Abstract
Eduardo Mendoza's City of Marvels recuperates the historical novel while subjecting it to the conventions of romance. These generic strategies relate to the manifest self-made man's rise to economic might between the two Barcelona World's Fairs and Barcelona's development as a modern metropolis—and to a later celebration: the 1992 Olympic Games. The depiction of the adventures of capital and the production of marvels responds to the bourgeoisie's role in Spain's modernization and to money's mediating function as a symbol of desire. The accomplishment of marvels involves the conquest of time and the substitution of illusory timelessness for historical contingencies. Timelessness mediated by money negates history through the production of ersatz historical images, which reinscribe an idealized past as the object of desire. A restoration—the figurative replication of historical events—is the response to nostalgia for a missed historical opportunity by a subject seeking myth's illusory power.
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