people are, yet two theorists whose
ideas have been fundamental to my own thinking deserve to be
singled out here: Gerard Genette and Felix Martinez Bonati. I
have included in the bibliography some works not directly quoted
but whose imprint may be detected in my commentaries. I should
also note that in all likelihood I have failed to recognize the
contribution of others merely because their ideas have now become
X Beyond the Metafictional Mode
so much a part of me that I have forgotten where I discovered

them. I can only hope that any such person will view his or her
omission as the compliment it really is.
The purely theoretical section of this book is the Introduction.
There I address the question of narrative mode and propose a
modal definition of metafiction. This section represents an attempt
both to summarize others' ideas and to propose my own admittedly
derivative theories.
The chapters following the Introduction feature detailed anal-
yses of from one to three works each, with briefer analyses of novels
pertaining to the same general category. The format is chro-
nological, although chronology is not strictly adhered to in the
final three chapters devoted to novels published in the 1970s and
1980s. In order of appearance, then, there is one chapter each on
the precursors of the twentieth century (the Quijote, El Buscon, and
"La novela en el tranvia"), on the Generation of'98 (Niebla), on the
vanguardist period (Locuray muerte de nadie and La novia del viento ), on
the postwar period (Don Juan and Un hombre que se parecia a Orestes),
and finally three chapters on the last decade: novels foregrounding
the act of writing Uuan sin Tierra), the act of reading (La colera de
Aquiles), and the act of discourse itself (El cuarto de atras). Although
the format is designed to provide a historical view, the examples
are selective rather than comprehensive. Generally I have chosen
what I consider the most prominent works of each writer, but in
the case ofGald6s I have chosen instead a little-known short story.
Those already familiar with the criticism of John W. Kronik on
metafiction in Gald6s's novels will understand my choice. Jarn<~s's
La novia del viento is another fairly obscure novel that I have
included, but it is contrasted with Locura y muerte de nadie, perhaps
that novelist's most prominent work. Certainly I can be accused of
not mentioning novels fully deserving of inclusion within what
many conceive as the general category metafiction. In some cases
these are conscious omissions on my part responding to the defini-
tion I am following; in other cases it may well be that I have failed
to recognize a given work's metafictional dimensions, or that I
simply do not know the novel in question. I can only hope that I
have made enough appropriate selections so as not to skew for the
reader the view I am projecting.
When they are readily available I have relied on English
Prqace XI
translations of the critical and theoretical works consulted. In the

case of the novels analyzed, I have relied exclusively on the
Spanish editions but have provided my own translations for every
passage cited. For those novels that have been translated I note the
English edition in the bibliography.
Although I have published articles on several of the novels
analyzed in this study, all the essays here were rewritten for the
present book. In most cases the essays here were greatly expanded
from the earlier published versions, and in each case they have
been refocused to accommodate their role in this study.
Perhaps the students in the Department of Spanish and Por-
tuguese of the University of Kansas who participated in graduate
classes with me, particularly those who were in my seminar on
metafiction, deserve whatever credit this book may derive, but
certainly none of the blame for its defects. In addition to them,
several colleagues read sections of the manuscript at various stages
of its development, and their always perceptive but never hostile
challenges to my ideas have been invaluable. Special thanks are
due to Steven Bell, Lucille Kerr, and especially Roberta Spires. I
would like to express my appreciation also to the General Research
Fund of the University of Kansas for grants enabling me to do the
preliminary work on this study and the final editing. For the
support to do the primary research and writing I wish to thank the
National Endowment for the Humanities, without whose fel-
lowship the task would not have been completed. Finally, I would
like to express my gratitude to the staff of the Spencer Research
Library at the University of Kansas for providing me with a study
in which to do the project.
Introduction
The Metafictional Mode
Several studies of the historical development of metafiction in the

European and American novel already exist, the most famous
being Robert Alter's Partial Magic. 1 Although the subtitle of Alter's
book is The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre, he does not attempt to
define metafiction's generic or modal components. He offers in-
stead a series of descriptive analyses of self-conscious narration as
it appears in works dating from Don Quijote to Pale Fire. His study,
therefore, shows a great deal ofmetafiction's artistic flexibility but
very little of its theoretical basis. His working definition of the
concept, however, is important. He defines the self-conscious novel
as one that "systematically flaunts its own condition of artifice and
that by so doing probes into the problematic relationship between
real-seeming artifice and reality" (p. x).
Robert Scholes, in a 1970 article, 2 attempts a much more the-
oretical discussion of the mode than that proposed by Alter. After
first defining four basic fictional forms-romance, novel, myth,
and allegory-he establishes four corresponding critical ap-
proaches-formal, behavioral, structural, and philosophical.
Metafiction, he then concludes, assimilates all the perspectives of
criticism into the process itself of fiction. In a later collection of
essays on the same subject, 3 Scholes establishes links between the
fable and metafiction based on a mutual pleasure in form, au-
thorial dominance, and a didactic quality. Unlike Alter, Scholes
does not try to chronicle metafiction but limits himself to analyzing
some of the major contemporary works displaying it.
Gustavo Perez Firmat follows the Scholes's formalist cue to
establish a structural connection between the medieval exemplum
and metafiction. He argues that both are based on a structural
pattern consisting of a brief narration (text) to which the author
adds a summary and interpretation of the narration's moral (the
2 Beyond the Metafictional Mode
scholium). He further refines his definition by proposing two

variations of this pattern. In "discursive metafiction" the scho-
lium appears in the form of discursive theorizing about the novel
itself, while in "narrative metafiction" the metafictionality of
the work depends on an allegorical rendering of characters and
events. 4
In a carefully argued structural approach to the concept of
metafiction, Linda Hutcheon defines two basic metafictional
modes: diegetically self-aware texts (texts conscious of their own
narrative processes) and linguistically self-reflective texts (those
foregrounding the limits and the powers oflanguage). 5
The Meaning of Meta.fiction is the title of Inger Christensen's
recent book in which, beginning with Stern's Tristram Shandy and
concluding with Beckett's The Unnameable, Christensen offers a
series of analyses patterned primarily on Wolfgang Kayser's nar-
rative models. 6 For Christensen, metafiction is principally con-
cerned with expressing the novelist's experience by exploring the
process of its own making.
Two other books that touch the subject but whose concern is
almost exclusively with criticism rather than theory are The Self-
Begetting Novel by Steven G. Kellman and The Literature ofExhaustion
by John 0. Stark. 7 These two studies contribute in varying de-
grees to an understanding and definition ofmetafiction. Yet for my
own purposes as a teacher and critic I have found that none of the
studies is quite adequate to the task of drawing the limits to what
reasonably should and should not be labeled metafiction. Alter, for
example, says that a self-conscious novel deliberately exposes the
artifice of fiction, which is not to be confused with an elaborately
artful novel where the artifice may be prominent. Such a differen-
tiation might be useful if some formula were provided for deciding
how "prominent" the artifice must be before it is considered
"deliberately exposed." Although Scholes's approach is patterned
on formalist-structuralist concepts, his definition of metafiction as
a work assimilating all the perspectives of criticism into the process
itself of fiction is, if anything, even more open-ended than that of
Alter. And Perez Firmat's "narration-gloss of the narration" for-
mula would seen to allow every novel with an intrusive narrator to
qualify as metafiction, while the reliance on allegory for his "nar-
rative metafiction" category threatens to make the term ali-in-
Introduction 3
elusive. Even Hutcheon's diegetic versus linguistic categories,

which are broken down into overt and covert subcategories, tends
to expand the application excessively. Finally, Christensen hardly
leads us beyond the now standard definition of metafiction as a
novel about itself, a definition that is fine in the most obvious
examples where a character or narrator discourses about the
nature of novels in general, but inadequate when it is a question of
deciding if more subtle and complex techniques qualify as novel-
istic self-commentary. As a step in the direction of plotting where
the limits might be drawn, I have adopted a linguistically
grounded approach focused on the concept of modes. And al-
though it is not my intention to propose rigid rules that would force
works into narrow categories, I hope that by exploring the con-
cept of metafiction as a fictional mode and by identifying its basic
components, I will have contributed to the community effort of
better understanding the material we work with.
It is probably fair to say that many literary terms are at best

inaccurately defined, primarily because a single term often refers to
two related yet different classifications. Realism, for example, has a
clear historical identity, yet many contemporary novels are justifia-
bly assigned to that general category. In the case ofmetafiction the
process is reversed. Critics now speak of the Quijote and Tristram
Shandy among other pre-twentieth-century novels as examples of
metafiction, yet what is currently becoming recognized as a meta-
fictional movement is generally pinpointed to the decades of the
1960s and l970s. 8 As is the case with realism and many other
terms, metafiction can refer both to historical and to ahistorical
classifications. With an eye toward clarifying these two often con-
fusing uses of literary labels and how such uses relate to the term
metafiction, some recent work in the field of genres and modes
offers itself as a useful point of departure for the present study.
According to Gerard Genette, Plato introduced the word "gen-
re" to literary studies and used it to classify works within histor-
ically identifiable traditions. That is, it refers to form in the tradi-
tional sense-the distinctions among verse, prose, and drama, but
also and more fundamentally among the different types of verse,
prose, and drama, e.g., the ode as opposed to the elegiac poem, the
pastoral as opposed to the picaresque novel, or Elizabethan as
4 Beyond the Metajictional Mode
. opposed to neoclassical drama. Whatever the criteria employed to

make such distinctions-usually some combination of thematics
and stylistics-they designate what Plato meant by the term "gen-
re,"9 or what has commonly come to be labeled literary movement.
The essential characteristic of genre or movement in this sense,
then, is its identification with a historically defined body of works.
"Mode," on the other hand, is a linguistically grounded, syn-
chronic concept: "Modes do not specifically impose a form and are
thus prenovelistic: they are applicable to fiction anytime, any-
where."10
Ulrich Wicks, for example, the author of the statement cited
above, points out that the genre "picaresque novel" has a clear
historical identity and is dominated by the picaresque mode; many
modern novels offer examples of the picaresque mode, but they
should not be confused with the historical group labeled the
picaresque novel. Genre and mode, therefore, overlap at the same
time that they demand separate consideration and identification.
It is probably accurate to say that most, if not all, genres or
movements are defined consciously or unconsciously by identify-
ing their modal characteristics along with certain thematic con-
cerns. When the mode is repeated outside the historical boundaries
of the genre, however, what results is different from the generic
model, notwithstanding the similarities to it. The new context in
which it appears changes the whole, even while the mode remains
basically constant. For example, within the movement called the
Spanish neorealistic novel of the 1940s and 1950s the picaresque
mode is prominent in Camilo Jose Cela's La fomilia de Pascual
Duarte (1942) [The Family qfPascual Duarte in the English version],
while within the New Novel movement of the 1960s the same mode
stands out in Juan Marse's Ultimas tardes con Teresa (1966) [Final
Afternoons with Teresa}. Both novels, however, arc radically different
from the Laz:.arillo, El busain [The Swindler in the English version],
and other picaresque novels of the late sixteenth and early seven-
teenth centuries, as well as from one another. The failure to make
the basic distinctions between genre as a diachronic concept and
mode as a synchronic concept helps to explain the problems critics
have been creating in defining metafiction. 11
The problem becomes evident if one considers for a moment the
Introduction 5
fictional mode paradigms proposed not too long ago by Northrop

Frye on the one hand and Robert Scholes on the other. In his
landmark study, Frye offers the following five fictional modes:
myth: the hero is superior in kind to other men and to his environment.
romance: the hero is superior in degree to other men and to his environ-
ment.
high mimetic: the hero is superior in degree to other men but not to his
environment.
low mimetic: the hero is superior neither to other men nor to his environ-
ment.
irony: the hero is inferior to ourselves. 12
Various critics have attacked what they point out as the termi-
nological asymmetry of Frye's paradigm. 13 Yet the underlying
flaw, as Genette notes in his article, is Frye's confusion between
generic and modal criteria. That is to say, Frye sets up his model
historically, with the idea that each mode gives way at a particular
moment in time to the subsequent mode, a process of evolution
culminating in the contemporary era with irony. Frye then implies
a circular form as he sees us standing at the threshold of reentrance
into the mythic mode. In short, he has applied a generic concept
of historical categories to modes, which, as noted, are ahistorical.
In addition, by focusing on the nature of the hero he defines
modes in basically thematic terms, whereas they are linguistically
grounded concepts. Thus by insisting on the hero/other men/
environment relationship as the determining factor, what is pre-
sented as a modal paradigm is in fact generic; rather than all-
inclusive modes, he has created restrictive historical categories. For
example, one would assume metafiction to be located in the catego-
ry of irony. In the cases where the metafictional mode appears,
there is probably always an ironic effect, but such an effect cannot
be adequately explained by Frye's definition of irony as the hero
being inferior to ourselves. Indeed, if he means by "ourselves" the
implied reader, in some metafictional examples the "we" is inferior
to the so-called hero and to everyone else of the fictional world. In
addition, the sequential position of irony as the last item on Frye's
paradigm suggests that it is an exclusively contemporary phe-
nomenon, a historical implication belied by works such as the
Quijote and Tristram Shandy and a host of others. In summary, as

laudable as is Frye's attempt to direct our attention to the concept
of modal paradigms, his infelicitous mixture of generic and modal
principles predetermines the inadequacy of the system he pro-
poses. Yet what Frye attempts is an important first step, a step to be
followed shortly by Robert Scholes's effort to revise the paradigm
with the aid of some of his newly acquired structuralist concepts.
Scholes begins by expanding the number of basic modes to
seven, and he attempts to correct Frye's terminological asymmetry
by relabeling them. Since one of his primary objections to Frye's
model concerns its implied circularity and corresponding rigid
clockwise progression, Scholes proposes a V-shape graph:
satire romance
picaresque tragedy
comedy sentiment
history
According to Scholes, both the shape of his graph and the new
categories reflect how, from its earliest forms up to the end of the
nineteenth century, fiction gravitated from satire and romance
toward history. In our present century the process reversed, and
he suggests that today we are once again at the top of the graph
with novels that are a modal mixture of satire and romance. 14 One
of the more attractive features of the model is that, within the
general vertical movement, i.e., from picaresque and tragedy to
comedy and sentiment, individual authors and works can be plot-
ted horizontally. Dickens's type of realism, for example, might be
located near the bottom but to the left, somewhere close to comedy,
while Zola's type of naturalism might be pinpointed slightly higher
on the scale, leaning toward tragedy. Further distinctions could be
made between individual works of the same author: A Tale if Two
Cities would appear to the right of Great Expectations or nearer
sentiment, one assumes. Yet in the final analysis Scholes's model
falls victim to the same conceptual error as that undermining
Frye's: he treats modes as a diachronic phenomenon and defines
them in basically thematic terms. The inadequacy of such a mix-
ture of generic and modal concepts becomes evident when one
attempts to account for metafiction within Scholes's paradigm. If
basically thematic criteria are applied, metafiction can fit every-
Introduction 7
where, and from a historical point of view examples of it clearly can

be found everywhere. This being the case, one might assume that
Scholes does not consider metafiction to be a fictional mode, if it
were not for his book Fabulation and Meta.fiction, in which he indi-
cates that it is. The problem, therefore, seems to be with his
paradigm rather than with his concept of metafiction, and again
the problem with the paradigm can be pinpointed to Scholes's
thematic definition of mode.
Notwithstanding the inadequacies of both Frye's and Scholes's
attempts to demonstrate graphically the relationships among the
various fictional modes, their works still stand as the point of
reference for most if not all of the more recent theory on the
subject. 15 If both contemporary theory and novelistic practice
seem to have passed them by, at least in the case of theory no one
has yet offered a viable alternative to their respective paradigms.
Since my whole point in raising the issue of fictional modes is to
identify metafiction's position among them, I now propose to do
so by offering a revision of the Scholes graph (which of course is
itself a revision of that offered by Frye). Departing from the basic
premise that modes are linguistically grounded concepts and
ahistorical, I propose to switch the emphasis from the thematic
concern of "better or worse than" to the linguistic process of
transforming extratextual reality; rather than constructing a para-
digm in which spatial contiguity represents a temporal rela-
tionship (satire was followed historically by picaresque and pica-
resque by comedy, etc.), my groupings are based on similarities in
the way fiction transforms extratextual referents. In any one
category all historical periods are potentially represented.
Every character, event, and setting in a work of fiction is itself a
fiction, even if outside of the fictional text we can identify charac-
ters, events, and settings with identical names and seemingly
identical characteristics. In short, the word can never be the
object to which it refers. Furthermore, the gulf between all lan-
guage and its point of reference is increased by fiction's quintessen-
tial inventiveness, its transformation of extratextual referents into
a make-believe world. We can detect the basic nature of the
extratextual referent, however, by analyzing the transformed tex-
tual simulacrum, for in one way or another the referent leaves its
imprint on this transformed image. One method for classifying

modes, therefore, is by the nature of the transformed images in a
given body of works.
The concept of transformed images can be applied easily to
Scholes's categories as he defines them. Satire, he says, represents
subhuman grotesqueries enmeshed in chaos, while romance, the
mode he places at the same level but as a polar opposite, offers
superhuman types in an ideal world. The key words here are
"subhuman" and "superhuman," for both make it clear that we
are dealing with idiocies or enlightenments. In other words, such
transformed images do not carry the imprint of real people and
concrete objects from exterior reality, but of abstractions of hu-
manity and the physical world. As he moves down to the next
historical level on his graph, Scholes defines picaresque as offering
characters in a chaotic world beyond ordinary human tolerance,
while tragedy projects heroic figures; however, he insists, the char-
acters and setting of both modes are closer to our own than are
those of satire and romance. Stated in terms of referents, then,
these modes refer to exaggerated aspects of humanity and nature,
but not to total abstractions or concepts. Finally, in comedy he says
we find characters with human failings similar to our own, while in
sentiment the characters have unheroic virtues to which we may
aspire. Imprinted on these fictional images are real types subject
to empirical verification; we should be able to imagine, if not
recognize, individuals from everyday life who correspond in detail
rather than in abstract or exaggerated manners to the fictional
model.
The bottom point on the Scholes graph, history, takes us beyond
fictional modes. With the historical mode there is no fictionally
transformed image, only linguistic markers designed to signify the
referent. Furthermore, the referent is supposed to stand the test of
scientific rather than merely empirical verification. Since, however,
history is not a fictional mode, as Scholes points out, it would seem
that it should be just beyond, not at the inverted apex of, the graph.
The apex might more logically correspond, therefore, to a mode
close to history but still generally identified with fiction: repor-
torial fiction. 16 Although the referents in this mode are trans-
formed by embellishment into a quasi fictional world, the transfor-
mation is minimal; aside from artistic embellishment, the fictional
Introduction 9
world is supposed to correspond to a documented verification of its

referents. Such a fictional mode, standing as it does at the very
edge of nonfiction in the form of history, strongly suggests a polar
opposite: metafiction, standing at the very edge of nonfiction in the
form of novelistic theory. A revision of the Scholes graph, therefore,
might begin with a more symmetrical design so as to reflect
reportorial fiction and metafiction as polar opposites:
novelistic theory
metafiction
satire romance
picaresque tragedy
comedy sentiment
reportorial fiction
------------------------------
history
By shifting the focus from thematics to the nature of the trans-
formed images, the spatial relationships among categories no long-
er are designed to represent historical periods. Metafiction and
reportorial fiction are furthest apart because of modal differences,
not because these two novelistic expressions appeared in com-
pletely separated historical periods. Reportorial fiction points al-
most directly at extratextual reality, while the metafictional mode
tends to point back at the work itself. Reportorial texts designate
documentally verifiable referents, while the metafictional mode
designates fiction itself as the primary referent. In a sense, the
language of fictional reporting is transparent since the reader tends
to look through it to the designated object, while the language of
metafiction tends to be more opaque in that the reader does not
look through it so much as at it. Closest to the metafictional mode,
then, are satire and romance with their abstract referents. In fact,
if we reintegrate Frye's mythic mode (a mode Scholes discards
because he feels demons, witches, and animals with supernatural
powers should not be compared with humans), we move even
closer to the metafictional pole.
Also close to metafiction are the grotesque, which jolts us into
an awareness of the fictionality or artificiality of the object, 17 and
the fantastic which, according to Todorov, makes us acutely aware
oflanguage itself as artifice. 18 Historically, the grotesque and the
fantastic flourished well after myth, romance, and satire. But by
lO Beyond the Metafictional Mode
treating them as modes and comparing their modal characteristics

to those of myth, romance, and satire, i.e. the radical transforma-
tion of the referent, all five can be assigned the same general level
on the graph near metafiction. In short, with a modal paradigm in
which spatial position is divorced from temporal connotation, it
should be possible to account for every fictional mode somewhere
between the two poles represented by metafiction and reportorial
fiction. In fact, one may choose to draw the line separating fiction
from nonfiction before metafiction or reportorial fiction, or indeed
to use different labels throughout; the graph is designed to show
relative abstract/concrete referents and the two polar axes for
fictional modes, not to dictate what is or is not fiction or what labels
are most appropriate for a given class of texts.
Finally, a word is in order in reference to the two nonfictional
categories, novelistic theory and history. A metafictional mode
maintained exclusively throughout a work called a novel, if such
were possible, might well cross the line separating fiction from
theory. By the same token reportorial fiction, in the opinion of
some, crosses the line separating fiction from history. But theory
and history themselves can be viewed as fictional or quasi-fictional
modes, since both are representations of representations. Even
granting such a thesis, the degree of abstraction involved in theory
would logically be greater than that involved in history. Although
perhaps not as radically distinct as previously viewed, on a modal
graph they can be considered polar opposites.
The study of modes, then, requires a putting aside of diachronic
considerations inherent in the concept of genre or movement. Yet,
as the connotation of the verbal construct "putting aside" suggests,
responsible critics cannot afford to ignore completely the problem
of historical categories. In spite of the problems Frye and Scholes
create for themselves by mixing modal and generic criteria in their
respective paradigms, obviously there is a complex overlapping
between genre and mode that needs to be confronted. Literary
styles and movements follow historical patterns and tend to repeat
themselves-therefore Frye's circular and Scholes's vertical expla-
nations.
' There is a basic fallacy, however, in both explanations even
when limited to genres. For, whereas it is true that literary forms
tend to repeat themselves, the repetitions do not follow rigid
Introduction 11
patterns but are only partial, or repetitions with variations. Myths

are being written today, but we recognize them as much by their
differences from as by their similarities to the ancient models. In
short, by way of a visual image of the relationship between modes
and the historical process of genres, we can imagine a series of
connecting coils, as in a spring, positioned within the rectangular
pattern formed by my modal categories. Then, rather than Schol-
es's concept of exclusively vertical movement, fiction can be imag-
ined as descending and ascending in a spiral, its movement both
vertical and horizontal. The points touched while ascending would
never be identical to those touched while descending. The coil
spring analogy reflects the impossibility of a genre ever being
repeated in exact form, for in its spiral movement the modal
combinations are constantly changing and in so doing are giving
birth to new, if somewhat similar, movements. Thus the visual
image of the modal paradigm framing the coil spring is offered to
reflect how these combinations represent structures of difference
from previous genres. And the structures of difference, whether
merely intuited or carefully analyzed, perhaps explain the con-
stant creation of new generic categories, both by novelists who
reply to previous novelists by means of the novels they write, and
by critics who identify the resulting characteristics and label the
categories. Metafiction stands prominently as one of the more
recent examples of a new generic category. As a movement it has
only recently emerged, but the metafictional mode can be traced
back to the earliest examples of what we call novels.
One theoretical concept that is central to my study should be
clarified here: the use of the term reader. In spite of the plethora in
recent years of reader and reader-response theories, too often no
clear distinction is made among what I see as three distinct
dimensions of narrative discourse: the text reader, the text-act
reader, and the real reader. First of all, there are readers within the
text, addressees to whom a narrator directs his or her discourses-
the text readers. The most obvious example of such a text reader
occurs in epistolary novels in which the fictional letters are ad-
dressed to a specified recipient who may or may not ever appear in
person, or the Vuestra Merced invoked in such picaresque novels as
the Lazarillo and El Buscon. But even if the addressee is not identi-
fied, for each narrative voice there is an implicit recipient enclosed,
12 Bf!)!Ond the Metafictional Mode
as is the speaker, within the text. The text reader, therefore, is a

purely linguistic dimension of the text. And whereas the identified
text reader is also a verbal construct, the non-identified, non-
explicitly-characterized text reader is a part of the general con-
struct of discourse itself.
Just as there is a recipient, implicit or explicit, for each voice
within the text, there is a recipient, normally implicit but as we
shall see sometimes explicit, for the sum total of the work's voices.
By way of clarification, within the novelistic world there may be
any number of text-speech acts each with its own sender and
receiver. Beyond the novelistic world, nevertheless, there is a sin-
gle, normally implied, sender or creator (Booth's implied author)
of all the individual text-speech acts; also beyond the novelistic
world, therefore, is a single, normally implied, receiver of all the
individual text-speech acts: the text-act reader. (Although one
might object to the somewhat awkward term "text-act reader"
when one has at one's disposal lser's popular "implied reader," as
the preceding argument has tried to demonstrate, both the recip-
ient embedded within the novelistic world and the one stationed
outside it may be implied.) And whereas the context of the text
recipients is the novelistic world in which they are embedded, the
context of the text-act reader is the sociohistorical world in which
the work is created.
Finally, there is the real reader who consciously or sub-
consciously projects him- or herself into the role of the text-act
reader so as to apprehend as accurately as possible the text's
message. But such a projection can never be accomplished totally;
the novel's message can never be apprehended completely. Work-
ing against the real reader and his or her efforts to assume the role
of text -act reader are language itself and the impossibility of red uc-
ing it to a univocal statement, an impossibility that most literary
works consciously exploit. Furthermore, since the real reader's text
is not only the written work but the written work viewed within its
sociohistorical context, there is the eternal question concerning
what aspects of the context to consider. And the aspects we focus
on, both within the written work and outside of it, respond also to
many factors, one of which is our own sociohistorical context. That
is to say, our present context influences the way we read. In
addition, the readin~ we give the work will depend on our critical
Introduction 13
strategies and competencies. As a result, not only will there be at

least some difference between any two people's readings, but any
one person's readings will be altered according to his or her ever
changing sociohistorical context, to the critical strategies he or she
employs, and to the competencies and expectations he or she
develops.
It should be noted, furthermore, that in the case of basically
representational or mimetic fiction written more or less at the time
of the reading, all three readers (text, text-act, and real) seem to be
one and the same. They are not, but since the differences are not
pronounced we have the illusion that they are identical and that
the written text directly mirrors reality. In the case of irony, on the
other hand, the difference between text reader and text-act reader
may become dramatic. In La familia de Pascual Duarte, for example,
when the transcriber swears he has not changed a thing in the
manuscript but has cut out some objectionable sections that might
be harmful to the reader's moral health, the message he directs to
his text reader is radically different from that directed to the text-
act reader. So literature of the fantastic, science fiction, or novels
with historical settings mark dramatic differences between the text
reader or readers and the text-act reader. As temporal (or cultural)
differences between the writing and the reading increase, the real
reader may find the task of projecting him- or herself into the role of
the text-act reader increasingly difficult, requiring in some cases
special historical-cultural background orientation in order even to
attempt such a projection. For the text recipient, then, the text is
that contained within the written artifact. For the text-act reader
the text is that within the artifact plus the context in which it was
written. And for the real reader the text is that within the artifact
plus the context in which it was written plus his or her own context
at the moment of reading.
When in this study I speak of the text reader and the text-act
reader, therefore, I will be referring to an inherent dimension of all
fictional discourse, the first embedded within the fictitious world
and the second separate from it. When I refer, on the other hand,
to the real reader or when I speak of the reader's (or our) reaction
to a given passage, I am not implying anything more than my
attempt to project myself into the role of the text-act reader; in no
way do I mean to suggest some type of absolute knowledge as to
how others may react, or that such a reaction is the appropriate

reaction elicited. Indeed, at best my ability to project myself into
the role of the text-act reader will be limited, and my reading will
be to one degree or another a misreading. I can only hope that
such a misreading serves to open the text in question to yet other
readers equipped with yet other critical strategies and further
developed expectations and competencies. 19
Now that I have proposed metafiction's definition relative to

other fictional modes, and my reader categories, I would like to
focus more directly on its modal components. The point of depar-
ture for such a focus will be Gerard Genette's landmark contribu-
tion to the theory of fiction, Narrative Discourse. Genette, echoing
Benveniste's term "instances de discours," 20 defines narrative
mode as the "situation d'enonciation" or the act of narrating. 21
The act of narrating involves the participants (narrator and nar-
ratee), the context, and the extratextual referent. The act of narrat-
ing, moreover, is normally implicitly rather than explicitly stated
in the narrative. Whereas to this point the focus has been on the
concept of the referent imprinted on the images of the text, now it
will be on the fictional speech act imprinted on the narrative
discourse.
The concept of the act of narrating as imprinted on the narrative
discourse evolves from Genette's thesis that there are two basic
levels or worlds in the fictional text: "the world in which one tells
and the world of which which one tells" (Discourse, p. 236). Since
the world in which one tells normally is not directly revealed, it
must be constructed by the "traces it has left-the traces it is
considered to have left-in the narrative discourse it is considered
to have produced" (Discourse, p. 214). Even in the case where the
fictional act of narrating is revealed-epistolary novels, for in-
stance-there is still another hidden level of the act of narrating
involving the implied author.
The world rif which one tells, then, is the product of the act of
narrating, it is the story, or the "what ofnarrative." 22 The level of
the world of the story is the primary if not exclusive focus of
attention for the casual or uninitiated reader, even in the case of
fictitious memoirs. If within this second level of the story a
character relates an ancedote or presents a narrative document,
Introduction 15
the text's narrative levels double. The character is now a narrator

corresponding to a third narrative level, and his product or story
corresponds to what would be a fourth narrative level. 23 As more
stories are embedded within stories, additional narrative levels are
created and result in a "Chinese box" effect. However many levels
are involved, "The transition from one narrative level to another
can in principle be achieved only by the narrating, the act that
consists precisely of introducing into one situation, by means of a
discourse, the knowledge of another situation" (Discourse, p. 234).
If, therefore, a narrator, narratee, or character from one level
intrudes into another, he or she violates the conventions of fiction,
producing, according to Genette, an effect of strangeness that is
either comical or fantastic. 24 Such an explanation of narrative
levels and how they can be violated is an important step toward
defining the metafictional mode. A modification must be made,
however, before we can arrive at an adequate definition: in addition
to the world from which one speaks and the world rif which one
speaks, the fictional mode is constituted by the world from which
one listens or reads. 25
When Genette mentions the narratee, he places him on the same
level or within the same world as the speaker; that is, the narratee
corresponds to what I defined above as the text reader. Yet
Genette's two-world explanation does not accommodate the ad-
dressee for the sum total of all the text speaker/reader combina-
tions: the text-act reader. Just as there is an implied author who is
the creator of all narrators, so there is an implied text-act reader to
whom he addresses himself. And whereas the addressee within the
speaker's world may be implied, he also may be a character and
therefore capable of responding. According to the conventions of
fiction, the addressee of the entire narrative does not enjoy such a
capacity; he exists, therefore, in a separate world, a world as sacred
to the conventions of fiction as are those of the fictive author and
the story.
If we accept the fictional mode as a triad consisting of the world
of the fictive author, the world of the story, and the world of the
text-act reader-subject of course to interior duplication by means
of embedded stories-a metafictional mode results when the mem-
ber of one world violates the world of another. Such a violation
might involve a character from the world of the story challenging
the authority of the fictive author, or the fictive author asking

advice of the text-act reader, or the members of all three worlds
engaging in direct discourse with one another. Such violations of
the boundaries separating these three worlds, boundaries that
have come to be accepted as sacred conventions of fiction, call
attention to the arbitrariness of the conventions and thereby un-
mask any illusion that what is being narrated is real rather than
mere fiction. Yet there is a certain contradiction in this whole
process. When the world of, say, the fictive author is violated and
he is thereby made an explicit part of the fiction, standing beyond
him is always another implied or fictive author. The same is true
with the text-act reader, for once he is dramatized into the fiction
there has to be another text-act reader to whom that dramatizing
process is addressed. In the final analysis, therefore, metafiction
violates one set of modes merely to replace it with another. 26
Metafiction cannot escape its own prison-house of fiction.
What I have been proposing up to this point is a definition of
the metafictional mode. Such a mode has given rise within the last
decade or so to what I think is now generally recognized as a
metafictional movement. In the case of the Spanish version ap-
pearing in the 1790s and early 1980s, the emphasis has shifted from
unmasking the conventions to foregrounding the process of creat-
ing fiction; rather than a narrator, reader, or character violating
another's boundaries, there is a violation of the traditional distinc-
tions among the act of narrating, the act of reading, and the
narrated product. The focus, therefore, is no longer directed ex-
clusively or even primarily to the world of the story, but rather to
the process of creating the story, either through the act of writing or
through the act of reading. In other cases the acts of writing and
reading are supplanted by discourse among the characters; the
story in effect consists of a discussion of how to write the work of
fiction, how to create a novel to enclose the discourse. And al-
though again it is a question of exchanging one type of illusion for
another, no longer is the effect merely one of strangeness as the
artifices and conventions of fiction are exposed, for here the novel
focuses on its own coming-into-being. No longer does the novel
merely tend to point back at itself; now it points primarily at itself.
In order to distinguish between the metafictional mode and
this movement that has evolved from it, I have chosen to call the
Introduction 17
latter the self- referential novel. This new novelistic expression is

the product of the spiral evolution proposed above in which at a
given moment one mode surges to the foreground to give rise to a
new movement while, with the next step in the vertical-horizontal
progression of the spiral, that mode fades to the background and a
new mode is featured. Yet in this spiral progression traces from the
previously foregrounded modes infiltrate the one presently domi-
nating, producing in the process an infinite series of unique yet
familiar novelistic expressions.
The Spanish self-referential novel is an example of such an
expression of the metafictional mode. In the following chapter I
will begin the process of tracing metafiction's evolution from mode
to this current movement by looking at three pre-twentieth century
precursors.
Chapter One
Violations and Pseudo-

