Time and structural technique in some twentieth century Spanish novelists
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Date
1973Author
Fiddian, R.W.
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Abstract
The importance of the theme of time and history in contemporary
ideology can be amply illustrated from twentieth-century Spanish
literature. This reflects a general Western tendency: time has become
an almost obsessive concern and finds expression as such in the works of
Proust, Ortega and Faulkner, to mention only three of a host of relevant
figures. The Spanish novel boasts a large number of works illustrative
of the theme.
Fiction, as a literary genre, is especially apt for the expression
of the idea of time, for its very form is temporal in nature: the writer
constructs his work in the medium of time, the reader peruses it in a
temporal process of assimilation and, on a more profound level, the novel's
plot represents a fictional duration, an action which can only occur in
a developing context of time. "Plot", here, is to be considered
synonymous with 'horizontal structure', by which is meant the development
of the novel's thematic and narrative elements throughout the work's
consecutive form. Levi-Strauss provides a useful definition which may be
applied to stock literary teaminology: "Form is defined by opposition to
a content which is foreign to it; but structure has no distinct content.
It is the content itself apprehended in a logical organisation. A novel's structure is the embodiment of meaning in form; since it is
fundamentally dynamic and temporal, this structure may ideally represent
the meaning, or human significance, which is embodied in nan's experience
of time.
In the context of contemporary culture and sensibility, this
meaning is uncertain: since the turn of the century, time has been conceived of as a negative property of the human condition. The collapse of faith
in a meaningful universe has given rise to a metaphysic of vital dis¬
orientation which has resulted in a pessimistic evaluation of time and
history.
Some authors of fiction write specifically about time; a number
of these may write about the metaphysical implications of time; but only
a minority succeed in creating a novel-form which incorporates an organic
correspondence between a content and a structure both subordinate to the
generic theme of time. This thesis purports to examine certain
novelistic structures found in a small group of twentieth-century Spanish
novels, and to relate them to the concepts of time defined in those works.
Human experience is here accorded formal expression via a structure which
emphasises the problematical nature of the contemporary response to time
as an essential property of the human condition.