"Un faccioso más y algunos frailes menos": end of an era

Abstract

This article begins with the consideration of the historical background of this episode, followed by an accounting of the historical moment when Galdós wrote it in order to fix its position within the novelistic production of our author. In this sense, the episode represents the end of a period and the beginning of a new one. The historical background of this last episode of the Second Series ends at the beginning of the 1st Carlist War and thus represents a beginning and not an ending. Unlike the 1st Series in which the historical and the personal find a happy outcome, the 2nd Series ends with a bifurcation en which the historical ends badly and the fictional finds a happy ending with the wedding of Salvador Monsalud and Sola. In the novelistic area, Un faccioso más… far from representing an ending, announces a new narrative mode in which Cervantes’ influence, so pervasive in the 1st Series, gives place to Quevedo’s and almost previews the “esperpentic” writing that will culminate in the last episode that Galdós wrote: Cánovas. At the end of Un faccioso más… Galdós affirms that he has reached the end of a narrative stage and expresses his desire to begin writing novels of contemporary events. After this  episode Galdós steps into the sphere of the best novelists of his time, not only in Spain, but in the world.