Violations: Quijote, Buscon,
and "La novela en el tranvia"
As I begin this examination of the precursors of the Spanish

metafictional mode with works of Cervantes, Quevedo, and
Gald6s, I confess to a certain inhibition upon entering such well
charted waters. I feel compelled to emphasize, therefore, that my
analyses of the Quijote and Busc6n will be limited to those episodes
featuring the metafictional mode; only in the case of the Gald6s
short story do I attempt anything resembling a complete reading.
The analyses in this chapter are designed to demonstrate and
thereby clarify the concept of violation-the textual strategy of
breaking the arbitrary conventions of fiction. By examining these
early and somewhat tentative violations of the laws of fiction, I
hope to demonstrate how the contemporary novels, although more
radical in the strategies they employ, carry the imprint of the
earlier models. 1 The metafictional mode, to repeat the thesis pro-
posed in the Introduction, transcends historical classifications.
Critics of almost every persuasion, ranging from Americo Cas-
tro to Dorothy Van Ghent, from jose Ortega y Gasset to Wolfgang
Kayser, have found justification for labeling the Quijote the first
modern novel. 2 Little wonder, therefore, that Robert Alter also
found Cervantes' masterpiece an indispensable point of departure
for his historical survey of self-conscious narration. 3 Notwith-
standing the possible objection that I am merely following Alter's
footsteps by beginning my analyses with the same novel, I think
there is enough contrast between our approaches to minimize any
sense of tautology.
Without much question the most celebrated example in the
Violations and Pseudo- Violations 19
Quijote involving a violation of the boundaries separating the three

fictional worlds is the battle in Part One between the novel's
protagonist and the Biscayan. As most will recall, the narrator is
describing the two combatants with swords raised and shields
firmly grasped when he suddenly interrupts his narrative to an-
nounce that the account ends here because the "first author" could
not find the concluding section of the manuscript. Such a dramatic
switch from the story to the act of narrating constitutes an obvious
violation of the conventions of fiction. Yet even more blatant is the
violation committed by the narrator when he evokes the role of the
first author and places the blame on him for the truncation of the
story. The narrator, as the subordinate of the first author, is in effect
rebelling against his superior. Furthermore, the narrator trans-
gresses the boundary separating the two when, after expressing his
irritation at such an inopportune truncation, he usurps the first
author's authority and sets out on his own to find the missing
documents.
That the continuation of a story depends on locating the missing
manuscript challenges, of course, the assumption of authorship
established in the prologue and in the famous initial sentence of the
novel: "En un Iugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero
acordarme" 4 ["In a place in the Mancha whose name I prefer to
forget"]. With the intrusion of the narrator or self-defined "second
author" to explain that the "first author" (a Moorish historian
named Cide Hamete Benengeli) could not find the remaining
manuscript, the identity of the "I" with which the novel begins
must be questioned retrospectively. Since the "second author" in
effect is only an author when he narrates the search, and otherwise
is merely a transcriber, and Cide Hamete as a historian is sup-
posedly also only a combination translator-transcriber, and the
anonymous author may in fact be a community of authors, none
seems to qualify as the "I" of the narrating act. Indeed, the
problem of the source of authority is further complicated when the
"second author," after finally discovering the documents, hires
someone to translate them from Arabic to Spanish. Not only does
the emergence of a second translator raise the question of this
translator's fidelity to the original text, but the second translator
also becomes an author when, in Part Two, at the beginnings of
chapters 5, 24, and 27, he questions the verisimilitude of Sancho's
conversation with his wife, calls attention to the first author's

marginal notes, and offers an explanation of the Moorish histo-
rian's use of a Catholic oath. As a result of the confusion over who is
actually speaking and with what narrative authority or veracity,
the boundary separating the primary speaker from the subordinate
speakers is completely blurred.
As is evident in the preceding explanation, the whole story of
Don Quijote and Sancho seems to depend on someone other than
the voice heard at the novel's beginning. Indeed, not only our
confidence in, but the very textual existence of, the anonymous
author or authors depends on Cide Hamete's transcription, which
in turn depends on the transcription and successful search for the
manuscript by the "second author," and finally on the assumption
that the translation of it is punctilious. Yet paradoxically none of
these supposedly subordinate speakers (Cide Hamete, the "second
author," and the translator) would exist if it were not for the story
of the knight and his squire as told by the anonymous author or
authors of the manuscript, for these speakers are textual extensions
of this narration. Such conflicts of authority, created when subordi-
nate speakers violate the boundary separating them from the
primary speaker, function as a textual strategy for directing atten-
tion to the arbitrary conventions of all fictional authority. As a
result, the focus switches from the illusion to the artifices responsi-
ble for creating the illusion. The fictionality of fiction is thus
foregrounded, and such a foregrounding reveals that within the
text there are not authors but only fictitious figures disguised as
authors.
Not content with revealing that authors within a text are mere
fictions, Cervantes in Book Two explores the fictionality of the
reader. The focus on the world of the text-act reader occurs when a
student tells Don Quijote and Sancho about the book he has just
read entitled El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de Ia Mancha by Cide
Hamete Benengeli. As the two protagonists then question the
young scholar about their respective projected images in the book,
the conversation serves as a critique of Part One. Since, however,
the critique consists of fictitious characters contemplating them-
selves as fictitious characters, they have transgressed the boundary
separating the world in which characters perform from the world
in which they are seen performing. Don Quijote and Sancho are
therefore readers of their own story, albeit the student stands

between them and the written text. They are readers, that is to say,
in the oral or juglar sense of the word.
The characters themselves, nevertheless, do not consider what
they are contemplating to be fictitious. On the contrary, for them
the book is a historical record of their exploits, and their primary
concern is with the accuracy of the account, especially in view of
the Moorish nationality of the author Cide Hamete (Moors are
notorious liars, according to Don Quijote). Yet as the discussion
continues, Don Quijote as reader-protagonist discovers that his
story is best served by poetic rather than historical truth.
The issue of historical versus poetic truth arises when the
student, described upon his introduction into the novel as "de
condici6n maliciosa y amigo de donaires y de burlas" (2.3:67) ["of
a malicious disposition and very fond of plays on words and
practical jokes"], begins to bait the two reader-protagonists. He
states, for example, that some people have criticized the book for
detailing every one of the physical abuses Don Quijote suffers. The
student adds to this affront to Don Quijote's dignity by noting that,
since the account of so many beatings becomes farcical, poetic
license could easily be exercised. Don Quijote, although far from
admitting that his story is a farce, welcomes the suggestion of
poetic license, arguing that the author indeed could have omitted
some of the incidents without altering the basic truth of the story.
After all, he reasons, Aeneas certainly was not as pious as Virgil
represented him, nor Ulysses as prudent as Homer indicated. At
this point the student does an about-face and argues that historians
cannot add or delete anything without compromising the veracity
of their accounts; poets, on the other hand, enjoy the freedom to
write of things as they should be.
While the malicious motive for the student's critical maneuver-
ing seems obvious, Don Quijote's sudden espousal of poetic over
historical truth is more complex. First and foremost, of course,
would be his attempt to recapture his dignity, and significantly his
first justification for omitting some of the painful incidents is
fairness-"equidad" (2.3:71). But there are also indications of
more complex psychological processes within the protagonist,
processes which in turn have theoretical implications vis-a-vis the
work of fiction. When he compares his situation to those of Aeneas
and Ulysses, he is identifying with fictitious personages, an identi-

fication even more dramatically evident later in the Maese Pedro
puppet show episode. But the self he is thus identifying here is his
literary self, the self recreated by the student's oral discourse. It is
not strange, therefore, that he should compare that verbal con-
struct with other verbal constructs from oral literary tradition. In
other words, he is drawing a clear distinction between the verbal
representation of him by others and the self that now is the
recipient of such a representation. Don Quijote exists at this point
simultaneously as actor and audience. And his role as audience, as
reader of his own verbal image, allows him to see that the verbal
image can never be the thing it represents, the word can never
become the object. Little wonder, therefore, that he appeals to
poetic license, for now he at least senses-is forced to sense by
virtue of the student's maliciously inspired stratagem-that even
historical representation is an illusion, a fiction of the reality it
pretends to be. And of course we the real readers now have the
opportunity to contemplate-by virtue of Cervantes' textual strat-
agem-how fiction is the vehicle par excellence for displaying
language's illusory essence.
The key to recognizing any illusion is recognition of the devices
that create it or, in the game of fiction, recognition of the con-
ventions by which the game is played. When Don Quijote listens to
and comments on the published account of his misadventures and
thereby becomes his own reader, he points not only at the fic-
tionality of the novel's anecdote but at the convention that hides the
recipient from view. By violating the boundary between the world
in which he performs and the world from which he is seen perform-
ing, he draws attention to the text-act reader as an integral element
of the fictional mode, or to borrow an expression from Walter Ong,
he alerts us to the fact that indeed "The Writer's Audience Is
Always a Fiction." 5 But at the same time that the world of the text-
act reader is invaded, another world is automatically created to
replace it; ifDon Quijote is now standing where the text-act reader
was stationed, the latter is now one step back. A violation exposes
but does not destroy the fictional mode. And since every real
reader, consciously or subconsciously, attempts to identify with the
text-act reader, we stand just behind Don Quijote as he con-
templates the conventions that create illusion: the illusion that

language is what it represents, that fiction is reality.
In fact, the laying bare of illusion is the motive Cide Hamete
himself professes at the end of the novel: "pues no ha sido otro mi
deseo de poner en aborrecimiento de los hombres las fingidas y
disparatadas historias de los libros de caballerias" (2. 74:353) ["For
my sole object has been to arouse man's contempt for the false and
absurd stories of chivalric novels"]. Yet his professed motive is
itself subject to being laid bare. Since within the fiction there is an
anonymous author or authors of Don Quijote's and Sancho's story,
and since Cide Hamete is merely one of the transcribers, in the
final analysis Cide Hamete is but one more reader of the story, as
are the "second author," the translator, and Don Quijote himself.
Cide Hamete's professed intent, therefore, has no more inherent
textual authority than the statements of any other of these readers
pretending to be authors. In fact, one "reading" suggested by this
textual strategy is that in the final analysis all authors are merely
readers expressing their reading in graphic form. For every appar-
ent creative source there is a prior creative source. Final meaning,
therefore, is always deferred to an infinite future of yet another
reading. In the most profound sense of the word the Quijote is, as
has been noted before, a novel about reading novels. 6
It would be inadequate and something of a distortion to cate-
gorize the Quijote as merely a metafictional novel. The metafic-
tional is one of many modes that play an important role in the
novel. 7 Indeed, the modal complexity of the Quijote may well
explain why the novel continues to attract the attention of virtually
each new critical school.
The violations of the boundaries separating the three worlds of
the fictional mode in the Quijote direct attention to the artifices of
fiction. A mere appearance of a violation, on the other hand, can
serve as a quite different textual strategy. Any threat to the bound-
aries between fictional worlds creates tension and thereby empha-
sizes the textual context in which the threat occurs. If the threat
ends in a true violation the effect is metafictional; however, if the
threat is never realized, or only tentatively realized, the artifices
remain hidden and attention is fixed on the episode or passage in
which the indication of a violation occurs. El Busc6n [The Swindler in
the English version] offers a very good example of a borderline

violation whose effect is emphatic but not metafictional. Such an
example should help clarify the basic definition of metafiction
which has been proposed in this study.
The episode concerns chapter VII of Part II, one of the key
chapters of the novel for it marks a definitive downward turn in the
picaro's moral and material well-being. The incident in question
involves the scheme of the protagonist/narrator Pablos to marry
into a wealthy family by convincing the members that he is Don
Felipe Tristan, a nobleman and heir to an estate. His strategy
seems to be working to perfection until his former master, Don
Diego, arrives on the scene. Pablos had served Don Diego when
both were students and their relationship was, or so Pablos
thought, that of friends rather than servant to master. In spite of
the years that have passed, Don Diego immediately suspects that
the supposed Don Felipe Tristan is in reality Pablos. When Pablos
denies his true identity, Don Diego insults him by begging for-
giveness for having mistaken a gentleman for someone as amoral
and vile as his former servant. To this insult is added humiliation
when the next day, in the presence of his fiancee and Don Diego,
Pablos is thrown from a horse he had borrowed without the owner's
knowledge. He is further embarrassed when the owner suddenly
appears to claim his horse. This episode inspires Don Diego to
investigate the motive and confirm the identity of the disguised
Pablos, and after having done so, to devise a plan for two thugs to
attack and brutally beat the poor imposter.
The apparent violation of narrative level involves Don Diego's
investigations and his plots to ambush Pablos. Since Pablos as the
first-person narrator naturally was not a witness to these acts of
espionage and plots for ambush directed against him, his narration
of them could only be by means of someone else's accounts. Yet not
only does he fail to identify the sources of his information, but as he
narrates the beating he seems to contradict his own previous
narrative account: "pero nunca sospeche en don Diego ni en lo que
era" 8 ["but I never suspected Don Diego nor what was going
on"]. In spite of the apparent contradiction, the preterite tense,
"sospeche," indicates that the point of focalization is from the
protagonist in the past and not from the narrator in his narrative
present. That is to say, at the time the beating occurred Pablos
never even suspected Don Diego; from his narrative position now,
however, he obviously knows differently, as the narration of the plot
against him clearly indicates. By focalizing that moment of the
beating from the experiencing selfs perspective, 9 Pablos's naive
confidence in his former friend's fidelity is juxtaposed with that
former friend's treachery.
As this example demonstrates, a tentative or partial violation
directs attention to the episode rather than to fiction's artifices.
Indeed, since Pablos directs his narrative to a text reader identi-
fied as vuestra merced (or v.m. as he is labeled in the text), this text
reader might well here question his addresser's reliability. The
message to the text-act reader, however, does not concern re-
liability but a so-called nobleman's sense of honor. As a represen-
tative of the noble class Don Diego reveals that his sense ofhonor is
just as corrupt as that of a picaro. 10 Since the text reader's title,
vuestra merced, identifies him as also a member of the noble class, he
is guilty by association. Thus Pablos is not really talking to but
about his text reader; his message assumes a recipient distanced
from the world of the story. In a fashion similar to what happens in
the Lazarillo, vuestra merced is a part of rather than the intended
recipient of the text-act message. In short, Pablos is very much in
control of the narrating act as he subtly attacks his own text reader.
And since no laws of fiction are actually violated, this is not a case
of metafiction but of a textual strategy designed to emphasize a
tragic turning point in the fictional life of the protagonist. This
distinction between violation and apparent violation is fundamen-
tal to my definition of metafiction. There is reason to believe that
Quevedo, consummate artist that he was, consciously bent, but
without breaking, the fictional mode so as to achieve the effect he
wanted.
For the final examples demonstrating the metafictional mode in
pre-twentieth-century texts, I will jump from the seventeenth to
the nineteenth century and focus on the great Spanish realist
novelist Benito Perez Gald6s. (Since in the history of Spanish
fiction the eighteenth century is not particularly significant, such a
leap is less extreme than it may appear at first glance.) Considering
Robert Alter's thesis that the nineteenth century is a period of
eclipse for self-conscious narration, 11 it may come as a surprise
that Gald6s not only is an exception but deserves credit as a true
26 Bryond the Metqfictional Mode
innovator in strategies for violating the conventions of fiction.

John W. Kronik has analyzed with uncommon insight three
novels of Don Benito in which a character violates the world of the
fictive author. In El amigo Manso (1882) [Good Friend Manso] the
protagonist, by declaring at the novel's very beginning that he does
not exist, also in so doing declares his autonomy from the fictive
author; the protagonist claims credit for his own eventual develop-
ment into a character, whereas the other characters, as Kronik
demonstrates, are products of the fictive author. 12
The violation of the fictive author's world is even bolder in
Misericordia (1897) [ Piery]. In this case the protagonist invents a
priest to explain how she gets the money to sustain her mistress,
and one day the priest miraculously materializes. As Kronik dem-
onstrates, we have here an example of a character creating another
character and in so doing usurping the creative prerogative of the
fictive author. 13 In yet another example of characters usurping the
creative function of the fictive author, Kronik explores the way in
which the protagonist Fortunata of the novel Fortunata y Jacinta is in
effect the product of some half dozen characters who collaborate in
her creation. 14 La de Bringas (1884) [The Spendthrifts in the English
version], on the other hand, offers another type of violation, in this
case the fictive author transgressing the world of the story. The
most humorous example of such a transgression occurs at the
novel's end. After having chronicled Rosalia de Bringas's obsession
with material possessions, her desperate attempts to pay her debts,
her husband's dismissal from his bureaucratic position in the
government, and finally the compromise of her honor in a futile
attempt to enlist the aid of a family friend in her economic crisis,
the omniscient narrator suddenly appears in the protagonist's
world. He says that shortly after the affair with the family friend, he
had his own encounter with Rosalia: "Quiso repetir las pruebas de
su ruinosa amistad, mas yo me apresure a ponerles punto, pues si
parecia natural que ella fuese el sosten de Ia cesante familia, no me
creia yo en el caso de serlo, contra todos los fueros de Ia moral y de
Ia economfa domestica" 15 ["She tried to repeat the experience of
her disastrous episode with the family friend, but I hastened to
head her off, for whereas it seemed fine for her to serve as the
provider for her unemployed spouse and her family, I didn't feel it
was my place to play the same role, in respect to both moral and
economical dicta"].
The preceding examples demonstrate that Gald6s, whether
consciously or unconsciously, is a disciple of the Cervantes model,
and possibly those of Stern, Fielding, and others, for violating the
conventions of fiction. His strategies, although certainly more than
mere imitations of his predecessors, carry the imprint of the earlier
models. Yet one of his first efforts in writing fiction, a short story
entitled "La novela en el tranvia" (1871) ["The Streetcar Novel"],
seems to suggest that he also learned from the Quevedo model.
This story offers an example of a violation of narrative level and
then a negation of the violation. Such a backing away from a
metafictional focus underscores some of the inherent contradic-
tions in the realistic mode of which Gald6s was to become Spain's
most celebrated master. 16
The story is a first-person narrative in which the protagonist/
narrator meets a friend on a streetcar. The friend, an incurable
gossip, begins telling about a conflict involving a countess, a count,
and a young man who has a close but platonic relationship with the
countess. The conflict is orchestrated by the household's major-
domo who, if successful in his evil machinations designed to lead
the count into a crime of passion, hopes to gain control of the
family estate. But before the friend can finish the narrative he
reaches his destination and departs. The protagonist/narrator
then glances at the newspaper serving as a wrapping for some
books he is returning to another friend, and discovers the same
story of the countess appearing there as a fictitious serial. Again,
however, the story is truncated before the denouement, this time by
a cut in the newspaper made by the protagonist when he wrapped
the books. After his surprise at what he thought was a true story
turning out to be fictitious, he is even more astonished when the
reverse occurs: seated directly across from him now is the major-
domo of the serial story.
The events have now taken a fantastic turn since the pro-
tagonist/narrator really believes he is observing in the flesh a
fictional being: "novelesco, inverosimil, convertido en ser vivo y
compafiero mio en aquel viaje" (p. 507) ["novelistic, non-ver-
isimilar, transformed into a living being and my companion on that
trip"]. Fiction has become reality. Of course, this is merely another

game of illusion created by the intrusion of a character from the
fourth narrative level into the second narrative level. To clarify, the
first narrative level corresponds to the narrating self as he tells his
story: "y lo crei como ahora creo que es pluma esto con que
escribo" (p. 514) ["I believed it just as now I believe that this
thing with which I am writing is a pen"]. The second level, then,
corresponds to his narrated experiences on the streetcar. Within
this second level, however, first the friend and then the anonymous
narrator of the serial tell their respective stories (really the same
story), so their act of narrating constitutes the third narrative level.
Finally, the fourth level corresponds to the world of which they
speak, or the conflict involving the countess, the count, the young
man, and the evil majordomo--the latter now apparently sitting
on the streetcar oflevel two. If we had only the friend's incomplete
story, the appearance of the majordomo would be merely for-
tuitous; since we also have the fictitious serial, his appearance is
fantastic. With this blurring of the boundaries between fact and
fiction, between the second and fourth narrative levels, the rules of
the game of fiction are placed in a state of suspension. The pro-
tagonist/narrator's "reality" is counterpoised by the majordomo's
"fictionality." The two men are now equally real or equally fic-
titious. The conventions of fiction are suddenly laid bare.
With the conventions now in a state of suspension, the pro-
tagonist/narrator feels justified in committing his own violation of
narrative level when the majordomo disembarks after first sin-
isterly examining a letter he is carrying: "Cuando sali6 el hombre
en quien crei ver al terrible mayordomo, me quede pensando en el
incidente de la carta, y me lo explique ami manera, no queriendo
ser, en tan delicada cuesti6n, menos fecundo que el novelista, au tor
de lo que momentos antes habia leido" (p. 507) ["When the man I
thought was the terrible majordomo got off, I continued to think
about the incident of the letter, and I explained it in my own way,
not wishing to be less creative in such a delicate matter than the
novelist, the author of what I had read moments before"]. When
the protagonist/narrator assumes the responsibility for continuing
the story, he violates the third narrative level corresponding to the
serial's author; he usurps that author's position and plagiarizes his
story material. Yet at this moment of maximum invasion of nar-
rative levels, the seeds are planted to reaffirm the boundaries and
negate the apparent violations. Such a restorative process is initi-
ated with the words from the quoted passage, "el hombre en quien
crei ver." Both the verb and its tense mark a difference between the
narrating self corresponding to the first level and the experiencing
self of the second level. The narrating self is now implying by his
use of this verb form that rather than a case of fiction becoming
reality, his experiencing self was at the time a victim of self-
delusion.
The process of restoring the boundaries between narrative lev-
els-and between "reality" and "fiction"-continues when the
protagonist/narrator falls asleep and furthers the countess's story
in a dream. Even though his dreaming self corresponds to the third
narrative level (or the level corresponding to the friend who began
the tale and the serial that continued it), and that which is dreamed
to the fourth level, in this case there is no violation, merely a
narrated switch in narrative level. And of course since we know he
is dreaming, the boundary between "reality" and "fiction" re-
mains intact.
Although the dream extends the story to the point where the
count seems about to commit his crime of passion, the protagonist/
narrator is awakened before the climactic moment. He then hears a
conversation on the streetcar between someone he believes to be
the young man of the story and a fellow traveler, and the con-
versation appears to concern the countess's fate. But when the two
young men are about to disembark and the protagonist/narrator
interrupts them to ask how the countess dies, they break into
laughter and leave. Immediately after their departure a woman
gets on with a dog matching the vision of the countess's dog in his
dream. Under his questioning she confirms that indeed the dog's
mistress has just died, but when he then asks what happened to the
count, she laughs and calls him a madman. Then three men get on
the streetcar talking about the shooting death of a hapless female
victim. Rather than the countess, however, he learns that the
victim was their hunting dog. Finally, he again sees the supposed
majordomo, attacks him, is arrested, discovers that the man is a
respected businessman, and ends the story by admitting that
several months passed before he regained his sanity. "Reality" thus
reconquers "fiction" and the boundaries between the narrative
30 Beyond the Metqfictional Mode
levels are reaffirmed. All the violations are explained as the pro-
tagonist/narrator's illusion.
The strategy of violating and then negating the violations of
narrative levels underscores even more the eternal conflict between
reality and fiction, truth and illusion. Gald6s in this story manipu-
lates the text-act reader into first questioning the very conventions
that allow fiction to seem real, and then reaccepting them. When
the protagonist/narrator confesses at the end that he was insane at
the time he thought the fictitious characters had come to life, the
text-act reader should retrospectively dismiss those transforma-
tions as illusions. Reality, therefore, comes with the protagonist/
narrator's recognition that the characters were "real people" only
resembling the creations of his imagination. (Obviously such a
reality is itself an illusion, another fiction made to seem real by the
conventions of fiction.) The violation-negation strategy in the final
analysis draws attention to the paradox of fiction's reality and to
the inexorable attraction of its illusions.
The strategy also addresses another dimension of the rela-
tionship between fiction and reality, that of the referents. The
question of referents is crystalized when the protagonist/narrator
is at the edge of sleep and begins considering the influences on his
thoughts: "Yo, que he lefdo muchas y muy malas novelas, di aquel
giro a Ia que, insensiblemente, iba desarrollandose en mi imagina-
ci6n por las palabras de un amigo, la lectura de un trozo de papel y
lavista de un desconocido" (p. 508) ["1, who have read many, and
some very bad, novels, tossed around what, unconsciously, was
taking form in my imagination thanks to a friend's words, the
reading of a section from a newspaper, and the sight of a strang-
er"]. This passage underscores the complexity of artistic sources
for any novelist. In addition to empirically observing his social
reality, the realist also borrows, consciously or unconsciously, from
what he hears and reads, including fictitious accounts. In view of
this borrowing, one can say, as Pirandello later would, that charac-
ters search for their own author; whether the author realizes it or
not, every work of literature is but one more link in a complex
network ofliterary intertextuality. By means of his manipulation of
the metafictional mode in "La novela en el tranvla," Gald6s
displays at a very early age a full awareness that realism refers to
literature as well as to social reality. The violation-negation strat-
egy, therefore, allows him to display both of these fundamental

dimensions of his craft. It is not without irony that Spain's great-
est realist novelist was perhaps his century's most blatant violator
of the conventions designed to make fiction seem real. Indeed, it is
tempting to speculate that Gald6s felt it his personal obligation to
expose the inherent contradiction in labeling any type of fiction
"realism."
One more word is in order in reference to Gald6s and metafic-
tion. His type of modal violations should not be confused with what
is commonly labeled the intrusive or editorial narrator. Whereas it
is true that an intrusive or editorial narrator interrupts his nar-
rative and thereby calls attention to his own presence, he does not,
at least in the typical nineteenth-century realist novel, direct atten-
tion to the artifices of fiction. On the contrary, the sententious
nature of most such intrusions directs attention from the work to
extratextual reality. Interrupting editorial comments aimed at the
nature of what has been narrated or how it has been narrated, on
the other hand, represent the type of self-consciousness generally
labeled metafiction. 17
The metafictional mode, as argued in the Introduction and
demonstrated in this chapter, is an atemporal textual strategy
involving a violation of the conventions of fiction. In the Quijote,
considered by many as the first modern novel, the violations
concern authorial source and the sanctity of the text-reader's
world, as well as that of the characters (the appearance in the
Quijote of a character from the plagiarized version of the novel).
Notwithstanding the prominence of the mode in Cervantes' mas-
terpiece, it is not dominant. In fact in El Busc6n we have only an
isolated example of an apparent violation serving as a textual
strategy to emphasize a turning point in the novel. Gald6s's "La
novela en el tranvia," then, seems to project the imprint of both
Cervantes and Quevedo by violating the fictional mode with the
intrusion of characters from an embedded serial novel into the
"real" world, a violation then negated by the logic of the narrator's
temporary insanity. That only recently the presence of a metafic-
tional mode in the works discussed has captured the attention of
critics seems to corroborate the theory of reader expectations. 18 It
would seem that critics did not recognize its presence in these
works because they were not prepared to expect it. Yet consciously
or subconsciously the novelists built on one another's strategies,

and whereas the process of assimilation between Cervantes and
Gald6s took nearly three hundred years, with the emergence of the
twentieth century that process was accelerated. The present cen-
tury's preoccupation with novelistic self-commentary, therefore, is
nothing more than a modern expression of strategies developed
over several eras.
Chapter Two
Fiction on a Palimpsest:
Niebla
The twentieth century in Spanish literary history was ushered in

by what is popularly known as the Generation of'98. Although the
date refers to the end of the nineteenth century (the Spanish
American War of 1898), the novelists identified with this genera-
tion rebelled against nineteenth-century literary expression, es-
pecially against the tenets of realism. Innovation, therefore, was
one of their primary concerns, and in the novel the innovations
inevitably led to various forms and degrees of novelistic self-
commentary.
One prominent form of novelistic self-commentary involves
interior duplication, or what has been defined as "autotextualite. " 1
In its most obvious manifestation this is a story-within-a-story
device, with the embedded story reflecting the framing story. In
Azorln's Dona Ines (1925), for example, a legend associated with a
statue not only reflects but determines the life of the protagonists;
the legend becomes their story, a type of fiction-begetting-fiction
effect. Ramon Perez de Ayala, in two novels that are actually a
single work, Tzgrejuan and El curandero de su honra (1926) [Tzger Juan
and The Healing ifHis Honor] at one point divides the pages into two
columns, one relating the activities of the male protagonist and the
other the simultaneous activities of the female protagonist. Such a
device, also a type of interior duplication but not in the same sense
as Dona Ines, lays bare the temporal-spatial conventions fiction
depends on to create the illusion of simultaneous action. In
Ramon de Valle lncl{m's Tzrano Banderas (1926) [The I)rant Ban-
deras], another technique exposing temporal-spatial conventions
comes into play. First of all, what turns out to be the conclusion of
the story appears in the form of a prologue to the novel, followed by
yet other cases in which the textual sequence of events does not
correspond to the chronological order of the story. In another
device that tends toward novelistic self-commentary, the pro-
tagonist and most of the other characters are described as puppets,
simulacrums so contrived that any illusion that they are real people
is swept aside. Yet all of the anti-realist devices noted, as well as
others, 2 represent at best limited novelistic self-commentary. Mi-
guel de Unamuno's Niebla (1914) [Mist], on the other hand, fea-
tures several blatant violations of the fictional mode. In fact, many
still consider Niebla as the Hispanic novel's most radical attack on
the conventions of fiction.
The initial reception of Niebla suggests that reader expectations
in general were not ready for Unamuno's radical modal violations.
Most early critics of the novel tended to dismiss it as an anti-novel,
preferring to direct their attention to U namuno's more con-
ventional works. In fact, only in the past decade has there been a
noticeable shift in preference for Niebla, and an accompanying
influx of analyses focused on the famous author-character-reader
confrontations within the novel. 3 These analyses, which tend to
offer existential explanations for the confrontations, have played an
important role in shaping present-day receptions of the novel.
Building from the past critical generation's readings of the novel as
truth versus fiction, reality versus dream, I would like to focus
now on the fictional process underlying such effects. If the past
generation of critics was justifiably intrigued by Niebla's illusion
that fiction and reality are one and the same, the present genera-
tion is more inclined to find the textual strategies involved in
creating such an illusion as intriguing as the illusion itself.
One ofUnamuno's strategies for creating the illusion that real-
ity and fiction are one is to destroy the illusion that the worlds of the
fictive author and of the text-act reader can never merge with the
world of the story. To effect the destruction of such an illusion (or
perhaps, more accurately, to effect the illusion of the destruction of
such an illusion), Unamuno unmasks the linguistic ontology of
author and reader as well as that of the characters. 4 And whereas
the unmasking climax occurs when the protagonist confronts the
fictive author near the end of the novel, the key moments leading
up to the confrontation occur in a framing device consisting of two
prologues and an epilogue, and within the framed construct in a
Fiction on a Palimpsest 35
discussion of a novel one of the characters is supposedly writing.

The initial section of the frame, a prologue written by one
Victor Goti, creates an almost immediate conflict between reality
and fiction when Victor turns out to be one of the characters of the
novel. What initially seemed to be a fairly common nonfictional
introduction to the novel therefore suddenly becomes a part of the
fictional text. As a result, the message of the opening statement of
the prologue changes completely in retrospect:
Se empeiia don Miguel de Unamuno en que ponga yo un pr6logo a este su
libro en que relata Ia tan lamentable historia de mi buen amigo Augusto
Perez y su misteriosa muerte, y yo no puedo menos sino escribirlo, porque
los deseos del senor Unamuno son para mf mandatos en Ia mas genuina
acepci6n de este vocablo.5
[Don Miguel de U namuno insists that I do the prologue for his book in
which he relates the very sad story of my good friend Augusto Perez and his
mysterious death, and I have no recourse but to write it, since Mr.
U namuno's wishes are my commands in the strictest sense of the word.]
In the beginning Victor is talking to his text reader as if both

existed in the real world, and the message seems to be nothing
more than a polite cliche expressing Victor's indebtedness to Una-
muno. In contrast the message to the text-act reader, once he
realizes Victor's fictionality, becomes a comical understatement of
authorial omnipotence. The text-act reader must retrospectively
revise his initial reading of the passage and now contemplate the
implications of a fictitious character confessing that he is subser-
vient to his creator, the real author. Moreover, even in mentioning
the real author this character has violated the boundary separating
their worlds.
The violation of the fictive author's world is much more blatant,
however, in a subsequent passage. No sooner does the character
profess his complete subservience to his author/creator than he
rebels. The rebellion centers on the explanation of the death of the
novel's protagonist, Augusto Perez. After first declaring that Una-
muno is mistaken in his explanation of how Augusto died, Victor
adds demurely: "pero no es cosa de que me ponga yo ahora aquf a
discutir en este pr6logo con mi prologado" (p. 15) ["but it is not
appropriate for me to argue here in this prologue with the person
whom I am prologuizing"]. The use of the term "prologado," the
product of the verb "prologar," is a subtle strategy for signaling

that all the characters are merely verbal constructs. Furthermore,
VIctor's use of the possessive adjective "mi prologado" defines
Unamuno as a product of his, VIctor's, own discoursing. The
character's rebellion, as a result, goes far beyond the sense of
equality implicit in his contradiction of the author's explanation of
Augusto's death; Victor, a character, is claiming credit for creating
Unamuno, the author. Thus this Unamuno is subtly defined as
merely another linguistic dimension of the text, a sign system
emerging from another sign system labeled Victor Goti. (Real
people cannot exist within a fictional world; signs merely masquer-
ade as people.) In short, the novel begins by attacking not only the
illusion that the authorial voice constitutes the Word, but also the
illusion that the world of the fictive author is an inviolable dimen-
sion of the fictional mode. This first prologue, therefore, functions
as a sign pointing at the novel as pure language dependent on
arbitrary conventions for all the illusions it creates.
The conventions of fiction come under further attack with a
post-prologue in which Unamuno not only answers Victor, but
threatens him:
Y debe andarse mi amigo y prologuista Goti con mucho tiento en discutir

asi mis decisiones, porque si me fastidia mucho acabare por hacer con ello
que con su amigo Perez hice, yes que lo dejare morir ole matare a guisa de
medico ... o dejan morir al enfermo por miedo a matarle, o le matan por
miedo de que se les muera. Y asi, yo soy capaz de matar a Goti si veo que se
me va a morir, ode dejarle morir si temo haber de matarle. [pp. 17-18]
[And my friend and prologue writer Goti better go easy in disputing in
such a way my decisions, because if he irritates me too much I will end up
doing with him what I did with his friend Perez, that is to say, I will allow
him to die or I will kill him the way physicians do it ... they either allow
the patient to die for fear of killing him, or kill him for fear that he will die
on them. And so I am capable of killing Goti ifl see that he is going to die
on me, or of allowing him to die if I am afraid I will have to kill him.]
In spite of the would-be threat here, by the act of electing to

answer his own character the fictive author has all but destroyed
the distinction between author and character; they exist on the
same narrative level and consequently the illusion of the fictive
author's power over his character vanishes. And of course even the
threat itself ironically underscores the fictive author's impotence.

In the final analysis he can only juxtapose his own discourses with
those of the character, producing an effect not unlike that of two
children, or puppets, challenging one another. So the message to
the text-act reader-as opposed to the fictive author's attempt to
impress his text reader with his authorial power-is that the fictive
author and the character alternately create and are created by one
another; each is but a sign system generating and then being
generated by the other. But the attack on the conventions of fiction
is not complete until the text-act reader himself is also reduced to a
linguistic entity.
The identification of the text-act reader as a dimension of the
fictional discourse is done by means of the most subtle textual
strategy of the frame, and occurs when the fictive Unamuno begins
his response to Victor: "De buena gana discutiria aqui alguna de
las afirmaciones de mi prologuista, Victor Goti, pero como estoy en
el secreto de su existencia-la de Goti-, prefiero dejarle la entera
responsabilidad de lo que en ese su pr6logo dice" (p. 17) ("I would
willingly argue here with some of the statements of my prologue
writer, Victor Goti, but since I am in on the secret of his exis-
tence-that ofGoti-, I prefer to leave him with the entire respon-
siblity for what he says in his prologue"]. The image of the text-act
reader is signaled by the parenthetical clarification, "su existen-
cia-la de Goti." Since the possessive adjective "su" is so ambigu-
ous-an ambiguity impossible to reflect in an English translation,
for it can refer to his, her, their, or your, both singular and plural-
the ostensible purpose is to clarify its ambiguity. Yet given the
discursive context in which Victor is the only apparent referent,
the parenthetical clarification creates confusion rather than elim-
inating it. In fact, the discord of an ambiguous clarification is itself
a sign pointing toward the text-act reader, the only other logical
referent for the possessive "su." 6 What more subtle way to signal
the text-act reader's always-present absence? But of course (and
again the contradiction), once his presence has been signaled he
can no longer be considered absent or merely implied. In fact, just
as beyond the fictive Unamuno who speaks in the post-prologue
there is the persona of another Unamuno determining what the
verbal construct labeled Unamuno will say, so there emerges
another text-act reader beyond the one that is exposed by the
38 Beyond the Metojictional Mode
parenthetical statement. Metafiction's violations, in other words,

merely destroy one set of illusions to replace it with another. Yet the
violation of the world of the text-act reader does signal that the
intended recipient of the discourses is an essential dimension of
any novel's linguistic system; he is the creative force inspiring the
discourses, and at the same time the product of them. Again, as in
the case of the fictive author, it is a question oflanguage rather than
people, of linguistic signs responding to other linguistic signs.
The epilogue, which completes the outside frame, addresses
much more directly the question of language as a conveyer of
illusions. Since the epilogue is composed primarily of the dis-
courses of Augusto's dog, Orfeo, it destroys any remaining illusion
that Niebla is a mirror of what is generally conceived as reality.
Furthermore, Orfeo himself theorizes about illusion, the illusion
that man uses language to convey his true feelings, that words
become one with objects and concepts, that lies are truth.
Orfeo's concern with language and illusion is inspired by his
master's death. He recalls the difficulty they had communicating,
and adds that dogs only really understand when humans howl
because howling is the only natural sound dogs make. In fact
barking, he says, is something dogs do to imitate man, who, "ladra
a su manera, habla, y eso le ha servido para inventar lo que no hay
y no fijarse en lo que hay. En cuanto le ha puesto un nombre a alga,
ya nove este alga, no haec sino oir el nombre que le puso, o verle
escrito. La lengua le sirve para mentir, inventar lo que no hay y
confundirse" (p. 164) ["barks in his own way, he talks, and that has
allowed him to invent what is not there and to ignore what is there.
As soon as he has placed a name on something, he no longer sees
this something, he only hears the name that he placed on it, or he
only sees its written signifier. Language allows him to lie, to invent
what does not exist and to become confused"). Orfeo's comments
in effect summarize the essence of the novel itself: a creation
designed to enable language to fulfill its natural function to invent
what does not exist. And by virtue of the other half of the frame, the
prologues, the focus switches from the invented product to the
process of inventing. By laying bare the conventions that make
fiction seem real, the frame assures that what is really there,
language and its incredible creative capacity, will not be ignored.
The frame is a sign, therefore, pointing simultaneously at itself and

at the construct it encloses.
In pointing at itself, the frame calls attention to its purely
linguistic quintessence; in pointing at the anecdote centered on
Augusto's unsuccessful courtship of the beautiful Eugenia, it im-
parts to this anecdote a tinge of pure fabulation. It is the case of
one sign (the prologues and epilogue) being superimposed on
another sign (the framed construct).7 The story cannot be sepa-
rated in the reading process from the metafictional effects of the
strategies employed in the frame surrounding it.
The imprint of the frame on the anecdote is discernible from the
moment Augusto first sees Eugenia and follows her until she
disappears into her house. Standing alone in the street he discovers
that her physical absence is no major obstacle to his vision of her:
"Estuvo asi sugiriendose Ia figura de Eugenia, y como apenas si la
habia vis to, tuvo que figunirsela. Merced a esta labor de evocaci6n
fue surgiendo a su fantasia una figura vagarosa ceiiida de en-
sueiios" (p. 31) ["He remained that way a while trying to make
himself create Eugenia's appearance, and since he had barely seen
her, he was forced to imagine it. Thanks to this evocative effort, an
image vaguely tinted by daydreams began to emerge in his fan-
tasy"]. A character of the story has just created another character
through imagination and language. Furthermore, as creator he
immediately declares his authority over his creation: "Mi Eugenia,
si, la mia-iba diciendose-, esta que me estoy forjando a solas, y
nola otra, nola de carney hueso ... !" (p. 31) ["My Eugenia, yes,
mine-he was saying to himself-, this one that I am creating by
myself, and not the other one, not the one of flesh and blood ... !"]
By virtue of the imprint of the prologues, the message of the text-
act reader is different from that which Augusto directs to his text
reader. Augusto, naturally not aware of the frame in which he is
enclosed, contrasts his imaginative creation with the "real" Eu-
genia ( "Ia de carney hueso"). His claim of ownership, then, is both
true and ridiculous since he concedes that the real object of his
affections is the other Eugenia. For the text-act reader, however, the
supposed Eugenia of flesh and blood is no less a fantasy than the
one Augusto invents; one is the fictive author's verbal construct
while the other is Augusto's. Since, however, the fictive author has
already been exposed in the prologue as a mere verbal construct

himself, the two Eugenias are equally inventions, mere fictions.
There is also a distinct echo from the prologues when Augusto,
in contrast to his earlier claim of authority over Eugenia, suddenly
begins to question who is the creator and who is the creation: "c:De
d6nde ha brotado Eugenia? c:Es ella una creaci6n mia o soy crea-
ci6n suya yo? c:O somos los dos creaciones mutuas, ella de mi, yo de
ella? c:No es acaso todo creaci6n de cada cosa y cada cosa creaci6n
de todo? Y c:que es creaci6n? (p. 50) ["Where has Eugenia emerged
from? Is she a creation of mine, or am I a creation of hers? Or are
we two mutual creations, she of me and I of her? Isn't perhaps
everything the creation of everything else? And what is creation?"]
Just as Victor and the fictive U namuno of the prologues are two
sign systems giving birth to and then being born of the other, so
Augusto now sees himself and Eugenia as both creator and crea-
tion of the other. And whereas on the anecdotal level Augusto's
questioning concerns love and its effect on two people, for the text-
act reader the issue is again language and its ability to give birth to
itself. In fact all of these passages point both back at the prologues
and ahead to the concluding chapters; they evoke the image of the
conflict between Victor and the fictive Unamuno in the opening
frames, and they augur Augusto's ultimate direct confrontation
with the fictive Unamuno near the end of the novel. In short, they
contribute to the process of switching the focus from the illusions to
the creation of the illusions. 8 Such a process is crystallized within
the framed construct when Victor, also a novelist, begins a discus-
sion with Augusto about the novel he is writing. This discussion
marks the point where the novel turns definitively inward on itself.
As the discussion begins, Victor notes that he is writing his
novel in dialogue, the purpose of which he explains: "Y sobre todo
que parezca que el au tor no dice las cosas por si, no nos molesta con
su personalidad, con su yo satanico. Aunque, por supuesto, todo lo
que digan mis personajes lo digo yo" (p. 92) ["And above all it
must appear that the author does not say things on his own
account, that he does not bother us with his personality, with his
satanic '1.' Although, of course, everything that my characters say
I am actually saying"]. Augusto, reacting to this claim of omnipo-
tence, decides to challenge his novelist friend: "Si, que empezaras
creyendo que los llevas tu, de tu mano, y es facil que acabes
convenciendote de que son ellos los que te llevan. Es muy frecuente

