Some Notes for a Novelist Clarín’s Critical Reception in Spain (1901-1984)

Abstract

As we know, Clarín’s novels were not always part of the canon of the 19th century’s great works. On the one hand, this work aims to establish the reason why this author remained excluded from the group of the great novelists of the nineteenth century for so many years. On the other, it offers some notes for a diachronic panorama that covers Clarinian criticism from 1901 to 1984, in order to reflect who were the first researchers who were interested in these novels, what were their interests and what was the basis on which they sustained his valuation. This enhancement of Clarín’s novels took several decades of the twentieth century, when an approach to the intratextual elements of his work was fundamental, leaving behind the vision of Clarín as a simple link that opened the way to the works of great author such as Galdós or those of the generation of 98.