Spanish gothic novel

Written by i j

Monday, 30 May 2011 18:03

Today I come with a little Spanish jewel for those of you who love old books and specially gothic horror and terror books, as always I felt by chance into a culture oasis and I was surprised with what I found inside, I know that most of you wont understand Spanish language for reading this texts but even then I think that most of you will know how to appreciate it and well, maybe we are lucky and someone is able to point us to other places with same content than this one but in other languages:

The Spanish Gothic Novel

(In the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library)

Spanish gothic novel

I’m not even sure where to start… lets start from the beginning: what can we find in the Virtual Library Miguel de Cervantes about gothic novel? Well I would first say that we can find a place in which gothic novel is analyzed by professionals.

Yeah I know this is not what you are going to enjoy more about this place but I think it’s something we have to point because it will allow us to learn more about this genre and look at it from different point of views. I do not know the people that takes place in this analysis and therefore I don’t know if the analysis is made from “inside” or from “outside” of the gothic scene but what I do see is that in the history section we are going to be able to find a text with concepts and ideas that I didn’t heard about before and therefore it’s great for having a better understanding of the gothic novel.

But as I said, I would bet this is not what you are going to enjoy more about this place so let take a deeper look to the inside:

We have another section called “studies”, in there we are going to find several articles and references to works made by some people about gothic novel, there is a little bit of everything and since I have no clue on how to resume all that information I´ll just leave a short extract of “thery of the gothic novel” by Miriam López Santos for those of you who can read Spanish:

Pero hablando de novela gótica, no podemos obviar un hecho harto conocido; en efecto, se viene advirtiendo, ya desde sus inicios, la acusación de un género simplista y falto de calidad. Sin embargo, no solo la censura, como se ha creído, fue la responsable de este estado de cosas; la propia crítica literaria de la época contribuyó sobremanera a obstaculizar un camino, ya de por sí extremadamente dificultoso. Debido a ello quizás, la consideración de la estructura de la novela gótica no haya variado un ápice desde que fuera divulgada, una vez multiplicado el número de obras de manera desconcertante, en un periódico inglés de la época:

Tómese un viejo castillo medio en ruinas; un largo corredor lleno de puertas, varias de las cuales tienen que ser secretas; tres cadáveres aún sangrantes; tres esqueletos encadenados; una vieja estrangulada y con varias puñaladas en el pecho, salteadores y bandidos a discreción; fantasmas ululantes; una dosis suficiente de susurros, lamentos ahogados y horrísonos estruendos. Mézclese todo, agítese bien y escríbase: el cuento esta listo.

Pillen, 1967:13

Aunque este es a trazo grueso el esquema narrativo gótico con sus principales características, que, en principio, reducirían considerablemente las posibilidades de innovación y diversificación, la vasta producción existente demuestra el infinito abanico de variantes que se pueden originar. Es más, la complejidad temática y estructural que esconde y la diversidad de interpretaciones teóricas a las que ha dado lugar apuntan en la dirección de una novela abundante en matices y en la que cada elemento del escenario y de la acción es introducido para contribuir a crear la impresión de ilimitado terror y de suspense palpitante. Solo desde esta perspectiva nos es posible comprender, entonces, la riqueza de estas novelas: sus atormentados personajes, el tratamiento dado a la mujer, el espacio literario, el vampirismo o el punto de vista del narrador.

Even if you can’t read Spanish, believe me when I say that here you will be able to find several points of view that at lease I had never thought about, really interesting.

And now we get to the most interesting part of the website, and it’s that they have scanned versions of a great variety of really old Spanish gothic novel books, I know it’s not the same as having one of those books in your hands, but let be serious that’s the closest we can hope to be to one of those unique books.

For giving you an example, you can find 12 tomes of “galería fúnebre de historias trágicas, espectros y sombras ensangrentadas” which should be translated to something like “Funeral galleries of tragic histories, specters and bloody shadows” written by Agustín Pérez Zaragoza Godínez, just as a note, the first tome was written in 1831.

And like that one you will be able to find 37 different titles for your enjoyment as a true culture oasis in the middle of the ocean that it’s internet.

The only thing that I miss is some foreign gothic novel… but hey it’s a Spanish portal about Spanish gothic novel so it was expected and I know that most of you will know how to appreciate it, here is the link:

http://bib.cervantesvirtual.com/portal/novelagotica/pcuartonivel.jsp?conten=presentacion

As I said in the opening would be great if you knew about other gothic novel portals and could share the information with us, I would update the article with your links to other languages gothic novel resources.

Enjoy.