111
David Goldin comments: «It is likely that Galdós incorporated elements of Clarín's own tragic vision of reality into Tristana. The Calderonian honor theme, of course, had been ironically recast several years earlier in La Regenta where it was both called to mind and subverted by the figure of Víctor Quintanar, a Calderón enthusiast who finds his innocent theatrical passion manipulated into a real-life duel and fatal shooting» (106, note 19). The theatrical and general literary backgrounds of La Regenta are dealt with by Valis, Sánchez and Sieburth.
112
A brief reference to the use of the term «galán» is found in Gullón (La novela 111): «Se menciona al protagonista como 'el viejo galán,' equivalente al tenoriesco don Lope, y como don Lepe, ambigüedad útil para dramatizarse la escena».
113
Carolyn Richmond (357) extends this particular theatrical analogy when she considers Vetusta as the stage for «el drama de la primera actriz y los dos galanes con el marido-el barba».
114
According to Akiko Tsuchiya (336), this reveals that Lope is aware of his self-fictionalisation.
115
Ciriaco Morón Arroyo («Ciencia») provides an excellent review of the intellectual history of this polemic over Spanish science, including the importance of John William Draper's book Conflictos entre la religión y la ciencia (first English edition in 1873).
116
An earlier version of this study was read at the 1992 Annual Convention of the Society for Literature and Science.
117
For a Bakhtinian analysis of the entire novel, see Sieburth.
118
Bakhtin writes: «Stupidity (incomprehension) in the novel is always polemical: it interacts dialogically with an intelligence (a lofty pseudo-intelligence) with which it polemicizes and whose mask it tears away [...] For this reason stupidity (incomprehension) in the novel is always implicated in language, in the word: at its heart always lies a polemical failure to understand someone else's discourse» (403). Víctor Quintanar's death in the final chapter of La Regenta represents the tragic climax of a long series of misunderstandings and misconceptions that lead him to ignore even the most obvious evidence of his wife's adultery. Though at times Víctor might reasonably question Ana's fidelity, his appropriation of Golden Age rhetoric requires him to overlook Ana's unhappiness: the «caballero» could never honourably acknowledge that his wife was sexually unfulfilled. He dies less from Mesía's bullet than from his own incomprehension: he does not see that others have alternative languages.
119
The Magistral's instrumentalization of Don Víctor at the end of the novel becomes possible through Víctor's own language: «¿Qué haría don Víctor? ¿De qué comedia antigua se acordaría para vengar su ultraje cumplidamente?» (2: 467). Fermín reifies the vestiges of Víctor's Golden Age ideology and pushes them into the last site where the conflict between two of the languages spoken by Víctor («nineteenth-century gentleman» versus «Golden Age 'galán'») can have a physical consequence: the duel with Álvaro. Fermín's machinations succeed because he understands the workings of Don Víctor's adopted ideology. Nevertheless, Fermín exhibits noawareness of dialogism in his own words as he deals with the rest of Vetusta; if he were conscious of it, he really would be as powerful as most of the city believes him to be.
A colleague has pointed out to me that Ana, too, has an implicit understanding of dialogism: she is torn between the humanistic ideas of her natural father (the «librepensador»), which she uses to fight off the Magistral, and the religious notions of her surrogate father (Fermín), which she employs as a defence against Álvaro. However, Ana differs from Frígilis in that she gradually falls prey to words from both speakers. Her choice seems to be over which of the two competing languages will become her «native» language, whereas Frígilis knows full well which language he finds internally persuasive.
120
The acclimatization of exotic plants was a common pursuit of nineteenth-century botanists. In La familia de León Roch several characters tour a greenhouse «donde los marqueses Tellería y de Onésimo examinaban las piñas exóticas, haciendo discretísimas apreciaciones sobre los progresos de la aclimatación -de lo cual debía resultar con el tiempo, según don Joaquín, un gran aumento en la materia imponible» (912). See Lucile Brockway (Science) for the political and economic importance of plant transfers and acclimatization.