Home > Catalogue > Rassegna iberistica > 42 | 111 | 2019 > Missing Information in the Fictional Worlds of Benito Pérez Galdós

Rassegna iberistica | Vol. 42 | Issue 111 | June 2019

« previous article | next article »
cover
cover
Research Article

Missing Information in the Fictional Worlds of Benito Pérez Galdós

A Modern and Vital Experiment

Donatella Siviero    Università degli Studi di Messina, Italia    

VIEW PDF DOWNLOAD PDF

abstract

This paper will examine the use of missing information in some novels by Benito Pérez Galdós: the trilogy El doctor Centeno, Tormento, La de Bringas. Galdós’ plots are built on allusions and withheld information, and revealed by different narrative voices; they require an active participation on the part of the reader, who must put together different blocks of information as though they were tesseras in a mosaic. This missing information leads to subjective textual lacunas, that is, they are deliberately interlocutory and relational, in order to lead the reader to a continual collaboration and to make him/her create logical connections between the text’s different perspectives. The use of this reticence strategy creates an almost metafictional relationship between Galdós’ works and the reader, a bond that is surprisingly modern with respect to the latter’s horizons of expectation.

Published
June 21, 2019
Accepted
April 1, 2019
Submitted
Jan. 31, 2019
Language
ES

Keywords: Aposiopesis • Novelas • Rhetorical techniques • | Benito Pérez Galdós • Galdós’ novels • Reticence • Paralipsis • Técnicas retóricas • Reticencia • Lagunas textuales • Textual lacunas

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Ri/2037-6588/2019/111/002

Copyright: © 2019 Donatella Siviero. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.