Epochal Allegory in Galdós'sTorquemada:The Ur-Text and the Episteme

Abstract

In the four-part novelTorquemada(1889-95), Galdos allegorizes the philosophical complexities of his age with a powerful negotiatory energy. Historical exigencies modify his miserly protagonist's figurai force by submitting the venerable sin of avarice to a secular revision that appropriately reflects the nineteenth-century positivist episteme. Since Dante'sDivine Comedyprovides the structural framework and the typological authority for the protagonist's successful social ascent, a sense of cognitive disjunction is inevitable. Comte's synthetic Religion of Humanity crosses with the medieval value system implied by Dante's Christian allegory, leaving the capitalist moneylender in a state of mortal anxiety and moral confusion. The epistemological dimension of Galdós's macroallegory equals in scope and signifying intensity the most famous twentieth-century models for allegorizing modern history —the archaeological, the tropic, the dialectical, the deconstructive—and underscores the role of positivism as a precursor of these oracular practices. (JPB)