Juan Valera y Alcala-Galiano (1824-1905), one of 19th-century
Spain's most well known authors, had a career in the diplomatic
service with postings in Europe and the Americas. A serious student
of his own and foreign literatures, Valera wrote novels, short
stories, essays and literary criticism. Fluent in a number of
languages, he also translated Longus's Daphne and Chloe from Greek
into Spanish. The unifying thread of his creative work is "art for
art's sake," that is, beauty as the end and purpose of imaginative
literature, an ideal epitomised by Pepita Jimenez, long considered
one of the best half dozen novels of 19th-century Spain. When it
was first published in 1874, Pepita Jimenez became an instant
success. Translations abound, as do the number of editions, upwards
of fifteen, many of them annotated, some of them illustrated. It
tells of Luis de Vargas, a devout twenty-two-year-old seminarian
who has come home to visit with his father before entering the
priesthood. The storyline unfolds when he meets a comely
twenty-year-old widow named Pepita Jimenez and has his religious
calling put to the test. On the heels of a fictitious prologue,
Valera gives the reader multiple perspectives. The first part of
the novel is epistolary in form, letters that Luis writes to the
Dean, who is both his uncle and his mentor at the seminary, and
everything - people, places, and activities - is filtered through
his eyes. The second part reverts to the traditional all-seeing
narrator of the realist novel, while the third consists of letters
that Pedro de Vargas, Luis's father, writes to his brother the
Dean.
General
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