BABEL-AFIAL Nº21

Artículos Roberto del Valle Alcalá Wigan Pier Or The Rocky Road To Socialism: George Orwell And The Romantic Critique Of Industrialism

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Macarena García-Avello Re/Membering The Dismembered : La Memoria Narrada en Fugitive Pieces de Anne Michaels

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Gemma López The Next Step: Darwin, Brontë, Fowles

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Marta Miquel-Baldellou In The Footsteps Of Edward Bulwer-lytton s Lucretia: Revisiting Victorian Popular Narratives Of Madness

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Vicente Beltran-Palanques Integrating The Speech Act of Refusals in the Instructed Setting

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Victoria Martín de la Rosa y Elena Domínguez Romero North and South Perspectives: A Metaphorical Approach to the Role Of Women in the Energy Sector

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Melania Evelyn Sánchez Reed Acquiring Conversational Skills in First Language Acquisition: Innate Capacity or the Fruit of Instruction?

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Mª José Corvo Sánchez Historia y Tradición en la Enseñanza y Aprendizaje de Lenguas Extranjeras en Europa (IX): Siglo XIX, Hacia el Presente de la Didáctica de Lenguas Modernas

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Christopher Rollason Review of: Eric Hobsbawm, (2011). How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism London: Little, Brown

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21 2012 A F I

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Nº 21 - Ano 2012

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SERVIZO DE PUBLICACIÓNS

COMITÉ EDITORIAL Cristina Larkin Galiñanes (Universidade de Vigo) Jorge Juan Figueroa Dorrego (Universidade de Vigo) Beatriz Figueroa Revilla (Universidade de Vigo) COMITÉ DE REDACCIÓN Antonio Ballesteros González (UNED Madrid) Alexander Bergs (Universidade de Osnabrück) Carlos Buján López (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Marta Cerezo Moreno (UNED Madrid) José Luis Chamosa González (Universidade de León) Juan Antonio Cutillas Espinosa (Universidade de Murcia) Mª Ángeles de la Concha Muñoz (UNED Madrid) Patricia Fra López (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Francisco Garrudo Carabias (Universidade de Sevilla) Constante González Groba (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Manuel González Piñeiro (Universidade de Vigo) Pedro Guardia Masó (Universidade de Barcelona) Juan Manuel Hernández Campoy (Universidade de Murcia) Mª José López Couso (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Ramón López Ortega (Universidade de Extremadura) Félix Martín Gutiérrez (Universidade Complutense de Madrid) Manuel Míguez Ben (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Jacqueline Minett Wilkinson (Universidade Autónoma de Barcelona) Rafael Moroy Casas (Universidade de Murcia) Marita Nadal Blasco (Universidade de Zaragoza) Manuela Palacios González (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Javier Pérez Guerra (Universidade de Vigo) Margarete Rubik (Universidade de Viena) Veljka Ruzicka Kenfel (Universidade de Vigo) José Siles Artés (Universidade Complutense de Madrid) Eduardo Varela Bravo (Universidade de Vigo) BABEL-AFIAL Nº 21; Ano 2012 EDITA Servizo de Publicacións da Universidade de Vigo Campus de Vigo 36310 VIGO, España IMPRIME Oficode, S.L. ISSN 1132 - 7332 DEP. LEGAL PO - 603 - 02 © Servizo de Publicacións da Universidade de Vigo, 2012

Índice Artículos Roberto del Valle Alcalá Wigan Pier or The Rocky Road to Socialism: George Orwell and the Romantic Critique of Industrialism

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Macarena García-Avello Re/Membering the Dismembered : La memoria narrada en Fugitive Pieces de Anne Michaels

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Gemma López The Next Step: Darwin, Brontë, Fowles

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Marta Miquel-Baldellou In the Footsteps of Edward Bulwer-lytton s Lucretia: Revisiting Victorian Popular Narratives of Madness

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Vicente Beltran-Palanques Integrating the Speech Act of Refusals in the Instructed Setting

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Victoria Martín de la Rosa i Elena Domínguez Romero North and South Perspectives: A Metaphorical Approach to the Role of Women in the Energy Sector

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Melania Evelyn Sánchez Reed Acquiring Conversational Skills in First Language Acquisition: Innate Capacity or the Fruit of Instruction?

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Mª José Corvo Sánchez Historia y tradición en la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en Europa (IX): Siglo XIX, hacia el presente de la didáctica de lenguas modernas

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Reseñas Eric Hobsbawm, 2011. How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism Christopher Rollason

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Roberto del Valle Alcalá Wigan Pier or The Rocky Road to Socialism: George Orwell and the...

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WIGAN PIER OR THE ROCKY ROAD TO SOCIALISM: GEORGE ORWELL AND THE ROMANTIC CRITIQUE OF INDUSTRIALISM* Roberto del Valle Alcalá Universidad de Alcalá roberto.valle@uah.es This paper argues that George Orwell’s Socialism was not arrived at in a smooth, linear or unproblematic trajectory. Rather, it was the outcome of a fraught experiential process, conceived of, first and foremost, as an ethical mandate to “see and smell” the material conditions of degradation into which decadent capitalism had issued. This experiential dimension had to be complemented by a critical elucidation of class prejudice in its different manifestations and also, crucially, of the real blocks to action engendered by official leftist outlooks. Orwell’s conclusion is a wholehearted endorsement of the romantic critique of industrialism found in conservative authors such as Carlyle and Lawrence: a frontal assault on the instrumental logic of modern progress guided by an organic ideal of society.

Key Words: Orwell, industrialism, instrumental reason, community, society.

socialism,

Este artículo sostiene que el socialismo en la obra de George Orwell no surge de una evolución ideológica lineal. Al contrario, este proyecto político singular nace de un proceso experiencial complejo, concebido en primer lugar como un mandato ético predicado sobre la necesidad de “ver y oler” las condiciones materiales de degradación a las que el capitalismo en crisis había dado lugar. Esta dimensión experiencial se habría de complementar, según Orwell, con un análisis crítico de los prejuicios de clase en sus diversas manifestaciones, *

Fecha de recepción: Mayo 2012

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así como de los obstáculos materiales generados por determinadas concepciones de la izquierda oficial.

Orwell asume, en consecuencia, los postulados básicos de la crítica romántica a la industrialización de autores tales como Carlyle o Lawrence: un ataque frontal a la lógica instrumental del progreso guiado por un ideal orgánico de sociedad.

Palabras Clave: Orwell, industrialismo, socialismo, razón instrumental, comunidad, sociedad.