que un au tor acabe por ser juguete de sus ficciones" (p. 92) ["Yes,
you will begin by believing that you are leading them by your
hand, but it is likely that you will end up convincing yourself that
they arc the ones leading you. Very often an author ends up as the
plaything of his fictions"]. The Unamuno-Victor conflict of the
prologues is now being reenacted between Victor and Augusto.
And when Augusto has the effrontery to ask what Victor does
about dialogue when only one character is present, Victor insid-
iously explains: "Entonces ... un mon6logo. Y para que parezca
algo asi como un dialogo, invento un perro a quien el personaje se
dirige" (p. 93) ["Then ... a monologue. And in order that it may
resemble somewhat a dialogue, I invent a dog to whom the
character addresses himself']. Poor Augusto, who constantly con-
fesses his doubts and troubles to his dog Orfeo--his dramatized
text addressee-has had his own fictionality thrown in his face.
And even though Victor, in a moment of exasperation, earlier
challenged Augusto's claim to reality-"Y si me apuras mucho te
digo que tu mismo no eres sino una pura idea, un ente de ficci6n"
(p. 62) ["And if you press me too much I will tell you that you
yourself are only a pure idea, a fictional being"]-on that occasion
it was possible to lend a metaphorical interpretation to the words.
Now, however, Augusto cannot ignore the fusion of his own reality
with Victor's invention. The game of fiction reigns supreme.
Victor is challenging the creative authority of the fictive author by
claiming credit for the invention ofhis interlocutor, and even of the
story of which both and his interlocutor were a part.
The text at this point becomes a palimpsest with the imprint of
the prologues clearly visible behind Victor's and Augusto's debate.
By virtue, therefore, of the palimpsest's dual images we have an
even more dramatic assault on the boundaries separating the
worldfrom which one speaks and the world ifwhich one speaks,
and, with the collapse of this boundary, an even more dramatic
assault on the illusion that some verbal constructs are endowed
with exclusively creative power while others are exclusively their
products. Authors and characters, since they are merely sign
systems, alternately create and are created by one another. And, of
course, this creative process is all for the benefit of a text-act reader,
the third creator/creation paradox constituting the fictional mode.
Again the narrative seems to be written on a palimpsest when

the fictive author interrupts the discussion of Victor's novel to
appeal directly this time to the text-act reader: "Mientras Augusto
y Victor sostenian esta conversaci6n nivolesca, yo, el au tor de esta
nivola, que tienes, lector, en la mano, y estas leyendo, me sonreia
enigmaticamente al ver que mis nivolescos personajes estaban
abogando por mi y justificando mis procedimientos" (p. 130)
["While Augusto and Victor were sustaining this 'nivolesca' con-
versation, I the author of this 'nivola' that you have, reader, in
your hands, and are reading, smiled enigmatically to myself upon
seeing that my 'nivolescos' personages were arguing my case for me
and justifying my procedures"]. While the fictive author appar-
ently commits this transgression of narrative level in an attempt to
affirm his hierarchical superiority over his characters, his direct
appeal to the text-act reader indicates his awareness that someone
else will pass judgment on his claim, a someone else who literally
holds in his hands the fate of him and the characters. Yet at the
same time that the fictive Unamuno seems to concede omnipo-
tence to his reader, he may have something else in mind. The fictive
author's enigmatic smile, although ostensibly inspired by Victor's
and Augusto's conversation, could also be directed at the text-act
reader as a signal of the sinister trick he, the author, has just played
on his interlocutor. By addressing him directly, he has dramatized
the reader's linguistic ontology; he has made him an explicit
dimension of the text. When the fictive author destroys in this way
the illusion that readers exist only in the real world, he paves the
way for creating a new illusion, the illusion that we real readers are
in fact fictitious.
The architect of the new illusion is not the fictive Unamuno but
Victor, whose answer to Unamuno's intrusion is an explanation to
Augusto of the need for a new suspension of disbelief:
Y ademas, que si, como te decfa, un nivolista oculto que nos esta oyendo
toma nota de nuestras palabras para reproducirlas un dia, ellector de Ia
nivola llega a dudar, siquiera fuese un fugitivo momenta, de su propia
realidad de bulto y se crea a su vez no mas que un personaje nivolesco,
como nosotros. [p. 146]
[And besides, just in case, as I was telling you, a hidden "nivolista" is
listening to us and taking notes of our words so as to reproduce them
someday, the reader of the "nivola" may come to doubt, if only for a
fleeting moment, his own concrete reality and to consider himself as
nothing more than a "nivolesco" character, just as we are.]
The one convention left intact after so many violations is that

which encourages the real reader to identify consciously or sub-
consciously with the text-act reader. As a result, our instinct to
identify places us now squarely within the text. The textual strat-
egy of destroying the illusion of the text-reader's separation from
the text creates the new illusion of the real reader's physical
involvement in it.
For many, the process of destroying fiction's conventions and
illusions is centered on, if not limited to, the final three chapters of
Niebla. In them the direct confrontation occurs between Augusto
and the fictive U namuno. Although these chapters are undeniably
the most spectacular displays of violations and consequently have
received by far the most critical attention, if not anticlimatic they
are at least dependent on the process of fusing into a single sign, by
means of Victor's novel, the frame and the framed construct.
As the past critical generation so perceptively noted, Niebla
makes us feel that truth and fiction, reality and dream, are indeed
one and the same. In fact, at the end ofUnamuno's last novel, San
Manuel Bueno, martir (1931) [Saint Manuel Good, Marryr], the fictive
author violates the world of the first-person narrator to argue the
same basic thesis:
~Que se parece mucho a otras casas que yo he escrito? Esto nada prueba
contra su objetividad, su originalidad. ~y se yo, ademas, sino he creado
fuera de mi seres reales y efectivos, de alma inmortalidad? ~Se yo si aquel
Augusto Perez, el de mi novela Niebla, no tenia raz6n al pretender ser mas
real, mas objetivo que yo mismo, que pretendia haberlo inventado? De Ia
realidad de este San Manuel Bueno, martir, tal como me le ha revelado su
discipula e hija espiritual Angela Carballino, de esta realidad no se me
ocurre dudar. Creo en ella mas que creia el mismo santo; creo en ella mas
que creo en mi propia realidad. [p. 82]
[So it resembles other things I have written? This doesn't prove anything
against its objectivity, its originality. And anyway, do I know if perhaps I
have created real and authentic beings, with immortal souls? Do I know if
that Augusto Perez, the one from my novel Niebla, wasn't right upon
claiming to be more real and objective than I, the very one who thought
he had created him? About San Manuel Bueno, the martyr's, reality, just
as his disciple and spiritual daughter Angela Carballino has revealed it to
me, about this reality I have no reason to doubt. I believe in it more than
the saint himself believed in it, more than I believe in my own reality.]
The textual strategy behind the theme of fiction versus reality in

the case of Niebla involves foregrounding the fascinating capacity of
language to give birth to itself, to create illusion in the very act of
destroying illusion. Another reading of the title itself, therefore, is
that U namuno is inviting us to look through the mist created by the
artifices of fiction to the process of invention underlying the ar-
tifices. Thus the laying bare of conventions and artifices by works
such as Niebla and San Manuel Bueno, martir does not denigrate the
work of fiction but rather glorifies its inventive capacity. And
whether Unamuno would admit or would even be aware of the
imprint of Cervantes, Quevedo, Gald6s, and perhaps others on his
strategies is a moot question. At some level he assimilated their
models of tentative or pseudo-violations and carried them to an
extreme: fictive authors, characters, and text-act reader united into
a single world where apparently nothing exists but the dream of
existence. Such is the disturbing yet fascinating illusion Unamuno
offers us by means of his flagrant violations of the fictional mode.
Chapter Three
Codes versus Modes:

Locura y muerte de nadie
and La novia del viento
Notwithstanding the example of Niebla and of some other novels

mentioned at the beginning of the previous chapter, the metafic-
tional mode is not predominant in the Generation of'98. Indeed,
before critics became obsessed with metafiction, Niebla was read
primarily for its existential content. As suggested in the previous
chapter, the self-commentary of the novels of the Generation of'98
can be seen primarily as anti-realist techniques. That is to say, by
eschewing the illusion that they are about real people involved in
real events, the novels of the Generation of '98 foreground their
own literariness; they indirectly comment on themselves by mak-
ing novelistic art itself one of their implicit concerns. Yet often
overshadowing the implicit problem of art in these novels is the
implicit problem of the nation and the Spaniard-not so much in
the sociopolitical as in the ontological sense. The subsequent
literary movement in Spain, on the other hand, brings the problem
of art to the forefront and relegates to the background existential
and social concerns. I am referring, of course, to the vanguardist
movement of the 1920s and 1930s with its resurrected motto, "art
for art's sake." 1 Such a movement, therefore, and specifically the
work of its leading novelist, Benjamin Jarnes, is a logical focal
point to explore in more detail the problematic relationship be-
tween experimentation-artfulness and metafiction.
Jarnes was not only the leading vanguardist novelist but, as a
contributor to the Revista de Occidente, one of the foremost
spokesmen for its artistic tenets. Perhaps influenced by his reputa-
tion as a spokesman for the movement, critics tend to define his
novels as theoretical essays or experiments, often citing a lyrical,

subjective style as the device through whichJarnes reduces all his
novels to treatises on art. 2 Although there is a certain justification
in such a claim, it fails to distinguish between his use of elaborate
artfulness as one type of novelistic self-commentary, and the adap-
tation he makes of the Cervantes, Quevedo, Gald6s, and Un-
amuno models for exposing the narrative process itself. Thus it is a
case, on the one hand offoregrounding literary codes, and on the
other of violating the modes or laws of fiction. To demonstrate the
distinction I am proposing, I have selected Locura y muerte de nadie
(1929) [The Insanity and Death if Nobody] as an example of self-
commentary through codes, and La novia del viento (1940) [The
Wznd:S Bride) as an example of a violation of the modes of fiction.
Anecdotally, Locura y muerte de nadie concerns the efforts of the
protagonist, Juan Sanchez, to gain recognition as something
other than just another face in the mass of humanity. Yet from the
very beginning of the novel, where his signature is challenged in a
bank, to the end, when he falls victim to a speeding truck, society
refuses to recognize his individuality, as his death is likened to the
mere erasure of his signature. In fact, Juan is such a nonentity
that it is probably not accurate to refer to him as the protagonist of
the novel. The source of focalization is Arturo, Juan's friend, who
is unknowingly drawn into a love triangle involving Juan's wife
and his business partner. Arturo serves as ironic observer of the
wife's and business partner's machinations and of Juan's futile
struggle against anonymity, a struggle culminating with a failed
suicide attempt immediately before his accidental death under the
wheels of the truck.
As one might suspect from even this schematic outline of the
story, the novel is generally read as an expression of two of Ortega y
Gasset's basic concerns: the threat of a dehumanized mass society
and the need to "dehumanize" art so as to reflect that threat. 3 A
more recent reading, however, views the work as a metafiction
whose metaphors function as indices of fictionality rather than of
dehumanization. 4 Whereas the author of the latter thesis limits the
novel to its metafictional dimension, I will be arguing that the
theme of dehumanization and fictional self-commentary are insep-
arable. Furthermore, the strategy for self-commentary in James's
novel contrasts with those strategies examined so far in this study.
Codes versus Modes 47
By using parody to emphasize the codes or formal constraints

distinguishing other literary genres and styles, Locura y muerte de
nadie foregrounds its own code system. 5 In short, the novel is
about its own novelistic style and at the same time about the society
such a style reflects.
The use of parody as a device for foregrounding literary codes or
formal constraints is most striking in chapters four and five. These
chapters present Arturo arriving at Juan's home following an
afternoon oflovemaking with a woman he knows only by the name
Rebeca.Juan, whom Arturo met earlier at the bank, shows him a
nude painting and Arturo recognizes the model, even though her
face is covered, as Rebeca. At that point Rebeca enters the room
with a man, andjuan introduces them as his wife Matilde and his
cousin and business partner, Alfredo. Arturo is shocked not only
by the discovery that his lover is his new friend's wife, but also by
the memory that Alfredo is the name Matilde uttered that after-
noon in a fit of passion during their lovemaking. As the four then sit
down at the table for dinner, the narrator remarks: "Del conflicto
dramatico--porque estamos en presencia de un profundo conflicto
dramatico--a Arturo solo le preocupa, en primer termino, para no
precipitar el desenlace, recordar bien el verdadero nombre de
Rebeca" 6 ["The only thing that bothers Arturo about the dramatic
conflict-because we are witnessing a profound dramatic con-
flict-is above all to remember the true name ofRebeca so as not to
precipitate the denouement"]. The parenthetical repetition of the
term "dramatic conflict" diminishes rather than increases the
tragic potential of this situation. And although such a gratuitous
interpretation calls attention to the presence of the narrator, it is
not the same type of violation of a fictional mode examined up to
this point-the type, for example, where a narrator addresses the
characters themselves. 7 In fact, rather than a true violation of
narrative worlds, this kind of aside, generally labeled an intrusive
or editorial comment, is all too typical of a certain novelistic style
prevalent in the nineteenth century. That is, the aside is coded and
therefore draws even more attention to the conventionality of the
romantic intrigue inspiring it. Such conventionality, furthermore,
collides with the very concept of "art for art's sake," a collision
that foregrounds literary style itself. 8 In short, the emphasis
has switched from the hermeneutic code-what will happen-to
the literary codes distinguishing certain types of plot situations.

Although the narrator initiates the process of foregrounding
literary code systems, he quickly shifts that function to Arturo. The
shift is effected by changing the object of focalization from an
outside view of the four characters seated at the dinner table to the
inner thoughts of each one. When the focus falls on Arturo, he
expresses himself with a vocabulary tinted by critical terminology:
"El azar nunca fue tan caprichoso conmigo. En una misma tarde
me encuentro con tres personajes representativos, muy dignos de
estudio, probablemente victimas de otras tantas enfermedades
incurables; peligrosos, eso si, para un puro contemplador que se
decide perder su pureza, a mezclarse en su drama" (p. 1434)
["Chance was never so capricious with me. On the same afternoon
I find myselfwith three representative personages very worthy of
study, probably victims of numerous other incurable diseases;
dangerous, yes, for a pure observer who decides to lose his purity
and become a part of their drama"]. The reference to himself as a
"pure" observer about to lose his purity conveys a tone of self-
mockery as his contemplative self separates from his physical self.
In fact, he creates the sensation of a literary critic commenting on
a dramatic work in which he has decided to play a role. As the
scene unfolds, his dual role of critical observer and participant
becomes even more clearly defined:
Y esta misma ausencia de elementos concretos le empuja a mirar a sus

compaiieros de mesa como elementos obstractos de un drama latente, de
unjuego cuyas cartas nadie se atreve a arrojar sobre Ia mesa. El, que por
com placer a Ia fracasada Rebeca, esta leyendo estos dias un lote copioso de
novelas del siglo XIX, define con esta vaga formula Ia extraiia situaci6n
intima del grupo: "Sobre nosotros se cierne Ia tragedia". [p. 1436]
[And this same absence of concrete elements inspires him to look at his
table companions as abstract elements of a potential drama, of a game in
which no one dares to throw his cards on the table. He, who wishing to
please the unfortunate Rebeca, is reading at present a whole collection of
nineteenth-century novels, defines the strange intimate situation of the
group with this vague formula: "Tragedy is hanging over us".]
Tragedy, when reduced to formulaic terms, becomes a purely

literary conceit. Since, furthermore, the source of the conceit is
identified as a certain sentimental novelistic genre of the past
century, lt IS really a question of hackneyed melodrama. Again

there is a clash between such a genre and the well-publicized tenets
of the vanguardist movement. This type of parody, by calling
attention to the question of plot conventions, constitutes a certain
kind of novelistic self-commentary. And whereas in the previous
example such self-commentary was orchestrated by the narrator,
now, even though the voice is still that of the narrator, the viewing
position is Arturo's consciousness. 9 This consciousness, detached
from his physical being, draws on literary conventionality to de-
scribe the bizarre scene, a scene of which he is a critical observer
and, at the same time, in which he is a participating actor.
Arturo's role as critic, however, soon eclipses that of actor as he
considers the implications of four participants in the potential
tragedy:
Una ligera meditaci6n acerca del numero cuatro comienza a tran-

quilizarle sobre el posible final ... Ia tragedia comienza asimismo a
reducirse de tamaiw, al crecer el numero de actores esenciales. Cuatro,
principian a ser excesivos. Comienza a intervenir el elemento ir6nico.
Tres, mantiene Ia escena, y uno, contempla: y todo el que verdaderamente
contempla, termina por desgajarse de lo contemplado. [pp. 1436-37]
[A slight consideration of the number four begins to calm him about the
possible final scene ... the tragedy also begins to become reduced in size
as the number of essential actors increases. Four begin to become exces-
sive. The ironic element begins to intervene. Three dominate the scene,
and one observes: and everyone who really contemplates, ends up by
separating himself from that which he is contemplating.]
By virtue of his critical detachment, he has recognized that the

scene in which he is physically involved does not conform to the
code system; the structural components of his situation do not
correspond to those of the genre Tragedy. Literary conventionality
saves him. Locuray muerte de nadie, therefore, is not really about the
story of Juan, Matilde, Alfredo, and Arturo; it is about stories in
general, and about itself in relation to the conventions of storytell-
ing. So the foregrounding of a code system from another era
functions self-referentially to point at this novel and its particular
code system. The foregrounded codes, in turn, also function refer-
entially as they point toward a society mired in its own con-
ventionality, in its own dehumanizing forces. In short, the codes of
50 Beyond the Meta.fictional Mode
Locura y muerte de nadie are both literary and social; they point at
both the novel itself and the social context in which it was created.
James's novel has justifiably been identified with the vanguar-
dist movement in Spain. As the preceding analysis suggests, liter-
ary borrowing in the form of parody is an important dimension of
such a movement. But the borrowing does not involve merely
inserting one passage into another. Gustavo Perez Firmat has
demonstrated that the incorporation of a passage from one text into
another transforms both the borrowed and the incorporating text
into a new text. 10 The formal constraints of the borrowed text are
broken merely by transposing it to another context; the formal
constraints of the incorporating text are also broken by the infusion
into it of alien literary codes. After reading a novel like Locura y
muerte de nadie, it is doubtful that one would ever react to post-
vanguardist melodrama again without seeing in it the traces from a
parodied version. The textual strategy of foregrounding literary
codes in this novel represents a type of novelistic self-commentary
and a break from melodramatic novelistic styles. It does not,
however, represent a breaking of the laws of narrative discourse
themselves.ll James engaged in that more radical self-commen-
tary in La novia del viento.
The first section of La novia del viento is dated 1926 and initially
appeared as a short story in La Gaceta Literaria, entitled "An-
dromeda." The middle and final sections, dated 1939, were added
to form the novel as it was published in 1940. Sections one and
three resemble Locura y muerte de nadie, since in them literary codes
are foregrounded as a means of parodying conventionality. In the
middle section, however, James adopts the more radical tech-
nique of violating narrative modes and in so doing exposes the
arbitrary conventions constraining narrative fiction itself.
The ancedote of the first section concerns the discovery by Julio
of a nude woman, the victim of highway robbers, tied to an olive
tree. Since the crime occurred in woods outside the city, Julio
returns to the casino to borrow a car. It is dawn by the time he can
return with the car, pick up the victim, and take her back to the city.
Her modesty protected only by a blanket, they drive around the
city until the shops open and Julio can buy her clothing. Once she
has dressed and applied makeup, Julio recognizes her as a cabaret
dancer whose pinup picture he carries in his wallet. Although she
invites him to visit her at the hotel where she lives or at the club
where she dances, the narrator ends the section by explaining that
Julio felt he had fulfilled his role as hero and was not sufficiently
motivated to see the adventure through to another stage. In the
third section (the second section has been called an essay on the
noveP 2 ), Julio becomes involved, however, in another adventure.
At a dance he meets Brunilda and her father, accepts their invita-
tion to accompany them on a hike up a hill named "La novia del
viento," and on their return shows Brunilda the tree where he
rescued the dancer Carmela. When he later receives a letter from
Carmela asking him to come to visit her in another city where she is
now working, Brunilda goes into action. She invites him to her
studio where she unveils a painting displaying herself nude and
tied to the same tree where Julio discovered Carmela. Julio, first
seduced by the provocative pictorial representation, is apparently
physically seduced by Brunilda. Brunilda then ensures that the
plastic image that finally aroused him will not serve as a rival in the
future when she destroys the painting at the novel's end.
Brunilda's destruction of the painting is a logical response to
Julio's tendency to find his sensual gratification in plastic images
and therefore to prefer adornment to naked reality. For example,
after discovering Carmela nude and spending the night with her as
she is imperfectly covered by only a blanket, once she has finished
dressing and applying makeup, Julio confesses: "Para mi, co-
menz6 usted a existir ahora. -.,:Vestida? -Si, Carmela" 13 ["As
far as I am concerned, you began to exist just now. -With my
clothes on?-Yes, Carmela"]. The woman who has just come into
existence corresponds, of course, to the picture he carries in his
wallet.
In addition to his attraction to plastic images, Julio depends
on literary models to explain his own experiences, a dependence
the fictive author mockingly reinforces with the titles of the three
sections and of several of the chapters ("Andromeda," "Epi-
metheus' Digression," "Brunilda in Flames," "The Birth of the
Hero," "Transfiguration," "The Return of Perseus," and "Death
of the Dragon"). These titles serve as parodic devices within the
context ofJulio's adventures, and mock his penchant for consider-
ing art as a substitute for, rather than an enrichment of, reality.
Julio's propensity for confusing art and reality-perhaps in-
tended as a commentary on realistic art in general-is ridiculously

evident when he first discovers the naked Carmela tied to a tree: "A
Julio no le sorprendio verla completamente desnuda. Siempre Ia
habia visto asi en los cuadros del Musco yen el tomo quinto de Ia
Enciclopedia Espasa" (p. 16) ["It did not surprise julio to see her
completely naked. He had always seen her that way in the paint-
ings of the museum in the fifth volume of the Encyclopedia Espasa"].
This reference to Rubens's "Enchained Andromeda," a reference
clarified on the next page, 14 not only mocks Julio as he dismisses
with a scholarly footnote the prurient potential of the situation, but
comically signals the victim's physical proportions. Julio, nev-
ertheless, is oblivious to the captive's feminine endowments as he
casts himself into the mythic role: "-c:Donde esta el dragon?-
c:Que dragon? -Perdone. Era un tropo" (p. 18) ["-Where's the
dragon? -What dragon? -Excuse me. That was merely a
trope"]. Much like Arturo in Locuray muerte de nadie,Julio is aware
of his involvement in literary conventionality. Such an awareness is
most evident as he observes Carmela (or Star as he has opted to
call her) put on the clothes purchased when the shops open:
AI cenirse Star Ia faja,Julio record6 a los pintores realistas del ochocien-

tos, obligados a fabricarse una realidad antes de pintarla. Solfa rectificar
en los modelos el talle, deformado por el corse, como el paisajista coloca un
buey en medio del prado para corregir una elipsis de armonia, o anade a
los ojos de los recien nacidos de Belen una luz espiritual de mozo de quince
anos, para ser d6cil a! dogma. [p. 55]
[As Star fastened the sash around her waist, Julio remembered the
eighteenth-century realist painters who were forced to fabricate a reality
before they could paint it. They used to adjust the waistline of their
models, deformed by corsets, just as the landscapist places an ox in the
middle of a meadow so as to correct a lack of harmony, or adds a spiritual
light of a fifteen year old to the eyes of newborn babies in Bethlehem,just to
be more faithful to the dogma.]
Unlike Arturo of the earlier novel, however, Julio is incapable of

assuming a critical view and distancing himself from literary
conventionality for more than a moment. In fact, he has reduced
art to a rote; rather than a stimulus to his senses and imagination, it
provides him with set patterns ofbehavior enabling him to escape a
confrontation with reality.
In addition to providing Julio with models for his own con-

duct, the literary references of the first and third sections allow the
text-act reader to recognize the ironic relationships between
Julio's trials and those of the mythic heroes of the models. In-
deed, the fictive author seems especially concerned with guiding
the reading process of the text-act reader, as evidenced by the
following passage after one of Julio's philosophical treatises:
"Hasta aqui Began aquella noche las reflexiones de Julio, reflex-
iones escritas para lectores graves, enemigos de todo humorismo"
(p. 72) ["Julio's ruminations that night ended at this point,
ruminations written for serious readers, enemies of any type of
humor"]. A somber and humorless reader clearly is not the intend-
ed recipient of the juxtapositions ofJulio on the one hand and the
mythic heroes on the other. In fact, by defining in explicit terms
Julio's implied text addressee, the fictive author underscores the
distinction between such an embedded addressee and the text-act
reader stationed outside the boundaries of the story.
The concept itself of the text -act reader is further explored in the
middle section, where the strategy for the novelistic self-commen-
tary involves a violation of fictional modes. In effect, the middle
section functions as a reading of the first section. Added some ten
years after the creation of part one, it offers a plot summary of the
latter that seems designed to recall the action for the initial ad-
dressee. In addition, it summarizes reader reactions to the first
part and offers advice on how to read the third section. In short,
this middle section represents a response by the fictive author to
his own story and to the reading of that story by others. He is his
own reader, and as such he is violating the world of the original
text-act reader to whom the implied message concerns the act of
reading and misreading as it relates to La novia del viento.
The fictive author begins his self-reading by citing those who
decoded the message as he intended it:
Asi fue escrita. Asi fue--por muchos-placenteramente leida. Sobre todo

por algunos expertos, ya cansados de leer esas historias pasionales que se
detienen golosamente en el punto y hora en que el heroe acaba de des-
nudar a! objeto amado. jCon que vehemencia elogiaban esta nueva
modalidad en desenlaces novelescos! -Es admirable--decian-ese modo
de no dar fin a una novela. El epilogo queda a cargo del lector. Ellector
colabora imaginando epilogos. [p. 67]
[That's the way it was written. And that's the way it was enjoyably read-
by many. Above all by some experts, by those tired of reading those
passionate stories that linger over the moment in which the hero has just
undressed the object of his affection. How vehemently they praised this
new mode in novelistic denouement! -It's admirable--they said-that
method of not ending a novel. The epilogue is left in the hands of the
reader. The reader collaborates by imagining his own epilogues.]
These supposedly real readers successfully projected themselves

into the role of the original text-act reader, and by citing their
receptions the fictive author is signaling to his new text-act reader
how the work should be received. In short, he is defining appro-
priate past reader receptions to shape future reader expectations
for the expanded version of his novel: "Pero los mitos-como vera
el que leyere-se encadenan inexorablemente" (p. 65) ["But
myths-as he who reads on will see-become inexorably linked to
one another"].
The need to prepare reader expectations is glaringly evident
when the fictive author explains how less sophisticated readers
received the original shortened version of his novel:
Pero nunca falta el discrepante que--decepcionado--pregunta por las

zonas reales de Ia aventura, por los orfgenes del suceso, porIa hoja clfnica
de los heroes ... Queda incomprendido el heroe. Julio, mozuelo cafdo de
las nubes, personaje fabuloso, inconcreto. Hijo del capricho, no de un
estudio severo de Ia humanidad. [pp. 67-68]
[But there is always the exception who--disappointed-wants to know

about the true-life elements of the adventure, about the origins of the
event, about the clinical case history of the heroes .... The hero is never
understood, Julio, a young guy who just drops out of the sky, a fantasy
character, amorphous. A child of whim rather than the product of a careful
empirical study of human nature.]
Such a reading, of course, reflects someone conditioned to realist

expositions, devoid of imagination and intolerant of any departure
from cause-and-effect novelistic principles. In a word, such a
person is guilty of misreading by insisting on a literal reading of the
characters and events.
In addition to the problem of reader expectations by those
accustomed to a more literal level of reading, the fictive author
must account for receptions distorted by overreading. To that end

he quotes a supposed letter from a morally indignant reader who
complains:
Y parece mentira que un hombre a quien suponiamos tan cabal se haya

complacido en pasear de tal modo a una lozana mujer, a juzgar por Ia
pintura, despues de abandonarla desnuda, quien sabe cuanto tiempo, a
merced de las mas lubricas miradas. Ese paseo, a solas, por una carretera,
toda una noche, provocando con sus malignas reticencias Ia sensualidad
de muchos j6venes incautos que seducidos porIa novedad .... Porque lo
peor del relata no es lo que se cuenta, sino lo que se insinua. [p. 69]
[And it seems incredible that a man we considered so prudent would allow
himself to drive around in such a manner with a very well developed
woman, to judge by the painting, after having abandoned her naked, God
only knows how long, to the mercy of the most lascivious glances. That
drive, all alone, along a highway all night long, provoking with their
pernicious reticence the sensuality of many inexperienced young men who
felt seduced by the novelty of it all .... Because the worst part of the story
is not what is narrated, but what is insinuated.]
The expanded version, therefore, is a response both to a literal

reading and above all to the above reading apparently inspired by
malicious intent:
Y tambien es preciso complacer al lector zoilesco. Por eso, en algunas

nuevas paginas, se intenta aqui explicar el preterito y el futuro de Carmela
y el de Julio. Con alguna alusi6n a Ia tercera figura mitica y real, al del
Dragon. Las paginas que siguen pretenderan calmar las ansias de verdad
hist6rica que suelen acometer al buen lector-y censor de novelas. [p. 69]
[And it is also necessary to placate the malicious reader. Therefore, in
some new pages the past and future of Carmela and Julio will be ex-
plained. With an allusion to the third mythical and real figure, the
Dragon. The following pages will attempt to calm the anxieties for histor-
ical truth that normally bother the good old reader-and censor of novels.]
Since the fictive author has gone to great pains to demonstrate

that this "buen lector-y censor de novelas" is guilty of blatant
misreadings, the claim that the expanded version is designed to
calm such a reader's anxieties seems to project a dual message.
This "buen lector" is now an embedded text reader who has been
characterized not only by the letter but by the adjective "zoilesco."
Such a characterization suggests that the message to the text-act

reader is the polar opposite. Rather than calming the anxieties of
those looking for historical truth, the text-act reader is being
signaled to look for poetic truth. Above all, he should set aside the
prejudices conditioned by realist techniques and open his expecta-
tions to accommodate new forms of the novel. Thus the fictive
author has violated the world of the text-act reader so as to reshape
reader expectations.
The concept of new reader expectations also points to the
multiple levels of reading inherent in any text, and to the need for
constant rereadings. Such a rereading is precisely what the fictive
author then offers in the third section entitled "Brunilda en
llamas." Yet in violent conflict with the role of the mythic hero,
Julio defines his completely pedestrian aspirations: "algun dia,
buscar la mujcr docil, sumisa, individuo mas debil, que no aspira
a llegar a la plena region de las ideas, ni siquiera en los actos
decisivos de la vida" (p. 78) ["some day look for the docile,
submissive woman, the weakest individual who does not aspire to
the lofty regions of ideas, not even in the decisive acts of life"]. A
new reading is suggested by this modern-day Brunilda who, by
seducing him, draws Julio out ofhis all-too-familiar Spanish male
attitude and his infatuation with plastic images and surface tex-
tures. She not only saves herself from the ring of fire perhaps
symbolic of the status of Spanish women in general, but saves
Julio as well. Whereas in the first part Julio forsook the nude
Carmela for the pinup picture of her he carried in his billfold, in his
third section Brunilda herself destroys the icon that initially
aroused him. Brunilda saves Siegried in this rereading of the
ancient myth, which of course is also a rereading of the first section
of La nouia del uiento.
It is tempting and perhaps justified to conclude that the novel-
istic self-commentary of the vanguardist movement was best
served by foregrounding literary codes. The primary preoccupa-
tion of novelists such as Gomez de la Serna, and Pedro Salinas in
his short fiction, like that of Jarnes, is breaking from stylistic
constraints rather than breaking the laws of fiction. 15 Even when
Jarnes violates the modes of fiction in La nouia del uiento, the
message of a need to change reader expectations on the stylistic
level tends to overshadow the message concerning the laws them-
selves of fiction. The same basic stylistic message comes across

even more clearly in Locuray muerte de nadie by the foregrounding of
the code system. At any rate the two novels demonstrate two
distinct textual strategies for novelistic self-commentary, and per-
haps help clarify the distinction Alter proposes between what he
calls "an elaborately artful novel" and a truly self-conscious
novei.I 6 It seems reasonable to conclude that for Alter, a self-
conscious novel means one that violates the modes of fiction. 17
Chapter Four
Rebellion against Models:

Don Juan and Orestes
The so-called "art for art's sake" movement of the 1920s and 1930s
came to an abrupt end with the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
Although it would be an exaggeration to say that novelistic activity
ceased completely during the war years, 1 most of the works emerg-
ing from that period are significant for historical rather than
artistic reasons. Camilojose Cela's La familia de Pascual Duarte [The
Family rif Pascual Duarte in the English version], published in 1942
and soon followed by other novels displaying similar techniques,
was the first of a new group whose artistic merits enabled them to
transcend their historical moment.
The novelistic movement initiated by Cela's Pascual Duarte ex-
tended until 1962, and although a plethora of labels have been
applied to it, neorealism is perhaps the most widely used and
accurate. 2 Such a term, however, should not lead one to assume
that these novels merely document reality. Indeed, many of the
neorealistic novels are noteworthy for their complex structures and
lyrical descriptions, e.g., Carmen Laforet's Nada (1944) [Nothing],
Miguel Delibes' El camino (1950) [The Road], Cela's La colmena
(1951) [The Hive in the English version], Ana Marla Matute's Fiesta
al noroeste (1953) [Northeast Festival}, and Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio's
El}arama (1956) [The One Day rifthe T#ek in the English version], to
cite some of the more notable examples. The novels grouped under
the rubric neorealism, however, display very little penchant toward
experimentation with narrative modes. Prevailing wisdom sug-
gests that the metafictional mode is incompatible with expressions
ofrealism. 3 Notwithstanding the temptation of such an easy expla-
nation for the hiatus of metafiction in the 1940s and 1950s, the
Rebellion against Models 59
explanation seems less than satisfactory in view of Gald6s's meta-

fictional experiments combined with the realist mode of the pre-
vious century. 4
For all practical purposes the end of the neorealistic movement
can be pinpointed to 1962, the year Luis Martin-Santos published
his novel Tzempo de silencio [Silent Time}. Martin-Santos's novel and
its successors are generally designated as the Spanish New Novel,
and although that term really never has been defined adequately, 5
without question the movement marks a resurgence of narrative
experimentation. By far the principal expression of such novelistic
experiments takes the form of self-referential language. As opposed
to what may be characterized as the transparent language of
neorealism, the language of the New Novel tends to be more
opaque; rather than looking through the language to the object
represented, in the New Novel one tends to look more at the
language itself. 6 Another less prominent type of experimentation,
equally anti-neorealist, involves the use of fantasy in the form of
resurrected literary or mythical models. The use of such models is
similar to the type of coding Jarnes and the vanguardists accom-
plish with parodies. Yet unlike the vanguardists, the creators of the
New Novel show a major concern with the process itself ofliterary
borrowing. Fiction representative of this new group explores from
various perspectives the concept of the work within the work, of
literature as a response to literature. Such novels are more con-
cerned with challenging and thereby updating classical literary
models than with merely parodying trite novelistic styles and
themes. Within the general category New Novel, the strategy of
transforming classical models qualifies as the most obvious expres-
sion of novelistic self-commentary.
The first notable example of a 1960s novel transforming a
classical model is Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's Don juan (1963).
The model is identified by the title itself, and the transforming
process consists of the speaker's efforts to challenge the model. The
anecdote involves the speaker's chance acquaintance in Paris with
Leporello, a man claiming to be the servant of the famous fictional
seducer. The novel, then, presents a clash between the supposed
"reality" of the speaker and the living "fiction" he encounters in
the form of this servant and his master. In short, the speaker
inadvertently finds himself enclosed within a literary model, and
his efforts to break out of that model serve as novelistic self-

commentary.
The persuasiveness of the model is apparent when, after the
very first encounter with Leporello, the speaker rather matter-of-
factly concedes the servant's extraterrestrial ontology: "Al prin-
cipio creia que irfa disfrazado; ahora tengo dudas acerca de su
realidad. Si hubiera de definirlo de algun modo, dirfa que es un
fantasma" 7 ["At first I thought he was just wearing a disguise;
now I have to question his reality. If I had to define him in some
way, I would say he is a ghost"]. The sensation of the supernatural
soon takes on a pronounced literary connotation with the nar-
rator's first visit to Don Juan's apartment: "Leporello abri6 las
maderas de una ventana, y tuve la sensaci6n repentina de hallarme
en el escenario de un teatro, o en algo que, sin ser teatro, fuese
escenario, y que, sin embargo, no era fingido o falso, sino de lamas
depurada autenticidad" (p. 29) ["Leporello opened the shutters of
a window, and I suddenly felt as if I were in the middle of a
theatrical scene, or in something that, although not a theatre, was a
staged scene but that, nevertheless, was not contrived or false, but
rather of the purest authenticity"].
A fictional setting that somehow seems real signals the con-
vergence of the supposed real world of the narrator with the
fictional world of Don Juan. Soon he begins to feel that indeed he
has crossed the threshold between the two worlds, and that in so
doing he has fallen under the control of the author of the fictional
world: "Llegue a sentirme como juguete en sus manos, o como
personaje literario en las del mal novelista, que piensa y siente lo
que el novelista quiere" (p. 40) ["I came to feel like a toy in his
hands, or like a literary character in the hands of a bad novelist, a
character who thinks and feels what the novelist dictates"]. Since
various authors (dramatists and poets as well as novelists) can
claim credit for versions of the Don Juan literary legend, the
model itself rather than a single author must be responsible for the
dictatorial control under which the speaker has fallen. The "bad
author" to whom he refers, then, seems to be a creation rather than
the creator of the model. Indeed, only the speaker's fictional self-
consciousness serves to counteract the stifling constraints of this
all-too-familiar literary model.
Since fictional self-consciousness does seem to combat the artis-
tic infecundity imposed by the model, the speaker decides to

