Cartografía de la Novela Digresiva en España

Abstract

In recent years, digressiveness in the novel has become a trendy topic in literary studies. Research on the English novel has acknowledged the relevance of digressiveness in early Modern prose fiction. Conversely, Hispanists have presented the Spanish digressive novel as a postmodernist achievement, having only the Spanish predecessors of Miguel de Cervantes's Persiles y Sigismunda (1617) and Coloquio de los perros (1613). These Hispanists regard Sterne and non-Spanish modernists as the great pioneers of the digressive novel. This article argues that the roots of the Spanish digressive novel are to be found in sixteenth-century Spain, most notably in Mateo Alemán's Guzmán de Alfarache (1599–1604) but also in the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) and in Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605–15). It also vindicates the digressive nature of the works of Spanish Modernists such as Azorín (pseudonym of José Martínez Ruiz) and Miguel de Unamuno. Guzmán is here presented as the first great Spanish digressive novel, and Unamuno's Cómo se hace una novela (1927) as the Spanish digressive novel par excellence.