Writing in “Nottingham and the Mining Country” about childhood memories of his native region, D.H. Lawrence rescues a powerful image of community, of organic linkage between fellow workers and their social world, projecting beyond the barren human landscape of 1930s Britain an alternative vision of social integration: The people lived almost entirely by instinct, men of my father”s age could not really read. And the pit did not mechanize men. On the contrary. Under the butty system, the miners worked underground as a sort of intimate community, they knew each other practically naked, and with curious close intimacy, and the darkness and the underground remoteness of the pit “stall”, and the continual presence of danger, made the physical, instinctive, and intuitional contact between men very highly developed, a contact almost as close as touch, very real and very powerful. This physical awareness and intimate togetherness was at its strongest down pit. When the men came up into the light, they blinked. They had, in a measure, to change their flow. Nevertheless, they brought with them above ground the curious dark intimacy of the mine, the naked sort of contact (Lawrence, 1950: 117) The intimate affectivity of the vision emphasises a direct physical continuity of bodies, miners’ bodies, carrying the symbolic burden of a combined exposure to the cruder depredations of

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industrial capitalism and a deep, instinctual homosociality fundamentally at odds with the cunning rationalities of modern political and economic forms. Lawrence’s image of mutuality is indeed closer to Burke’s depiction of the foregone “age of chivalry”, of its mores and rules of social intercourse, than it is to the contemporaneous discourse of Socialism or Labourism. In effect, his miners’ underground community rehearses – in Burke’s words – “that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom” (1986: 170).

According to Lawrence, the “colliers were deeply alive, instinctively. But they had no daytime ambition, and no daytime intellect. They avoided, really, the rational aspect of life. They preferred to take life instinctively and intuitively” (1950: 118). The elemental immediacy of this existence harbours no discursive or (in Lawrence’s words) “materialistic” concern – just the sheer immanence of homosocial affect, the sheer life of labouring and communing bodies.

The aim of this essay is to situate George Orwell’s critique of industrial capitalism and of the standard doctrinal responses articulated by the “official” left in the 1930s within this “affective” tradition of anti-capitalism. In this sense, the analyses Orwell brings together in his 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier are an ethical and strategic repository of contestation whose distinctive idiom must be read in the light of earlier, anti-progress and even anti-modern, critiques of social and ideological change. The emphasis is laid on survival and continuity, on the affective alliances and material articulations of social experience which make the denunciation of class oppression fundamentally dependant on the creative possibilities of ordinary resistance and hence deeply suspicious of rational-theoretical dogma.

Orwell’s documentary analysis of poverty and unemployment in the first half of The Road to Wigan Pier brings Lawrence’s indictment of modern ugliness to bear on the particular realities of moral and physical dereliction induced by the economic slump of the 1930s.

Orwell’s depiction of the human landscape shaped by the Depression in the North of England is directly influenced by a conceptual sequence (rehearsed throughout the Romantic tradition in its classic

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criticism of Industrialisation) which causally relates the “civilising” logic of capitalist rationality and its attendant discourse on “progress” to a grim offshoot or by-product of material ruin and spiritual decay.

The Road to Wigan Pier thus opens with a glimpse of degraded working-class life, a dramatic foray into the darker recesses of modern society rather than with the relatively triumphalist description of coalmining. The Brookers’ lodging house is a condensed repository of degradation; a paradigmatic negation of the principles and values of community and organic belonging hypostasised by Lawrence. Neither Gemeinschaft nor Gesellschaft (Tönnies, 2002) the world inhabited by the Brookers and their like is a lumping together of miseries and humiliations – a voiding of humanity branded with the logic of class stratification: On the day when there was a full chamber-pot under the breakfast table I decided to leave. The place was beginning to depress me. It was not only the dirt, the smells and the vile food, but the feeling of stagnant meaningless decay, of having got down into some subterranean place where people go creeping round and round, just like black beetles, in an endless muddle of slovened jobs and mean grievances. The most dreadful thing about people like the Brookers is the way they say the same things over and over again. It gives you the feeling that they are not real people at all, but a kind of ghost for ever rehearsing the same futile rigmarole… But it is no use saying that people like the Brookers are just disgusting and trying to put them out of mind. For they exist in tens and hundreds of thousands; they are one of the characteristic by-products of the modern world. You cannot disregard them if you accept the civilisation which produced them. For this is part at least of what industrialism has done for us (Orwell, 2001a: 66).

The material and moral penury of a particularly degraded example of working-class life is thus inextricable from the “civilising project” of modernity. There is an inescapable consubstantiality and continuity between capitalistic rationality and the local embodiments

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of its systemic failure. This makes the acknowledgment of poverty, its close analysis and experiencing, not only requisite for the doctrinal observer – for the socialist in the making – as part of a process of ideological development, but rather, a general ethical mandate with consequences for all: “It is a kind of duty to see and smell such places now and again, especially smell them, lest you should forget that they exist” (Orwell, 2001a: 66).

The bid for an organic reconstitution of social life away from the bracing dereliction of modern industrial “civilisation”, which has been pointed out as a central element of Orwell’s programme,i is predicated on a contrasting pattern of working-class reality which is closely associated, as in Lawrence, with the archetypical masculinity of miners.

Orwell’s depiction of mining in the Northern districts supposes a radical shift in tone and emphasis, from the bleakness and inertia of a self-defeating working class overly exposed to the worse dynamics of an internalised subalternity, to the proud proletarian identity of the mining communities. The dynamics of homosociality emphasised by Lawrence give way in Orwell to a detailed description of underground work. The mine becomes a heroic space – in sharp contrast with the vile domesticity of the Brookers’ house – in which the well-nigh superhuman powers of the miners meet and defy the internal limit of productive rationality. Coalmining supplies the emblem of a native resistance which tips the balance against a blanket projection of the working-class condition as deprived and debased. This emblematic position is, as Beatrix Campbell has pointed out, the product of a characteristic identification, in the critique of industrialism, between oppositionality and the mystique of masculinity: “[t]he socialist movement in Britain – and we could add: the broad range of antiindustrialist discourses, not only on the left – has been swept off its feet by the magic of masculinity, muscle and machinery. And in its star system, the accolades go to the miners” (1984: 98).

The miner stands out, in the loaded iconography of labouring figures and working-class idols, as a structural pivot commanding symbolic authority and attracting the unflinching adherence of a fetishistic discourse made by and for men. Orwell’s characteristic

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definition of the coal miner as “a sort of grimy caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported” (2001a: 68) encapsulates this fundamental equation between an idealised incarnation of Work – as the real sustenance upon which the capitalist machine is propped – and an essential notion of masculinity.

According to Rob Breton: “In its physicality, its demand for total engagement, its social usefulness, its community, its demand for ‘manly’ strength, its direct involvement with the land and solid materials, and in the image of self-realization it confirms, mining encapsulates nonrationalized Work, an idea Orwell isolates and protects” (2005: 161): the fillers look and work as though they were made of iron. They really do look like iron – hammered iron statues – under the smooth coat of coal dust which clings to them from head to foot. It is only when you see miners down the mine and naked that you realise what splendid men they are. Most of them are small (big men are at a disadvantage in that job) but nearly all of them have the most noble bodies; wide shoulders tapering to slender supple waists, and small pronounced buttocks and sinewy thighs, with no one ounce of waste flesh anywhere (Orwell, 2001a: 69).

