ABSTRACT
This piece represents the documentary strand of Gald6s criticism which, in the 1970s in particular, sought to explain his work in the light of extra-fictional evidence (here Gald6s's journalistic writings). Goldman is perhaps too ready to assume that the novels are straightforward reflections of Gald6s's opinions as expressed in his journalism (leaving aside the question of whether journalism truly represents its author's opinions; it is a pity Goldman does not tell us what journals Gald6s was writing for, and what their political bias was). His article would also have benefited from some theoretical discussion of the generic relations between journalism and fiction in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless this piece provides an essential compendium of Gald6s's journalistic writing on various social issues. Gald6s's hostility to state control, consistent with his liberal sympathies, is illustrated in his fiction: the novels of the 1880s show the institutions of the State to be the source of Spain's economic and moral problems; the protagonists of the novels of the 1890s reject all forms of institutionalism and explore individual solutions to social ills. Particularly interesting is the information given here on Gald6s's interest in criminology: this is a subject to which Foucault's insights could profitably be applied. As Goldman rightly points out, for Gald6s the figure of the criminal was indissolubly linked with that of the saint (and that of the anarchist and madman): a moral paradox explored in embryonic form in Fortunata and Jacinta, and foregrounded in the disturbing later novels La incognita, Realidad, Angel Guerra, Nazarfn and Misericordia, which deserve to be better known. Goldman's plea for an interdisciplinary approach to Gald6s studies (which would hopefully go beyond the literary and journalistic disciplines
represented here) has been largely ignored; in this age of cultural studies it seems especially opportune.
