ABSTRACT
The author of two outstanding books on Gald6s, one of which (1982) is on the contemporary novels, Urey is one of the few critics to have successfully applied a semiotic approach to Gald6s's work (see also Tsuchiya, 1990). This Barthesian analysis of cultural codes shows a sophisticated understanding of the ways in which literary realism, rather than reflecting a pre-existing reality, constructs meaning through the structural play of similarities and differences. Urey's approach also shows the influence of deconstruction, with its emphasis on the breakdown of binary oppositions. Unlike deconstructionists, however, Urey does not read against the grain, but implies that Gald6s is responsible for the infinite chains of irony in his work, where everything is liable to become its opposite. (One thinks here of Gald6s's comment in his Royal Academy speech - see Chapter 2that the dissolution of categories in contemporary society offers the writer creative possibilities.) Particularly perceptive is Urey's attention to Gald6s's use of puns: more work could be done on Gald6s's brilliant and often duplicitous use of language. Urey also shows how essential metaphor is to Gald6s's construction of a social reality in which meaning, like goods, is based on exchange. In its suggestion that nothing has a stable identity, Gald6s's work is, again, remarkably modern. The Torquemada novels are available in English translation (1988, Andre Deutsch, London).