This eroticisation of the labour-force, taken or cast at its most primary or elemental – as sheer corporeality –, paradoxically overturns the symbolic position initially assigned to the worker within the social organisation of labour. By hypostasising and fetishising the sterling physicality of these Nietzschean Übermenschen of modern industrialism, their enforced position in the system (their objective “nature” as cogs in a complex machinery) is undercut and ultimately replaced by a figure of immanence and self-referentiality for which no instrumental use can be prescribed.

Orwell’s libidinal engagement with the archetypes of industrial civilisation is counterbalanced, in the remaining sections of the first half of the book, with substantial documentary mapping of the actual conditions endured by many of these iconic representatives of working-class life. Thus the cruder effects of the crisis are

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contextualised in a particular dismantling of the very foundations of “civilisation” (Schweizer, 2001: 28).

The second half of the book analyses the facts of class which made Orwell’s integration with the working-class communities of the North an ultimately failed project. As Ben Clarke has pointed out, despite “his admiration for the working class, Orwell is simply ‘not one of them’, just as he equally simply is ‘a bourgeois’. The complex network of practices and values that defines the communities he visits prevents his integration. It also undermines his position as a social explorer” (2007: 59). The highly idiosyncratic and opinionated quality of this section of The Road would eventually earn Orwell the unqualified ire and contempt of broad sectors of the British Left.ii Most tellingly, it caused the book to be published with an editorial note by Victor Gollancz in which he expressed, on behalf of the Left Book Club, his disagreement with Orwell’s conclusions.

Orwell begins by delineating a personal trajectory of conversion to the socialist cause, examining the whys and wherefores of his decision to “see the most typical section of the English working class at close quarters” (2001a: 140). Orwell writes: “This was necessary to me as part of my approach to Socialism” (2001a: 140). His “descent” into the northern “abyss” of proletarian England is imagined as a fundamental and ineluctable step in the process of political development which had first seen him break with British imperialism in Burma and then experience the “down and out” life of a tramp in the urban underworlds of London and Paris. However, his exploration of the northern working class implied a qualitative leap, a change of moral substance which explicitly postulated Socialism – however embryonically or instinctively conceived – as the precise horizon of political achievement against which concrete realities and limitations were to be judged.

His reflection commences with a cross-examination of English class realities and, in particular, with the difficult topography of middle class distinctions and prejudices. Thus, he famously characterises his own background as “lower-upper-middle-class” – a particular stratum or “sub-caste” within an intricate series of bourgeois layers. Orwell emphasises in this respect that, however useful the economic

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determination may appear in terms of establishing the identity of a particular individual or family within the accepted divisions, “the essential point about the English class-system is that it is not entirely explicable in terms of money. Roughly speaking it is a money stratification, but it is also interpenetrated by a sort of shadowy castesystem; rather like a jerry-built modern bungalow haunted by medieval ghosts” (2001a: 140).

Orwell explains the virulence of much upper-middle-class prejudice (of the sort he himself had imbibed during his formative years and from which his socialist conversion was to mark the final break) as a particular ideological function of the often crude material differences between the various bourgeois rungs. The common denominator of these groups was a firm prejudice and an ingrained snobbishness aimed at the working classes. However, the lower strata within them, the “shabby genteel” and generally impoverished middle classes played a specific role in the defence and upkeep of the bourgeois ideological fortress. These “down-at-heel” members of the class were in that sense “the shock-absorbers of the bourgeoisie”: The real bourgeoisie, those in the £2,000 a year class and over, have their money as a thick layer of padding between themselves and the class they plunder; in so far as they are aware of the Lower Orders at all they are aware of them as employees, servants and tradesmen.

But it is quite different for the poor devils lower down who are struggling to live genteel lives on what are virtually working-class incomes. These last are forced into close and, in a sense, intimate contact with the working class, and I suspect it is from them that the traditional upper-class attitude towards “common” people is derived (Orwell, 2001a: 141).

The most basic aspect of the general characterisation and screening of the working classes operated by the bourgeois mentality is also the most irrational and hard to eradicate. This is the belief, from which a middle-class upbringing is inseparable, that “the lower classes smell”: “That was what we were taught – the lower classes smell.

And here, obviously, you are at an impassable barrier. For no feeling of

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like or dislike is quite so fundamental as a physical feeling” (Orwell, 2001a: 144). The rooting of prejudice in a fact of sheer physicality thus creates a chasmic antagonism, which even the best of one’s intellectual efforts and deep-seated political convictions can do little to unsettle. Orwell insists on the extraordinary resilience of habits, manners and prejudices acquired in the early stages of a middle-class upbringing. His point is that the former are fundamentally inseparable from the latter, and so, that the instinctive badges of class identity – however trivial they may appear – actually betray a fundamental assumption of superiority and continue to shape, even beyond the nurturing ground of a middle-class background, the individual’s unconscious allegiances: Perhaps table-manners are not a bad test of sincerity. I have known numbers of bourgeois Socialists, I have listened by the hour to their tirades against their own class, and yet never, not even once, have I met one who had picked up proletarian table-manners. Yet, after all, why not? Why should a man who thinks all virtue resides in the proletariat still take such pains to drink his soup silently? It can only be because in his heart he feels that proletarian manners are disgusting. So you see he is still responding to the training of his childhood, when he was taught to hate, fear, and despise the working class (Orwell, 2001a: 150).

The specific resistances induced by this early training in prejudice make any genuine attempt to transcend the class differential – in substance and not merely in appearance – a genuine personal struggle which the aspiring middle-class socialist must necessarily confront. Orwell locates the roots of his own struggle in the acute experience of oppression with which he had been acquainted in Burma. The bitterness and injustice generated by five years in the British Imperial Police were to issue in a sense of self-estrangement and in a radical urge to “get right down among the oppressed, to be one of them and on their side against their tyrants”: It was in this way that my thoughts turned towards the English working class. It was the first time

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that I had ever been really aware of the working class, and to begin with it was only because they supplied an analogy. They were the symbolic victims of injustice, playing the same part in England as the Burmese played in Burma (Orwell, 2001a: 158).

This fundamentally immature desire to mingle with the despised “others” of a markedly blinkered class ideology took the form, in these early years of reaction against the inherent outlook of his bourgeois background, of an “extreme” and yet still “unconscious” courting of underclass life: Orwell’s strenuous efforts to “go native” among London tramps are marked by a crucial overcoming of the physical scruple which he relates to a middle-class upbringing (Orwell, 2001b). This preliminary step will only acquire retroactive value with the securing of an enlightened position vis-à-vis the structural causes of class division; that is, with the assumption of an explicitly socialist programme of action.

