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Romance Quarterly
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Critical Approaches to the

Writings of Juan Benet.
Roberto C. Manteiga, David K.
Herzberger, and Malcolm Alan
Compitello, eds. Hanover and
London: University Press of
New England, 1984. x + 171 pp
Published online: 09 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: (1986) Critical Approaches to the Writings of Juan Benet. Roberto
C. Manteiga, David K. Herzberger, and Malcolm Alan Compitello, eds. Hanover and
London: University Press of New England, 1984. x + 171 pp, Romance Quarterly, 33:2,
242-242, DOI: 10.1080/08831157.1986.9925791
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08831157.1986.9925791

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242

Horacio"). The two new studies include a vigorous negative to the oft-posed
question, "Is Spanish Romanticism a second Baroque?" ("Romanticismo y Barroco") and a penetrating inquiry into the matter of Romantic emotionality ("El
desconsolado sentir romantico").
This is not a history of Romanticism but rather an inquiry into that unique
combination of emotion and art which has been labeled "Romantic," and which
evolved in Spain between 1770 and 1870. Sebold writes of "un fen6meno que
se produce euolutiuarnente, lo mismo en Espaiia que en 10s demas paises de
Occidente, merced a la interacci6n entre la poetica neoclasica y la filosofia de
la Ilustraci6n, empezando a manifestarse hacia 1770 y prolongandose, bajo
diferentes variantes y paralelamente con otras tendencias literarias, por un
espacio de unos cien aiios" (p. 7). As Miguel de 10s Santos Alvarez might have
said, "iBueno! iBueno! iBueno!"

David Thatcher Gies

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Critical Approaches to the Writings of Juan Benet. Roberto C. Manteiga, David

K. Herzberger, and Malcolm Alan Compitello, eds. Hanover and London:
University Press of New England, 1984. x

+ 171 pp.

Malcolm Alan Compitello. Ordering the Evidence: "Voluerris a Region" and

Civil War Fiction. Barcelona: Puvill Libros, 1983. 191 pp.
Both these books start out with two strikes against them. The first is Juan
Benet himself. The second I'll leave until the last. It may seem strange to say
an author is his own worst enemy-but only to those who haven't read, or
attempted to read, Juan Benet. The preface to the first book, Critical Approaches
to the Writings of Juan Benet, speaks eloquently of the problem. The editors
offer this volume, they say, "to help the reader penetrate Benet's fiction and
theory well beyond page fifteen" (p. x). The subject of this inquiry rightfully
asks, however, in the foreword: . . what can be the value of a literary work
that resists being read beyond page fifteen?" And he goes on to say: "If my
work is so entangled that the average reader needs a mentor in order to penetrate
it, why didn't I, at the time of writing it, draw upon that mentor or, better
yet, with a bit more effort, embark on the path of clarifying it and making
it accessible to the average reader and, at the same time, try to preserve its
value as much as possible?" (pp. vii-viii). The problem is, of course, a nonproblem for Benet since "value, enigma, and difficulty are indissolubly united
in that work of fiction." This is to say that there is no answer to Benet's ironic
posing of the question to his critics because there is no question. Ca ne se pose
pas. And that is a funny way to begin a book of criticism (or a review, 1 must
admit). Nevertheless, the twelve contributors heroically persist in their duties
as critics to clarify the mysteries of Benet's writing, although no one ever really takes up the challenge of the novelist's initial (non-)question, a question which,
for all its teasing and slightly miffed self-contradictoriness, has to be asked.
' I .