further the cause of creativity by usurping the role of the model's
fictive author. The speaker aspires secretly to become the fictive
author ofhis own story. Leporello, however, knows about the secret
heretical project and asks permission to read the manuscript. At
that point the narrator/character/author confesses that the story is
silly and that he does not even know why he bothered to write it.
Leporello then answers him: "Yo si lo se. La escribi6 porque no
tuvo mas remedio porque una fuerza superior le oblig6 a hacerlo.
Pero nose le ocurre presumir de haberla inventado. La historia no
tiene nada suyo, usted lo sabe. Ni siquiera las palabras le per-
tenecen" (p. 255) ["Well I do know. You wrote it because you
didn't have any alternative since a force superior to you forced you
to do it. But don't think you have invented it. The story is not yours
at all, and you know it. The words aren't even yours"). Leporello
seems to be suggesting that the superior force is the literary model
itself, that no author can free him- or herselffrom the constraints of
tradition and reader expectations. In this sense, then, Torrente's
Don Juan raises the questions of authorial control and artistic
originality. Authors, it seems to suggest, are less creators than
imitators. Torrente's Don Juan therefore presents the conflict be-
tween the constraints imposed by past models and formulas on any
novelistic expression, and the constant need to challenge all con-
straints so as to express the always constant yet always changing
phenomenon of human existence. The modal violation occurring
when a fictional character in a contemporary novel enters the
world of a classical model and then attempts to write his own story
is the textual strategy by which Torrente challenges the constraints
of tradition, by which he strives for a new mode of expression. So
intertextuality is simultaneously an obstacle and a creative force,
but for it to be creative the existing prototypes must be transformed
into new modes of expression. Such seems to be the message of
Torrente's Don Juan.
As interesting and important as Torrente's challenge to literary
models is to the Spanish novel of the 1960s, it fell to another
Galician novelist, Alvaro Cunqueiro, and his Un hombre que se
parecia a Orestes (1969) [A Man Who Resembled Orestes], to develop
more fully the potential of transforming classical archetypes into
new modes of expression. In so doing Cunqueiro points even more
directly to the emergence in the mid-l970s of the Spanish self-

referential novel.
The title itself, Un hombre que se pareda a Orestes, points simul-
taneously to the hero of the classical model-Aeschylus's Oresteia-
and to the departure from the model. That is to say, this hero only
resembles the original. The title announces that Cunqueiro's novel
is a rereading of the myth, a rereading that in turn has been read as
demythification, revitalization, escapism, social criticism, a hu-
morous blend of realism and fabulation, and finally a blend of self-
conscious narrative and metatheatre. 8 The variety of interpreta-
tions the novel has inspired attests to its artistic complexity, an
artistic complexity grounded in the clash between the formulas
imposed by the classical model and the contemporary novel's
search for new modes of expression.
The clash between rigid formulas and artistic innovation is most
obvious in the novel's exterior structure. On several occasions the
narrative mode is interrupted by the dramatic mode in the form of
segments of two plays embedded within the novel. In addition,
the novel ends with six character sketches followed by an
onomastic index of the remaining characters (except for Aegis thus,
who is strangely missing from both lists), and each sketch and
index entry offers a new caricature of the respective personages. 9
The combination of theatrical modes of dialogue and a conclusion
presented as sketches and indices clashes with what is conceived as
traditional novelistic form. These nonconventional devices call
attention to themselves as artifices, and such a flaunting of artifices
is the most blatant expression of the conflict between the tyranny of
literary models and the need to challenge such a tyranny. The
challenge involves turning the conventions and artifices against
themselves. First by exaggerating the rigidity of generic formulas
and then by violating the very modes ofliterature, the novel offers a
new set of formulas and models to express in contemporary terms
an ancient conflict of human existence.
The conflict between original model and modern imitation is
central to the anecdote of Un hombre que se pareda a Orestes. When the
novel begins a stranger has arrived in the city, introducing himself
as Don Leon. Since the people of the city have been waiting for a
long time for the arrival of Orestes and a spy network has been set
up to identify him and prevent his murderous revenge, all strang-
ers are suspect. Yet as Don Leon's words, actions, and physical
appearance suggest more and more that he is indeed the avenging
hero, the people become increasingly skeptical of the whole myth.
In fact, as the captain of the spy network explains, the situation
has taken on an aura of play acting: "Y ellos, los reyes, no pod ran
morir si no viene Orestes. El pueblo estani ese dia como en el
teatro" 10 ["And they, the king and queen, will not be able to die if
Orestes does not come. That day everyone will feel as if he is at the
theatre"]. The people, in short, feel that their own identity is
determined by the fictional model, yet this identity is in conflict
with their present context, a context totally lackjng the epic dimen-
sions associated with the model: "jCoiio, eso parece de Ia trage-
dia!-habia comentado Eusebio. Pero eJ cobraba por descubrir a
Orestes, y debia registrar a! forastero que le seiialaban en el aviso"
(p. 25) ["Motherfucker, that business sounds as if it's right out of
the tragedy-Eusebio had commented. But they paid him to
investigate Orestes, and he had to check out the stranger described
in the bulletin"]. Not only does the vulgarity underscore the degree
to which pragmatic considerations have supplanted the cosmic
forces behind the original myth, but the same vulgar pragmatism
reflects how the myth has been reduced to mere formulas. Rather
than a fiction, it is an anti-fiction suppressing both compassion and
imagination.
The anti-fiction resulting when fiction is reduced to a rigid set of
norms becomes evident when one of the city augurs responds to
Don Leon's question about the theatre offerings currently avail-
able:
Yo tambien soy muy amigo del teatro, don Leon, pero a los augures nos
esta prohibido en esta ciudad, ya que el pueblo respetuoso teme que
estando nosotros en los tendidos viendo Ia pieza, apasionados por el
protagonista, o de una mujer hermosa que salga, hagamos suertes a
escondidas dentro de una bolsa con habas blancas y dientes de liebre, y
modifiquemos el curso de Ia tragedia, y llegue a anciano respetable un
incestuoso, o Medea reconquiste a Jason, y todo quede en besos a los
ninos. [p. 41]
[I am also a theatre buff, Don Leon, but we augurs are prohibited from
seeing it in this city, since the respectable people are afraid that if we are in
the balcony watching the play, and become caught up by the protagonist,
or by some beautiful woman who happens onto the stage, we may secretly
throw dice made of white beans and rabbit teeth in a bag, and thereby
change the course of the tragedy, and an incestuous person will achieve
respectable old age, or Medea may reconquer Jason, and in the end
everyone will be just one big happy family.)
The characters, therefore, are slaves to all past literary models.

They cannot escape the model they arc in, and are prohibited from
using their creative imagination to alter other models. And where-
as such exaggeration of their enslavement produces a comic effect,
it also tends to reduce the literary work to its anecdotal level; it
presents literature as nothing more than a finite number of plot
situations, each so rigidly defined that plot is seen as another of the
arbitrary conventions constraining literature's ability to express
the ever-changing yet ever-constant essence of human existence.
Literature as convention becomes even more evident with the
first example of a play within the novel. The official city dramatist,
Fil6n el Mozo, has defied the law by secretly writing a theatrical
version of Orestes' appearance. After a textual reproduction of
Scene One, Scene Two of Fil6n's play begins and then abruptly
ends at the moment lphigenia looks out the window and is
supposed to see Orestes. At this point the dramatic form gives way
to the narrative form as the speaker intrudes to explain that the
dramatist cannot finish the scene until Orestes actually arrives. In
addition to mocking the conventions of plot, the mixture of dra-
matic and narrative fictional forms comically lays bare the illusion
that fiction is about real people, places, and events. Not only do we
have fiction within fiction, but the referent on which the comple-
tion of Fil6n's play depends is itself a fiction; the fictitious scene
representing the arrival of Orestes cannot be written until Orestes
(a fictional character) makes his appearance. Thus Fil6n's absurd
fidelity to mimetic art directs attention to the absurdity of ever
thinking that art and reality are one. Only conventions allow us to
accept fiction as real. In short, this segment of a play within the
novel comically exaggerates the conventions of fiction, and in so
doing turns them against themselves. Rather than absolute laws,
they reveal themselves to be arbitrary constraints or formulas
badly in need of revitalization.
Since true revitalization demands certain commitments, the
characters opt instead for embellishment. Fil6n el Mozo, for exam-
ple, contents himself with imagining embellishments for Orestes'

arrival scene, since he is unwilling to write his own ending. Even
Aegis thus follows Fil6n's example as he dreams of ways to adorn
the scene of his own murder:
Egisto, verdaderamente, lo pensaba todo como si Ia escena final se desa-

rrollarse en el teatro, ante cientos o miles de espectadores. Un dia se dio
cuenta de que Clitemnestra tenia que estar presente en todo el ultimo acto,
esperando su hora. Podria Egisto, en Ia pared del fondo, en el dormitorio,
mandar abrir un ventanal sobre Ia sala de embajadores, un ventanal que
permitiese ver Ia cama matrimonial, y en ella a Clitemnestra en camis6n,
Ia cabellera dorada derramada en Ia almohada, los redondos hombros
desnudos. Cuando se incorporase, despertada por el ruido de las armas, en
el sobresalto debia mostrar los pechos, e intentando abandonar el !echo
para correr hacia el ventanal, una de las hermosas piernas hasta medio
muslo, o algo mas, que Ia tragedia permite todo lo que el terror exige. [pp.
79-80]
[Aegis thus really conceived of the whole thing as if the final scene were
unfolding in the theatre, before hundreds or thousands of spectators. One
day he realized that Clytemnestra had to be present during all the final act,
waiting for her time. Aegis thus could have a bay window over the ambas-
sadors' waiting room opened, on the wall in the background of the bed-
room, a bay window that would allow the marital bed to be seen, and on it
Clytemnestra in a chemise, her blonde hair spread out over the pillow, her
round shoulders bare. When she gets up, awakened by the noise of the
weapons, in her excitement she should bare her breasts, and in the process
of attempting to get out of bed and run to the bay window, also one of her
legs up to mid-thigh, or perhaps a little higher, for in theatre you can get
away with whatever the dramatic situation requires.]
The embellishment he imagines, of course, merely transforms an

epic tragedy into a titillating soap opera. Although he is a self-
conscious fictional character and frustrated with his formulaic
existence, his action here represents at best a half-hearted rebellion
against the formulas; by ridiculously embellishing them, he under-
scores their authority over him.
True rebellion, as he learns from his friend Eum6n, requires a
much more radical approach. Eum6n suggests the radical solution
when he learns from Aegis thus that no one who knew Agamemnon
saw the face of the victim after the murder. Eum6n then speculates
that the victim was actually Orestes who, impatiently waiting for
his father to be murdered, arrived before the crime was committed,
and thus Aegisthus erroneously killed the son rather than the
father. According to Eum6n, it is simply a matter of changing the
story's sequence of events:
Fijate en que todo esta escrito. Todo lo que esta escrito en un libro, lo esta
a! mismo tiempo, vive a! mismo tiempo. Estas leyendo que Eum6n sale de
Tracia una manana de lluvia, y lo ves cabalgar por ague! camino que va
entre tojales, y pasas de repente veinte hojas, y ya esta Eum6n en una nave,
y otras veinte y Eum6n pasea por Constantinopla con un quitasol, y otras
cincuenta, y Eum6n, anciano, en su !echo de muerte, se despide de sus
perros favoritos, a! tiempo que vuelve a Ia pagina primera, recordando Ia
dulce lluvia de su primer viaje. Pues bien, Orestes se sale de pagina.
Orestes esta impaciente. No quiere estar en Ia pagina ciento cincuenta
esperando a que llegue Ia hora de Ia venganza. Se va a adelantar. [p. 98]
[You have to realize that everything is written down. Everything that is
written down in a book takes place at the same time, exists at the same
time. You are reading that Eum6n leaves Thrace one rainy morning, and
you see him riding along that road bordered by furze trees, and you
suddenly skip twenty pages, and Eum6n is now on a boat, and another
twenty and Eum6n strolls through Constantinople with a parasol, and
another fifty pages and he is now an old man on his death bed, and is
saying goodbye to his favorite dogs, at the very same time that his mind
skips back to the first page, remembering the sweet rain that was falling as
he left on his first excursion. Well, Orestes is leaving his place on the page.
Orestes is impatient. He doesn't want to be on page one hundred and fifty
waiting for the time of his vengeance. He is going to hurry things along.]
Eum6n's solution does not merely question the conventions of

plot, it challenges the very laws of fiction. In effect he exposes
fiction as a totally arbitrary game that pretends that space and
sequential order represent temporal progression. Aegisthus, or
any other artist, has the power to change the rules of the game. Yet
the rebellion implicit in changing the rules does involve certain
consequences, for as Aegisthus reasons, his own role in the tragedy
will be diminished if the victim was Orestes rather than Agamem-
non. Eum6n quickly tries to dispel his friend's apprehensions: "jTu
valor no se discute, amigo!-afirm6 Eum6n abrazandolo-. jYa
veras como si profundizas en el asunto, terminas saliendo del
escenario para platea, ves el argumento con nuevos ojos y acabas

separando de tiel Egis to regicida!" (p. l02) ["Your valor is beyond
challenge, my friend!-Eum6n affirmed hugging him. You will
soon see, if you delve into the matter more, that you will finally
come down off the stage and take a place in the orchestra seats,
where you will see the plot from a whole new perspective and will
end up separating from yourself the regicidal Aegis thus.") After
first exposing the artifices of fiction, he now is attempting to incite
to riot a fellow fictional character by encouraging him to defy the
authority of the fictive author Aeschylus. Eum6n's advice repre-
sents a violation of narrative modes. Yet the violation occurs within
the embedded text. By advocating to Aegisthus that he step out of
Aeschylus's fictional world, in effect he is encouraging him to place
himself under the authority of the fictive author of the framing text.
He is being encouraged to substitute the persona ofCunqueiro for
that of Aeschylus. If he does so he will become a new Aegisthus
("acabas separando de ti el Egisto regicida") contributing, of
course, to Cunqueiro's new reading of the ancient myth.
Eum6n's rebellious advice to violate the embedded text's nar-
rative boundaries is, in the final analysis, a vital part of Cun-
queiro's textual strategy for revitalizing fictional modes. Rather
than a novel that pretends to mirror reality or that slavishly follows
established norms, this novel mirrors itself by challenging fictional
norms. Yet ultimately Aegisthus rejects the advice and chooses to
continue his sterile, formulaic existence. Authentic rebellion is left
in the hands of the protagonist of the second of Fil6n el Mozo's
plays, Dona lnes.
Dona Ines is the protagonist of Azorin's famous novel of the
same title published in 1925. In that novel Dona Ines, approach-
ing middle age, falls victim to her own romantic idealism, which
comes in conflict with a prosaic, pragmatic world. The literary
name Dona lnes is thus identified with tragic, unrequited love.
The Dona lnes of Cunqueiro's novel lives in an adjoining king-
dom, and when Eum6n learns that she is the referent for Fil6n's
theatrical heroine, Eum6n cannot resist a little spicy gossip: " -
Me dice Egisto en confianza-explic6 Eum6n a Fil6n el Mozo-,
que todo el desequilibrio de dona Ines viene de estar ella tambien
ala espera de Orestes, solo que para recibirlo con cama deshecha"
(p. 167) ["Aegisthus tells me confidentially-Eum6n explained to
Fil6n el Mozo-, that all of Dona lnes's emotional problems can

be explained because she is also waiting for Orestes, only in her
case to greet him in bed with the covers thrown back"]. Such a
lascivious remark humorously mocks the very romantic ideals
associated with the name Dona lnes. It is the first step in
departing from the model, in offering a new reading, in this case of
a modern, rather than an ancient, classic. In fact, reading itself
becomes the primary focus with the interpolation of this second
play within the novel.
The focus begins to switch from the story to reading and readers
when Eum6n asks permission to read Fil6n el Mozo's play about
Dona lnes. With the subsequent appearance of the dramatic
mode, then, it is not a question of the illusion of real-life drama, but
rather of the convention of written dramatic form. The dramatic
mode appearing on the page represents the text Eum6n holds in his
hand.
The initial scenes Eum6n reads concern the arrival of a mail-
man at Dona lnes's castle and the story the mailman fabricates to
explain why he has no love letters for her. The explanation he offers
is that a handsome prince called him aside in Florence and,
continually glancing at his watch, asked him to tell Dona lnes that
he would write her declaring his love as soon as he had time to do
so. Dona lnes then takes the mailman's watch and, holding it to
her ear, cries that its ticking is the very love message she has been
awaiting. With this ending to the scene, there is an abrupt switch
from the dramatic to the narrative mode: "Eum6n de Tracia sac6
su reloj y lo escuch6 y se dijo que seria muy hermoso el tener un
amor lejano y saber de el asi. Y se doli6 de si mismo, que nunca lo
habian amado tanto, ni se le habian ocurrido tales imaginaciones
amorosas" (p. 178) ["Eum6n of Thrace took out his watch and
listened to it, and he said to himself that it would be beautiful to
have a distant love and to hear about her that way. And he felt sorry
for himself because he had never been loved that much, nor had he
even dreamed such amorous thoughts"]. With the change of mode,
suddenly the focus falls on Eum6n as a reader of fiction rather than
merely a character in it. By expanding the vision from the embed-
ded text to the framing text, the text-act reader is signaled that the
fictional mode involves not only a story but an implied reader of
the story. The shift of focus suddenly reveals the role ofEum6n as a
text reader; it makes explicit what is conventionally an implicit
dimension of the fictional mode.
This example of modal shift, moreover, lays bare not only the
convention of the implied text reader but also that of a suspension
of disbelief. By changing the focus from what is represented to the
person reacting to the representation, the convention of a suspen-
sion of disbelief is turned against itself. Eum6n, in his reaction to
the play, is even more ridiculous than Doiia lnes. Thus, rather
than an enticement to accept fiction as reality, Cunqueiro's textual
strategy is an invitation to contemplate how the illusions of reality
depend on the comically arbitrary rules by which the game we call
fiction is played.
The culmination of the process of turning the conventions of
fiction against themselves, of rebelling against the constraints of
both genre and mode, involves the recognition by Doiia lnes of
her purely linguistic-artistic ontology. When a musician visits
Doiia Ines in her tower and, after boasting how he creates reality
with his music, challenges her reality by questioning if she is really
the mistress of the castle, she indignantly responds:
.:Podrla serlo otro? Yo soy el palacio, este palacio, estejardin, este bosque,
este reino. A veces imagino que me marcho, que abandono el palacio en Ia
noche, que huyo sin despedirme, y conforme lo voy imaginando siento que
Ia casa se estremece, que amenazan quebrarse las vigas, se desgoznan las
puertas, se agrietan las paredes, y parece que todo vaya a derrumbarse en
un repente, y caer, reducido a polvo y escombro, en el suelo. Todo esto
depende de mi, musico, de esta frase que soy yo, en una larga sinfonia
repetida mon6tonamente, ahora adagio, despues allegro, alguna vez an-
dante. [p. 180]
[Could it be anyone else? I am the palace, this palace, this garden, this
forest, this kingdom. At times I imagine that I am leaving, that I am
abandoning the palace during the night, that I am fleeing without saying
goodby, and as I imagine it I feel that the house shudders, that the beams
threaten to split, that the doors come loose from their hinges, that the walls
crack, and it seems as if everything is suddenly going to crumble and fall,
reduced to dust and rubble on the ground. All this depends on me,
musician, on this series of sounds that I am, in a long symphony, first
adagio, then allegro, once in a while andante.]
Initially she merely seems to be affirming her ownership of the

property when she says she is the palace, garden, forest, and
kingdom. The meaning becomes more complex, however, when
she speaks of the destruction accompanying her imagined depar-
tures from the tower. The key to decoding the meaning seems to be
provided by her self-definition as a "frase." Within the anecdotal
context the word "frase" seems to indicate a musical phrase, one of
its dictionary definitions. Yet within the structural context of a
fiction within a fiction, the word "frase" also points at its more
common meaning as a grammatical unit. In either case the use of
the word reflects Doiia lnes's awareness of being part of an artistic
work. In fact, not only she but everything surrounding her is but a
verbal construct, a constituent part of an artistic whole. If one of
the constituent parts decides to rebel, therefore, the artistic whole
may well crumble. Her self-awareness of the role she plays dis-
tinguishes her from all the other characters appearing in the novel.
She is aware not only of her fictionality but also of her capacity to
rebel, and finally is willing to face the consequences of such a
rebellion, consequences that in effect challenge the very concept of
artistic unity. Self-awareness of this magnitude violates the modes
of fiction, for Doiia lnes not only is destroying any illusion that she
is a real person but is also rebelling against the literary model
associated with her name, against the creator of that model, and
finally against the very concept of absolute unity.
At first glance the section of Un hombre que se parecia a Orestes
dedicated to Doiia lnes seems to be an artistic infelicity; it appears
to destroy the novel's structural and thematic unity. Yet I would
argue that, on the contrary, it can be seen as an essential link in the
novel's redefinition of artistic unity. 11 Doiia lnes's appearance in a
novel about Orestes in itself represents a defiance of literary mod-
els; she is a characater from a modern novel invading the world of a
Greek classic. Because of her role as intruder, along with her self-
awareness of her linguistic-artistic ontology, Doiia lnes represents
the realization of a rebellion the other characters are unwilling to
attempt. In fact, Doiia Ines functions as a sign pointing toward
artistic freedom. By recognizing herself as a convention or an
artifice, she turns that convention or artifice against itself in a
dramatic expression of novelistic self-commentary. The story of
Doiia lnes can be seen, therefore, as a fitting culmination to the
central conflict of the novel, a conflict between the constraints of

established conventions and models, and the need to find new
means of artistic expression, new strategies for revitalizing ancient
and modern myths, new readings of our literary tradition.
Un hombre que se parec{a a Orestes represents a significant step
toward the Spanish self-referential novel emerging in the mid
1970s. Cunqueiro, while still relying on parody and the fore-
grounding of literary codes (strategies that seem to carry the
imprint of James on them), places major emphasis on a violation
of the modes of fiction. The novelistic self-commentary, therefore,
concerns the underlying laws of fiction more than mere stylistic
constraints. Yet even his violations are only partial. When Eum6n
preaches rebellion to Aegisthus and Dona lnes does rebel by
recognizing her artistic ontology, both are violating the boundary
separating them as characters from the world of their respective
fictive authors. But the violations are of the world of the fictive
authors of the embedded texts. In the final analysis they are
rebelling against the personae of Aeschylus and Azorin only to place
themselves under the authority ofCunqueiro's persona. The bound-
aries of the framing text remain intact. In short, Cunqueiro
artfully controls the metafictional mode so as to serve the cause of a
novelistic expression that, while not pretending to duplicate, still
resembles its classical models.
With the emergence of the new self-referential novel in the mid
1970s, the Spanish novel becomes much more radical in its viola-
tions and much more concerned with fiction's modes of existence.
Indeed, rather than merely exposing the artifices of fiction, the
new genre foregrounds its own process of creation, its own coming-
into-being. The conventions of narrative levels are all but annihi-
lated as what is narrated and the narrating instance tend to fuse.
While I am not suggesting that Alvaro Cunqueiro's Un hombre que
se pareda a Orestes had a direct influence on the Spanish self-
referential novelists, certainly it played a role in shaping reader
expectations for the new metafictional movement. At the very least
Cunqueiro's novel forms a link in an intertextual chain that helps
us as critics to recognize more clearly, and perhaps appreciate
more deeply, some of the techniques involved and effects created by
the new wave of Spanish metafictional novels.
Chapter Five
Process as Product:
Juan sin Tierra
When, metafiction is defined as a mode, as proposed in the Intro-

duction to this study, it forms a polar opposite to reportorial fiction.
That is to say, the reportorial mode points almost directly at
extratextual reality while the metafictional mode tends to point
back at the work itself. Both modes, nevertheless, can appear in the
same novel, as indeed is the case in numerous examples from
Gald6s. (While not exactly the reportorial mode, Galdosian real-
ism is close to it.) Furthermore, since modes are atemporal, we find
dramatic examples of the metafictional mode from Don Quijote to
the present. Yet prior to the last decade in Spain, the mode
appeared sporadically, generally as a mutation of other generic
movements. And when it did appear it served to foreground the
artifices and conventions of fiction; it switched the focus from the
created image to the strategies involved in creating it. In short, the
novels examined up to this point in which the metafictional mode
plays a significant role convey a fascination with fiction as a weaver
of dreams.
In the decade of the 1970s not only did the metafictional mode
begin to dominate in specific novels, but such novels became the
dominant force in the field of Spanish fiction. The mode finally
gave birth to a general novelistic movement which I have labeled
the Spanish self-referential novel. 1 Certainly one could argue that
the switch to such a term at this juncture merely adds confusion to
an already confusing issue. Yet I would counterargue, echoing
what I tried to demonstrate at the beginning of this study, that
much of the confusion surrounding the term metafiction stems
from the historical misuse of the terms mode and genre. Since I
have been using metafiction up to this point to refer to an atem-
Process as Product 73
poral mode of expression, the danger of confusion would be even

greater if I were now to use the same term to label a temporally-
bound body of texts. The term Spanish self-referential Novel,
moreover, is designed not only to address the mode-genre issue but
to reflect the fact that the current expression of the mode does not
lead to the same effects seen so far in this study. Rather than
foregrounding the artifices and conventions of fiction, the self-
referential novel foregrounds the process of its own creation; more
than a novel about fiction, it is a novel about its own coming-into-
being. In short, the self-referential novel conveys a fascination
with the creative process itself.
With the emregence of a whole movement in which metafiction
is the predominant mode, the question of categories and divisions
within the movement arises. Since categories and divisions inevita-
bly reflect the critical approach applied, what I am about to
propose is a reflection of my focus on the concept of modes, and of
my basic definition ofmetafiction as a violation of fictional modes.
Another critical approach and another basic definition ofmetafic-
tion would perhaps lead to a different body of texts and to different
categories and divisions within it. Again, then, I am not attempt-
ing to pigeonhole but rather to propose a vision, one way oflooking
at a selected group of texts. In no way do I wish to suggest that it
is the only way of looking at such a group.
With the preceding caveat underscored, the Spanish self-refer-
ential novel falls into three basic categories or divisions: those
focusing on the world of the fictive author (the act of writing), those
focusing on the world of the fictive reader (the act of reading), and
those focusing on the world of the characters and actions (the act of
oral discoursing). Naturally the focus in any given group of novels
does not fall exclusively on any one of the three worlds-such an
exclusiveness offocus would probably be impossible. Yet the con-
centration on one world at the expense of the other two is one
distinguishing characteristic of the Spanish self-referential novels
of the 1970s and 1980s. The subsequent chapters will demonstrate
how various novels tend to group themselves according to one of
the three foci mentioned as they foreground their own process of
creation.
The first Spanish novel not only associating itself with a focus on
the act of writing, but marking the beginning of the general self-
referential movement of the 1970s, is Luis Goytisolo's Recuento

(1973) [Recount]. 2 In fact, it is the first novel of a tetralogy entitled
Antagon{a [Antagonism], all four works of which are keystones of the
self-referential movement.
In its initial chapters, Recuento seems to teeter on a line between
neorealism and the New Novel. In either case the focus is on the
story, and the act of narrating is limited to the traces it leaves on
what is narrated. In the final chapters, however, the focus shifts
from the product to the process of narrating:
No obstante, ya en el curso del primer capitulo, las descripciones de ben ir

perdiendo su canicter objetivo, casi enunciativo. Se iran haciendo sub-
jetivas, irreales, en cierto modo. Como los paisajes que uno imagina al
contemplar las nubes desde un avi6n. Repeticiones contradictorias. En los
capitulos siguientes, lo mismo que los diilogos, desaparecerin paulatina-
mente. [p. 638]
[Nevertheless, already in the course of the first chapter the descriptions
should slowly begin to lose their objective, almost enunciative, character.
They will slowly become subjective, unreal, in a certain sense. Like the
landscapes that one imagines when looking at clouds from an airplane.
Contradictory repetitions. In the subsequent chapters, just like the di-
alogues, they will gradually disappear.]
As the novel draws to an end the fictive author becomes so self-

conscious that he not only analyzes what he has already written,
but speculates as to how he should write the subsequent pages, a
speculation that points directly at the next novel in the tetralogy.
The end of Recuento, therefore, is no longer about Raul or the story
of his physical-psychological development, but about the process
involved in writing his story. Thus Recuento not only marks the
beginning of the Spanish self-referential novel, but is also the first
of a series of novels focusing on the world of the fictive author and
his act of writing his own novel.
Whereas the act of writing is foregrounded only near the end of
Recuento, it serves as the principal focus for Luis Goytisolo's next
novel, Los verdes de mayo hasta el mar ( 1976) [The Verdure of May All the
Wzy to the Sea]. 3 In this second work of the tetralogy, the story
concerns Raul as he is writing a novel while vacationing in Rosas
on the Costa Brava. The line separating the novel Raul is writing
from the story of his writing it, however, continually shifts. Raul
finds the referents for his novel in his own context, and then
transforms them into fictional entities. But as the process unfolds
and the focus shifts constantly from Raul's context to the novel he is
creating, the two worlds become confused; characters from Raul's
world appear, untransformed, in the novel he is writing, and the
fictitious characters from the novel appear in his world. Finally the
focus shifts to the act of narrating as a means of clarifying this
confusion between the author's context and the novel he is writing:
recopilaci6n de las notas tomadas por el protagonista durante su estancia
en Rosas respecto a una obra en curso, entremezcladas a otras anota-
ciones, recuerdos, reflexiones, comentarios referentes a su vida cotidiana,
etcetera; un relata que, al tiempo que refiere la anecdota cotidiana del
protagonista y su mujer o amante en Rosas, incluye, junto a las anota-
ciones relativas a una obra que esta escribiendo, as! como reflexiones,
recuerdos, etcetera, las anotaciones relativas a la anecdota de esa estancia
en Rosas, recreaci6n de la realidad con todas las deformaciones y trans-
posiciones que le son propias y que, a la vez que proyecci6n del pro-
tagonista sabre la realidad, sabre una realidad ala que este atribuye todas
sus obsesiones personales, suponen asimismo una incidencia de la obra en
el autor, tanto por lo que sabre sf mismo le revelan cuanto por lo que le
velan. Yuxtaponer, o mejor, superponer a la variante optima diversos
materiales pertenecientes al res to de las variantes. [pp. 256-5 7]
[summary of the notes taken by the protagonist during his stay at Rosas in
respect to a work in progress, mixed in with other notations, memories,
ruminations, comments concerning his daily life, etc.; a story that, at the
same time that it refers to the everyday anecdote of the protagonist and his
wife or lover in Rosas, includes, along with the notations relative to a work
that is being written, as well as ruminations, memories, etc., the notations
relative to the anecdote of the stay in Rosas, a recreation of reality with all
its deformations and transpositions that are a part of it and that, at the
same time that it is a projection of the protagonist into reality, into a reality
to which he attributes all his personal obsessions, these deformations and
transpositions presuppose also a point of incidence of the work and the
author, not only concerning what they reveal of him, but also what they
hide. Juxtapose, or better, superimpose on the best variation of the work
diverse materials pertaining to the rest of the variations.]
Obviously the clarification is as confusing as the process it

pretends to explain, if not more so. It does, however, convey the
problem of the referent vis-a-vis the creative process. The levels of
fiction which initially were relatively clear-Raul in Rosas writing
a novel about a protagonist in Rosas-become impossibly inter-

twined as the fictive author tries to convey how Raul, the charac-
ter/novelist, attempts to transform referents from his world into the
novel he is writing. In addition, the character/novelist's act of
writing within the fiction becomes intertwined with the fictive
author's act of writing the fiction. Reality, therefore, is a point of
departure that soon is impossible to define: "Ia intersecci6n o
incidencia de los distintos pianos-real uno, ficticio el otro, fic-
ticiamente real un tercero, y as! siguiendo" (pp. 266-67) ["the
intersection or point of incidence of distinct levels-one real, the
other fictitious, a third fictitiously real, and so on"]. In Los verdes de
mayo hasta el mar it becomes impossible to distinguish between one
level of fiction and another, or even between reality and fiction.
Indeed, reality in this novel obviously cannot be equated with
geographical or proper names, characters, dates, and events, but
with the process itself of writing fiction. Stated in another way, the
act of narrating is real; the product or what is narrated is always a
fiction.
Los verdes de mayo hasta el mar, then, reflects the shift from the
product to the process of creating the product initiated near the
end of Recuento. Thus these two novels, along with Jose Marla
Merino's Nove/a de Andres Cho:::; (1977) [Andres Cho:::;'s Novel], in which
there is also a character/novelist writing a novel, form the nucleus
of a group of Spanish self-referential novels focusing on the world
of the fictive author, on the process of writing. Yet the work that
most dramatically foregrounds the narrating instance is written by
the brother of Luis, Juan Goytisolo. Indeed, Juan sin Tierra
(1975) 4 Uuan the Landless in the English version] could well be
considered the manifesto for the whole Spanish self-referential
novel movement.
Juan sin Tierra violates the laws of fiction by challenging the very
distinction between the world from which one narrates and the
world if which one narrates. In fact, the process and the product
of narrating alternately determine and are determined by one
another. The text author constantly interrupts his narration to
contemplate what he has created, and what he has created dictates
his next step in the creative process. 5 The text author, therefore, is
both the creator and the creation of his own artistic efforts. juan sin
Tierra, as a result, foregrounds the act of writing becoming the
novel at hand, and the text author becoming a new kind of novel-
ist-although within the work this dual coming-into-being is a
simultaneous process.
Since juan sin Tierra is an example of art-in-process, the novel's
referent is itself. Indeed, the text author's expressed purpose is to
free the work and its language from their traditional denotative
function:
autonomfa del objeto literario : estructura verbal con sus propias rela-
ciones internas, lenguaje percibido en sf mismo y no como intercesor
transparente de un mundo ajeno, exterior: mediante el acto de liberar las
palabras de su obediencia a un orden pragmatico que las convierte en
meros vehfculos de Ia raz6n omnfmoda : de un pensamiento 16gico que
desdeiiosamente las utiliza sin tener en cuenta su peso especffico y su va-
lor: completando las funciones de representaci6n, ex presion y Hamada in-
herentes a una comunicaci6n oral cuyos elementos (emisor, receptor,
contexto, contacto) operan tambien (aunque de modo diverso) en el
instante de Ia lectura con una cuarta funci6n (er6gena?) que centrara
exclusivamente su atenci6n en el signo lingiifstico: descargando, gracias a
ella, allenguaje de su simonfaca finalidad ancillar6
[autonomy of the literary object: a verbal structure with its own internal
relationships, a language perceived in itself and not as a transparent
conduit of a separated, exterior world : by means of the act ofliberating the
words from their obedience to a pragmatic order that converts them into
mere vehicles of absolute reason: of a logical thought that disdainfully uses
them without considering their specific weight and value : completing the
functions of representation, expression and appellation inherent to an oral
communication whose elements (addresser, addressee, context, contact)
also operate (although in a diverse mode) in the instant of reading with a
fourth function (erogenous?) which will center its attention exclusively on
the linguistic sign : freeing, thanks to it, language from its false ancillary
finality.]
This example of self-conscious narration-perhaps more accu-
rately self-conscious theorizing about the act of narrating-occurs
in the final chapter of the novel, a chapter in which the focus is
centered exclusively on the narrating instance. That is, in the final
chapter the world ifwhich one narrates is totally supplanted by the
world from which one narrates; rather than merely a violation of the
boundaries separating the two worlds, the worlds in effect change
places. Such a transposition (in which the act of writing obliterates
what is written, or the story) represents the culmination of a
process in which the two-the act of writing and its product-vie

for dominant position. The textual strategy underlying such a
conflict involves transforming cultural codes into narrative codes, 7
of freeing language from externally-imposed meaning so that it
may develop its own internal relationships and the ultimate "au-
tonomy of the literary object."
In order to transform cultural codes into narrative codes, the
text author creates a series of binary oppositions. The first of such
binary oppositions involves non-body versus body as the text
author attempts to transcend the limitations of his physical exis-
tence. In his quest to reach a state of nirvana, he suddenly realizes
that humans can never negate their bodies: "cuerpo tan solo :
despliegue de materia : hijo de la tierra y a la tierra unido" (p. 11)
[mere flesh : an extension of matter : child of the earth and
inseparable from the earth"]. This initial opposition expands into
a whole sign system whose axis is formed by the anecdotal conflict
sometime during the nineteenth century between the text author's
white Spanish ancestors and their black Cuban slaves.
The white colonizers-black slaves dichotomy is culturally pre-
coded: asceticjudeo-Christian values for the whites versus pagan
sensual gratification for the blacks. But as this cultural coding
expands, the text author suddenly interrupts what he is narrating
to focus on his act of narrating, and to advise himself as to the next
step: "dividinis la imaginaria escena en dos partes : dicho mejor :
en dos bloques opuestos de palabras : a un lado substantivos,
adjetivos, verbos que denotan blancor, claridad, virtud: al otro, un
lexico de tinieblas, negrura, pecado" (p. 30) ["you will divide the
imaginary scene into two parts: more accurately: into two oppos-
ing blocks of words: on one side nouns, adjectives, verbs signifying
whiteness, clarity, virtue : on the other, a lexicon of shadows,
blackness, sin"]. With this violation of the story by the act of
narrating, the original cultural codes become narrative; what were
originally objects from sociohistorical reality have been trans-
formed into linguistic signs guiding the text author in his search for
a new, freer mode of novelistic expression. He has taken the first
step toward freeing language from externally-imposed meaning.
The liberation of language also occurs on the anecdotal level.
When the priest Vosk looks out the plantation house window to spy
on the slaves' activities, and is too horrified to describe to the good

Catholic family what he sees, he is told to explain it in Latin:
membrum erectum in os feminae immissint!