Orwell’s central emphasis and injunction in the second part of The Road is precisely the need to reconcile political vision with a real acknowledgement of deep-seated class instincts, and thus, ultimately, to consciously undertake the difficult road beyond class not by circumventing its facts – and real blocks to action – but by limiting and reducing their relevance to effective socialist transformation. In this perspective, many well-intentioned attempts to “break” class barriers by enacting facetious scenarios of communal sharing which tend to ignore the radical embeddedness of prejudice and separation are fundamentally flawed: All such deliberate, conscious efforts at classbreaking are, I am convinced, a very serious mistake.

Sometimes they are merely futile, but where they do show a definite result it is usually to intensify classprejudice... You have forced the pace and set up an uneasy, unnatural equality between class and class; the resultant friction brings to the surface all kinds of feelings that might otherwise have remained buried, perhaps for ever (Orwell, 2001a: 168).

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The opposite temptation to demonise the bourgeoisie from a supposedly advanced proletarian position – one claiming to have “seen through” the bankruptcy of bourgeois values and culture as a whole – is, according to Orwell, a parallel source of estrangement and a further obstacle to the necessary creation of inter-class socialist alliances. This hostile and reductionistic approach, which Orwell associates with “the younger Communist writers” and the Left Review – generates a further dislocation of the real challenges and aims in the attempt to surpass the class divide. In that sense: The only sensible procedure is to go slow and not force the pace. If you secretly think of yourself as a gentleman and as such the superior of the greengrocer’s errand boy, it is far better to say so than to tell lies about it. Ultimately you have got to drop your snobbishness, but it is fatal to pretend to drop it before you are really ready to do so (Orwell, 2001a: 172).

The road to Socialism, as Orwell explicated it in the prerevolutionary – that is, pre-Spanish Civil War – approach of The Road to Wigan Pier, is thus a hazardous and meandering road around ingrained conceptions and prejudices (around “ideologies”) with the distinctive, and all too real threat of Fascism lurking in the background.

The parlous state of the movement, both nationally and internationally, prompts a critical reconsideration of both its material underpinnings (the class divide and the set of ideological responses it generates) and its doctrinal components. This particular turn in Orwell’s argument is by far the most controversial and symptomatic of what, at this stage in his political development, can only be characterised as the preliminary phase of his Socialism. The basic identification of its doctrinal core is thus a commonsensical acknowledgement of egalitarianism and mutuality in a time of dire inequalities and social fragmentation: “the idea that we must all cooperate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions, seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system” (Orwell, 2001a: 173) And yet, “the fact that we have got to face is that Socialism is not establishing itself. Instead of going forward, the cause

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of Socialism is visibly going back. At this moment Socialists almost everywhere are in retreat before the onslaught of Fascism, and events are moving at terrible speed” (Orwell, 2001a: 174). The root-cause of this retreat must therefore be sought out, at least partially, in the specific imaginaries invoked by Socialists, in the established outlook of a theory of social praxis that “in the form in which it is now presented to us, has about it something inherently distasteful – something that drives away the very people who ought to be flocking to its support” (Orwell, 2001a: 174).

Orwell polemically associates this repulsive kernel of the theory with the specific theoretical reflexes of orthodox Marxism (or even Marxism tout court). In establishing this long-standing, and often problematical, association (which will remain largely unrevised throughout his subsequent work), Orwell centrally targets some of the more obtuse pronouncements of a simplistic teleological vision welded to assumptions of “historic necessity” and the inexorability of Socialism itself.iii The very occurrence of Fascism as a novel, determining force in the balance of political loyalties appears to confirm the failure of any such “iron laws” of historical prognostication.

Orwell’s counter-intuitive method is to expose the limitations of the anti-socialist view by proceeding from within, that is, by charting the sources and logical steps followed by “the ordinary objector to Socialism”. The first observable fact in any close study of existing Socialism is that, “in its developed form [it] is a theory confined entirely to the middle class” (Orwell, 2001a: 175). Thus, its prime adherents – at least in the English context with which Orwell is here concerned – are not working-class individuals with organic links to the industrial areas, but essentially bourgeois elements with a tendency to cut themselves off from any real sense of “common humanity”. The identification of Socialists with “cranks” (that is, with “every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England”) engenders an automatic reaction of hostility in the “ordinary man” (Orwell, 2001a: 175). This is with little doubt, as has been abundantly observed, Orwell at his most parochial and prejudiced (Hoggart, 1974: 38). Yet the reductionism (and chauvinism) of particular insights is inseparable from the main outline of the argument and its outstanding points. Thus the widening

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gulf between middle-class Socialism and what Orwell identifies as the commonsensical average is a function of the actual distance, in manner, idiom and worldview, between their doctrine itself and the experiential horizon of the proletariat. This is especially true of the Fabian variety of socialist theory or the jargon-filled orthodox Marxist discourse “which, even when it is not openly written de haut en bas, is always completely removed from the working class in idiom and manner of thought. The Coles, Webbs, Stracheys, etc., are not exactly proletarian writers” (Orwell, 2001a: 176). Orwell’s claim is that the fine textures of orthodoxy and theory are essentially removed from the practical experience and immediate political imagination of working people: To the ordinary working man, the sort you would meet in any pub on Saturday night, Socialism does not mean much more than better wages and shorter hours and nobody bossing you about. To the more revolutionary type, the type who is a hunger-marcher and is blacklisted by employers, the word is a sort of rallying-cry against the forces of oppression, a vague threat of future violence. But, so far as my experience goes, no genuine working man grasps the implications of Socialism. Often, in my opinion, he is a truer Socialist than the orthodox Marxist, because he does remember, what the other so often forgets, that Socialism means justice and common decency (Orwell, 2001a: 177).

In this alignment of the doctrine with a fundamentally bourgeois experience of political action, and in the resulting recognition of a basic rift between the theory and its avowed collective subject – the proletariat –, Orwell approximates a relatively widespread interpretation of working-class attitudes towards Socialism (Day, 2001: 168). Left-wing criticism of middle-class dirigisme within the ranks of British Socialism was not infrequent in the interwar period. Ellen Wilkinson’s 1929 novel Clash and Harold Heslop’s The Gate of a Strange Field, to name but two examples, offer a characteristic response to the Fabian-inspired, top-down logic of social transformation (Fox, 1994). Wilkinson was particularly vocal about class determinations of political action and about the discrepant loyalties these generated. Her portrayal of working-class labour heroine

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Joan Craig provides the narrative cover for, and exploration of, the attempted and ultimately failed encounter between the “enlightened” world of a London middle-class intelligentsia with a “committed” outlook and the relatively backward world of northern labour activism (Del Valle Alcalá, 2009). The total effect of this representation is indubitably one of frustrated alliance: a recognition of the latent incompatibility between extant bourgeois loyalties and a purely rhetorical solidarity with the working class.iv Wilkinson opts for class retrenchment, calling at the same time for a sincere break with middle-class values and tactics of resistance.

