Reading 'La Regenta': Duplicitous discourse and the entropy of structure (Purdue University Monographs in Romance Languages)

Sieburth, Stephanie A.

ISBN 10: 9027217440 / ISBN 13: 9789027217448

Published by John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1990

About this Item

occasional notes in pencil. 9789027217448.

Seller Inventory # ccd621

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Reading 'La Regenta': Duplicitous discourse and the entropy of structure (Purdue University Monographs in Romance Languages)
• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
• Publication Date: 1990
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN 10: 9027217440
• ISBN 13: 9789027217448
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Criticism of La Regenta has until recently focused on the text's plot as an extraordinarily coherent and convincing fictional world. Stephanie A. Sieburth demonstrates that the devices which produce order in the text are counterbalanced by an equally strong tendency toward entropy of meaning. The narrator is shown to be duplicitous and unreliable in his judgments on characters and events. Without an omniscient narrator, readers must interpret for themselves the complex intertextual structure of the novel. Saints' lives, honor plays, and serial novels each provide partial reflections of Ana Ozores' story. The text becomes a collage of mutually reflecting segments which, like Ana in her moments of self-doubt and madness, ultimately question the function of language and of any overriding interpretation or meaning.