socios concumbentes tangere et masturbationem
mutuam adsequi!
penis vehementis se erixet tum maxime cum
crura
puerorum tetigent!
anus feminarum amant lambere!
sanguinis menstruationis devorant!
coitus a posterioris factitant!
ejaculatio praematura!
receptaculum seminis! [p. 32]
Since spoken Latin is largely restricted to use within the Church,

its effect here demonstrates the influence of cultural codes on
semantics. Although the description involves sexual activities that
would scandalize Vosk's text addressees (the text author's an-
cestors), the sound produced by the liturgical rhythm of the Latin
erases the words' meaning for them. The message implicit in this
combination of what the words mean and how the family decodes
them triggers another switch to the narrating instance: "interrup-
ci6n, oquedad, silencio : como cuando dejas de escribir" (p. 32)
["interruption, hollowness, silence : as when you stop writing"].
Apparently the text author, who in effect is his own text-act reader,
finds in this scene a message concerning the arbitrary nature of
language, and how easily its meaning can be subverted. His re-
sponse is to create more subversive binary oppositions.
The metonymic expansion of subversive oppositions evolves
soon into the flush toilet versus the open-air latrine. The flush toilet
is coded by virtue of its location in the plantation home, where its
use is strictly limited to the white masters. In addition, this new
sanitary device points back to the original non-body-versus-body
opposition, and to the subversive conflict between semantics and
context, as the text author's great-grandmother satisfies her needs:
"tirara de la cadena oculta en el bordaje del palio y, cerrando los
ojos con mistico arrobo, murmurara para si I he cagado como una
reina" (pp. 19-20) ["she will pull the handle hidden at the side of
the tank and, closing her eyes in a mystical trance, murmur almost
to herself I I've just shit like a queen"]. Contrasted to this humor-
ous mixture of scatological vulgarity and regal pretensions on the
part of the white mistress is the black slaves' response to being
ridiculed by their masters:
abrumados por el peso de Ia vergiienza, giraran sobre sus talones y os

volveran dignamente Ia espalda sin conseguir otra cosa que revelar a Ia
estupefacta asamblea Ia humillante coloracion de sus hemisferios poste-
riores : Ia no-sublimada, no-oculta, no-inodora, no aseptica explosion
visceral que ninguna caja de caudales, sagrario 0 we lograra escamotear.
[p. 46]
[overcome by the weight of their embarrassment, they will spin on their
heels and turn their backs on you with dignity, merely achieving in the
process the view for the stupefied gathering of the humiliating coloration of
their posterior hemispheres : the nonsublimated, nonhidden, nonodorless,
nonaseptic intestinal explosion that no safe-deposit box, sanctuary, or
flush toilet will manage to snatch away by sleight of hand.]
Their retort is not only totally natural for them but appropriately
vulgar. They are accustomed to satisfying their digestive functions
in a public open-air latrine, while the white masters use the flush
toilet as a means of denying their identical functions. 8
The Spaniards' inclination to equate Christianity with non-
body eventually leads to an attempt to suppress completely all
bodily secretions, and when the speaker imagines himself as a
small boy seated on a chamber pot and being encouraged by his
parents to resist his body's demands, the narrated story is again
interrupted: "(el) dompedro te orienta quiza por la buena via y te
inspira de paso la soluci6n : Ia de un pais ( el suyo) secularmente
estreiiido" (p. 226) ["the chamber pot perhaps points out to you
the right path and in the process inspires your solution : that of a
country (his) secularly constipated"]. Again story level cedes to
the narrating instance; the culturally-coded sanitary devices now
are narratively-coded signs pointing toward a new kind of writing:
ah, y sobre todo, abandonar inmediatamente el uso del dompedro 0 we

automatico en favor de Ia desdenada evacuacion ancestral! : una posicion
defectuosa durante el proceso constituye un obstaculo grave a Ia oportuna
liberacion del intestino: en Iugar de acomodarse en un asiento horizontal a
cuarenta centfmetros del suelo (o algo menos de Ia mitad en el caso del

dompedro) el sujeto (o pais) estreiiido debe ponerse en cuclillas, apoyando
de preferencia los pies en un escalon elevado, de una altura de veinticinco
centimetros : dicha postura (se lo garantizamos!) coadyuva al funciona-
miento de los musculos abdominales que impulsan Ia circulacion serpen-
tina y constituye un argumento de peso en boca de quienes preconizan Ia
optima relajacion del canal y el retorno a los viejos, entraiiables placeres
de Ia emision de Ia zanja publica. (p. 228)
[ah, and above all abandon immediately the use of the chamber pot or
flush toilet in favor of the discredited ancestral means of evacuation! : a
defective position during the process constitutes a grave obstacle to the
opportune liberation of the intestine : instead of positioning oneself on a
horizontal seat forty centimeters from the floor (or a bit less than half the
distance in the case of the chamber pot) the constipated subject (or
country) should squat down, preferably supporting his feet on an elevated
step, at a height of twenty-five centimeters: such a posture (we guarantee
you!) facilitates the function of the abdominal muscles that set in motion
the serpentine circulation and constitutes a strong argument for those who
champion the optimum relaxation of the intestinal tract and the return to
the old, dear pleasures of emission in a public open-air latrine.]
The story of the Spanish white colonizers versus the Cuban black
slaves has been supplanted by the act of narrating. Each sign
evolves from the signs preceding it, and at the same time inspires
yet another sign in response. From non-body versus body, from
white versus black, from semantics versus context, and now from
flush toilet versus open-air latrine, the system inevitably leads to
the narrating instance. The novel is about its own creative process,
a creative process grounded in binary oppositions.
The expanding system of oppositions leads to even more im-
plausible pairings as a "Reproductive Couple" and Shirley Temple
appear on the one hand, opposed by a homosexual couple and
King Kong on the other. Within the first dichotomy the text author
projects himself as a character in the story, and attacks and homo-
sexually violates a wretched beggar in full view of American,
Italian, French, and Spanish tourists in Tangiers. This scan-
dalous non-propagating sexual conduct is contrasted with the
"sanctified" activities of the Spanish "Reproductive Couple" who,
as if they are mannequins, mechanically perform their coupling in
the show window of a large department store. They are trying
valiantly to comply with their Christian obligation to propagate

the species. The transformation of these culturally grounded char-
acters into signs pointing at the act of writing occurs when the
Spanish couple's product-oriented efforts are frustrated by impo-
tency:9 "Ia tribulaci6n de Ia Parejita resulta cada vez mas las-
timosa y en vano repetiran gerundios e imperativos : irregular,
quizas defectivo, el verbo no alzara" (p. 73) ["the Couple's distress
is becoming more and more pitiful and in vain they will repeat
gerunds, and imperatives : irregular, perhaps defective, the verb
won't rise erect").
The relationship between creative impotency andjudeo-Chris-
tian values culminates with the appearance of the blonde Shirley
Temple. Her polar opposite is a grotesque figure from popular
cinema, the black ape King Kong. The actress is an example of a
real person transformed by cinema into a symbol of Western
cultural values; the ape is the same medium's "special effects"
triumph symbolizing primitive rebellion. With another violation of
the world of the text author supplanting the world of the action,
these culturally-coded figures become signs pointing at the narrat-
ing act:
seguiras su ejemplo y glorificanis Ia potencia amorosa del simio : poniendo

tu pluma al servicio de su desmesura magnifica, entronizando sus prendas
con todos los recursos de Ia insidia verbal : mediante Ia sutil, em-
ponzoiiada subversion de los sacrosantos valores lingiiisticos: sacrificando
el referente a Ia verdad del discurso y asumiendo a partir de ella las
secuelas de tu delirante desvio : tu maravillosa soledad de corredor de
fondo : el desafio insolente al orden real : dejanis que Ia Parejita se
reproduzca entre educados bostezos y conciba y de a luz un asqueroso
niiio. [p. 77]
[you will follow his example and glorify the amorous potential of the
primate : placing your pen at the service of his magnificent excess, en-
throning his endowments with all the devices of verbal chicanery : by
means of the subtle, poisoned subversion of the sacrosanct linguistic
values :sacrificing the referent to the truth of discourse and assuming with
it the consequences of your delirious deviation: your marvelous solitude of
a back hallway : the insolent challenge to real order : you will allow the
Little Couple to reproduce itself with educated yawns and to conceive and
give birth to a loathsome child.]
By transforming the cultural codes into narrative codes, King

Kong becomes a sign pointing toward a new rebellious kind of
writing, while the Little Couple points to traditional, product-
oriented novelistic tenets. In addition, these two characters dem-
onstrate the folly of assuming that art is a direct representation of
reality. By juxtaposing the real actress with the fake anthropoid,
the text author suggests that artistic reality is never an exact image
of external reality-Shirley Temple as projected on the screen is no
more a real person that is King Kong. In fact, the Shirley Temple-
King Kong combination dramatizes the extent to which art is
always separate from and merely an illusion of external reality; it
underscores how in art the act of creating the illusion is the only
thing that is "real." Thus the metafictional mode of juan sin Tzerra
serves as a manifesto for a new concept of the relationship between
the novel and reality:
Ia habilidad del relato suplanta Ia dudosa realidad de los hechos, tu

victoria de artista consagra Ia gesta inutil del militar : descartaras, pues,
con desden Ia gloria fundada sobre Ia impostura y decidini.s abandonar
para siempre tus hueras presunciones de historiador : renunciando a las
reglas deljuego inane para imponer allector tu propio y aleatorio modelo
en lucha con el elise comun : sin disfrazar en lo futuro Ia obligada
ambigiiedad dellenguaje y el ubicuo, infeccioso proceso de enunciaci6n :
conmutando desvio rebel de en poder inventivo: recreando tu mundo en Ia
pagina en blanco. [p. 126]
[the capacity of the fictitious story replaces the questionable reality of

facts, your victory as an artist consecrates the futile deeds of the warrior:
you will disdainfully sweep aside, then, glory founded on deceit and you
will decide to abandon forever your sterile presumptions as a historian :
renouncing the rules of the inane game in order to impose on the reader
your own and fortuitous model in conflict with the common cliche :
without disguising from now on the obligatory ambiguity oflanguage and
the ubiquitous, infectious process of enunciation : transforming rebellious
deviations into inventive power : recreating your world on the blank page.]
As further binary oppositions are created-Lawrence of Arabia

versus the French missionary Pere Foucauld, Roman law versus
civil anarchy, the traditional realistic mode versus a new self-
referential expression-the work frees itself more and more from
externally-imposed meaning. This inward turn culminates in the

final chapter where the act of narrating completely usurps what is
narrated.
In a sense the final chapter ofJuan sin Tierra is the novel turned
inside out; it represents the ultimate violation of the laws of fiction,·
a transgression of the never-clear line separating metafiction from
novelistic theory, fiction from nonfiction:
eliminar del corpus de Ia obra novelesca los ultimos vestigios de tea-

tralidad : transformarla en discurso sin peripecia alguna : dinamitar Ia
inveterada noci6n del personaje de hueso y carne : substituyendo Ia
progressio dramatica del relata con un conjunto de agrupaciones textuales
movidas por fuerza centripeta unica : nucleo organizador de Ia propia
escritura, plumafuente genesica del proceso textual. [p. 311]
[eliminate from the corpus of the novelistic work the final vestiges of
theatricality : transform it into discourse without any turning points :
demolish the ingrained notion of characters of flesh and blood: substitut-
ing for the dramatic progressio of the story a collection of textual juxtaposi-
tions motivated by a unique centripetal force : the organizing nucleus of
writing itself, engendering fountain pen of the textual process.]
Thus the system of transforming cultural codes into narrative

codes is the textual strategy underlying this journey to the core of
writing itself. The novel is now exclusively about its own process of
coming-into-being. The violation of fictional modes is carried to a
new extreme of self-referentiality.
Along with the process of the novel becoming its own referent,
and in fact inseparable from it, is the text author's own self-
referentiality. By virtue of the second-person familiar narrative
voice, he is both the sender and the recipient ofhis own discourses:
"miralos bien : sus rostros te resultaran conocidos" (p. 15) ["look at
them closely : their faces will be familiar to you"]. Similar to the
phenomenon of a dream in which the dreamer is both the creator
and the creation of the dream, 10 the text au thor is both the source
and the object of his own discourses. As he writes, in effect he also
reads himself.
In addition to serving as his own text addressee, the text author
proposes to become his own progenitor. After first slaughtering the
White Dove of Christianity, he sets out to impregnate Yemaya, the
pagan goddess of the Cuban slaves' African ancestors: "pro-
seguiras tus incursiones audaces mientras el otro tu guarda dentro

la inmediata creaci6n de su cuerpo : inmaterial aun, pero presin-
tiendo ya la vecindad del ser y su futuro, deslumbrante sino" (pp.
56-57) ["you will continue your daring thrusts while the other you
waits within for the imminent creation of its body : still formless,
but sensing already the proximity of its being and its future,
radiating destiny"]. As both his own progenitor and his own
progeny, the text author proposes to fuse his own coming-into-
being with that of the novel. He is striving to create a new self who
will be a new kind of novelist.
To create the new self to serve as the new novelist, the old self
must first be destroyed. The second-person familiar narrative voice
with its inherent bifurcation facilitates the task of identifying the
self that must be sucrificed. It is the self rooted in the cultural
history of Spain:
historia desvivida y sobremuerta, epopeya demencial, f(mebre canci6n de

gesta, entonada sabre un fonda mudable do procesiones, sainetes, come-
dias, corridas de taros, acontecimientos deportivos, alegres zarzuelas,
zumbido y furia, bolero de Ravel interminable, gesticulaci6n vana y huera,
extendida siglo tras siglo, sin conexiones reales, por pura inercia hist6rica,
hasta el nacimiento del otro, el que tu fueras, en el seno de una atrofiada,
extemporanea burguesia, poco mas de cuarenta aiios atras. [p. 182]
[a lifeless and twice-dead history, a demented epic, a sepulchral chancon de
geste, recited against a fluctuating background of processions, farces, com-
edies, bullfights, sporting events, gay operettas, sound and fury, Ravel's
interminable bolero, vain and hollow gesticulation, prolonged century
after century, without any real connections, out of pure historic inertia,
until the birth of the other one, that one that you were, in the bosom of an
atrophied, inopportune bourgeois society a little over forty years ago.]
The new novelist, then, must rid himself of the cultural history
in which he was born some forty years ago. And once having
identified that self, he finally achieves his artistic rebirth, the fruit
of his oneiric coitus with the black goddess Yemaya in the initial
chapter of the novel: "te has transformado y has transformado el
instrumento en que te expresas abandonando en cada hoja de
papel blanco jirones y andrajos de tu antigua personalidad hasta
alcanzar el estadio actual en que U.nicamente una fachada nominal
y borrosa te identifica" (p. 318) ["you have transformed yourself
and you have transformed the instrument with which you express
yourself abandoning with each sheet of white paper your old
personality until reaching the present state in which only a nomi-
nal and blurred facade identifies you"]. He, as well as the novel in
which he exists, emerges from a black-white binary opposition.
Indeed, his identity as a new novelist is now inseparable from the
written text of which he is both speaker and addressee, creator and
creation. And whereas he has realized his dual goal of writing a
new novel and becoming a new novelist, in the process he has
defined forever his reality as the fiction entitled Juan sin Tzerra.
The fictional reality of which the new novelist is both the creator
and the creation ultimately becomes his confinement, his prison-
house oflanguage. His quest for a new artistic self is only successful
as a quest, as process. It can never be a realization, a product. The
only way, therefore, that he can sustain his self-creation is to
continue to transform objects from exterior reality into signs point-
ing toward the creative process. Yet ultimately the system of
metonymic associations exhausts itself and the text novelist finds
himself threatened by the very system upon which his existence
depends. In a final desperate attempt to sustain the process,
therefore, he abandons Spanish for another language.
First he writes in a phonetic Spanish: "para seguir a con-
tinuasi6n con el abla ef-fetiba de miyone de pal-lante que diaria-
mente lamplean sin tenen cuenta er c6digo pemi impuetto por su
mandarinato" (p. 320) ["to continue with the authentic speech of
millions of speakers who use it daily without realizing the penal
code imposed by its mandarin"]. Soon the phonetic Spanish gives
way to a Hispanicized Arabic: "El-Asnam Tanxa Dar-Bida Kuyo
trato a pem-mityo er konosimyento Kabal de ty mim-mo i Ia
posyvilida dep-presal-lo lyberandote de tu hantiryor ympot-tura i,
grasias ha Ia prat-tyca dun lenguage cuep-po, dun belbo
beldadelamente echo carne" (p. 320) ["El-Asna Tanxa Dar-Bida
whose contact has permitted you a perfect knowledge of yourself
and the possibility of expressing it by liberating yourselffrom your
former imposture and, thanks to the practice of a language that has
real life to it, of a verb truly made of flesh"]. Next there is Arabic
written in Roman transliteration: "qui ya ayuha al-kafirun I Ia a
budu rna ta budun" (p. 320) ["tell them that they do not know
God"]. After a blank page, there is only Arabic script. 11 This final
switch in the communication code signals the end of the active
communication between fictive author and text-act reader. It also
signals the end to the text author's attempts to free language
completely from externally-imposed meaning. Language can only
be freed from external reality by transforming its cultural codes
into narrative codes.
Yet even the final Arabic script cannot erase its cultural codes.
The text author has finally been foiled by the very instrument
through which he was seeking absolute artistic freedom: language.
And so with the end of the linguistic process, exterior reality
imposes itself, and the text and the text author are reduced to static
black markers on a white page. Thus the novel ends where it
began, with a black-white binary opposition-the thread of the
seam that unravels the text author's attempt to create his own
reality through fiction.
Though the confines of the written text explain the ultimate
undoing of the text author's attempt to create a new self, the text-
act reader standing beyond these confines is privileged to infinite
artistic rebirth. That is to say, although the text author directs his
messages to himself and so is his own text reader, the sum total of
the intertextual messages fuses into another message directed
beyond the boundaries of the written text. This message is directed
to the text-act reader. In short, the text-act reader represents the
never-clearly-defined point where the work of fiction and the so-
ciohistorical context in which the work was written meet. And
since real readers attempt to project themselves into the role of the
text-act reader, each new reading and each new reader lead to a
different point of contact. 12 As long as there are readers of juan sin
Tzerra the static black markers will be transformed into the text
author's eternal quest for a new novel and a new artistic being. And
if each individual reader, like the text author, must ultimately come
face to face with the confines of his or her temporal existence, he or
she at least is aware of forming a part of a larger system of
humanity that, at least one hopes, transcends the confines of our
time and space. Each real reader, therefore, represents a link in an
infinite chain capable of transforming static letters into dynamic
experience, of resurrecting the text author whose dynamic creative
process will always end in a static printed artifact. 13 In effect, the

real reader represents a final corroboration of art as defined by juan
sin Tzerra: a dynamic coming-into-being.
The metafictional mode is given a new expression in Juan sin
Tzerra. And although one can detect the imprints of Cervantes,
Gald6s, Unamuno, James, and Cunqueiro on Goytisolo's textual
strategies, the violations consisting of the world of the text au tor
first competing with, and then finally supplanting the world of the
story represent a more radical metafictional expression than any-
thing we have seen up to this point. Indeed, if the final chapter is
read in isolation it almost qualifies as pure novelistic theory-
nonfiction. Of course it should not be read in isolation any more
than passages from nineteenth-century realistic novels should be
isolated from their novelistic context and treated as sociohistorical
documentation. Within the artistic process of the novel, the final
chapter ofJuan sin Tzerra is a natural culmination of the conflict for
predominance between the narrating instance and what is nar-
rated. In the end the creative process triumphs over the created
product; the novel becomes its own referent.
Since the novel's projection toward self-referentiality involves
the text author's efforts toward self-creation, implicit in the dual
processes is the role of the reader in the creative endeavor. In effect
the text author of Juan sin Tzerra is also a reader. Little wonder,
therefore, that after the examples of Recuento, Los verdes de mayo hasta
el mar, Novela de Andres Cho;::;, and especially Juan sin Tzerra, all
focused on the world of the author and the writing process, the
emphasis would finally turn to the world of the reader and the
reading process. The next group of self-referential novels to be
examined, then, are reader-produced texts.
Chapter Six
Reading-into-Being:
La calera de Aquiles
As I proposed in the Introduction and have been arguing

throughout this study, there are three basic levels of reading and
readers inherent in any fictional text.. Each speaker within the
world of the story directs his or her discourses to the text addressee,
explicit or implicit, embedded within that world. The sum total of
the intratextual messages equals another message directed beyond
the boundaries of the story to a text-act reader. Finally real readers,
in order to apprehend the work's message, project themselves into
the role of the text-act reader, a projection that at best can be only
partially successful.
Whether speaking of the text reader embedded within the story,
or of the text-act reader to whom the story is directed, or of the real
reader on whom the whole reading process depends, it is clear that
the concept of readers cannot be eliminated from any work of
fiction's coming-into-being. It is all but inevitable, therefore, that
in its obsession with the creative process, the Spanish self-referen-
tial novel would turn its attention to the concept of reading and
readers. The resulting reader-produced texts form the second
category I am identifying for the Spanish self-referential move-
ment.
The novel that qualifies as the most immediate precursor of the
reader-focused metafictional group is Miguel Delibes' Cinco horas
con Mario (1966) [Five Hours with Mario]. In that novel a woman
spends the night talking to the corpse of her recently deceased
husband and ultimately realizes that she has been talking to
herself, that her ostensive criticisms of him are in fact self-con-
fessions. She is her own text addressee. The message directed to the
text-act reader, however, seems more concerned with psychosocial
aspects of Spain and Spanish women than with fiction's creative

process.
The first fiction-in-process novel focused on the world of the
reader is Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's Fragmentos de Apocalipsis
(1977) [Fragments rifthe Apoca(ypse]. The novel begins with a first-
person narrator explaining that he is simultaneously writing a
novel and a work diary recording the process of his novelistic
efforts. The work diary, therefore, constitutes an attempt to fore-
ground the narrating instance; it represents a violation of the
boundary separating the world of the fictive author from the world
of the story, since process and product appear on the same nar-
rative level. Yet contrary to what occurs in juan sin Tierra, in which
the written text in effect dictates to the text novelist his next step in
the writing process, in Fragmentos de Apocalipsis the text author uses
the diary to analyze and critique what he has written. In short, the
diary serves to transform his role from that of writer to that of his
own text reader. It forms a circle of nearly absolute artistic self-
indulgence.
The pervasive sense of solipsism resulting when an author plays
the role of his own reader finally makes the text author/reader of
Fragmentos de Apocalipsis realize the inherent danger in such a dual
role:
Releido, sin embargo, lo que acabo de escribir, no acaba de convencerme.

La primera ficci6n pensada, a poco que se distraiga uno, acabara con-
virtiendose en una historia mas de James Bond. En cuanto a Ia segunda,
toda vez que el triunfo de Ia revoluci6n no parece cercano, y que el propio
Mao-Tse-Tung le ha dado un par de siglos de plazo, peca indudablemente
de idealismo. No se que hacer. Tendre que discutirlo con Lenutchka.'
[Having reread, nevertheless, what I have just written, I'm not con-
vinced. The first fictitious version conceived, if one becomes the least bit
distracted, will end up becoming just another James Bond story. As for
the second version, as long as the triumph of the revolution does not seem
to be at hand, and Mao-Tse-Tung himself has allowed a couple of cen-
turies before it happens, the story just seems excessively idealistic. I don't
know what to do. I will have to discuss it with Lenutchka.]
The text author/reader's decision to involve another reader in his

creative process opens a new dimension in the concept of metafic-
Reading-into-Being 91
tion as a violation of the fictional modes. Not only will this reader
transgress the boundary separating one fictional level from an-
other, she will advise the text author in the composition of his
novel; she will play not only the role of reader, but that of a reader
righting the writer.
Lenutchka's story, according to the text author's explanation,
begins before the novel itself. He says that one day he decided to
write an erotic story in first-person narrative, but since the only
such amorous incidents stored in his memory were from literary
sources, he wrote his pseudo-autobiographical narrative based on
literary models. In fact, he created a fictitious persona for his first-
person voice modeled after Don juan. The text author's fictitious
persona enjoyed the same success in seduction as his namesake until
reaching the end of the list ofliterary characters for his conquests,
at which point the persona did the only logical thing: he turned from
lover to novelist. By now the original text author's identity was
absorbed completely by his fictitious persona, to the point that,
apparently, it is not the original text author speaking but rather his
persona. Lenutchka, in the meantime, identifying herself as a Rus-
sian professor of literature, had begun a correspondence with the
text author about his work, a correspondence that soon evolved
into mutual professions of love. The combination of Lenutchka's
Russian nationality and the text author's advanced age seemed to
eliminate any possibility of consummating their love. Then one day
he informed her of his plan to write the very novel which is the
subject of the diary: "Un conjunto de palabras, en el que estare yo
mismo, hecho palabra tambien; con las cartas a la vista, quiero
decir, con la advertencia reiterada de que es una ficci6n verbal, yen
modo alguno una historia verdadera ni siquiera veridica" (p. 132)
["A collection of words, in which I myself will be transformed into
words also; with all the cards on the table, by that I mean, with
the repeated notice that everything is a verbal fiction, and in no
sense of the word a true story nor even an authentic one"].
Given Lenutchka's Marxist literary orientation, the text author
was surprised when he received a letter in return with a lengthy
explanation of the reasons that "la empujaban a pedirme que, ya
que otra soluci6n no nos cabia, la metiera tam bien en la novela; es
decir, la redujese ami misma condici6n de sistema verbal para que,
asi los dos, en el relato, pudiesemos amarnos" (p. 133) ["prompted

her to ask me that, since no other solution was available to us, I
include her in the novel also; that is to say, that I reduce her to my
own status of a verbal system so that, with the two of us as part of
the story, we would be able to love one another"]. This complicated
game in which one text novelist is the fictitious creation of another,
now progresses to the point where a fictitious character from one
narrative level transgresses the boundary of another; Lenutchka
steps from the story of the project of writing the novel into the story
that is the novel. Fiction begets fiction.
With Lenutchka now a part of the text author's linguistic exis-
tence, he can claim credit for creating not only his own lover but a
social realist critic determined to counteract his metafictional
excesses. Her readings are pitted against his writings. This contra-
dictory situation-a metafictional characater working against
metafiction-gives rise to yet another contradiction. When her
criticisms lead the text author to the brink of destroying the
manuscript, his love for her stays his hand: "Estuve en aquel
momento por destruirlo todo y mandar a! diablo el proyecto; pero,
sino lo hice fue porno perder a Lenutchka que, con el texto roto, se
me iria" (pp. 154-55) ["At that moment I was at the point of
destroying everything and saying to hell with the project; but, ifl
didn't do it, it was so as not to lose Lenutchka who, once the text
was torn up, would leave me").
Torrente's use of a dramatized reader in Fragmentos de Apocalipsis
underscores in a parodic manner the conflicting yet parallel role of
writing and reading in the creative process. Lenutchka is simul-
taneously an obstacle and a creative impulse; her constant objec-
tions to his metafictional mode lead him to the point of destructive
exasperation, but she also provides the very reason for the being of
the text. Her role in the novel in fact echoes speech act theories and
thereby suggests that novels are also speech acts, and the nature of
speech acts is determined as much by the receiver as it is by the
sender. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the
receiver is the only justification of the illocutionary speech act.
Therefore, when near the end of Fragmentos de Apocalipsis the text
author, in order to save Lenutchka's reputation from the slan-
derous comments of another character, removes her from his text-
"Basta con que no piense en ella, con que no vuelva a nombrarla

como presente" (p. 376) ["All I have to do is not think about her,
not refer to her again"]-he condemns himself to a double failure:
"como autor de una novela quejamas escribire, y como amante de
una mujer que no verejamas. Aceptado esto, (que mas me queda?"
(p. 376) ["as the author of a novel that I will never write, and as
the lover of a woman whom I will never see. Once this is accepted,
what is there left for me to do?"]. For the text author, apocalypse is
now. Whereas earlier he refrained from destroying the novel out of
love for Lenutchka, now the same love has doomed her and the
novel. Thus the use of a dramatized reader in Fragmentos de Apoca-
lipsis is a textual strategy demonstrating that text writers and text
readers are equal and conflicting forces in any novel. They simul-
taneously work for and against one another in a dynamic process of
creation-destruction, a creative-destructive process that is but a
dramatized reflection of the linguistic system operating in every
literary text as each sign alternately replaces, and is replaced by,
another sign. Fragmentos de Apocalipsis, by foregrounding the world
of the reader, gives new expression to the dynamic essence of
language, and thereby to human existence.
Another example of a reader-focused self-referential novel is
provided by Javier Tomeo's El castillo de la carla cifrada (1979) [The
Castle of the Coded Letter}. The basic narrator of this novel appears as
narrator only in the first sentence of the work: "-Nose preocupe,
Bautista, y deje de temblar-me dijo aquella manana cl senor
Marques-. Lo que voy a encargarle es facil" 2 ["-Don't worry,
Bautista, and quit trembling-the Marquis told me that morn-
ing-. What I am going to have you do is easy"]. After this single
indication that what follows is his, Bautista's, account of the Mar-
quis's instructions, the only voice henceforth in the novel is that of
the Marquis. In other words, the basic narrator is also the text
addressee; he is the implicit sender of the Marquis's recorded
speech and the explicit receiver of that speech. The sender-receiver
concept is further complicated, however, for whereas the Marquis
addresses Bautista, most of his comments concern the reaction he
anticipates to a letter he is asking Bautista to deliver. The letter,
written in a secret code, is to Don Demetrio Lopez de Costillar.
And although the Marquis admits that he himself is not sure of its
meaning-" ~Como pod ria explicarle mi carta, si yo mismo no sc

muy bien que es lo que he escrito?" (p. 21) ["How could I explain
my letter to you if I myself am not clear as to what I have
written?"]-he speculates on the various readings Don Demetrio
will give to it. The Marquis, therefore, also plays the dual role of
sender and receiver; he is the author and the reader of his own
letter. Considering, furthermore, that he himself does not know for
sure what he has written, there is a logical illogic to the whole
hermeneutic game of guessing the presuppositions that would lead
Don Demetrio to what the Marquis defines as "Un universo de
interpretaciones" (p. 25) ["A whole universe of interpetations"].
El castillo de la carla cifrada challenges the very distinction we
customarily make between authors and readers, between writing
and reading. In this novel both speakers actually play the role of
addressee. The novel suggests that meaning is not something that
originates with the author but rather with the reader. All inter-
pretative reading, therefore, depends on the presuppositions and
expectations the reader brings to the text. Indeed, the meaning
may well escape the grasp of the author himself, and only by
playing the role of his own reader can he hope to approach the
meaning of his own utterances. In short, El castillo de la carla cifrada
violates the laws of fiction by transposing the worlds of the fictive
author and of the reader; readers, rather than writers, play the key
role in the creative process. Since, furthermore, the role of the
reader changes according to the presuppositions and expectations
he or she brings to the text, each reading leads to a unique artistic
creation.
Yet another reader-focused novel, Juan Marse's La muchacha de
las bragas de oro (1978) [The Girl with the Golden Panties], presents an
old man, a Falangist, dictating his memoirs to his niece. She
becomes his critical reader as she constantly challenges his distor-
tions and lies, and in effect usurps his role as writer. As with
Delibes' much earlier Cinco horas con Mario, however, the message
directed to the text-act reader seems more concerned with so-
ciopolitical (and perhaps commercial) concerns than with the
artistic creative process. Luis Goytisolo's La c6lera de Aquiles (1979)
[Achilles' Rage], on the other hand, seems to define sociopolitical
issues in terms of artistic creation-in-process; Luis Goytisolo's
novel qualifies as the most radical and profound reader-focused

text to emerge in the new wave of Spanish metafiction.
IfJuan sin Tzerra is the paradigm for those self-referential novels
foregrounding the world of the fictive author, La calera de Aquiles
serves a similar role for those concerned with the world of the
reader. For, as the narrator herself states near the end of the novel:
El valor del texto, en lo que a las obras de ficci6n se refiere, es cosa de Ia que
ya se ocupa---o debiera ocuparse-la critica literaria. Lo tonto, asi pues,
de las teorias de Ia informacion, es que prescinden de lo que debiera ser lo
suyo, que es Ia lectura. No el texto, sino Ia lectura del texto. No el
contenido en si del mensaje, sino Ia lectura en si de ese mensaje. No Ia
forma en que llegue, sino el impacto que causa. No Ia bala, sino el balazo.
El res to de lo que se diga son especulaciones que valen para el receptor de
un telex, y basta.3
[As far as works of fiction are concerned, the value of the text is that to
which literary criticism is now dedicating itself--or should be dedicating
itself. The folly of information theories, therefore, is that they disregard
what should be their primary concern, which is the reading: not the text,
but rather the reading of the text: not the content itself of the message, but
rather the reading itself of that message: not the form in which it may
arrive, but rather the impact that it creates: not the bullet, but rather the
striking of the bullet. Whatever else may be said is speculation that applies
to a telex receiver, and that's it.]
La calera de Aquiles gives artistic expression to this pronouncement

by foregrounding the act of reading. In fact the novel presents
writing as merely the graphic response to a reading. And since the
response is similar to but always distinct from the text to which it is
responding, the relationship reading-writing is based on a struc-
ture of differences. With the parallel yet contrasting relationship of
reading-writing as the structural axis, therefore, Luis Goytisolo
develops his novel around a system of differences that is merely a
dramatic reflection of the gulf that always exists between the sign
and what the sign attempts to represent.
The concept of writing that is really a reading emerges as the
first-person narrator, a lesbian by the name of Matilde Moret,
narrates an episode in her past involving herself, her lover Camila,
and an Argentine playboy by the name of Roberto who attempted
to woo Camila from her. In addition to the "reading" Matilde
offers ofCamila's and Roberto's motives, she also begins to narrate

the content of several letters between the two that she has inter-
cepted. As she narrates this content, however, she is actually
reading and interpreting what she is sure is the "real meaning" of
each lover's words. In marked contrast to the narrative summary
she extends for the letters, she suddenly interrupts her personal
story to offer a textual recreation of a novel entitled "El edicto de
Milan," ["The Milan Edict"] a work she published several years
ago under the pseudonym Claudio Mendoza. Of course the novel
represents a fictional reading of her own life. The interpolated
novel, which within the framing novel extends over three chapters,
consists of three versions of the same basic anecdote. These three
"readings," in turn are followed by a reappearance of Matilde as
narrator, who then explains and interprets various aspects of "El
edicto de Milan." The foregrounding of the reader and the act of
reading is further underscored by Matilde's frequent citations of
her cousin Raul's theories on the subject, an example of which
appears above. In the case of La colera de Aquiles, then, coming-
into-being is reading-into-being.
Luis Goytisolo's initial strategy for directing the focus to reading
and the reader is to undermine the speaker's narrative authority.
As Matilde narrates the events from the past she employs what
Felix Martinez Bonati labels mimetic language, language con-
stituting the "truth" of any fiction-the convention whereby one
accepts the existence of Matilde, Camila, and Roberto, for exam-
ple. Matilde constantly undermines her narrative credibility, how-
ever, by interjecting her own views and judgments. Such interjec-
tions represent what Martinez Bonati defines as nonminetic
language, language that is subject to the same skeptical scrutiny as
any opinionated statement. 4 An example of such a switch from
mimetic to nonmimetic language occurs when Matilde notes that
Camila finally ended her affair with Roberto, and then adds: "Lo
que conmigo hubiera sido posible-una relaci6n profunda-, con
ella no lo era. Y eso debia de ser justamente lo que mas se temia
Camila: que, ala larga, su querido Roberto acabara entendiendose
mejor conmigo que con ella. Celos, en otras palabras" (p. 41)
["What would have been possible with me-a profound rela-
tionship--, was not with her. And that must have been exactly
what Camila feared most: that, as time went on, her dear Roberto
would end up more interested in me than in her. jealousy, in other
words"]. The speculative nature of this utterance changes it from
what at first glance might appear to be a narrative statement of
fact-fictional fact-to an interpretation, to a reading. The mes-
sage Matilde directs to her implied text addressee is different from
the message the fictive author directs to his implied text-act reader.
Her message of uncontestable superiority to Camila becomes a
completely opposite message from the perspective of the text-act
reader. From such an outside vantage point one might well read
Matilde's statement not as an affirmation of superiority but as an
expression of inferiority; Camila is not jealous of her, she is jealous
of Camila. By engaging in such interpretative speculation, she
loses her narrative authority and in effect operates on the level of a
reader. As a result, Matilde is automatically pitted against the text-
act reader; her reading opposes the reading implicit in the textual
strategy of undermining her narrative authority.
The conflict between Matilde's reading and the reading implicit
in this textual strategy of discredited authority becomes even more
obvious when she turns her attention to the letters she intercepted.
She used these letters, she says, to measure the degree of passion
between the two lovers, and to be in a position to frustrate its
consummation as it intensified. And to complicate her devious
scheme, she began to write her own intimate notes in the form of a
diary and to leave these notes in a place where she knew Camila
would find and read them. Each note was designed to reflect the
latest tone she read into Roberto's letters, and so, in her own words,
the notes were "respuestas a Ia respuesta de una respueta" (p. 42)
["replies to the reply of a reply"]. The repetition of the word
"respuesta" underscores the difference between an original text
and the texts created by an interpretative reading of the original.
The original fades from view as one reading gives rise to another,
and this to yet another, in a potentially infinite chain of differences.
Differences in readings are even more dramatic in those in-
stances in which Matilde provides detailed analyses of certain
sections from the letters. For example, in one instance apparently
some lingering self-doubts compel her to explain a reference to a
whale in one of Camila's letters:
As!, aquella frase relativa al cachalote, cuyo alcance, pese a escaparseme

de entrada, no dej6 por ello de golpearme con dureza, lo confieso, ahora
que puedo hacerlo. Til no sabes lo que es encontrarse con un cachalote en
Ia cam a, escribi6literalmente Camila en una de esas cartas que dejaba por
Ia casa un tiempo prudencial antes de hacersela llegar a Roberto. Tarde lo
mlo, esta es Ia verdad, en caer en Ia cuenta de que, a lo que realmente
estaba aludiendo era a mi fogosidad amorosa, una peculiar forma de
ferocidad que, para bien o para mal, no puedo menos que reconocer como
muy mla. Hubiera quedado mejor poniendo una pantera en Iugar de un
cachalote, es cierto; pero tambien mas convencional. Aparte de que el
oficio de Camila no es precisamente el de escritora. [pp. 308-9]
[Thus that sentence referring to the whale, whose meaning, in spite of
escaping me at the time, hit me pretty hard I have to confess, now that I
can do it. You don't know what it's like to be in bed with a whale, Camila
wrote word for word in one of those letters that she left lying around for a
discreet length oftime before sending it to Roberto. The truth is it took me
quite a while to catch on that she was really alluding to my love-making
ardor, a particular form of ferocity that for better or worse I have to
recognize as characteristic of me. It would have been better for sure if she
had used a panther rather than a whale; but also more conventional. Not
to mention that no one ever claimed that Camila has any writing talent.]
While it is impossible to say that Matilde's interpretation of the