Orwell’s position, though less expedient about the necessary passage beyond middle-class ideological boundaries, is largely coincidental with Wilkinson’s criticism of the “high-minded Socialist slum-visitor”: “The truth is that to many people, calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which ‘we’, the clever ones, are going to impose upon ‘them’, the Lower Orders” (Orwell, 2001a: 179-180).v One of the more palpable effects of this estrangement of Socialists from common feeling and sensibility is, according to Orwell, the blanket rejection to which the movement as a whole is often condemned by people who could, at least potentially, sympathise with “the essential aim of Socialism.” This induced alienation cannot be accounted for in a mechanistically materialist way, as is often the case in the standard (vulgar) Marxist analysis. Thus the grim spectacle of 1930s left-wing politics, as Orwell interprets it in the English context, is one marked by a general disconnection between projected aims (which are regarded as largely compatible with a numerical majority of the population) and particular stylistic and intellectual modes of presentation and explanation.

Amongst the ominous consequences of this fundamental breakdown, the rise of Fascism as a compensatory strategy indirectly capitalising on Socialists’ incapacity to make their case and to generally empathise with popular demands, stands out as the most symptomatic development of the period. In the popular reaction against Socialism – grounded in a “commonsensical” hostility towards “prigs” – (Orwell,

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2001a: 182), Orwell identifies a fundamental aversion to mechanisation. Thus the “Socialist world is always pictured as a completely mechanised, immensely organised world, depending on the machine as the civilisations of antiquity depended on the slave” (2001a: 185). This unquestioning complicity and even coextensiveness of Socialism with technological dominance becomes a serious limitation as soon as the mechanical aspect is no longer “merely regarded as a necessary development but as an end in itself, almost as a kind of religion”: All the work that is now done by hand will then be done by machinery: everything that is now made of leather, wood or stone will be made of rubber, glass or steel; there will be no disorder, no loose ends, no wildernesses, no wild animals, no weeds, no disease, no poverty, no pain – and so on and so forth. The Socialist world is to be above all things an ordered world, an efficient world. But it is precisely from that vision of the future as a sort of glittering Wells-world that sensitive minds recoil. Please notice that this essentially fat-bellied version of “progress” is not an integral part of Socialist doctrine; but it has come to be thought of as one, with the result that the temperamental conservatism which is latent in all kinds of people is easily mobilised against Socialism (Orwell, 2001a: 186).

The tenor of this analysis brings back the main emphases of the Romantic critique of industrialism. The unrelenting onslaught of the machine is the price of a bleary-eyed progressivism; and this price is to be paid in a brutal dismantling of the organic equilibria – the harmonious rhythms – of pre-industrial society. Thomas Carlyle’s conservative pronouncements against industrialism in the first half of the nineteenth century defined a very similar polemical target, which he evocatively labelled “the Age of Machinery” (an “epoch” of which 1930s Socialism as anatomised by Orwell, no doubt constituted – as Jacobinism and Chartism before it – a precise and organic function): It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards,

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teaches and practises the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster... These things, which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force, of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for external combinations and arrangement, for institutions, constitutions, – for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope and struggle. Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical character (Carlyle, 1971: 64, 67).

The consubstantiality of this structural dynamic of modern society and the accompanying forms of social organisation and political rule is, for Carlyle, indisputable. Indeed, “Nowhere... is the deep, almost exclusive faith we have in Mechanism more visible than in the Politics of this time” (Carlyle, 1971: 70). The radical adherence to “institutions, constitutions” and an associated progeny of “mechanical” exertions against that “subordination of the heart” which, according to Burke, “kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom” (Burke, 1986: 170), supplied further proof of an unstoppable drift towards “speedy anarchy” (Carlyle, 1971:181). In a similar vein of interpretation, Orwell credits the predominant form of Socialism of his contemporaries with an analogous projection: the endless mediations and “rationalisations” supposed by technology and machinery fundamentally deny the human element in creativity. With the social division of labour – which pulsates at the core of Orwell’s description of the industrial condition in which Socialism has its roots – comes the end of that unitary process of production in which the worker can directly relate to the outcome of her/his work – and in which work itself displays the lineaments of an organic and total process requiring, so to speak, an integral productive intelligence – a craft, rather than a dictated gesture or isolated operation in an impersonal series (Braverman, 1974). The

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boundless extensiveness of the mechanisation process leaves no exempted area, subjecting all and sundry to its logic and rituals: “The machine would even encroach upon the activities we now class as ‘art’; it is doing so already, via the camera and the radio. Mechanise the world as fully as it might be mechanised, and whichever way you turn there will be some machine cutting you off from the chance of working – that is, of living” (Orwell, 2001a: 192).

Orwell’s critique of industrial capitalism is fundamentally continuous with an earlier tradition of analysis and resistance to the mechanising dynamics of the modern age. It has been argued in this paper that The Road to Wigan Pier presents the crucial outline of his intellectual and moral conversion to Socialism as a process of experiential analysis and ideological critique. The material exposure to the degrading conditions of capitalist exploitation must thus be accompanied by an ethical denunciation of instrumental reason and “mechanical” doctrine. This, rather than signalling an original break with native radicalism, and the onset of a supposedly post-socialist line of thought, marks a crucial revitalisation of Burke’s, Carlyle’s, and more recently, Lawrence’s, emphases on communal loyalties and continuities. Radical resistance becomes, in the discursive modes of this romantic critique of capitalism, an assertion of common values which fundamentally rejects the ideological repudiation of shared social experience.

NOTES Richard Hoggart has suggested, in this sense, that Orwell “wanted to belong to a coherent society, [that] he longed for a sense of communion” (1974: 38).

2 As Ben Jackson has noted, the “critique of Orwell’s definition of socialism became a minor industry” (2007: 98).

3 This criticism, from a radically different perspective, was also formulated by a declared Marxist thinker such as Walter Benjamin. His devastating critique of teleological “historicism” pervades his important “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, in which the vulgar conception of historical evolution encountered in linear interpretations of Marxism is berated for 1

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its negation of the complex temporality of historical emancipation (Benjamin, 1999: 253-264).

4 More recently and in a different context, Ross McKibbin has drawn a parallel between particular expressions of working-class identity and effective reactions of hostility towards received discourses of radical social transformation. In his analysis, “class consciousness is a term which... describes attitudes which are defensive, negative or apolitical. A class conscious stance thus becomes one of working-class suspicion of middle-class men and women arising out of a belief in the fundamental incompatibility of the ideas and politics of men who do not share the same life experiences or the same way of earning a living, whether or not they are your allies or ostensible partners in the labour movement” (Quoted in McKibbin 1994: 294-295).

