The "Historia de la novela" by Andrés González Blanco and Emilia Pardo Bazán

Abstract

Andrés González Blanco’s Historia de la novela (1908) put forward a new approach to the theory of the genre that involved also, a significative change in the way Literary Criticism had to be conducted. This article explores his theoretical propositions for the novel, that have been ignored, in order to interpret to what extent his Historia represented an alternate view to other critical discourses at the time, as for instance Emilia Pardo Bazán’s. The difference between his work and Goméz de Baquero’s writings, but the alignment of his work as well with other discourses in the field, that, nevertheless, have been silenced or forgotten. In fact, González Blanco challenged common sense ideas on literary history and on the concept of the novel, through an obscure and paradoxical Hegelian language. He also defended the psychological novel, whose main figures were Paul Bourget in France and Pardo Bazán in Spain. It was Pardo Bazán’s ability to appropriate the psychological subgenre what made her, according to González Blanco, the canonical author for the Modern Spanish novel.