reference is irrefutably wrong, it seems forced at the very least.
Even she has to admit that a whale is not the most felicitous image
to connote passion. In fact, a more common connotation for a
whale is bulk, and such a connotation suggests the need to reread
some ofMatilde's earlier supposedly mimetic utterances when she
referred to her own "perfecta forma fisica" (p. 31) ("perfect fig-
ure"] or described herself as "alta, esbelta, elegante" (p. 60) ["tall,
slim, elegant"]. Whether a question of Matilde's mistaken self-
image, her attempt to deceive her text addressee, Camila's
spitefulness, or any number of other possibilities, the convention
attributing uncontestable truth to certain utterances in fiction is
now challenged. What initially was read as a statement of fact now
must be reread as an opinion subject to multiple interpretations.
And if the implication is followed to its next logical step, that all
writing is but the graphic expression of a reading of what preceded
it, it becomes clear that infallible authority in all fiction is but an
illusion, an arbitrary convention. With this in view, Matilde's
"unreliability" as a narrator (in the Wayne Booth sense of the
word) functions as a sign suggesting that the very concept of
reliability is in fact a contradiction inherent in language, which
seems to indicate presence when in fact it marks absence. This
structure of difference essential to language itself is dramatized by
the conflict between Matilde's readings and the responses im-
plicitly elicited by such readings.
Even when Matilde does not intrude as a reader, a structure of
differences imposes itself. As the interpolated novel, "El edicto de
MiL'in," unfolds in chapters four, five, and six, for example,
Matilde's only claim to existence is as the implied author of it.
Furthermore, since she published the novel under the pseudonym
Claudio Mendoza, she is removed yet another step. In fact, in
chapter four, where the interpolated novel begins, the whole notion
of an implied author is limited to the shifting point of focalization
from which the action is presented. As the story begins Lucia is
alone in the Paris train station just after her fiance Luis has
departed for Spain to work for the Communists against the dic-
tatorship. As she leaves the station the point of focalization shifts
subtly between an inside and an outside view:
La estaci6n subitamente inanimada y silenciosa no bien el tren hubo

partido. Las aceras resbaladizas que, como en un sueiio, se alargaban y
alargaban segun ella iba avanzando, el pelo suelto, las manos en los
bolsillos de Ia gabardina, el olor a llovizna como un alien to que empaiia los
cristales, y como Ia mirada de un loco el brillo gris del pavimento.[pp.
97-98)
[The station suddenly lifeless and silent no sooner had the train departed.
The slippery sidewalks that, as if in a dream, stretched on and on the more
she advanced, her hair blowing in the wind, her hands in the pockets of her
jacket, the smell of mist like a breath that frosts over a window pane, and
the gray glow of the payment like the gaze of a madman.]
The shifting point offocalization, which initially offers her view

of the station and of the dreamlike extension of the sidewalk and
then moves outside to describe her physically, and finally back
inside as she sees and feels the mist in the air, and on the pavement,
implies the presence of a manipulating hand behind it. Yet the
images of loneliness tend to all but erase the awareness of an
implied author and to encourage identification with the pro-

tagonist, with her illusory reality. The artifices and conventions of
fiction arc backgroundcd, overpowered by the illusions they create.
As a result, Lucia and her world seem real. This illusion of reality
prevails throughout the anecdote as Lucia feels abandoned by Luis
and suspects him of being involved with a female political col-
league in Spain. Her trip to Sctc to meet him for a weekend only
intensifies her conviction that he now loves someone else. On her
return to Paris she is merely an observer of the shifting sexual
entanglements of her university friends until finally succumbing to
a one-night affair with a Cuban mulatto named Camilo. The
chapter ends with her arrival at Barcelona, where she is to marry
Javier, another of her university friends but one singled out for
always conducting himself as a real gentleman.
Chapter five repeats the basic anecdote of chapter four, but with
significant differences:
Dos cosas, por libre que una sea, hay que tcner muy claras: lo que se puede
y lo que no se puede hacer, dijo Lucia. Algo que Gina era capaz de
entender perfectamentc, pcse a los embrollos morales que le creaba su
desdichada propensi6n a caer siempre en los brazos de tios mitad chorizos,
mitad revolucionarios, dispuestos a explotar a fondo su mala conciencia
de nina bien milanesa. Algo, en cambio, que era del todo inutil pretender
explicar a Charlotte, para quien esta clasc de consideraciones habia que
situarlas-no menos accptables, pero tampoco de mayor validez-en un
mismo plano, por ejemplo, que un proyecto de viaje en moto aljap6n o un
caso de vocaci6n religiosa. Que Lucia sc negara, sin ir mas lejos, a salir con
alguien que tuviese pareja, a robar el hombre a nadie, casados o no
casados, eso era lode mcnos. Con gente como Camilo, si: igualmente lib res
ambos, de igual a igual; Lucia, en definitiva, no era precisamente una
estrecha. Pero eso de romper Ia unidad de una pareja, con el resultado
seguro de que el sufrimiento de alguien estaba en juego, lo dejaba para
personas tipo Marina o lrenita, La Princesa Roja. [p. 139]
[No matter how free a girl may be, she has to keep two things in mind: what
she can and cannot get away with, Lucia said. Something that Gina was
perfectly capable of understanding, in spite of moral entanglements that
were created for her by her unfortunate propensity to always fall into the
arms of guys who were part pigs, part revolutionaries, ready to exploit to
the limit her guilty conscience as a nice girl from Milan. Something, on the
other hand, that was totally useless to try to explain to Charlotte, for whom
this type of consideration had to be placed-no less acceptable, but no
more valid either-on the same level, for example, as the plans for a
motorcycle trip to Japan or the decision to enter a convent. The fact that
Lucia would refuse, at least, to go out with someone who had a partner, to
rob a man from anyone, married or not, was no big deal. With guys like
Camilo, sure: both equally free, on even terms; indeed, Lucia was not
exactly a blushing virgin. But the business of breaking up a couple, with
the certainty that someone's suffering was a part of the game, she left that
for persons like Marina or little Irena, the Red Princess.]
Unlike the beginning of the interpolated novel offered in the

previous chapter, where the view stresses images conveying the
sensation ofloneliness and vulnerability, in this second version of
her story the indirect recorded speech places the emphasis on
mental processes. These processes, rather than projecting an im-
age of vulnerability, characterize her as a street-wise woman whose
brazen image is tempered only by her particular sense ofhonor. Yet
even this sense of honor is undermined by the sarcasm with which
she speaks ofher friends, and by the suggestion that the underlying
motive of the sarcasm is self-pity (Irena, the "Princesa Roja," is
the woman she suspects of having stolen Luis's affections). Such an
introduction to the "new" Lucia is followed directly by details of
her extended relationship with Camilo (as opposed to the single
affair narrated in the previous chapter), a relationship she finally
terminates after tiring of his unorthodox sexual proclivities. Fur-
thermore, in this chapter Lucia has affairs with several men in
addition to Camilo, including one in the bathroom with the con-
ductor of the train she takes to visit Luis in Sete. The chapter ends,
however, with her arrival once again in Barcelona where she is to
marry the wealthy and ingenuous Javier. As the protagonist
becomes less appealing and contradictions arise between the first
and second versions of her story, one begins to detect the presence
of Matilde as the functional creator hiding behind her creation.
The conclusion of"El edicto de Milan" is offered in chapter six,
yet it is nothing more than a third version of Lucia's basic story:
En definitiva, una tiene que hacer lo que le gusta hacer, y Ia (mica forma de
saber que es exactamente lo que a una le gusta hacer es probarlo todo
primero. Son cosas sobre las que resulta imposible pronunciarse hasta que
las has hecho, hasta que las has probado. Y si das un no de antemano,
quiere decir, no ya que tienes prejuicios, sino, que inconscientemente,
estas temiendo el si, su atraccion sobre ti. Para Ia gente, piensen como
piensen, hay siempre una norma moral a Ia que debes adecuar tu con-
ducta. Yo, en cambio, pienso que es Ia moral Ia que se debe acomodar a ti,
a tus gustos, a tu manera de ser. [p. 171]
[Indeed, one has to do what one likes to do, and the only way of knowing
exactly what one likes to do is to try everything once. There are things that
are impossible to pass judgment on until you have done them, until you
have tried them. And if you say no beforehand, it means, not only do you
have prejudices, but subconsciously you are afraid to say yes, you are
afraid of their attraction for you. No matter what people may think, for
them there is always a moral norm to which you should adjust your
conduct. On the other hand I believe that morality should accommodate
itself to you, to your preferences, to your personality.]
With this third "reading" of Lucia, one begins to detect more

clearly the presence of Matilde as the implied author. Such a
presence emerges first with the totally self-indulgent, amoral,
attitude of Lucia. It is reinforced later in the anecdote when Lucia
confesses to a lesbian affair with Charlotte and a menage trois a
episode involving another female friend and a man characterized
in the earlier versions by his renowned sadomasochistic tenden-
cies. In addition to these personality echoes of Matilde's own life,
the quoted passage offers the first example of a first-person nar-
rative voice ("Yo, en cambio, pienso"). Since the first-person
narration is not sustained, it functions as a violation of the embed-
ded novel's narrative voice; it makes explicit the presence of the
fictional author Matilde. So as the second and third versions of
Lucia create more distance between the text reader and the pro-
tagonist, the artifices and conventions of fiction edge ever so slowly
to the foreground. Each reading with variations constitutes an
artifice in itself, and also underscores the structure ofdifferences on
which the whole novel is constructed.
With the end of the interpolated novel, Matilde reclaims her
role as narrator, and in an even more pronounced manner, that of
reader. Not only does she continue to offer self-readings along with
readings of other intercepted letters, she now directs a major
portion of her efforts to commenting on "El edicto de Milan," to
correcting what she considers the misreading of it by the very
person to whom she was addressing it, her cousin Raul. Not only is
she reading her own novel, she is also "correcting" someone else's
reading of it.
In her role as reader of Lucia's fictitious story, morever,
Matilde offers another challenge to the concept of "suspension of
disbelief." Whereas before Lucia, especially in the first version,
projected an illusion of reality, of being a real person, now Matilde
completely unmasks that illusion with her commentary; she dra-
matically reduces Lucia to a fiction by explaining the strategies
underlying the illusion of reality. But then suddenly Matilde lays
bare the illusion of her own reality as she begins to boast of her
textual strategies concerning the work's final paragraph:
La ambigiiedad de tal parrafo, como Ia de tantos otros, es, por supuesto,

totalmente premeditada. Vamos, una broma en forma de trampa que
tiendo al critico avezado para que, recogiendo algunos cabos que dejo
sueltos con malignidad calculada, analizando algunos laps us, alguna que
otra incoherencia, pueda llegar a Ia sagaz conclusion de que Claudio
Mendoza es una mujer y, por aiiadidura, lesbiana. De ahi que cualquier
hipotetico lector de las presentes lineas pueda concluir a su vez, no menos
sagazmente y en virtud del mismo juego de compensaciones, en que mi
nombre, Matilde Moret, encubre un var6n; cosa, por otra parte, acaso mas
cierta de lo que a primera vista pueda suponerse. [pp. 201- 2]
[The ambiguity of such a paragraph, like that of so many others, is, of
course, totally premeditated. Okay, a joke in the form of a trap that I lay
out for the astute critic so that he, by recollecting some loose ends I leave
lying about with calculated malice, by analyzing some lapses, a few
inconsistencies, may arrive at the clever conclusion that Claudio Mendoza
is a woman and, moreover, a lesbian. Following the same line of reasoning
any hypothetical reader of the present lines may conclude on his part, no
less cleverly and by virtue of the same set oflogic, that my name, Matilde
Moret, disguises a male; something, on the other hand, perhaps truer than
one may imagine at first glance.]
When the narrator says that "mi nombre, Matilde Moret,

encubre un var6n," she shatters completely the convention of
"suspension of disbelief." In effect this discourse is now directed
to the text-act reader. Matilde is not speaking to a text addressee
embedded within the world of the story; the fictive author is
speaking through her to the text-act reader stationed outside that
world. And since the communication act now extends beyond the
boundaries of the fictitious world, suddenly the persona of Luis

Goytisolo emerges as the ultimate manipulating hand behind this
game of gender and authorship. The real reader identifying with
the text-act reader, therefore, can now reconstruct the game in
which Luis Goytisolo, or his persona, creates a fictitious woman,
Matilde, who pretends to create a fictitious man, Claudio, who
pretends to create on his part a fictitious character, Lucia.
But such a reconstruction from outside the boundary of the
fictitious world does not adequately explain the novel. La c6lera de
Aquiles is not only a game exposed as merely a game, but also an
aesthetic experience based on illusion. In terms of the aesthetic
experience Lucia is the most "real" of all the characters in the
novel. With an eye turned to the artifices and conventions of the
game, however, she is not only fictitious but a fiction three times
removed. In effect this laying bare of the game places the illusion
under erasure-crossed out, as Derrida, following Heidegger's
lead, graphically demonstrates the concept. Yet since it is merely
under erasure, the illusion is still visible, the aesthetic experience
still exists. By violating the boundary separating text speaker and
addressee from fictive author and text-act reader, and thereby
placing the illusion under erasure, another dimension of fiction's
inherent structure of differences surfaces: its function as a sign
signaling the absence rather than the presence of reality. And if on
the one hand the illusion is obviously inadquate and therefore
must be crossed out, on the other hand it is a necessary comple-
ment of, yet never a substitute for, reality. In fact, the recognition
of fiction as a sign of absence can also be seen as directly related to
the concept of reading: every work of fiction is merely the response
to another work, another link in a chain of differences created by a
futile but dynamic search for the ultimate fusion oflanguage and
reality, of art and exis_tence.
Such a search finally leads Matilde to a rereading of a work
predating written literature, the story of Achilles. She feels his
story may serve as a point of reference for defining her own sense of
anguish. Achilles's mother, Matilde recalls, took him from under
Chiron's tutelage and, dressing him like a girl, placed him in a sort
of convent to hide him from his enemies. Matilde reads this episode
as an example of a person's natural inclinations being diverted by
an outside force; therefore Achilles is a symbol for her of "aquel
que no ha logrado superar la creencia de haber sido victima, en sus

primeros aiios, de la traici6n y el abandono, de haber sido some-
tido a las reglas de un mundo que no era el suyo, constreiiido a
simular una manera de ser que nada tiene en comun con la que le
es propia" (p. 274) ["someone who has not managed to recover
from the feeling of having been a victim in his early years of
betrayal and abandonment, ofhaving been subjected to the rules of
a world that was not his own, obliged to conduct himself in a
manner that has nothing to do with his own personality"]. Not
only is she postulating a unique reading of the Achilles story, but
the referent for the reading is not the written text; the referent is a
painting by Poussin entitled "La c6lera de Aquiles" that she saw in
the Louvre. Yet, as Matilde confesses near the end of the novel, she
has never been able to find this painting again in the museum, nor
even in the catalogue of Poussin's complete works. She finally
admits that perhaps the painting was by someone else, or that it
never existed. The source from which Matilde arrived at her new
reading transcends her own consciousness. In fact, the attempts
on her part to arrive at a single source diminish the fictional
creation-as is demonstrated by her efforts to identify and explain
the referents for the characters in "El edicto de Milan." In the
case of the painting, the problem of its identity provides a glimpse
into the infinite network of texts inherent in the very concept of
literary source.
The idea of a source as an infinite network of texts, and of the
discovery that there is a chain of common human experiences
extending far beyond any individual's capacity for recognizing
what forces are influencing his or her readings, allows Matilde to
see a link between Achilles and her own addressee: "Yo escribo
para quien sea consciente de que, en definitiva, en mayor o menor
grado, todos hemos sido victimas de la dicotomia a la que estoy
refiriendome, de que a todos se nos ha robado algo de nosotros
mismos" (p. 274) ["I am writing for someone who is conscious that
beyond any doubt, to a greater or lesser degree, we have all been
victims of the dichotomy to which I am referring, that we have all
been robbed of some part of ourselves"]. Matilde may be suggest-
ing that although no one can define this something that has been
taken from all of us, everyone should sense the imprint of this
something on any work of fiction, not just on hers. As a result of its
amorphous outline, however, each reader will interpret this some-

thing distinctly. That is, each reader creates his or her own text
while reading, a text whose identity will always be defined by the
difference between it and the previous one. Thus readings inspire
other readings in an infinite process leading inexorably away from
the very source they are designed to reach.
La c6lera de Aquiles demonstrates that there are as many texts of
the novel as there are readers who attempt to close the gap between
themselves and the implicit text-act reader. Although this gap
exists for every fictional work, its existence is exaggerated by Luis
Goytisolo's textual strategy in this novel of creating multiple text
addressees (Matilde directs her replies to the letters to Camila, her
novel "El edicto de Milan" to Raul, and her comments on the
letters, the novel, and everything else to a secret recipient). The
message sent to each of these text addressees, moreover, is different
from that directed to the text-act reader, a text-act reader with
whom each real reader attempts to identify and thereby apprehend
the work's composite message. Since the ability to achieve such an
identification can never be totally successful, "the message" of the
novel is always deferred to an infinite future of yet another reading.
If the self-referential novels represented by Juan sin Tierra seem to
write themselves into existence, those represented by La c6lera de
Aquiles may be said to read themselves into existence. Whereas the
writer-focused group supplants the story with the process of writ-
ing, the reader-focused novels transpose fictive author and reader.
Readers create texts. All writing, therefore, is defined as merely the
graphic expression of a reading. La c6lera de Aquiles, as the para-
digm of the reader-produced group, might best be described as the
reading of a reading of a reading. 5 In this group of novels, then,
the respective worlds of the fictive author and of the story are not
merely violated but literally ingested by the world of the reader.
In the more radical expression of the self-referential novel
examined in the next chapter, there is an attempt to reduce the
triad of the fictional mode to a single all-assimilating cell. As if in
response not only to the reader-dominated but also to the writer-
dominated texts, the third category of self-referential novels effaces
both fictive author and reader. The written fictional mode emerges
only at the end of the characters' oral discoursing.
Chapter Seven
Product Preceding Process:

El cuarto de atras
In the two categories previously proposed for the Spanish self-

referential novel the narrating instance is foregrounded. Since the
narrating instance involves both a sender and a receiver, the first
group is identified as author-focused and the second as reader-
focused. The first group examines the process of creating the
written work through the act of writing, and the second group
explores the same process through the act of reading. In either
case the emphasis is shifted from the product (story) to the process
(act of narrating). In the third group the emphasis is directed back
to the story, but in such a way that it seems that the product (story)
precedes the process (act of narrating).
Essential to the illusion that process and product are transposed
is a focus on the pre-writing stage of novelistic creation. That is to
say, we are offered the illusion that the novel does not yet exist, that
the characters, who in all my examples are fictitious authors, are
laying the groundwork for what will become the written work.
Their discourse, therefore, is made to appear oral. When and if
they manage to transform this oral discourse into writing, they will
have created a work of fiction, complete with the world of the fictive
author and the world of the text-act reader. In this final category
demonstrating different methods for violating the laws of fiction,
then, the fictional mode itself must be created.
Perhaps Juan Goytisolo was the first novelist to signal the
nature of my third category of self-referential novels when, in an
interview focused on his recently published Juan sin Tierra, he said
to Julian Rios: "Si vuelvo a escribir sera tal vez a partir de un
nuevo sincretismo creador-como llamaba Brach al arte de Joyce
ode Picasso--buscando el media de superar el esquema historia/
discurso de Benveniste" 1 ["If I write again perhaps it will be

based on a new creative syncretism-as Brach called the art of
Joyce or Picasso--a search for a means of surpassing Benveniste's
story/discourse paradigm"]. In his subsequent novel Makbara
(1980), Goytisolo attempts to bridge this gap between product
(story) and process (discourse) by creating a speaker who is a teller
of tales, a minstrel who assumes the role of all the characters he
invents. Ncar the end of the novel the speaker attempts to define
what he sees as a new oral fictional mode:
liberaci6n del discurso, de todos los discursos opuestos a Ia normalidad

dominante ... posibilidad de contar, mentir, fabular, verter lo que se
guarda en el cerebro y el vientre, el coraz6n, vagina, testiculos : hablar y
hablar a borbollones, durante horas y horas : vomitar sueiios, palabras,
historias hasta quedarse vado : literatura al alcance de analfabetos, mu-
jeres, simples, chiflados : de cuantos se han visto tradicionalmente pri-
vados de Ia facultad de expresar fantasias y cuitas : condenados a callar,
obedecer, ocultarse, comunicar por murmullos y signos : al amparo de Ia
oficiosa neutralidad del Iugar : de Ia impunidad del juglar que zahiere
tras Ia mascara falaz de Ia risa : oradores sin pulpito ni tribuna ni atril :
poseidos de subito frenesf : charlatanes, embaucadores, locuaces, todos
cuen tis tas. 2
[freedom of the discourse, of all the discourses opposed to the dominating
normal state of things ... the possibility of telling, oflying, offabulating,
of spilling out what is guarded in the brain and the gut, the heart, the
vagina, the testicles : speaking and speaking in a flood, for hours on end :
vomiting dreams, words, stories until being empty: literature accessible to
the illiterate, to women, to retarded people, to fools : to all who have
traditionally been deprived of the facility to express fantasies and troubles
: condemned to remain silent, to obey, to hide, to communicate by means
of murmurs and signs: aided by the complacent neutrality of the setting:
by the impunity of the minstrel who criticizes behind the false mask of
laughter : orators without benefit of a pulpit or tribunal or podium :
suddenly possessed with a frenzy : charlatans, tricksters, chatterboxes, all
story tellers.]
Thus Goytisolo attempts to fabricate an illusion that we are not

reading words but rather listening to oral speech. We have circled
back to the oral tradition where everyone who wishes can be a
novelist. In such an oral mode there is no implied author hidden
Product Preceding Process 109
behind the speaker and no text-act reader standing beyond the

world of the listeners. The narrating act occurs within the world of
the story. In short, literature has surpassed the constraints of the
written word, and in so doing violates the very laws of fiction.
Rather than process (discourse) creating a product (story), the two
seem to fuse. The act of discoursing is the story of Makbara, 3 or so
Goytisolo's textual strategies would have us believe. Yet even more
daring than juan's attack on the modes of fiction is that offered by
his brother Luis in one of his more recent novels.
In Teoria del conocimiento (1982) [Theory rif Knowledge} Luis
Goytisolo's final installment to the tetralogy Antagonia, the story
also seems to occur before the act of writing the story. By means of
three successive speakers there is a general movement from written
to oral discourse, a movement that also leads from the planning
stage toward the actual creation of a novel. Initially there are
merely entries of a diary, followed by notes for a novel recorded on a
cassette, and finally the voice of a man dictating the novel into a
tape recorder. Although there does seem to be a progression to-
ward the completed work, that work in its written form remains an
unfulfilled project of the future as the process leads away from,
rather than toward, the written word.
The textual strategy behind the illusion that fiction precedes
itself, that rather than a novel we are offered the preliminary stages
in creation of the novel, centers on the three speakers. Each speaker
is an aspiring author, and in a circular process each contributes to
the others' creative efforts.
The circular process begins with Carlos writing his diary.
Among his preoccupations is a woman living across from him
whom he observes regularly from his window. As he writes he
wonders exactly what emotion was aroused in him when he first
saw her, and especially when he first learned that her name was
Aurea:
Responder a esta cuesti6n no es mas facil que responder a Ia pregunta de

par que escribo, de por que estoy ahara redactando estas lineas. Y conste
que no me refiero a! hecho de que lo que estoy escribiendo sea un diario, al
problema de par que una persona escribe su diario, sino al hecho de
escribir en si ... el fen6meno de Ia escritura a toda contingencia ajena a Ia
conciencia de estar siendo lo que realmente es que posee el escritor en el
llO Beyond the Metafictional Mode
acto de proyectarse bacia el exterior por medio de su obra, de una obra

qu~llo sabe bien-escapa a! dominio de su conciencia en Ia medida en
que se objetiviza, en Ia medida en que se convierte en replica antag6nica
de si mismo.4
[To respond to that question is no easier than responding to the question of
why I am writing, of why I am transcribing these lines. And let it be clear
that I am not referring to the fact that what I am writing happens to be a
diary, to the problem of why a person writes a diary, but to the fact of
writing itself ... the phenomenon of writing removed from every con-
tingency other than the consciousness that the writer possesses of being
what he really is in the act of projecting himself toward the exterior by
means of his work, of a work that-he knows very well-escapes the
control of his consciousness to the degree that it becomes objectified, to the
degree to which it is transformed into an opposing replica of himself.]
Clearly for Carlos the act of writing is an existential affirmation of

his being, while the written product opposes that being. Appar-
ently, therefore, he prefers to write a diary in which he muses about
writing a novel rather than to write the novel itself. He feels the
need to keep the process-his means of self-affirmation-separate
from the product. In fact, his dream is "encontrarme un buen dia
con un libra mio en los escaparates, inesperado como uno de esos
bongos que brotan, se diria, de la noche a la manana; que la
presencia de mi libra y mi aparicion como escritor coinciden basta
superponerse, basta hacer ociosa cualquier clase de explicacion o
conjetura" (p. 63) ["one fine day just to run into a book of mine in a
store window, as unexpected as one of these mushrooms thatjust
sprout forth, as they say, overnight; I want the presence of my
book and my emergence as a writer to coincide to the point of
occurring one on top of the other, to the point of rendering useless
any kind of explanation or conjecture"]. The written work threat-
ens to poison its creator. The antidote is to sustain the process of
writing.
Ricardo, the second author within the work, also writes. But
after writing the notes from which he one day intends to create a
novel, he records them. His solution to the threat of the written
work is to transform the writing into oral discourse. For him, then,
writing is a preliminary but necessary step in the creative process:
"Escribir como pensar perfeccionando, como forma de dar
Product Preceding Process lll
agudeza ala idea, de articularla con otras y organizar el conjunto.

La palabra escrita no sera ni mas ni menos cierta que la palabra
pensada por el mero hecho de haberse objetivado; lo que si ganara,
en cuanto expresi6n, es coherencia respecto a si misma" (p. 77)
("Writing as a means of perfecting the thought process, a form of
sharpening the idea, of articulating it with others and organizing
the whole. The written word will not be any more or less certain
than the unwritten word merely because it has been objectified;
what it will gain, as far as expression is concerned, is coherence in
respect to itself']. Perhaps because Ricardo is an architect by
profession, he uses writing as a blueprint for his artistic con-
struction. He is a planner, not a builder. In fact, his ideal IS a
creation that will not be a novel, but rather a pre-novel:
Pues bien: imaginemos una obra asi, en Ia que, de cada una de sus partes
surjan otras que a su vez generen otras y otras, en un despliegue mas y mas
vasto. Esta fue mi idea primitiva de Ia obra en proyecto, una idea que no
tard6 en completarse y definirse hasta quedar concretada en lo que es
ahora, el proyecto de una obra compuesta por diversos libros ... aprox-
imarse ... a! proceso de gestaci6n de Ia obra, las notas tomadas, los
escritos previos, a ser posible en el contexto en que fueron escritos. [p. 218]
[Okay: let's imagine such a work, in which, from each of its components
emerge others that in turn generate still others, in an unfolding more and
more vast. This was my original idea for the projected work, an idea that
did not take long in becoming finalized and defined until ending up in the
concrete form of what is now a project composed of diverse books ...
approach ... the process of gestation of the work, the notes jotted down,
the preliminary drafts, if at all possible within the context in which they
were written.]
Obviously the work he is defining is a mirror of the very work of

which he is a part. And whereas Carlos wants to sustain the
process of writing and dreams of seeing the product sprout forth
one day as some kind of phenomenon of nature, Ricardo proposes
to eliminate the product. Ricardo is striving for a perpetual "obra
en proyecto."
The final speaker in the novel, a nameless old man, although
also an aspiring novelist, eschews writing completely. He is dictat-
ing his novel into a tape recorder, and his typist will then transpose
ll2 Beyond the Metafictional Mode
the dictation into written form. The old man, familiar with the
works of his two predecessors, has taken steps to assure that he will
receive exclusive recognition for his creation:
Este es precisamente el gran riesgo: Ia obra ap6crifa, Ia falsa atribuci6n de

una obra a un autor, sea premeditadamente, por insaciable vanidad del
que usurpa, sea por mera confus6n interpretativa, por deducci6n err6nea.
Veamos sino cual es Ia situaci6n y que es lo que se halla enjuego: tenemos
el diario deljoven Carlos, una copia mecanografiada que, a falta de datos
mas explfcitos acerca de su desdichado autor, cualquier futuro estudioso
puede llegar a pensar que se trata de una obra de ficci6n escrita por
Ricardo Echave, dada Ia seguridad con que este se refiere a determinados
aspectos de su contenido. Tenemos tambien lo que yo llamo el Libro de
Ricardo, esto es, Ia grabaci6n del contenido de sus notas realizada pore!
mismo. Y estan, finalmente, mis cintas, estas cintas que Carlos convierte
cada noche en transcripci6n mecanografiada, jus to el procedimiento in-
verso al seguido por Ricardo Echave. Una situaci6n, sobra decirlo, que
convierte a Carlos en depositario (mico de todos esos materiales. Y Carlos
tiene mi confianza, ya que su elecci6n como transcriptor y despositario se
debe a lo que vi en el iris de sus ojos tanto acerca de su vida cuanto acerca
de su caracter, pasivo por excelencia, falto de imaginaci6n, de cualidades
creadoras, el transcriptor ideal, en suma. [pp. 310-11]
[This is precisely the great risk: the apocryphal work, the false crediting of
a work to an author, whether it is a case of premeditation, of insatiable
vanity of the plagiarizer, of mere interpretative confusion, of an erroneous
deduction. Let's see what the situation is, and what the game is all about:
we have young Carlos's diary, a recorded copy of which, were it not for
explicit data concerning its unfortunate author, some future scholar might
well arrive at the erroneous conclusion that it is a fictional work written by
Ricardo Echave, in view of the certainty with which the latter refers to
certain aspects of its content. We also have what I call Ricardo's Book,
that is to say, the tapings he made himself of the content ofhis notes. And
finally, here we have my tapes, these tapes that Carlos each night converts
to typewritten script, just the inverse process to that followed by Ricardo
Echave. A situation, it goes without saying, that makes Carlos the sole
depository of all those materials. And Carlos has my confidence, since his
selection as transcriber and depository is a result of what I saw in the iris
of his eyes concerning not only his life but his character, exemplary
passivity, lack of imagination and creative qualities, in short, the ideal
transcriber.]
The speaker's preoccupation with being recognized as the true

creator of his novel is ironic on several levels. First of all, appar-
ently he himself has plagiarized from young Carlos and Ricardo, a
plagiarism implicit in his explanation that his typist will be the sole
depository of all the materials. In addition, the speaker's preten-
tious ofbeing the final authentic voice in the work are dramatically
undermined by the existence of not one, but two title pages-the
first listing Luis Goytisolo and the second listing Raul Ferrer
Gaminde as the author of the novel. Not only is he unable to erase
the imprint of his predecessors from his work, but he is also a mere
pawn in a dispute over authorship between the fictive and the real
author. And since the whole process in which he aspires to be at the
top of the authorial hierarchy actually begins and ends with Carlos
(the typist is the father of the young Carlos writing his diary), the
very concept of authorship is reduced to a circle of intratextual
borrowing, of one author mirroring another.
A mirror perhaps best conveys the narrative process of Teoria del
conocimiento. The text functions as a series of mirrors, with the
image in each mirror reflecting the reverse side of the image
preceding it. Thus oral becomes written discourse, and written
becomes oral discourse. In such a text the process of discourse
never ends as a static artifact. In short, the novel appears to move
toward its own creation but without ever becoming the created
product. The fictional mode, it seems, remains a potential yet to be
realized. 5
Carmen Martin Gaite's El cuarto de atras (1978) [The Back Room in
the English version] offers the most dramatic example of the
Spanish self-referential novel's illusion that the story precedes the
act of writing the story. In fact, in this story-focused novel the
protagonist, by virtue of her discourses with a stranger and with
her own past, creates the fictional mode of the novel; only on the
last page of the novel does the novel seem to become a novel.
The anecdote involves a first-person narrator who falls asleep
one evening only to be awakened by a stranger claiming to have
arrived for his appointment to interview her, an appointment she
does not remember having made. Whether the stranger is "real" or
a part of her dream is never clear as he begins to quiz her about the
books she has published and about her current literary projects. As
they talk her thoughts are constantly interrupted by flashbacks to

personal incidents in her life, and to lines from pop songs, pulp
magazines, sentimental novels, classroom texts, literary classics,
etc., all a chaotic but integral part of her sociocultural develop-
ment. At one point the stranger gestures at a small stack of
typewritten pages on a table and asks if they are a part of one of her
current projects. She assures him they are not, and in fact insists
she has no idea of their origin or content. Even an interrupting
phone call in which the protagonist talks with someone claiming to
be the interviewer's lover, a woman who just may be a character
from one of the protagonist's novels, fails to alter the pattern of
dialogue in the present triggering fragments from the past. And as
the process continues, the two notice that the stack of pages off in
the corner seems to be growing. Finally the wind scatters the pages,
and as the stranger begins to place them back in order, she falls
asleep. She is awakened by the return of her daughter from a late
date, and although the protagonist is alone, there are two glasses
on a tray. She tells her daughter that she cannot explain the two
glasses for she spent the evening alone. As the protagonist finally
reaches to turn out the light, she notices that the stack of papers is
on her nighttable and now numbers one hundred and eighty-two
pages. The title is, "El cuarto de atras," and the first paragraph she
reads is the same as the first paragraph with which the novel
began.
The image of the written manuscript of the novel appearing
within the novel itself represents an aesthetic expression of the
distinction Barthes, for example, has made between the work and
the text. The work is the static black markers on the page, the
artifact, the object one holds in one's hands; the text, on the other
hand, is held only in language itself, it exists only as discourse. 6
When, therefore, the protagonist picks up the manuscript entitled,
"El cuarto de atras," it appears as the product of the discoursing in
which she has been involved up to that moment. By the same token
when we read the final words narrating her act of picking up the
manuscript, we suddenly become aware of the novel we hold in our
hands, and see it now as a mere artifact, the product of the
discoursing in which we have been aesthetically participating. The
text then emerges, independent as it were, of the written word. As a
result, the role we play as the text-act reader in this novel is really
not that of reader at all, but rather that of a participant in dis-

course. Underlying such an aesthetic experience are textual strat-
egies involving the protagonist-narrator's process of dramatizing
her addressee, of forsaking historical narration, and of espousing
the fantastic mode. When at the end of such a process the artifact
entitled "El cuarto de atras" emerges, the protagonist can lay
claim to having created her own narrator, reader, and story, all
three of which she holds in her hands. Such is the nature ofCarmen
Martin Gaite's contribution to the contemporary Spanish novel's
assault on the fictional modes.
The transformation of the text addressee from a mere im-
plicature of fictional discourse to a dramatized character repre-
sents a key strategy for directing the focus to the world of the
characters and action in El cuarto de atrris. As the novel begins the
protagonist-narrator is alone in her house and her narrating act is
directed to an implied text addressee-a conventional narrative sit-
uation. Just before falling asleep, however, she invokes the ap-
pearance of an interlocutor: "las estrellas se precipitan y aun tcngo
tiempo de decir 'quicro vcrte, quiero vcrtc', con los ojos ccrrados;
nose a quien se lo digo" 7 ["the stars arc tumbling down and I still
have time to say 'I want to see you, I want to sec you,' with my eyes
closed; I don't know to whom I am saying it"]. In apparent answer
to her plea, the next chapter opens with the telephone ringing and
the voice of a man announcing that he is there for the interview.
Whether dream or fictional reality, the narrator has given an
identity to, if not actually created, 8 her text addressee; further-
more, she has bestowed upon him the capacity to respond. Indeed,
he responds not only to the comments she directs toward him but
to her unspoken thought processes. In short, rather than a narrator
narrating, from the second chapter on she becomes a fictional
character talking with another fictional character.
The subject of the conversation between the protagonist and the
stranger is basically the same one she was directing to her implied
recipient in the first chapter: whether to write a historical account
or a fictional one of the Franco years. The project to write a factual
account in the form of memoirs occurred to the protagonist the day
she watched the dictator's funeral on television. Since that day she
has been collecting data to facilitate the task. Rather than an
assistance, however, the data have become an obstacle: "jQue
aglomeracion de letreros, de fotografias, de cachivaches, de libros

... !; libros que, para enredar mas Ia cosa, guardan dentro fechas,
papelitos, telegramas, dibujos, texto sobre texto" (p. 16) ["What
an accumulation of labels, photographs, souvenirs, books ... !;
books that, to complicate the whole thing even more, have within
their covers dates, scraps of paper, telegrams, drawings, one text on
top of another"]. Each datum has required another to substantiate
it, creating in the process this endless proliferation of "texto sobre
texto." As she considers the problem, she becomes aware, more-
over, that it is much more than a mere question of volume: "Siem-
pre hay un texto soiiado, indeciso y fugaz, anterior a! que de verdad
se recita, barrido por el" (p. 40) ["There is always a text that is but
a dream, vague and ephemeral, preceding and erased by the one
that is actually being quoted"]. Apparently the act of placing these
static documents into the context of dynamic personal experience
leads to a network of associations; the documents are transformed
into texts, and each text, "being the intertext of another text,
belongs to the intertextual. " 9
The protagonist's memory serves as entrance into this intertex-
tual network. In spite of the copious documentation she has
collected, her memory refuses to submit itself to even the most
elementary temporal division: "Yo es que Ia guerra y Ia posguerra
las recuerdo siempre confundidas. Por eso me resulta dificil es-
cribir el libro" (p. 127) ["I am always confusing in my mind the
war and the postwar period. That's the reason it is so difficult for
me to write the book"]. The factual history recorded in her notes is
in obvious conflict with her personal experience of this history. For
example, when the stranger asks her to recount a specific event she
had mentioned, her memory forges its own path: "Hago un leve
gesto de asentimiento, que nose refiere para nada a ese texto del
aiio cincuenta y tres por el que parece interesarse, sino que retro-
cede a sus fuentes" (p. 48) ["I nod agreement, which has nothing
at all to do with the text of 1953 that he seems to be interested in,
but rather slips back to its sources"]. But this constant movement
toward the source is not a question of identifying influences or
references-for every source identified there will always be another
source. Her mind is responding to free associations triggered by
the stranger's questions. Each fragment from the past is traversed
by a network of intertextual associations placing her memory in
constant conflict with an orderly presentation of historical facts;

her attempts to write a book of memories as a factual account are
opposed by the subjective essence of personal experience, by the
unrelenting force of intertextuality.
Factual accounts require the use of historical narrative, or the
presentation of events in their proper sequence without interven-
tion by the enunciator or narrator; historical narrative is imper-
sonal since it excludes every "autobiographical" linguistic form. 10
The inadequacy of such a narrative mode to convey her personal
experiences is apparent when she explains to the stranger why she
has not even begun to write her memoirs: "Se me enfri6, me lo
enfriaron las memorias ajenas. Desde Ia muerte de Franco habra
notado como proliferan los libros de memorias, ya es una peste, en
el fondo, eso es lo que me ha venido desanimando, pensar que, si a
mi me aburren las memorias de los demas, por que no les van a
aburrir a los demas las mias" (p. 128) ["The project just stopped
cold on me, other people's memoirs stopped me cold. Since the
death of Franco you have probably noticed how books of memoirs
have proliferated to the point it is now a plague. To go right to the
core of things, the thought that has been discouraging me all along
is that if other people's memoirs bore me, why aren't mine going to
bore them"]. By attempting to limit herself to a narrative mode
that is in direct conflict with the subjective essence of memories,
she has stifled her creative instincts; she is attempting to reduce to
impersonal narration her personal experiences. Apparently for
this reason the stranger advises her: "Nolo escriba en plan de libro
de memorias" (p. 128) ["Don't write it in the form of a book of
memoirs"]. But as soon as she promises him she will follow his
advice, she remembers another promise she made: "En seguida de
decirlo, pienso que eso mismo le prometi a Todorov en enero. Claro
que entonces se trataba de una novela fantastica. Se me acaba de
ocurrir una idea. i Y si mezclara las dos promesas en una?" (p. 128)
["As soon as I say it, I remember that I promised Todorov the
same thing last January. Of course that was a question of a novel
in the fantastic mode. I have just had an idea. Why not combine
the two promises into one?"]. The protagonist's decision to aban-
don historical narrative as a mode for writing her book is a
reflection, of course, of the very process in which she is involved as
a narrator who really isn't narrating. Rather than telling a story
118 Beyond the Meta.fictional Mode
composed of a sequential plot line-historical narrative-she is

discussing how to go about composing a story. Indeed, her prob-
lem is precisely how to make the episodes she wants to include in
the story conform to a sequential order, and of course how to keep
her autobiographical linguistic forms out of it. Now suddenly
Todorov's concept of the fantastic offers itself as an opportune
vehicle for justifying the very narrative mode she can't avoid
anyway.
Todorov actually imposes himself on the protagonist well before
the preceding example and in a much more physical manner:
Ahi esta ellibro que me hizo perder pie: Introduccirin ala literaturafantdstica
de Todorov, vaya, a buenas horas, lo estuve buscando ante no se cuanto
rato, habla de los desdoblamientos de personalidad, de Ia ruptura de
limites entre tiempo y espacio, de Ia ambigiiedad y Ia incertidumbre; es de
esos libros que te espabilan y te disparan a tomar notas, cuando lo acabe,
escribi en un cuaderno: "Palabra que voy a escribir una novela fan-
tastica", supongo que se lo prometia a Todorov. [p. 19]
[There's the book that made me trip: Introduction to Fantastic Literature by
Todorov, how about that, it's about time, I was looking for it for I don't
know how long. It deals with personality bifurcation, with a breakdown
between temporal and spatial limits, with ambiguity and uncertainty; it's
one of those books. that excite you and make you rush to take notes, and
when I finished it, I wrote in a notebook: "I swear I am going to write a
novel in the fantastic mode," I suppose that I was promising it to
Todorov.]
In effect, character bifurcation, a breakdown between temporal

and spatial limits, and ambiguity and uncertainty are precisely the
phenomena interfering with the protagonist's efforts to construct a
historical narrative. Yet it takes the mysterious stranger, a person
whose very appearance on the scene and whose enigmatic back-
ground reflect what Todorov defines as the fantastic, to allow her to
recognize the striking similarity between such a mode and her own
literary inclinations.
Not only do the protagonist's literary inclinations form an
affinity with the fantastic mode, but her discursive interaction with
the stranger forms a part of the fantastic. For example, when
reconstructing in her own mind a romantic encounter from the
past she finally says to herself: "Esto es Ia literatura. Me esta
habitando la literatura" (p. 49) ["That's a pure literary conceit.