5 See Peter Beilharz (1992) and A.M. McBriar (1962).

WORKS CITED Beilharz, P. 1992. Labour’s Utopias: Bolshevism, Fabianism, Social Democracy. London: Routledge.

Benjamin, W. 1999. Illuminations. London: Pimlico.

Braverman, H. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital: the Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York and London: Monthly Review Press.

Breton, R. 2005. Gospels and Grit: Work and Labour in Carlyle, Conrad, and Orwell. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press.

Burke, E. 1986. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Campbell, B. 1984. Wigan Pier Revisited: Poverty and Politics in the 80s.

London: Virago.

Carlyle, T. 1971. “Signs of the Times”, in Thomas Carlyle: Selected Writings. London: Penguin.

Clarke, B. 2007. Orwell in Context: Communities, Myths, Values.

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Day, G. 2001. Class. London: Routledge.

Del Valle Alcalá, R. 2009. “En-Gendering the Clash: Ellen Wilkinson and Interwar Socialist Feminism”, Philologia, 7: 127-134.

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Fox, P. 1994. Class Fictions: Shame and Resistance in the British Working Class Novel, 1890-1945. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Hoggart, R. 1974. “Introduction to The Road to Wigan Pier”. In R. Williams, ed. George Orwell: A Collection of Critical Essays.

Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Jackson, B. 2007. Equality and the British Left: A Study in Progressive Political Thought, 1900-64. Manchester: M.U.P. Lawrence, D.H. 1950. “Nottingham and the Mining Country”. In Selected Essays. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

McBriar, A.M. 1962. Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884-1918.

Cambridge: C.U.P. McKibbin, R. 1994. The Ideologies of Class: Social Relations in Britain 18801950. Oxford: Claredon Press.

Orwell, G. 2001a. Orwell”s England. London: Penguin.

Orwell, G. 2001b. Down and Out in Paris and London. London: Penguin.

Schweizer, B. 2001. Radicals on the Road: the Politics of English Travel Writing in the 1930s. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2001.

Tönnies, F. 2002. Community and Society. Newton Abbot: David & Charles.

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“RE/MEMBERING THE DISMEMBERED”: LA MEMORIA NARRADA EN FUGITIVE PIECES DE ANNE MICHAELS* Macarena García-Avello Universidad de Oviedo garciamacarena@uniovi.es This article examines the representation of the process through which a traumatic experience conforms into a narrative in Anne Michaels’s novel Fugitive Pieces (1996). The traumatic past of the main character, Jakob Beer, is conveyed through a narrative that performs a series of functions that need to be considered throughout this investigation. We will focus on the narrated memory in order to study the connection between language and consciousness, the theories of the narrated self, scriptotherapy and the communicative memory and its role as testimony. These different aspects can be compared to a transference or a “translation”, which constitutes one of the main metaphors throughout the novel.

Key words: Fugitive Pieces, trauma, narrative memory, narrated self, scriptotherapy, communicative memory, testimony, translation.

Este artículo examina la representación del proceso por el que la experiencia traumática se configura en una narrativa en la novela Fugitive Pieces (1996) de Anne Michaels. En ella, el pasado traumático Jakob Beer se dispone en una narrativa cuyas funciones y propiedades se detallarán a lo largo de esta investigación.

En concreto, el presente artículo se centra en la memoria narrada con el objetivo de profundizar en el vínculo entre lenguaje y conciencia, la construcción de la identidad narrativa, la escriptoterapia (escriptoterapia), la memoria comunicativa y su papel como testimonio. En todos estos casos, se observa cómo existe una traslación comparable *

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a una “traducción” que da lugar a una de las principales metáforas de la novela.

Palabras clave: Fugitive Pieces, trauma, memoria narrativa, identidad narrativa, scriptoterapia, memoria comunicativa, testimonio, traducción.

1. INTRODUCCIÓN La novela Fugitive Pieces (1996) de la canadiense Anne Michaels corresponde a lo que Barbara Foley denomina una novela pseudofactual, “pseudofactual novel” (1982), para referirse a la incorporación de dos diarios ficticios o “pseudodiarios”. Escrita por dos personajes imaginarios, Jakob y Ben, cuyas vidas se han visto marcadas por el trauma, este modo de representación les permite reflexionar sobre su pasado, al tiempo que refleja el proceso de configuración de la memoria en una narración. El presente artículo se centra en el diario escrito por Jakob Beer con el objetivo de analizar el proceso por el que la experiencia traumática se conforma en una narración. Fugitive Pieces muestra cómo el trauma se interpone en la recuperación, aceptación y trasmisión del pasado personal, identificándolo con una fisura que rompe con la narración del pasado. No obstante, el diario es la prueba evidente de que Jakob ha sido capaz de poner su experiencia traumática por escrito, lo que indica que en el presente en el que el narrador se sitúa ha logrado restablecer el vínculo con su pasado.

Asimismo, la narración del pasado traumático cumple una serie de funciones que se detallarán en las siguientes líneas. A lo largo de este artículo se examinará el proceso de escritura del pasado, haciendo hincapié en el importante papel de la narrativa para la recuperación de la víctima tras el trauma. A través de una experiencia límite, la novela de Anne Michaels pone a prueba una serie de teorías sobre la narración del recuerdo; entre ellas, la relación entre lenguaje y conciencia, la identidad narrativa, la escriptoterapia (“scriptotherapy” en inglés) y la narración como testimonio. Por otra parte, la construcción de un recuerdo atravesado por el lenguaje no sólo permite aprehender el pasado, sino también transmitirlo a otros, dando a conocer la experiencia personal a los demás.

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La primera parte de Fugitive Pieces corresponde al diario ficticio de Jakob Beer, un judío de origen polaco, cuya infancia se ve interrumpida por el asalto de los nazis a su hogar cuando apenas tiene nueve años. Gracias a su pequeña estatura, el niño consigue esconderse detrás de un hueco en la pared desde el que escucha cómo los soldados asesinan a sus padres y secuestran a su hermana mayor, Bella. Tras esto, huye al bosque donde se oculta bajo tierra durante el día y por las noches cambia de refugio. El niño cumple con este ritual hasta que Athos, un geólogo griego a cargo de las excavaciones de Biskupin, “la Pompeya polaca”, le saca del barro de la ciénaga. Al comprender que se trata de un superviviente judío, decide escapar con él a la isla de Zakynthos de la que procede. La tragedia con la que se inicia el diario representa un punto de inflexión, convirtiéndose en el episodio más atroz, así como el más determinante de la vida del narrador. Este impacto extremadamente sobrecogedor a una edad tan temprana no sólo ocupa un lugar central dentro de su biografía, sino que deja además unas secuelas que se manifiestan de diversas formas a lo largo de su existencia; a través de sueños, pesadillas, visiones, depresiones, etc.

La historia de Jakob, tal y como él la rememora, se deslinda y continuamente retorna al trauma infantil enmarcado en el contexto del Holocausto.

2. LA MEMORIA NARRADA Puesto que Jakob en su diario representa por escrito la memoria traumática, nos disponemos a lo largo de este artículo a llevar a cabo un análisis exhaustivo del proceso por el que los síntomas se convierten en recuerdos narrados. Para ello conviene mencionar la distinción de Ricoeur entre la evocación y la búsqueda, o en palabras de Aristóteles, la mneme y anmnesis, según el acto de recordar sea pasivo o activo. La evocación involuntaria es especialmente nociva en los casos de trauma, provocando lo que Ricoeur denomina “irrupción obsesiva” y que puede resumirse con la siguiente cita: “en los casos de irrupción obsesiva […] la evocación no se siente (pathos) simplemente, sino que se sufre” (2003:60). Esta clase de memoria hace que el recuerdo traumático, además de ser independiente de la voluntad del sujeto, se caracterice por su resistencia a la hora de acomodarse a una narración. La dificultad al integrarlo en una narración del pasado está relacionada con muchos

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de los síntomas del síndrome post-traumático, pues tal y como explica Cathy Caruth, “the pathology consists […] solely in the structure of its experience or reception: the event is not assimilated or experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it” (1995: 4-5). La cita hace hincapié en la disociación que impide que la experiencia se procese con normalidad.

Esta abstracción de la mente impide al sujeto asimilar el acontecimiento traumático; de ahí que el siguiente paso sea la aparición de una fase de incubación, también conocida como latencia (“incubation period” o “latency”) tras la cual comienzan a manifestarse diferentes síntomas. Este fenómeno coincide con lo que Freud denomina “Nachträglichkeit” (1895), traducido en inglés como “deferred action” o “belatedness” para hacer referencia a la postergación de la exteriorización del síndrome post-traumático en repeticiones posteriores del episodio traumático.

La búsqueda se orienta a la recuperación consciente del pasado, lo que implica la acción deliberada de darle voz a los recuerdos. En la novela de Michaels la búsqueda se lleva a cabo a través de lo que se denomina en este artículo como “memoria narrativa” basada en una memoria que se ha configurado en una narración. El hecho de que el diario recoja por escrito la memoria traumática, caracterizada por su resistencia a la hora de configurarse en una narrativa implica una transposición comparable a la traducción interlingüística, que, de hecho, aparece como un leitmotiv a lo largo de la novela. Como constata Gabriela Stoicea, “working through a trauma always involves some sort of translation” (2006: 46). El proceso de la traducción entre idiomas inevitablemente conlleva alteraciones, lagunas y omisiones, de la misma forma que al poner palabras a la memoria traumática no sólo se producen cambios sustanciales, sino que siempre hay algo que escapa la traducción y, por tanto, se pierde. Por otra parte, la traducción facilita la transmisión de un canal a otro, de una lengua a otra, permitiendo su comunicación a aquellos a quienes les es extraña. Esto es lo que ocurre con la memoria narrativa, cuya traslación al lenguaje permite comunicar y compartir la experiencia. Esta transformación implica también una conversión en memoria “comunicativa”.

Asimismo, la narrativa impone un significado y una continuidad al pasado, lo que como veremos es indispensable no sólo para la recuperación tras el trauma, también para la consolidación del “yo”.

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La relevancia de la memoria narrativa se pone de manifiesto en Fugitive Pieces mediante las funciones que desempeña en el caso de Jakob. Puesto que tal y como se argumentará más adelante, el lenguaje y el conocimiento consciente se presuponen, la narrativa no sólo somete al escrutinio la experiencia vivida, sino que la organiza, la reevalúa y le otorga sentido. Las secuelas ocasionadas por la represión, la repetición y otras manifestaciones del síndrome post-traumático se diluyen con la mediación del lenguaje, por lo que la construcción de una narrativa resulta especialmente reparadora en estos casos. Además de sus fines terapéuticos en los casos de trauma, la memoria narrativa es fundamental para la construcción de la identidad del sujeto.

Finalmente, la narración posibilita la comunicación y transmisión del recuerdo, lo cual se encuentra estrechamente ligado a la narrativa como testimonio y al establecimiento de unas relaciones interpersonales. Por lo tanto, el resultado de la “búsqueda” en el sentido ricoeurniano es una re-presentación que se engloba bajo el término de “memoria comunicativa” (Assmann, 2006) El aspecto contradictorio del recuerdo traumático es que la condición de superación consiste en poner fin a la fluctuación entre represión y repetición por medio de un lenguaje al que la experiencia traumática se resiste. En otras palabras, los síntomas del trauma emanan de una memoria “quebrada”, vacía de palabras, que rehúsa someterse al lenguaje, a pesar de que su integración en una narrativa supone la única posibilidad de sobreponerse. Durante su infancia, Jakob ignora todavía la potencialidad del lenguaje como remedio al efecto demoledor del trauma. Los infortunios a los que tuvo que hacer frente en su niñez le familiarizaron con otras propiedades del lenguaje; en concreto con su poder para borrar u omitir. Todo proceso lingüístico supone inevitablemente una selección que no depende únicamente del sujeto, sino que en muchos casos está determinado por factores extralingüísticos. Para el psicoanálisis, así como para una serie de filósofos entre los que cabe destacar a Wittgenstein, aquello que sobrepasa al lenguaje permanece desconocido para la conciencia y, por tanto, es casi como si no existiera; de acuerdo con la famosa frase de Wittgenstein (1921) “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. Evidentemente nada indica que los límites sean fijos; muy al contrario, las fronteras de lo que puede manifestarse verbalmente y, por consiguiente, pasar a formar parte del mundo cognoscible se

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encuentran en proceso continuo de expansión. En el caso de Jakob, los recuerdos que no han sido dotados de palabras exceden la comprensión, y viceversa, el primer paso para reconocer la experiencia pasada es articularla y registrarla por medio de la narración.

Llegados a este punto es interesante detenerse en los primeros pasos del protagonista en dirección a la construcción de la memoria narrativa. El diario describe cómo años después de escapar de Polonia, ya en Toronto, evoca de manera imprevista una vieja canción infantil que le devuelve reminiscencias de su infancia. La canción representa el lenguaje consciente de su niñez que le asalta acompañándose de una serie de imágenes-recuerdo de esta etapa de su vida. La melodía se asocia a un acto cotidiano, su madre peinándole el pelo a su hermana. Esta escena familiar corriente, incluso podría considerarse ordinaria dentro del contexto del día a día de su infancia, emerge tan inesperadamente que Jakob se siente invadido por la emoción.