Literary conceits are overpowering me"]. Although these are clear-
ly her inner thoughts, the stranger replies and even helps her
construct the anecdote:
-Lomas logrado---dice el hombre--es Ia sensaci6n de extraiieza. Usted

llega con su acompaiiante, se apoyanjuntos contra Ia barandilla de aquel
puente a mirar el rio verde con el molino a! fondo, ahi ya esti contenido el
germen de lo fantistico, y durante toda Ia primera parte consigue man-
tenerlo. Ese hombre que va con usted nose sa be si existe o no existe, si Ia
conoce bien o no, eso es lo verdaderamente esencial, atreverse a desafiar Ia
incertidumbre; y ellector siente que no puede creerse ni dejarse decreer lo
que vaya a pasar en adelante, esa es Ia base de Ia literatura de misterio, se
trata de un rechazo a todo lo que luego, en aquel hotel, se empeiia en
manifestarse ante usted como normal y evidente, (no? [pp. 49-50]
[-The most effective aspect-the man says-is the sensation of strange-

ness. You arrive with your companion, the two of you lean against the
railing of that bridge to look at the green river with the mill in the
background, and right there is the core of the fantastic mode, and during
the whole first part you succeed in maintaining it. One does not know if
that man you are with really exists or not, if he knows you well or not, and
that is what is absolutely essential, to dare to defy uncertainty; and the
reader feels that he cannot allow himself to believe or not believe whatever
happens next, that is the foundation of mysterious literature, it is a
question of rejecting everything that later, in that hotel, insists on present-
ing itself before you as normal and evident, don't you agree?]
The stranger's advice to incorporate unresolved mystery into

her story merely reflects the unresolved mystery she is now in-
volved in as she talks to him, or rather as he responds to her inner
thoughts. In short, he is demonstrating to her that the fantastic is
indeed a dimension ofher reality, and not merely an escape from it.
The stranger's lesson is reinforced by the protagonist's emerg-
ing self-awareness, most apparent when she remembers the day
she began writing historical books: "una tarde de sol, cuando
habia empezado a refugiarme en la historia, en las fechas" (p. 59)
["one sunny afternoon, when I began to take refuge in history, in
dates"]. Rather than a confrontation with reality, she is beginning
to realize that documented history can be a type of escapism (a
type of escapism that may well point to the so-called social realist
writers of the 1950s and 1960s as well as to her personal circum-

stances).11 But according to the stranger, an even greater danger of
documentation is the assumption that literature must conform to
its rules of cause and effect, for as he notes: "La literatura es un
desafio a la 16gica ... no un refugio contra la incertidumbre" (p.
55) ["Literature is a defiance of logic ... not a refuge against
uncertainty"]. He goes on to explain to her how the fantastic
reflects reality: "cosas raras pasan a cada momenta. El error esta
en que nos empeiiamos en aplicarles la ley de la gravitaci6n
universal, o la ley del reloj, o cualquier otra ley de las que acatamos
habitualmente sin discusi6n; se nos hace duro admitir que tengan
ellas su propia ley" (p. 103) ["unusual things happen all the time.
The error lies in insisting upon applying to them the law of
universal gravitation, or the law of clocks, or any other laws that we
routinely obey without challenge; it becomes difficult for us to
admit that they operate by their own laws"]. Thanks to the discur-
sive exchange she is engaged in with her addressee, the protagonist
is slowly realizing that fantastic literature frees both writer and
reader from a one-dimensional, cause-and-effect view of existence.
And as she begins to recognize the illogical phasis of the universe,
she also begins to recognize the role oflanguage in such a universe.
In effect, language in its static written form has been the real
obstacle to her creative impulses: "Siempre el mismo afan de
apuntar cosas que parecen urgentes, siempre garabateando pa-
labras sueltas en papeles sueltos, en cuadernos, y total para que, en
cuanto veo mi letra escrita, las cosas a que se refiere el texto se
convierten en mariposas disecadas que antes estaban volando al
sol ... vivo rodeada de papeles sueltos donde he pretendido en
vano cazar fantasmas y retener recados importantes" (pp. 121-22)
["Always the same obsession with jotting down things that seem
urgent, always scribbling isolated words on separate pieces of
paper, in notebooks, and when everything is said and done, for
what, as soon as I see my handwriting, the things to which the text
refers are converted into disected butterflies that earlier were flying
around the sun ... I am surrounded by loose pieces of paper on
which I have attempted in vain to capture ghosts and preserve
important messages"]. Static markers on a page attempting to
stand for dynamic experience constitute the problem.
Yet language cannot stand for anything other than itself. Word
and thought, image and object, sign and meaning can never
become one, even though mimetic representation tends to make it
appear so. But as Todorov himself notes, the fantastic mode
provides a solution to the ossifying effect of mimetic representation
by unmasking the illusion that language can stand for reality: "If
the fantastic constantly makes use of rhetorical figures, it is be-
cause it originates in them. The supernatural is born oflanguage, it
is both its consequence and its proof: not only do the devil and
vampires exist only in words, but language alone enables us to
conceive what is always absent: the supernatural. The super-
natural thereby becomes a symbol oflanguage, just as the figures
of rhetoric do." 12 The fantastic mode, therefore, merely under-
scores the essence of all literature: a fantasy world composed of
language. By thus freeing language from the illusion that it is what
it represents, the fantastic mode foregrounds the transformation of
the static markers on the page into a plethora of interconnecting
texts in dynamic discourse with one another.
Discourse, finally, is the force capable of solving the pro-
tagonist's need for a new mode of artistic expression. When, for
example, she laments to the stranger that the book they have been
discussing does not even exist, he reassures her by explaining: "Si
ya fuera un libra no nos estariamos divirtiendo tanto esta noche,
las cosas solo valen mientras se estan hacienda, ~no cree? ...
Ademas contar como se le ha ocurrido ya es como empezar a
escribirlo, aunque nunca lo escriba, que eso jque mas da!" (p. 129)
["If it were already a book we wouldn't be having such a good
time tonight, things are only worth while in the process of doing
them, don't you agree? ... Besides, to tell how it came to you is just
like beginning to write it, and although you may never write it, so
what!"]. Thus El cuarto de atras separates the written artifact, which
within the fiction exists only as the stack of papers on the table in
the corner, from the activity of producing texts through discourse.
And since discourse involves "an utterance assuming a speaker
and a hearer, and in the speaker, the intention of influencing the
other in some way," 13 the text addressee plays a role as creative as
that of the protagonist. Furthermore, in this case the text reader is
also a text speaker. The protagonist, apparently sensing her inter-
locutor's essential role in the creative process when she summoned

him in the first place, is acutely aware of his vital importance now
as the process nears its end: "Tengo que seguir contandole cuentos,
si me callo, se ira" (p. 193) ["I have to continue telling him stories,
if I stop talking, he will leave me"]. The boundary separating
speaker from listener does not exist in this textual situation; one is
as important as the other when the mode is discourse. Yet inevita-
bly the protagonist does send away her interlocutor when, ex-
hausted by the discussion of how to write the book and what to
include in it, she falls asleep. When she does so, the text they have
been jointly creating comes to an end.
As a result of the almost exclusive focus on how and what to
write, the illusion is created that the written work remains an
unfulfilled potential, a product yet, or perhaps never, to come into
existence. Until it does come into existence, it is as if no fictional
mode exists in El cuarto de atras. In fact, only when the protagonist
picks up the manuscript do the three worlds of the fictional mode
fall into focus: "Ya estoy otra vez en la cama con el pijama azul
puesto y un coda apoyado sabre Ia almohada. El sitio donde tenia
el libra de Todorov esta ocupado ahara par un bloque de folios
numerados, ciento ochenta y dos. En el primero, en mayusculas y
con rotulador negro, esta escrito 'EL CUARTO DE ATRAS'. Lo
levanto y empiezo a leer" (p. 210) ["Here I am again in bed in my
blue pajamas and one elbow leaning against the pillow. The spot
where I had Todorov's book is now filled by a stack of numbered
pages, one hundred and eighty-two. On the first one, in black
capital letters is written the title, 'EL CUARTO DE ATRAS.' I
pick it up and begin to read"]. The product that up to this point
was relegated to an obscure corner now inserts itself into the
forefront. And when the protagonist reads the first paragraph of
the manuscript and it turns out to be the same as the paragraph
with which the novel began, the fictional mode becomes clearly
defined. The woman reading is now a fictive author whose narra-
tion or product she holds in her hands. By the same token the
woman who earlier was talking with the stranger is now dramat-
ically reduced to a verbal construct firmly embedded within the
pages of the manuscript, as is the stranger with whom she was
talking. Standing somewhere outside this written artifact is a text-
act reader, whose world is on the same level but separate from that
of the fictive author holding the work in her hands. A fictional

mode has been created, therefore, not through the act of writing or
reading but through that of discourse. Yet beyond that mode is the
conventional one that makes possible this new illusion so master-
fully constructed by Carmen Martin Gaite.
By dramatizing her narratee and making him an active partici-
pant in discourse, by forsaking the impersonal cause-and-effect
dogmas ofhistorical narrative, and by recognizing the fantastic not
only as a viable fictional mode but as an essential dimension of
reality, the protagonist discovers a solution to her need for a new
artistic expression. Her process of discovery, in turn, results in a
novel that has been recognized as: "una de las mas imaginativas
respuestas de nuestra literatura a ese hecho hist6rico transcen-
dente que signific6 Ia desaparici6n de Franco y su regimen" 14
["one of the most imaginative replies of our literature to that
transcendent historical event represented by the disappearance of
Franco and his regime"]. Indeed, one reading suggested by the
novel is that the reality of the Franco years cannot be apprehended
by a static presentation of dates, statistics, and events; it cannot be
reduced to univocal statements. The dynamic interplay of texts in
El cuarto de atrds, on the other hand, does allow us to apprehend that
the literary text is integrally woven into the sociohistorical text of
the country. 15 Above all, it points toward the plurality of meanings
inherent in the very concept "text": "Siempre hay un texto soiiado,
indeciso y fugaz, anterior a! que de verdad se recita, barrido por el"
(p. 40) ["There is always a text that is merely a dream, vague and
ephemeral, preceding and erased by the one that is actually being
cited"].
A plurality of meanings is the effect created by nearly all the
textual strategies employed in the novel. When the protagonist
begins to read the manuscript she earlier created, for example, her
action bestows upon the original text a whole new plurality of
meanings. Even the title of the novel itself points toward this
liberating plurality. "El cuarto de atras," or backroom, was the
place where the protagonist as a child enjoyed the freedom to
develop her creative imagination. 16 As the mature narrator at-
tempting to come to grips with post-Franco Spain, she now sees
that the present context imposes a new plurality of connotations on
this text from the past: "me lo imagino tambien como un desvan
del cerebro, una especie de recinto secreto lleno de trastos bo-

rrosos, separado de las antesalas mas limpias y ordenadas de Ia
mente por una cortina que solo se descorre de vez en cuando; los
recuerdos que pueden darnos alguna sorpresa viven agazapados
en el cuarto de atras, siempre salen de allf, y solo cuando quieren,
no sirve hostigarlos" (p. 91) ["I imagine it also as an attic of the
brain, a type of secret enclosure filled with dimly outlined used
furniture, separated from the cleaner and more orderly front rooms
of the brain by a curtain that is only pulled back once in a while; the
memories capable of surprising us a little live huddled in the
backroom, they always come out from there, and only when they
feel like it, it does no good to try to prod them"]. Not only El cuarto
de atras but the whole Spanish fictional movement that emerged in
the 1970s allows us to experience the lifting of this curtain with the
end of the dictatorship: the freeing of the memory and of fiction
itself from the shackles ofhistorical narrative; the recognition of the
fantastic as an integral part of existence; the dynamic role of
discourse in the transformation of the work into a network of
interconnecting texts.
Whereas in some ways the story-focused self-referential novels
are the most flagrant violators of the laws of fiction, they may also
herald a new direction for the Spanish novel, a movement away
from the metafictional mode. For with the new prominence of the
story and the blurring of the narrating act, we are but one short
step from a nonmetafictional mode. Exactly what form will emerge
is still unclear to this writer, but certainly it will not be a carbon
copy of anything from the past. As the novel follows its spiral
movement to its next stage, it will carry with it the traces of the self-
referential novel, and these traces will influence whatever mode
surges to the forefront, assuring in the process another unique
novelistic expression.
Afterwords
Throughout this study I have defined metafiction as the violation

of fictional modes, and have used that definition as the unifying
focus for all the analyses. Whereas the term violation may seem
somewhat extreme in some cases, I have intended it in the same
sense that speech act theorists define flouting, for example, as one
means of violating the Cooperative Principle. 1 Just as flouting
modifies but does not destroy the speech act, so modal violations
modify but do not destroy the essence of fiction. The Cooperative
Principle can be violated in multiple ways and with untold effects;
fictional modes can also be violated in multiple ways with untold
effects. The concept, then, does not necessarily lead to a rigid,
reductive formula for defining metafiction. Indeed, rather than
reduce, I have attempted to demonstrate that such a concept can
open the text and in so doing perhaps contribute to the community
effort of discovering new dimensions of the literary experience. The
efficacy of this contribution will be measured by the degree to
which it inspires modifications and corrections, the degree to
which the readings it offers are answered by other readings, and
the degree to which the novels studied in it point to other novels.
Before the term metafiction came into vogue, critics often re-
ferred to what we now call metafictional works as anti-novels, or
even non-novels. Since in my definition of metafiction I use the
violation of fictional modes and conventions as the fundamental
criterion, there is a certain justification for the anti- or non-novel
label. Yet both have a pejorative connotation, and people who
choose these labels tend to view such works as a critic's delight but
a reader's ennui. They are seen as literary but not readable. For
many, metafiction is guilty of one of today's most onerous crimes:
elitism. Isaac Stern has provided one of the more eloquent recent
replies to those who fear elitism in art:
There is another problem today: the concern about whether the arts are an
elite function in a populist time. This should be faced. There's nothing
wrong with the word elite; it's not a dirty word. It's a description of what
the best of society can do. It does not have to carry the connotation of
social and economic position. In our day, in our society, it is a recognition
of what people can do. The world looks to the United States for leadershitr-
political, economic, military and more. I'm sure that certain parts of
Washington would be less than proud if the instruments we provided for
the defense of other countries as well as our own were not the best possible
airplanes, the most powerful guns, the most effective rifles and the greatest
number of bullets. Why should we not have the same pride in the kind of
people we develop, the organizations that represent us and the society in
which we live?2
Although Stern's plea is obviously directed to those in the United

States government and society who provide the financial support
for the arts, his defense of elitism can apply to the type ofliterature
I have examined in this study. And, I would like to argue, since in
general this type of literature is elitist, it is our obligation as
teachers and critics to expose our students and colleagues to it.
With such a dictum I am not implying that we should abandon
that other elitist group labeled the classics, or what Roland Barthes
calls "readerly texts," but merely that "writerly texts" (those in
which the reader in effect has to rewrite the text, in which he or she
is the creator to the same degree as is the author) also have a role in
our cultural development. 3 Each type of text provides its own
unique aesthetic experience, and the danger is to champion one, in
the name of whatever aesthetic or moral principle, to the exclusion
of the other.
Of the novels examined in this study, certainly the most readerly
are those from before the twentieth century. The Quijote, for exam-
ple, is both a readerly and a writerly text, depending on the
approach one applies to it. The same could be said of the Gald6s
novels in which the metafictional mode is prominent. But as we
move into the twentieth century, the writerly tends more and more
to overwhelm the readerly text; the active role of the reader be-
comes an explicit dimension of the work, and the role of passive
consumer is all but denied. There is reason to assume, further-
more, that such a shift in emphasis reflects the change that oc-
curred in reader expectations. Cervantes, Quevedo, and Gald6s
seemed to be acutely aware of reader expectations as they carefully
counterbalanced the writerly dimension of their works with a more
Afterwords 127
familiar readerly focus. Unamuno, on the other hand, apparently

exceeded reader expectations at the time he published Niebla;
initially considered one of his less successful novels, now it is the
preferred. Each of these novelists, along with those from other
countries, helped mold reader expectations to the point where the
more daring metafictional expressions of the last two decades were
possible. For those who accuse these recent novels of elitism,
however, they too have exceeded expectations.
Forming a dramatic contrast with those who see the metafic-
tional mode as too elitist is the school of thought that says that the
current movement reflects a state of exhaustion, that solipsism has
become a feeble substitute for creative imagination. Robert Scholes
even goes so far as to make a moral issue of self-reflection in fiction.
He believes that novelistic self-reflection projects an exaggerated
sense of alienation, and that literature has an obligation to generate
systems reflecting harmony between man and the natural order. 4
That the contemporary metafictional movement is about to, if it
has not already, run its course is irrefutably clear; that it should be
censored by Scholes as mere "masturbatory reveling in self-scru-
tiny" (p. 218) seems at best an excessively sweeping generalization.
Even if not fulfilling the harmonizing role Scholes would impose on
them, metafictional texts reflect the society in which we exist. Even
self-reflexive texts, after all, cannot escape the context in which
they are created.
An explanation of the connection between the contemporary
metafictional movement and Western society leads in several direc-
tions. It is possible to speculate, for example, that self-conscious
narration is a reaction against our modern computerized world in
which technology threatens to replace conscious creativity. It may
also be a response to bureaucratic growth in all Western societies,
to a need to reassert the existence of a single controlling force.
Conversely, one could argue that some metafictional novels reflect
the impossibility of ever identifying such a center of authority, that
they are a reaction against the illusion of absolutes in any realm of
human existence. Or perhaps this novelistic movement merely
mirrors the leisure society Western civilization has created for
itself, a society in which everything is transformed into a game and
everyone is forced to play the game. Whatever explanation one
offers for the relationship between metafiction and contemporary
Western society, the particular national context in which the work

is created must receive prominent consideration. In the case of the
Spanish self-referential novel, therefore, we should not exclude
Franco Spain from our readings.
Notwithstanding the very serious danger of simplification, one
must begin by recognizing that the emergence of the Spanish self-
referential novel coincided with the end of the Franco dictatorship.
Among the many repressive policies of the regime, what it at-
tempted to do to language and artistic creativity seems to offer the
most obvious connection between the new novelistic movement
and the context from which it grew. By attempting to reduce
language to a univocal ideological tool of the state through cen-
sorship, slogans, and proclamations, the dictatorship committed
sodomy on language's quintessential plurality of meanings. The
death of Franco in November 1975 gave added impetus to an effort
already underway to restore polysemy to language; there was a
new urgency to express creative freedom. As a reply, therefore, to
some thirty-six years of repression, the self-referential novel sig-
nifies at least to some degree a celebration of the creative process.
Perhaps that celebration of creativity more than anything else
explains the switch from the earlier expression of the metafictional
mode in the Spanish novel.
Rather than the former focus on the creation of illusions, the
new focus is on creation itself. To whatever degree this, in addition
to other factors, explains the self-referential movement, the works
composing it, when read within the context in which they were
created, reflect more than mere exercises in authorial self-indul-
gence. In one way or another they transform a unique social
reality into a unique aesthetic experience. Since that social reality
is in a constant process of dynamic change, the metafictional
movement of the last decade is irrefutably destined to give way, ifit
has not already, to a new novelistic genre. Yet the end of the
metafictional movement of recent times will not mark the end of
metafiction. Movements are composed of a temporally-defined
body of texts; modes represent a temporal strategies of expression.
The metafictional mode that can be traced back at least as far as
the Quijote certainly can be expected to prevail long after the
current obsession with its textual strategies wanes.
Notes
Introduction
1. Robert Alter, Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre (Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press, 1975).
2. Robert Scholes, "Metafiction," Iowa Review I (1970): 100-115.
3. Robert Scholes, Fabulation and Metcifiction (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press,
1979).
4. Gustavo Perez Firmat, "Metafiction Again," Taller Literario I (Fall 1980):
30-38.
5. Linda Hutcheon, Narcissistic Narrative: The Meta.fictional Paradox (Waterloo,
Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 1980).
6. Inger Christensen, The Meaning f!! Meta.fiction: A Critical Study f!!Selected Novels
by Sterne, Nabokov, Barth, and Beckett (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1981).
7. Steven G. Kellman, The Self-Begetting Novel (New York: Columbia Univ.
Press, 1980); John 0. Stark, The Literature f!! Exhaustion (Durham: Duke U niv. Press,
1974).
8. Scholes in Fabulation and Meta.fiction suggests that we are (or were in 1979) at a
turning point away from metafiction and toward a more committed movement to
some degree involving or similar to science fiction. See his epilogue, entitled
"Imagination Dead Imagine: Reflections on Self-Reflexive Fiction," pp. 210-18.
Inger Christensen in The Meaning f!! Metcifiction credits William Gass with coining
the term metafiction in a collection of essays published in 1970.
9. Gerard Genette, "Genres, 'types,' modes," Poitique 32 (Nov. 1977): 389-421.
10. Ulrich Wicks, "The Nature of Picaresque Narrative: A Modal Approach,"
PMLA 89 (March 1974): 241.
11. Linda Hutcheon, even in her fine study on metafiction (Narcissistic Narrative),
confesses confusion as to how to resolve this diachronic-synchronic problem.
12. Northrop Frye, "Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes" in Anatomy qf
Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 33-67.
13. In addition to the Genette article, "Genres, 'types,' modes," see Tzvetan
Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard
Howard (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975); and Christine Brooke-Rose, "Histor-
ical Genres/Theoretical Genres: A Discussion ofTodorov on the Fantastic," New
Literary History 13 (Autumn 1967): 145-58.
14. Robert Scholes, "Systems and System-Builders," in Structuralism in Liter-
ature: An Introduction (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 117-41.
15. Christine Brooke-Rose, "Historical Genres/Theoretical Genres,'' for exam-
ple, does a critique first of Frye and then ofTodorov's "theoretical genres," noting in
the latter case that Todorov also confuses historical and ahistorical criteria.
130 Notes to Pages 8-14
16. For one of the more recent discussion of what I am labeling "reportorial
fiction," see John Hellmann, Fables rif Fact: The New journalism as New Fiction
(Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1981). Although Hellmann sees both the "New
Journalism Novel" and what he calls "fabulist fiction" as self-reflexive, he draws a
basic distinction between the two similar to the one I am arguing: "The fiction
writer provides such apparatus as clear fakery in order to draw attention to the
traditional status of fiction as a masquerade of reality. The effect is to obviously
'frame' the work, and thus to set it off from reality. The new journalist, on the other
hand, frames his work in order to convince the reader that the opposite is the case--
that it is a 'true account' based on actual observation and years of research" (p. 14).
For another theory on the transformation of referents, see John S. Brushwood,
"Sobre el referente y Ia transformaci6n narrativa," Semiosis 6 Qan.-J une 1981):
39-55.
17. John W. Kronik, "Gald6s and the Grotesque," Anales Galdosianos, Supple-
ment (1976): 39-54.
18. "If the fantastic constantly makes use of rhetorical figures it is because it
originates in them. The supernatural is born oflanguage, it is both its consequence
and its proof: not only do the devil and vampires exist only in words, but language
alone enables us to conceive what is always absent: the supernatural" (The Fantastic,
p. 82). In his book Todorov distinguishes between "historical genres" and what he
calls "theoretical genres"-the latter a mixture of generic and modal criteria. In a
later article entitled "The Origin of Genres," New Literary History 13 (Autumn 1967):
159-70, Todorov backs away from his earlier terminology and limits his use of the
term "genre" to "those classes of texts that have been perceived as such in the course
of history" (p. 162). He then proposes an analysis oflevels of discourse as a means of
defining the properties of any given historical class of texts. In this later article
Todorov seems to be echoing Genette's thesis on genre versus mode.
19. Seymour Chatman, in Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fi~tion and Film
(Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978), proposes a differentiation of readers similar to
what I am proposing. According to the Chatman explanation, the narratee is the
addressee of the narrator, the implied reader that of the implied author, and the real
reader that of the real author. As I noted earlier, the term "implied reader" can
create problems since the narratee often is also implied, and in metafiction the
implied reader is often given an explicit identity. Susan Sniader Lanser, The Narrative
Act: Point rifView in Prose Fiction (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1981), follows the
Chatman paradigm except that she uses the word "audience" in place of"implied
reader."
20. Emile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth
Meek (Coral Gables: Univ. of Miami Press, 1971), pp. 205-15 et passim.
21. In "Genres, 'types,' modes,'' Genette explains mode as the "situation
d'enonciation" (p. 394 et passim), a term he defines in more detail as the "act of
narrating" in his Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lewin
(Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1980); see particularly his chapter "Voice,'' pp.
212-62.
22. Seymour Chatman, in Story and Discourse, defines the story as the "what of
narrative" while discourse is the "way of narrative" (p. 9).
Notes to Pages 15-23 131
23. Genette has a term for each of these levels, but to avoid undue complica-
tions, I have chosen merely to number them. His term "metadiegetic," for exam-
ple, is totally different from the way I have been using the prefix "meta" in this
study.
24. For an application of the concept of narrative levels to a text see Shlomith
Rimmon-Kenan, "Ambiguity and Narrative Levels: Christine Brooke-Rose's
Thru," Poetics Today 3 (1982): 21-32.
25. Such a triad structure of the fictional mode basically corresponds to that
proposed by Felix Martinez Bonati in a book first published in Chile in 1960 and
later reprinted in Spain: La estructura de la ohra literaria: Una investigacion de .filosofia del
lenguaje y estitica (Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1972). Recently an English version ap-
peared as Fictive Discourse and the Structures qf Literature: A Phenomenological Approach,
trans. Philip W. Silver (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1981).
26. Tzvetan Todorov, in "An Introduction to Verisimilitude," The Poetics qf
Prose, trans. Richard Howard (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 80-88, notes
a similar conflict when a writer must violate the verisimilitude of the world he is
evoking in order to obey the verisimilitude of the genre in which he is writing.
Chapter One: Violations and Pseudo- Violations

I. Luis Goytisolo, in a letter to the author, 2 August 1981, states: "El Quijote, en
efecto, y por motivos que convendria analizar, se ha convertido en 'el modelo'-no
tendria sentido hablar aqui de influencias--de novela, no solo para mi sino tam bien
para mis mas destacados colegas, los Juanes, Benet, Marse, Goytisolo."
2. The works and respective criteria for considering the Quijote the first modern
novel are: Americo Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes (Barcelona: Noguer, 1972),
who cites the expression of Renaissance ideas; Dorothy Van Ghent, The English
Novel: Form and Function (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), who quotes Lionel
Trilling's thesis that all prose fiction is a variation of the theme of Don Quijote; Jose
Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones del Quijote (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1964 ), who cites its
ability to achieve a plurality of planes or aesthetic profundity; and Wolfgang Kayser,
"Origen y crisis de Ia novela moderna," trans. Aurelio Fuentes Rojo, Cultura
Universitaria 47 (1955): 5-47, who refers to the employment of a "personal narrator."
3. Alter, Partial Magic.
4. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Ellngenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de Ia Mancha
(Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1958), Primera Parte, Capitulo Primero, p. 47. For further
citations from this edition I will note in arabic numerals Part I or 2, the chapter,
and the page.
5. Walter J. Ong, S.J., "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction," PMLA
90 Qan. 1975): 9-21.
6. The thesis of Mia I. Gerhardt, Don Quijote: La vie et les livres (Amsterdam:
N .V. Noord-Hollandsche, 1955 ). Gerhardt's rather obscure study has been the most
influential on my own approach to the novel.
7. One might argue that an even more dramatic metafictional example occurs
in Book Two when the protagonist confronts a character from Avellaneda's pia-
giarized version. Although certainly representing a violation of the world of the

story, the effect of that episode strikes me as more concerned with the dispute over
the plagiarized version than with the craft of fiction.
8. Francisco de Quevedo, Historia de la vida del Buscon (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe,
1967), p. 128.
9. The term "experiencing self' is borrowed from Franz Stanzel, Narrative
Situations in the Novel: Tom Jones, Moby-Dick, The Ambassadors, Ulysses, trans. James P.
Pusack (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1971). Stanzel explains that the first-
person narrative presents the protagonist/narrator in two dimensions. His "narrat-
ing self' is the narrator in the present in the act of telling the story. This narrating
self normally has greater insight and maturity than he had at the time he experi-
enced what he is narrating.
10. Two prominent critics, nevertheless, insist that there is a violation of nar-
rative level. Francisco Rico, La nove/a picaresca y el punto de vista (Barcelona: Seix
Barra!, 1969), sees this episode as an artistic oversight in which the narrator does
trespass the boundaries of his narrative. Gonzalo Dfaz Migoyo, Estructura de la
nove/a: Anatomia de "El Busctin" (Madrid: Editorial Fundamentos, 1978), on the other
hand, believes Quevedo consciously has his narrator violate his limits in order to
dramatize this key turning point. Whereas I agree that it is a conscious strategy
designed to dramatize the moment, I believe that if one analyzes the point of
focalization it is obviously a pseudo rather than an actual violation.
II. "The Self-Conscious Novel in Eclipse," in Partial Magic, pp. 84-137.
12. John W. Kronik, "El amigo Manso and the Game of Fictive Authority,"
Anales Galdosianos 12 (1977): 71-94.
13. John W. Kronik, "Misericordia as Metafiction," in Homenaje a Antonio Sanchez
Barbudo: Ensayos de .{iteratura espanola modema (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press,
1981), pp. 37- 50.
14. John W. Kronik, "Galdosian Reflections: Feijoo and the Fabrication of
Fortunata," Modem Language Notes 97 (1982): 1-40.
15. Benito Perez Gald6s, "La de Bringas," in Obras completas, 6 (Madrid:
Bolanos y Aguilar, 1960): 507.
16. I am indebted to Vernon A. Chamberlin for calling my attention to this
story. I cite from the Obras completas, 6 (Madrid: Bolanos y Aguilar, 1945): 503-15.
17. A narrator interrupting to comment on the nature of what he has narrated
would be an example ofGustavo Perez Firmat's text-scholium formula as he defines
it in "Metafiction Again." See my Introduction to this book for a more detailed
explanation of Perez Firmat's thesis.
18. The primary source of the theory on reader expectations is Hans Robert
Jauss, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," New Literary History II
(Autumn 1970): 8-37.
Chapter Two: Fiction on a Palimpsest

I. See Lucien Dallenbach, "lntertexte et autotexte," Poitique 27 (1976): 282-96,
for a more detailed explanation of how "mise en abysme" functions as novelistic
self-commentary.
2. Leon Livingstone, Temayforma en las novelas de Azorin (Madrid: Gredos, 1970),

defines interior duplication in much broader terms, and discusses several works
from this novelistic generation that by his definition engage in self-commentary. See
particularly "EI desdoblamiento interior y el problema de Ia forma en Ia novela,"
pp. 32- 69.
3. Prominent among such essays are: Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, "Unamuno's
Niebla: Existence and the Game of Fiction," MLN 79 (1964): 188-205;Jose Emilio
Gonzalez, "Reflexiones sobre Niebla, de Unamuno," Asomante 17 (1961): 60-69;
Frances W. Weber, "Unamuno's Niebla: From Novel to Dream," PMLA 88 (March
1973): 209-18; Leon Livingstone, "The Novel as Self-Creation," in Unamuno, Creator
and Creation, ed.Jose Rubia Barcia and M.A. Zeitlin (Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press, 1967), pp. 92-115; in the same volume, Alexander A. Parker, "On the
Interpretation of Niebla," pp. 116-38; and most recently, Fernando de Toro, "Per-
sonaje aut6nomo, lector y au tor en Miguel de Unamuno," Hispania 64 (Sept. 1981):
360-65. For an annotated bibliography on the novel see David William Foster,
Unamuno and the Novel as Expressionistic Conceit (Hato Rey, Puerto Rico: Inter Amer-
ican Univ. Press, 1973), pp. 44-52.
4. Apparently Niebla represents what Linda Hutcheon, in Narcissistic Narrative,
has in mind for her metafictionallinguistic mode: "the text would actually show its
building blocks-the very language whose referents serve to construct that imag-
inative world" (pp. 28-29).
5. Miguel de Unamuno, Niebla (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1963), p. 9.
6. Unamuno employs a similar textual strategy in San Manuel Bueno, mti.rtir. As
the narrator Angela describes the voice of Don Manuel when he repeats Christ's
words of doubt, she notes: "Y era como si oyesen a Nuestro Senor Jesucristo
mismo, como si Ia voz brotara de aquel viejo crucifijo a cuyos pies tantas genera-
ciones de madres habian depositado sus congojas. Como que una vez, al oirlo su
madre, Ia de Don Manuel .... " ["And it was as if they were listening to Jesus
Christ himself, just as if the voice were sprouting forth from that old crucifix at
whose base so many generations of mothers had deposited their griefs. So that one
time, when his mother, Don Manuel's, heard it .... "] Miguel de Unamuno, San
Manuel Bueno, mti.rtir (New York: Las Americas, 1960), p. 18.
7. This is very similar to what John W. Kronik notes in reference to the
prologue to Gald6s's El amigo Manso: "The frame does not outline decoratively the
image it contains or simply circumscribe that image spatially; instead, it infuses the
construct with meaning and delimits that meaning. It is a sign superimposed on
another sign, which latter can no longer be perceived independently of its informing
structure" (pp. 74-75 ). "El amigo Manso and the Game of Fictive Autonomy," Anales
Galdosianos 12 (1977): 71-94.
8. For the reasons just outlined I take issue with Robert Alter, Partial Magic,
when, after first conceding that Niebla raises questions that might be regarded as
prolegomena for the self-conscious novel in the twentieth century, Alter concludes
by saying: "The problem with Unamuno's novel-it is a recurrent trap for modern
self- conscious novelists-is that nothing in its fictional realization is quite so
interesting as the theorizing that goes on within it" (p. 157).
Chapter Three: Codes versus Modes
I. For a more detailed discussion of Spanish vanguardism, see: Miguel Angel

Hernandez, Prosa vanguardista en Ia generacion del 27 (Geci y La Gaceta Literaria)
(Madrid: Prensa Espanola, 1975); Ramon Buckley and John Crispin, Los vanguar-
distas espaiioles (1925-1935) (Madrid: Alianza, 1973); and especially Gustavo Perez
Firmat, Idle Fictions: The Hispanic Vanguard Novel, 1926-1934 (Durham: Duke Univ.
Press, 1983). The accuracy of the rubric "art for art's sake" for vanguard ism has
been challenged by at least one critic: Victor Fuentes, "La narrativa espanola de
vanguardia (1923-1931): Un ensayo de interpretacion," Romanic Review 63 (Oct.
1972): 211-18.
2. A sampling of critics' reactions to James's novels: Eugenio de Nora, La nove/a
espaiiola contempordnea, vol. 2 (Madrid: Gredos, 1962): "Lo caracteristico deJarnes y
sus coetaneos es, precisamente, Ia desmembracion sistematica y-en cierta medi-
da-la reconstruccion artificial y laberintica del relato. El artista suplanta, o
cuando menos somete abiertamente al creador; Ia habilidad pasa a ser mucho mas
necesaria e importante que Ia inventiva" (p. 155). Emilia de Zuleta, Arley vida en Ia
obra de Benjamin jarnis (Madrid: Gredos, 1977): "Los personajes o el narrador,
dentro de Ia novela o en unidades narrativas menores introducidas ex profeso,
toman a su cargo Ia tarea de advertir al publico y a los criticos sobre las interpreta-
ciones que del genero se han hecho en cada caso particular, sobre los fines de Ia
novela, sobre Ia seleccion de las tecnicas utilizadas y sobre muchos aspectos mas"
(p. 115 ). Victor Fuentes, "La dimension estetico-erotica y Ia novelistica de James,
Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 235 Uuly 1969): 25-37: "La narrativa de Jarnes halla
principal soporte en Ia propia intimidad del autor--de aqui su marcado caracter
lirico y ensayistico--, quien se proyecta en su obra, en el papel del poeta, como
liberador y creador que aspira a establecer un orden mas alto en el mundo, fundado
en Ia armonia y Ia fratificacion y no en Ia supresion" (p. 28). Joaquin de En-
trambasaguas, Las mejores nove/as contempordneas, vol. 7 (Barcelona: Planeta, 1961):
"Y el hombre, las actitudes del hombre ante el mundo que le rodea, sus reacciones
individuales, seran los temas de las novelas de Benjamin James, en que ei mismo
figurara directamente-Julio--o dentro de sus personajes ... porque a traves de
ellos expone teorias sistematicas" (p. 1334). In the most recent monographic study
ofJames's work, Maria Pilar Martinez Latre, La nove/a intelectual de Benjamin jarnis
(Zaragoza: Institucion Fernando el Catolico, 1979), comments: "La busqueda de
una expresion original le obliga a utilizar un lenguaje esoterico, propenso a las
brillantes y sugestivas metaforas, que lo alejan de Ia trivialidad, pero dificultan Ia
comprension del mensaje (descoyuntan Ia trama novelesca y Ia atomizan)" (p. 27).
3. Paul Ilie, "Benjamin James: Aspects of the Dehumanized Novel," PMLA
76 (1961): 247-53, has made by far the most insightful study of"dehumanization" in
James's novels.
4. Gustavo Perez Firmat, "Locura y muerte de nadie: Two Novels by James,"
Romanic Review 72 (1981): 66-78.
5. I am following Oswald Ducrot and Tzvetan Todorov in defining literary
codes as the system of formal constraints distinguishing the different literary
movements, genres, and styles: Dictionnaire encyclopidique des sciences du langage (Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1972), p. 137.
6. Benjamin James, "Locura y muerte de nadie" in Las mejores nove/as contempo-

rdneas, vol. 7 (Barcelona: Planeta, 1961) ed. Joaquin de Entrambasaguas, p. 1426.
7. For an example of a narrator of a James novel directly addressing a charac-
ter, see Teoria del zumbel (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1930), pp. 47-53.
8. Such an explanation basically corresponds to how Mikhail Bakhtin defines
parody in his Problems if Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. R.W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis,
1973). See particularly the chapter entitled "The Word in Dostoevsky," pp. 150-227.
9. For a much more detailed explanation of focalization, see Micke Bal, "Narra-
tion et focalisation: Pour une theorie des instances du recit," Poetique 29 (1977):
107-27.
10. "Apuntes para un modelo de Ia intertextualidad en literatura," Romanic
&view 69 (1978): 1-14. Bakhtin says the borrowed words become "double voiced"
when introduced into someone else's speech (Problems if Dostoevsky's Poetics, p. 161).
II. There is, however, one notable exception in Locura y muerte de nadie where the
modes of fiction are violated. At the end of chapter thirteen, after Juan's failure to
catch Matilde and Arturo in a compromising position, which would enable him to
avenge his honor in truly noble tradition, the narrator notes: "En este breve relata,
en este fragmento de Ia vida de Juan Sanchez, nose tuvo Ia fortuna de hallar a todos
los personajes en su pun to de mas alta tension. Para alguno se adelanto, para otro se
retraso Ia novela" (p. 1504). ["In this brief story, in this fragment from the life of
Juan Sanchez, one was not fortunate enough to catch all of the characters at their
highest point of dramatic tension. For some the novel got ahead of itself, for others it
fell behind."] He is saying, in effect, that the novel has betrayed him, that as author
he has no control over it. This is an example, of course, of a violation of the laws of
fiction, although the intent seems more playful and less probing than, say, what we
saw in Unamuno. At any rate such an example is an exception rather than a rule in
this particular novel.
12. J.S. Bernstein, Benjamin James (New York: Twayne, 1972), p. 100.
13. Benjamin James, La novia del viento (Mexico City: Nueva Cultura, 1940), p.
58.
14. Emilia de Zuleta, Arte y vida, p. 236, reports that a copy of this painting is in
fact listed in the Prado catalogue and is also reproduced in the Encyclopedia £spasa.
15. Gustavo Perez Firmat, "Pedro Salinas' 'Mundo cerrado' and Hispanic
Vanguard Fiction," La Chispa '81: Selected Proceedings (New Orleans: Tulane Univ.,
1982), pp. 261-67, perspicuously analyzes how the Salinas short story "Mundo
cerrado" reflects one of Ortega y Gasset's metaphors on the "new art." According to
Ortega in his famous essay La deshumanizacion del arte (Madrid: Revista de Occi-
dente, 1925 ), the problem of separating the artistic work from its content, i.e., story,
is similar to the problem of viewing a scene through a window pane. One must
either focus on the pane and thereby blot out the scene, or focus on the scene thereby
ignoring the existence of the window pane. Ortega argues that the "new art" blots
out the story so as to direct attention to the artistic work. The foregrounding of
literary codes seems to characterize a basic vanguardist strategy for switching the
focus from the content to the work of art.
16. Alter, Partial Magic, p. xii-xiii.
17. Since this essay was written, a collection of previously published articles on
James has appeared, La nove/a lirica, 11: Perez de Ayala, james, ed. Daria Villanueva
(Madrid: Taurus, 1983). Several of the articles in Villanueva's volume are cited in
this chapter.
Chapter Four: Rebellion against Models

I. J.M. Martinez Cachero, La nove/a espanola entre 1939 y 1969 (Madrid: Editorial
Castalia, 1973), has best documented the continuing novelistic activity of the war
years.
2. Other terms applied to this novelistic movement include social realism,
objective realism, behaviorism, Tremendismo, and variations mixing or modifying
with other adjectives the terms listed. For the best panoramic studies of the postwar
Spanish novel see: Gonzalo Sobejano, Nove/a espanola de nuestro tiempo (En busca del
pueblo perdido) (Madrid: Editorial Prensa Espanola, 1970); and Ignacio Soldevila
Durante, La nove/a desde 1936 (Madrid: Alhambra, 1980).
3. Alter, Partial Magic, obviously unaware ofGaldos, sees a similar hiatus in the
nineteenth-century realist novel. Alter attributes such a hiatus to the realist novel's
function as a source of sociopolitical information (see "The Self-Conscious Novel in
Eclipse" pp. 84-137).
4. Gustavo Perez Firmat, indeed, argues that Ignacio Aldecoa's neorealistic El
.folgor y Ia sangre (1954) is an example of"narrative metafiction," or a type of novel
whose metafictionality is conveyed allegorically. Such an open definition ofmetafic-
tion does not correspond to my use of the term in this study. See Perez Firmat's
"Metafiction Again."
5. The best studies comparing neorealism and the New Novel are: Janet W.
Diaz, "Origins, Aesthetics and the 'Nueva Novela Espanola,' "Hispania 59 (March
1976): 109-17; and Felix Grande, "Narrativa, realidad y Espana actuates: Historia
de un amor dificil," Cuademos Hispanoamericanos 10! (May 1975): 545-51.
6. I present this thesis with various examples in my article "El nuevo lenguaje
de Ia nueva novela," Insula 396-97 (Nov.-Dec. 1979): 6-7.
7. Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Don juan (Barcelona: Destino, 1963), p. 20.
8. See, for example: Michael D. Thomas, "Cunqueiro's Un hombre que se parecia a
Orestes: A Humorous Revitalization of an Ancient Myth," Hispania 61 (March
1978): 35-45; Pacho Marinero, "Don Alvaro de Bretaiia: Perifrasis y panifrasis del
tiempo," Insula 308-9 Ouly-Aug. 1972): 23; Cesar Antonio Molina, "Alvaro Cun-
queiro: La fabulacion sin fin," Insula 413 (April 1981): I, 10-11; and Jacqueline
Eyring Bixler, "Self-Conscious Narrative and Meta theatre in Un hombre que se parecia
a Orestes,'' Hispania 67 (May 1984): 214-20.
9. I discuss how the sketch of Orestes complements the general treatment of
the myth in "Mito-realidad: La dinamica de Un hombre que se parecia a Orestes" in La
nove/a espanola de posguerra: Creacion artistica y experiencia personal (Madrid: CUPSA,
1978), 246-77.
10. Alvaro Cunqueiro, Un hombre que se parecia a Orestes (Barcelona: Destino,
1969), p. 24.
II. Bixler, "Self-Conscious Narrative," in defending the Dona lnes section,
argues that indeed it contributes to the novel's structural unity. One might argue
that the chorus in the Oresteia was itself a metafictional device, perhaps even an
inspiration for Cunqueiro's experiments with the mode.
Chapter Five: Process as Product

I. I first proposed this term in my article "From Neorealism and the New
Novel to the Self-Referential Novel: Juan Goytisolo's Juan sin Tierra," Anales de Ia
Narrativa Espanola Contemportinea 5 (1980): 73-82.
2. (Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1973). For the most insightful essay written to date
on the novel, see: David K. Herzberger, "Luis Goytisolo's Recuento: Towards a
Reconciliation of the Word/World Dialectic," Anales de Ia Nove/a de Posguerra 3 ( 1978):
39-55.
3. (Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1976). I am aware of only two articles to date on this
novel: Alexandra Riccio, "De las ruinas al taller en Ia obra de Luis Goytisolo,"
Anales de Ia Nove/a de Posguerra 2 (1977): 31-42; and Jose Ortega, "Aspectos narrativos
en Los verdes de mayo has/a el mar, de Luis Goytisolo," Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 370
(Aprill981): 105-14.
4. There are several important essays on this novel, including a whole collection
entitled juan sin Tierra (Madrid: Espiral/Revista, 1977), edited by Julian Rios. Also
of note are: Susan F. Levine, " 'Cuerpo' y 'no-cuerpo'-Una conjunci6n entre
.Juan Goytisolo y Octavio Paz," journal tif Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century 5 (Fall
1977): 123-35; and Michael Ugarte, Trilogy tif Treason: An lntertextual Study tif Juan
Goytisolo (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1981). My own previous work on this
novel can be found in, "Latrines, Whirlpools, and Voids: The Metafictional Mode
of Juan sin Tierra," Hispanic Review 48 (Spring 1980): 151-69; and reprinted in
translation in Voces I (1982): 67-79, as "Letrinas, torbellinos y vacios: el modo
metaficcional de juan sin Tierra"; and the article on the self-referential novel cited in
note I of this chapter.
5. In this essay I have adopted the term text author to distinguish between the
fictive author whose explicit appearance always constitutes a violation, and the
character/author within the story such as Raul in Los verdes de mayo has/a el mar. Since
the text author ofjuan sin Tierra both assumes responsibility for writing the work and
projects himself into the story as a character, I want to distinguish between the two
previously used terms.
6 . .Juan Goytisolo, juan sin Tierra (Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1975), pp. 312-13.
7. From Roland Barthes, "Textual Analysis of a Tale by Edgar Poe," Poe Stud-
ies 10 Qune 1977): 1-12, I am borrowing the term and concept "narrative code."
8. Susan F. Levine, " 'Cuerpo' y 'no-cuerpo,' " discusses several interesting
implications of the digestive process and how Goytisolo incorporates some of
Octavio Paz's concepts on the subject into the novel.
9. Throughout the novel the text author draws semiotic connections between
artistic creativity and Western bourgeois values: "antes de que Ia vieja predisposi-
ci6n de Ia estirpe a suprimir Ia libertad viva de hoy en nombre de Ia imaginaria
libertad de manana sometiese Ia invenci6n creadora a los imperativos de Ia produc-
ci6n" (p. 14) ["before the old predisposition of the race to suppress the living liberty
of today in the name of the imaginary liberty of tomorrow subjects creative inven-
tion to the imperatives of production"].
10. I am borrowing the dream analogy from Mieke Bal's definition of third-
degree focalization; see his "Narration et focalisation."
II. According to Goytisolo, the translation of the Arabic script is: "estoy
definitivamente al otro lado, con los parias de siempre, afilando el cuchillo" ["I am
definitively on the other side, with the eternal pariahs, sharpening my knife"]. See
"Juan Goytisolo-J uli:in Rios: Desde Juan sin Tierra," p. 10 in the collection of essays
on the novel (see note 4 of this chapter).
12. Readers represent the interesting contradiction of tremendous freedom of
interpretation tempered always by the constraints imposed by the text. As Inge
Crosman explains, in "Poetique de Ia lecture romanesque," L'Esprit Criateur 21
(Summer 1981): 70-80: "La lecture con<;ue ainsi est un role ajouer par un lecteur
plus ou moins libre, plus ou moins contraint selon le programme prevu par le texte"
(p. 71).
13. As I hope my argument has shown, it is misleading to equate the text
author with the real author Juan Goytisolo. Some people may be led to believe, for
example, that when the text author notes near the end of the novel that, "si en lo
futuro escribes, sera en otra lengua" (p. 319) ["if you write in the future, it will be in
another language"], Goytisolo contradicts himself by then publishing Makbara in
Spanish. The only contradiction lies in equating the words of a fictitious creation
with those of a real person.
Chapter Six: Reading-into-Being

I. Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Fragmentos de Apocalipsis (Barcelona: Destino,
1977), p. 82.
2. Javier Tomeo, El castillo de la carla cifrada (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1979), p. 5.
3. Luis Goytisolo, La co/era de Aquiles (Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1979), p. 296.
4. Martinez Bonati, Fictive Discourse and the Structures of Literature. See especially
"Statification of the Literary Work According to the Various Logical Kinds of
Discourse," pp. 27-43.
5. I am not aware of any critical article to date on this novel other than my own
much abridged and somewhat differently focused essay "La cdlera de Aquiles: Un
texto producto del lector," &vista lberoamericana 47 Quly-Dec. 1981): 241-45; and
Gonzalo Sobejano's "El 'Ecce Homo' de Matilde Moret" in El cosmos de '?l.ntagon{a ":
lncursiones en Ia obra de Luis Goytisolo, prologue by Salvador Clotas (Barcelona:
Editorial Anagrama, 1983), pp. 89-106.
Chapter Seven: Product Preceding Process

I. "Juan Goytisolo-J uli:in Rios: Desde Juan sin Tierra," in juan sin Tierra
(Madrid: Espiral/Revista, 1977), p. II.
2. Juan Goytisolo, Makbara (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1980), p. 221.
3. Not surprisingly, since Juan Goytisolo is the author, Makbara has already
generated a considerable amount of criticism. See, in the special issue of Revista

lberoamericana 116-17 Quly-Dec. 1981), the following articles: Gonzalo Sobejano,
"Valores figurativos y compositivos de Ia soledad en Ia novela de Juan Goytisolo,"
pp. 81-88; Maryellen Bieder, "De Seiias de identidad a Makbara: Estrategia narrativa
en las novelas de Juan Goytisolo," pp. 89-96; Linda Gould Levine, "Makbara:
Entre Ia espada y Ia pared-ipolitica marxista o politica sexual?" pp. 97-106. In
addition, see the special issue of J.Oces I (1981), particularly Malikajdidi Embarec,
"Lectura marroqui de Makbara," pp. 83-86.
4. Luis Goytisolo, Teoria del conocimiento (Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1981), p. 29.
5. For more views on Antagonia see: El cosmos de "Antagonia".
6. Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text," in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-
Structuralist Criticism, ed . .Josue V. Harari (Ithaca: Cornell U niv. Press, 1979), pp.
73-81.
7. Carmen Martin Gaite, El cuarto de atrtis (Barcelona: Destine, 1978), p. 25.
8. It is difficult to ignore an echo here from Galdos's Misericordia in which the
protagonist invents a priest to explain the food she manages to provide for her
destitute mistress, the priest later appearing as a character in the novel.
9. Barthes, "From Work to Text," p. 77.
10. For a more detailed definition of historical narrative see Emile Benveniste,
"The Correlations ofTense in the French Verb," in Problems in General Linguistics, pp.
205-15.
II. There is an obvious correlation here between the protagonist's life and that
of the real author. Martin Gaite interrupted her own novelistic career to do studies
on Macanaz and on love in eighteenth-century Spain. The novelist, however, has
made it clear that she incorporates autobiographical data into a fictional context.
In other words, the novel is not a history of her life but a fictional creation drawing
from certain real episodes. See Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier, "Conversacion con
Carmen Martin Gaite en Nueva York," Insula 411 (Feb. 1981): I, 10-11.
12. Todorov, The Fantastic, p. 82.
13. Benveniste, "Correlations of Tense," pp. 205-15.
14. Dario Villanueva, "La novela espanola en 1978," Anales de Ia Narrativa
Espanola Contemportinea 4 (1979): 93.
15. The concept of intertextuality, as I am applying it, corresponds to my
reading of .Julia Kristeva's explanation, for example as in "The Bound Text," in
Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, trans. Thomas Gora eta!.
(New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 36-63. See also Jonathan Culler's
"Presupposition and Intertextuality," in The Pursuit l!f Signs: Semiotics, Literature,
Deconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 100-118.
16. For other readings of the novel see: Bias Matamoro, "Carmen Martin Gaite:
El viaje a! cuarto de atras," Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 351 (Sept. 1979): 581-605;
and .Julian Palley, "El interlocutor sonado de El cuarto de atrtis, de Carmen Martin
Gaite," Insula 404-5 Quly-Aug. 1980): 22. From the collection From Fiction to
Metafiction: Essays in Honor of Carmen Martin-Gaite, ed. Mirella Servodidio and
Marcia L. Welles (Lincoln: Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies,
1983), see the following: .Julian Palley, "Dreams in Two Novels of Carmen Martin
Gaite," pp. 107-16; Mirella d'Ambrosio Servodidio, "Oneiric Intertextualities,"
pp. 117-27; Manuel Duran, "El cuarto de atrtis: Imaginacion, fantasia, misterio;
Todorov y algo mas," pp. 129-37; Robert C. Spires, "lntertextuality in El cuarto de

atrds," pp. 139-48; Kathleen M. Glenn, "El cuarto de atrds: Literature asjuego and the
Self-Reflexive Text," p. 159; Linda Gould Levine, "Carmen Martin Gaite's El cuarto
de atrds: A Portrait of the Artist as Woman," pp. 161-72; Ruth El Saffar, "Liberation
and the Labyrinth: A Study of the Works of Carmen Martin Gaite," pp. 185-96;
Marcia L. Welles, "Carmen Martin Gaite: Fiction as Desire," pp. 197-207; and
Gonzalo Sobejano, "Enlaces y desenlaces en las novelas de Carmen Martin Gaite,"
pp. 209-23.
Afterwords
I. The best explanation of speech act theory as it applies to literature can be
found in Mary Louis Pratt, Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse (Bloom-
ington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1977).
2. Isaac Stern, quoted in J#zl/ Street Journal, 16 Oct. 1981, p. 25.
3. Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1974), pp. 3-4 et passim.
4. Fabulation and Metafiction, pp. 215-18.
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1977.
Editions if Novels and Stories Quoted

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel. El ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. 8
vols. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1958.
[The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote de la Mancha. Translated by Samuel
Putman. New York: Random House, 1949.]
Cunqueiro, Alvaro. Un hombre que se parecia a Orestes. Barcelona: Destino,
1969.
Goytisolo, Juan. Juan sin Tierra. Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1975.
Uuan the Landless. Translated by Helen R. Lane. New York: Viking Press,
1977.]
- - - . Makbara. Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1980.
Goytisolo, Luis. La colera de Aquiles. Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1979.
- - - . Recuento. Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1973.
- - - . Teoria del conocimiento. Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1981.
- - - . Los verdes de mayo hasta el mar. Barcelona: Seix Barra!, 1976.
James, Benjamin. Locura y muerte de nadie. Vol. 7 of Las ml!jores novelas
contempordneas, edited by Joaquin de Entrambasaguas. Barcelona:
Planeta, 1961.
---.La novia del viento. Mexico City: Nueva Cultura, 1940.
- - - . Teor{a del ::.umbel. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1930.
Martin Gaite, Carmen. El cuarto de atrtis. Barcelona: Destino, 1978.

[The Back Room. Translated by Helen R. Lane. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1983.]
Perez Ga1d6s, Benito. La de Bringas. Obras Completas, 4: 1573-1671. Madrid:
Bolanos y Aguilar, 1960.
[The Spendthrifts. Translated by Gamel Woolsey. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Young, 1952.]
- - - . "La novela en el travia." Obras completas, 6: 503-15. Madrid:
Bolanos y Aguilar, 1945.
Quevedo, Francisco de. Historia de La vida del Buscon. Madrid: Espasa-
Calpe, 1967.
[The Swindler. In Two Spanish Picaresque Novels. Translated by Michael
Alpert. New York: Penguin, 1969.]
Tomeo, Javier. El castillo de La carla cifrada. Barcelona: Editorial Ana-
grama, 1979.
Torrente Ballester, Gonzalo. Don Juan. Barcelona: Destino, 1963.
- - - . Fragmentos de Apocalipsis. Barcelona: Destino, 1977.
Unamuno, Miguel de. Niebla. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1963.
[Mist. Translated by Warner Fite. New York: Knopf, 1928.]
---.San Manuel Bueno, mtirtir. New York: Las Americas Publishing Co.,
1960.
Index
act of discourse: as relates to Spanish Brushwood, John S., 130n. 16

self-referential novel, x, 73. See also Buscon, El [The Swindler} (Quevedo), x,
discourse-focused novels II, 18, 23-25, 31
act of reading: as relates to Spanish
self-referential novel, x, 73. See also camino, El [The Road} (Delibes), 58
reader-focused novels castillo de Ia carla cifrada, El [The Castle
act of writing: as relates to Spanish rif the Coded Letter} (1omco), 93-94
self-referential novel, x, 73, 107. See Castro, America, 18, 13ln. 2
also author-focused novels Ccla, Camilo Jose, 4, 58
Aeschylus, 62, 67, 71 Cervantes, Miguel de Saavedra, 18-23,
Alter, Robert, 1-2, 18, 2.1, 57, 133n. 8, 27, 31, 32, 44, 46, 88, 126
136n. 3 Chatman, Seymour, 130nn. 19, 22
amigo Manso, El (Good Friend Manso) Christensen, Inger, 2, 3
(Perez Gald6s ), 26 Cinco horas con JY!ario (Five Hours with
Anta.~onia /Antagonism/ (L. Goytisolo), Mario/ (Delibes), 89, 94
74, 109 codes, 45-50; transformation of
anti-novel: as label for metafiction, 125 cultural into narrative in Juan sin
art for art's sake: and vanguardist Tierra, 78-88
literature, 45, 47, 58 cdlera de Aquiles, La (Achilles' Rage) (L.
artistic unity: rebelling against in Un Goytisolo ), x, 89, 94-106
hombre que se parecia a Orestes, 70 colmena, La [The Hive} (Cela), 58
author-focused novels: defined, x, 73, comedy, 6-10. See also mode
I 06-7: as represented by Recuento, Cooperative Principle, 125
73-74: by Los verdes de mayo hasta el Crosman, Inge, 138n. 12
mar, 74-76; by Nove/a de Andres Choz, cuarto de atrtis, El [The Back Room}
76; by Juan .1in Tierra, 76-88 (Martin Gaite), x, 107, 113-24
autotextualiti, 33 Cunqueiro, Alvaro, 61-71, 88
Azorin, 33, 67, 71 curandero de su honra, El [The Healing of
His Honor} (Perez de Ayala), 33
Bal, Micke, 138n. 10
Barthes, Roland, 114, 126 dehumanization, 46
Beckett, Samuel, 2 Delibes, Miguel, 58, 89, 94
Benveniste, Emile, 14 de Nora, Eugenio, 134n. 2
binary oppositions: as analyzed in Derrida, Jacques, 104
Juan sin Tierra, 78-88 Diaz Migoyo, Gonzalo, 132n. 10
Bixler, Jacqueline Eyring, 136n. II Dickens, Charles, 6
Booth, \Vayne, 12, 99 discourse-focused novels: defined, 73,
Bringas, La de [The Spendthrifts} (Perez 106-7; as represented by Makbara,
Gald6s), 26 108-9; by Teoria del conocimiento,
109-13; by El cuarto de atrds, 113-24. Goytisolo, Luis, 74-76, 94-106, 109-13,

See also act of discourse 131 n. I
Dona lnis (Azorin), 33; as modd for Great Expectations (Dickens), 6
Un hombre que se parecia a Orestes, grotesque, the, 9. See also mode
67-71
Don Juan (Torrente Ballester), x, 58, Heidegger, Martin, 104
59-61 Hellman, John, 130n. 16
historical narrative, 117
editorial narrator. See intrusive history, 6-10. See also mode
narrator hombre que se parecia a Orestes, Un [A
Enchained Andromeda (Rubens), 52 Man Who Resembled Orestes}
Entrambasaguas, Joaquin de, 134n. 2 (Cunqueiro), x, 58, 61-71
erasure, under, 104 Hutcheon, Linda, 2, 3, 133n. 4
Fabulation and Afetafiction, 7 implied author, 12, 100, 102, 108

familia de Pascual Duarte, La [The Family implied reader, 5, 12
qf Pascual Duarte} (Cela), 4, 13, 58 instances de discours, 14. See also
fantastic, the, 9; role in El cuarto de narrating
atrds, 118-24. See also mode interior duplication: as novelistic self-
Fielding, Henry, 27 commentary, 33
Fiesta a! noroeste /Northeast Festival} intertextuality: as analyzed in Locura _r
(Matute), 58 muerte de nadie, 45-50; in Don juan,
flouting: as relates to violations of 59-61; in Un hombre que se parecia a
fictional modes, 125 Orestes, 61-71; in El cuarto de atrds,
focalization: as analyzed in El Busc6n, 113-24
24-25; in Locura _Y muerte de nadie, 48; intrusive narrator, 31; as analyzed in
in La c6lera de Aquiles, 99 Locura _Y muerte de nadie, 4 7
Fortunata_y Jacinta (Perez Galdos), 26 irony, 5. See also mode
Fragmentos de Apocalipsis [Fragments qf Iscr, Wolfgang, 12
the Apocalypse} (Torrente Ballester),
90-93 Jarama, El [One Da_r qfthe Week}
framing devices: as analyzed in Niebla, (Sanchez Ferlosio), 58
34-44; in Un hombre que se parecia a James, Benjamin, x, 45-57, 59, 71, 88
Orestes, 61-71 Juan sin Tzerra [juan the Landless} 0.
Franco, Francisco: death of, 128 Goytisolo), x, 72, 76-88, 95, 106,
Frye, Northrop, 5-7, 9-10 107
Fuentes, Victor, 134n. 2
Kayser, Wolfgang, 2, 18, 13ln. 2
Gaceta Literaria, La, 50 Kellman, Steven G., 2
Galdos. See Perez Galdos Kronik, John W., x, 26, 133n. 7
Generation of '98, x, 33-34, 45
Genette, Gerard, ix, 3, 5, 14-15, 130n. LaForet, Carmen, 58
21, 131n. 23 language: opaque/transparent, 9, 59;
genre, 3-6, 10-11, 72-73, 128 self-referential, 59
Gerhardt, Mia 1., 131n. 6 Lanser, Susan Sniader, 130n. 19
Gomez de Ia Serna, Ramon, 56 Lazarillo de Tormes, II, 25
Goytisolo, Juan, 76-88, 107-9 Levine, Susan F., 137n. 8
Index 151
literary models: transformation of as analyzed in El Buscon, 24-25; in

novelistic self-commentary in Don "La novel a en el tranvia," 29
Juan and Un hombre que se parecia a Narrative Discourse, 14
Orestes, 58-71 narrative levels: defined, 14-15;
Literature qf Exhaustion, The (Stark), 2 violations of, 15-16; as analyzed in
Livingston, Leon, 133n. 2 Quijote, 18-23; in El Buscon, 23-25;
Locura y muerte de nadie [The Insanity and in "La novela en el tranvia," 27-31
Death qf Nobody} Qarnes), x, 45-50, neorealism, Spanish, 4, 58-59
52, 135n. II New Novel, Spanish, 4, 59, 74
Niebla [Mist] (Unamuno), x, 33-44, 45,
Makbara Q. Goytisolo), 108-9 126
Marse, Juan, 4, 94 non-novel: as label for metafiction, 125
Martinez Bonati, Felix, ix, 96, 131 n. 25 Novela de Andres Choz [Andres Choz's
Martinez Latre, Maria Pilar, 134n. 2 Novel} (Merino), 76, 88
Martin Gaite, Carmen, 113-24 "novela en el tranvia, La," x, 18, 27-32
Martin-Santos, Luis, 59 novelistic theory, 9-10. See also mode
Matute, Ana Maria, 58 novia del viento, La [The Wind's Bride]
Meaning qf Metafiction, The Qarnes), x, 45, 46, 50-57
(Christensen), 2
Merino, Jose Maria, 76 Oresteia (Aeschylus), 62
metafiction: as defined by others, 1-3; Ortega y Gasset, Jose, 18, 46, 131 n. 2,
diegetically self-aware, 2; 135n. 15
discursive, 2; linguistically self-
reflective, 2; narrative, 2. See also Pale Fire (Nabokov), I
mode Partial Magic, I
mimetic: high, 5; low, 5. See also mode Perez de Ayala, Ramon, 33
mimetic/nonmimetic language: Perez Firmat, Gustavo, I, 2, 50, 132n.
defined, 96; as analyzed in La crflera 17, 135n. 15, 136n. 4
de Aquiles, 96-99 Perez Gald6s, Benito, x, 18, 25-32, 44,
Misericordia [Piety} (Perez Gald6s), 26, 46, 72, 126
139n. 8 picaresque, 4-10; novel, 4. See also
mode: metafictional, ix, 1-3, 5-7, 9-10, mode
14-17, 72-73, 125; defined as Plato, 3-4
linguistic phenomenon, I-ll, 14-17, Poussin, Nicolas: as referred to in La
128; compared to genre, 3-4, II crflera de A guiles, 105
movement, literary, 4, 10, 72-73, 128 presuppositions: as analyzed in El
muchacha de las bragas de oro, La [The castillo de la carla cifrada, 93-94. See
Girl with the Golden Panties} also reader expectations
(Marse), 94
myth, 5-11. See also mode Quevedo, Francisco, 18, 23-25, 27, 31,
44, 46, 126
Nada [Nothing} (LaForet), 58 Quijote (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de
narratee, 14-15. See also reader: text la Mancha) (Cervantes), x, I, 3, 6,
narrating: act of, 14, 19, 130n. 21; 18-23, 31, 72, 126, 128, 131n. I
instance, 71, 107; process/product
in juan sin Tierra, 76-88 reader: real, 11-13, 89; text, 11-13, 89;
narrating/experiencing self: as text-act, 11-13, 16, 89
152 Beyond the Metojictional Mode
reader expectations, ix, 31, 126-27; El castillo de Ia carla cifrada, 93-94;

as analyzed in La novia del viento, by La muchacha de las bragas de oro,
50-57; in Don juan, 59-61; in 94; by La c6lera de Aquiles, 94-106;
El castillo de [a carla cifrada, 93- by Makbara, 108-9; by Teoria del
94 conocimiento, 109-13; by El cuarto de
reader-focused novels: defined, 73, atrds, 113-24
88-89, 107; as represented by sentiment, 6-10. See also mode
Fragmentos de Apocalipsis, 90-93; by sign of absence: as analyzed in Niebla,
El castillo de la carla cifrada, 93-94; 37; in La co/era de Aquiles, 99, 104
by La muchacha de las bragas de oro, sign system: as analyzed in Niebla,
94; by La co/era de Aquiles, 94-106. 34-44; in Juan sin Tierra, 76-88
See also act of reading situation d'enonciation, 14, 130n. 21. See
readerly texts, 126 also narrating
reader-produced novels. See reader- Spanish American War, 33
focused novels Spanish Civil War, 58
Recuento [Recount} (L. Goytisolo), 74, 88 Spanish society: as reflected by self-
referents, transformation of: as relates referential novel, 127-28
to fictional modes, 7-10; as relates speech act, 125; as relates to reader-
to realism, 30-31; as relates to response criticism, 11-13; as
metafiction, 88 analyzed in Fragmentos de
reportorial fiction, 9-10, 72. See also Apocalipsis, 90-93
mode Stanzel, Franz, 132n. 9
&vista de Occidente, 45 Stark, John 0., 2
Rico, Francisco, 132n. 10 Stern, Isaac, 125-26
Rios, Julian, 107 Stern, Laurence, 2, 27
romance, 5-10. See also mode story-focused novels. See discourse-
Rubens, Peter Paul, 52 focused novels
structure of differences: as analyzed in
Salinas, Pedro, 56 La c6lera de Aquiles, 94-106
Sanchez Ferlosio, Rafael, 58 suspension of disbelief: as analyzed in
San Manuel Bueno, mdrtir [Saint Manuel Un hombre que se parecia a Orestes, 69;
Good, Martyr] (Unamuno), 43-44, in La c6lera de Aquiles, 103
133n. 6
satire, 6-10. See also mode Tale of Two Cities, A (Dickens), 6
Scholes, Robert, I, 5-11, 127, 129n. 8 Teoria del conocimiento [Theory of
second-person narration: as analyzed Knowledge] (L. Goytisolo), 109-13
in Juan sin Tierra, 84-86 text vs. work, 12-13, 114
Self-Begetting Novel, The (Kellman), 2 Tiempo de silencio [Time of SilenceJ
self-conscious novel: as defined by (Martin-Santos ), 59
Alter, 2, 57 Tigre juan [Tiger juan] (Perez de
self-referential novel, Spanish: defined, Ayala), 33
ix, 16-17, 62, 71-74, 107-8, 127-28; Tirano Banderas [The Tjrant BanderasJ
as represented by Recuento, 74; by (Valle Inclan), 33
Los verdes de mayo hasta el mar, 74-76; Todorov, Tzvetan, 9, 118, 121, 130n. 18,
by Juan sin Tierra, 76-88; by 13In. 26
Fragmentos de Apocalipsis, 90-93; by Tomeo, Javier, 93-94
Index 153
Torrente Ballester, Gonzalo, 59-61, viento, 50-57; of literary models in

90-93 Don juan, 59-61; of literary models
tragedy, 6-10. See also mode in Un hombre que se parecia a Orestes,
Tristram Shandy (Stern), 3 61-71; of narrating/narra tion in
Recuento, 74; of narrating/narra tion
Ultimas tardes con Teresa [Final Afternoons in Los verdes de mayo hasta el mar,
with Teresa} (Marse), 4 74-76; of narrating/narra tion in
Unamuno, Miguel de, 34-44, 46, 88, Juan sin Tierra, 76-88; of author/
126 reader in Fragmentos de Apocalipsis,
Unnameable, The (Beckett), 2 90-93; of author/reader in El
unreliable narrator, 99 castillo de Ia carla cifrada, 93-94; of
author/reader in La muchacha de las
Valle Inclan, Ramon de, 33 bragas de oro, 94; of author/reader
Van Ghent, Dorothy, 18, 13ln. 2 in La c6lera de Aquiles, 94-106; of
vanguardism, Spanish: as relates to oral/written discourse in Makbara,
.James and literary codes, x, 45, 50, 108-9; of oral/written discourse in
59 Teor{a del conocimiento, 109-13; of
verdes de mayo hasta el mar, Los {The oral/written discourse in El cuarto
Vtirdure cif May All the Uily to the Sea} de artrtis, 113-24; pseudo-violatio ns
(L. Goytisolo), 74-76, 88 in El Buscon, 23-25
violations of fictional modes: defined,
14-16, 125; of narrative levels in Western society: as reflected in the
Quijote, 18-23; of narrative levels in self-referential novel, 127
"La novela en el tranvia," 27-32; Wicks, Ulrich, 4
of characters/auth or/reader in writerly texts, 126
Niebla, 34-44; of literary codes in
Locura y muerte de nadie, 46-50; of Zola, Emil, 6
reader expectations in La novia del Zuleta, Emilia de, 134n. 2, 135n. 14

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STUDIES IN ROMANCE LANGUAGES: 30

John E. Keller, Editor

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Introduction: The Metafictional Mode

1. Violations and Pseudo-Violations: Quijote, Buscon,

2. Fiction on a Palimpsest: Niebla 33

3. Codes versus Modes: Locura y muerte de nadie and

4. Rebellion against Models: Don juan and Orestes 58

5. Process as Product: Juan sin Tierra 72

6. Reading-into-Being: La colera de Aquiles 89

7. Product Preceding Process: El cuarto de atrds 107

Although my interest in metafiction was inspired by contemporary

so much a part of me that I have forgotten where I discovered

translations of the critical and theoretical works consulted. In the

The Metafictional Mode

Several studies of the historical development of metafiction in the

scholium). He further refines his definition by proposing two

elusive. Even Hutcheon's diegetic versus linguistic categories,

It is probably fair to say that many literary terms are at best

. opposed to neoclassical drama. Whatever the criteria employed to

fictional mode paradigms proposed not too long ago by Northrop

Quijote and Tristram Shandy and a host of others. In summary, as

where, and from a historical point of view examples of it clearly can

imprint on this transformed image. One method for classifying

world is supposed to correspond to a documented verification of its

treating them as modes and comparing their modal characteristics

patterns but are only partial, or repetitions with variations. Myths

as is the speaker, within the text. The text reader, therefore, is a

strategies and competencies. As a result, not only will there be at

how others may react, or that such a reaction is the appropriate

Now that I have proposed metafiction's definition relative to

the text's narrative levels double. The character is now a narrator

the authority of the fictive author, or the fictive author asking

latter the self- referential novel. This new novelistic expression is

Violations and Pseudo-

As I begin this examination of the precursors of the Spanish

Quijote involving a violation of the boundaries separating the three

conversation with his wife, calls attention to the first author's

therefore readers of their own story, albeit the student stands

and Ulysses, he is identifying with fictitious personages, an identi-

templates the conventions that create illusion: the illusion that

the English version] offers a very good example of a borderline

innovator in strategies for violating the conventions of fiction.

trip"]. Fiction has become reality. Of course, this is merely another

egy, therefore, allows him to display both of these fundamental

or subconsciously the novelists built on one another's strategies,

The twentieth century in Spanish literary history was ushered in

discussion of a novel one of the characters is supposedly writing.

In the beginning Victor is talking to his text reader as if both

product of the verb "prologar," is a subtle strategy for signaling

Y debe andarse mi amigo y prologuista Goti con mucho tiento en discutir

In spite of the would-be threat here, by the act of electing to

threat itself ironically underscores the fictive author's impotence.

parenthetical statement. Metafiction's violations, in other words,

The frame is a sign, therefore, pointing simultaneously at itself and

already been exposed in the prologue as a mere verbal construct

convenciendote de que son ellos los que te llevan. Es muy frecuente

Again the narrative seems to be written on a palimpsest when