In the new clones and new quiet, a thread of memory clung to a thought. Suddenly an overheard word fastened on to a melody; a song of my mother´s that was always accompanied by the sound of brush bristles pulling through Bella´s hair […] The words stumbled out of my mouth, a whisper, then louder, until I was mumbling whatever I remembered […] I whimpered; my spirit shape finally in familiar clothes (Michaels, 1998:110).

La evocación irrumpe con violencia en la conciencia, sirviendo de puente en la búsqueda por la que Jakob aspira a recuperar estos recuerdos configurándolos en una narrativa. En cuanto a la naturaleza de la rememoración conviene indicar que este episodio está marcado por la ambivalencia. La serenidad y la calma que caracterizan el instante recordado contrastan e impiden presagiar lo que ocurriría después. En la delicadeza de la imagen no es posible anticipar el significado turbador que adquiere el recuerdo tras la tragedia del asalto nazi, siendo, de hecho, el motivo por el que ha permanecido durante años sepultado. La evocación está empañada por el aire siniestro que inspira acordarse de su familia en un momento en que se desconocía el destino terrible que en el presente del protagonista es imposible de

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eludir. Asimismo, el avance con respecto a la represión padecida años atrás es innegable, ya que este recuerdo contribuye a dar forma a una memoria que hasta entonces se componía casi exclusivamente de figuras fantasmagóricas.

La canción quebranta el silencio, cediendo gradualmente el paso al sonido de la música y a las letras de las canciones a medida que las sombras del pasado se diluyen en imágenes cotidianas y el lenguaje se apropia de la memoria. La lengua materna que primero había deseado encubrir con letras griegas y posteriormente había ocultado sirviéndose del inglés se subleva con el fin de dejar al descubierto una escena de su infancia en Polonia. Aquello que existía sólo en el subconsciente empieza a manifestarse cada vez más nítidamente hasta que el protagonista se ve forzado a darles un reconocimiento explícito.

La frase “my spirit shape finally in familiar clothes” señala que por primera vez desde que abandonó su país natal, sus recuerdos están articulados por el lenguaje. Inducido por una vieja música, su mente por fin registra el tiempo precedente al trauma. La letra en yiddish junto con la melodía de la canción se asocia inmediatamente con el recuerdo-imagen de su madre peinando el pelo de Bella. Por medio del estímulo de la música recupera de manera involuntaria la huella del pasado, provista de un discernimiento que sólo confiere el lenguaje.

La actitud de Jakob pone nuevamente en evidencia la afirmación de Ricoeur acerca de que todo episodio debe ser susceptible de configurarse en una trama, pues para ser comprensible, la experiencia debe narrarse.

La complacencia que siente ante el desvanecimiento de la amnesia que rodeaba toda su infancia señala la necesidad de darle voz a los silencios. Además de la imposibilidad de borrar el trauma de la memoria del cuerpo, el sujeto precisa de una narrativa del pasado, pues sin ella, se expone a un peligro constante de desintegrarse. Si bien la cita no corresponde al momento de superación del trauma, sí representa el primer paso en esta dirección, introduciendo sutilmente las otras funciones de la narración que se desarrollarán a continuación.

En primer lugar, la frase “my spirit shape finally in familiar clothes” también sugiere que la recuperación de este recuerdo restituye una parte de su identidad. En tanto el intervalo de la infancia rememorada representa una de las piezas clave de su pasado, esta aprehensión le

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permite recobrar una pieza de su “yo”. Un segundo aspecto de la cita, fundamental para la superación del trauma, atañe a la referencia a la gente que se encuentra en la calle en ese momento, poniendo en evidencia la importancia de oídos que le escuchen cuando comienza a cantar: “to raise my foreign song and feel understood” (Michaels, 1998: 110). Aparte de rememorar la canción, evocando a través de ella a su madre y a Bella, el protagonista siente el impulso incontenible de entonarla en voz alta. Jakob no se limita a reproducir mentalmente la melodía con la letra, sino que de repente se ve incitado a pronunciar el yiddish que durante años había permanecido relegado al silencio, con el propósito de que otros le escuchen. La cita anticipa un tema que será analizado más adelante con mayor profundidad, la importancia del lenguaje como testimonio, así como el hecho en sí mismo de establecer lazos afectivos por medio del intercambio lingüístico. Esto señala la razón adicional por la que el recuerdo debe ser traducido al lenguaje: la trasmisión. La búsqueda de Jakob, como se observa más adelante, culmina con la “communicative memory” (Assmann, 2006), término que resulta especialmente apropiado por la alusión a la necesidad de comunicar el recuerdo, de compartir así la memoria con otros.

3. LA ESCRITURA COMO TERAPIA O “ESCRIPTOTERAPIA” Antes de profundizar en los nexos promovidos por el intercambio lingüístico de recuerdos, es pertinente dedicar una sección al papel tan esencial de la memoria narrativa tanto para la identidad del sujeto como para la aceptación y posterior superación del trauma. El relato hace que el pasado sea reconocible, analizable y que la continuidad impere sobre la fragmentación inherente a la realidad humana. Es, por tanto, fundamental a la hora de proporcionar una coherencia y continuidad a la experiencia fragmentaria e inconexa del sujeto. El papel de la narración para la superación psicológica constituye uno de los pilares del psicoanálisis, cristalizada en la tesis de Carl Jung en The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1959) de que el primer requisito para la recuperación consiste en la expresión verbal del sufrimiento. También LaCapra (2001) se hace eco de la necesidad de “relatar” el trauma, de darle salida a través del lenguaje con el fin de transformar la memoria del cuerpo en memoria

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comunicativa. La búsqueda se identifica con el proceso del “re/member”, por el que la irrupción obsesiva se configura en una narrativa del pasado mediante la transferencia de la memoria del cuerpo a una representación semántica que permite reconocer, examinar y comunicar el pasado. Esta traslación conlleva una pérdida de la “autenticidad” de las emociones y percepciones, al tiempo que resalta la imposibilidad de traducir ciertas memorias al lenguaje. Sin embargo, la narrativa es también la condición indispensable para la restitución tras el trauma, en tanto constituye el requisito a la hora de reevaluar lo ocurrido, analizarlo e integrarlo como parte del “pasado” y, en consecuencia, como una pieza integrante de su “Yo” y, finalmente, comunicárselo a otros. La siguiente cita de Roberta Culbertson resume magníficamente una situación que es sin duda aplicable a Jakob: To return fully to the self as socially defined, to establish a relationship again with the world, the survivor must tell what happened. This is the function of narrative […] render body memories tellable, which means to order and arrange them in the form of a story […] Telling, in short, is a process of disembodying memory, demystifying it, a process which can only begin after memories have been re-membered (1995:179) Pasar de la evocación a la búsqueda representa un proceso consciente que implica un trabajo deliberado por parte del sujeto. La cita introduce el concepto de “re/member”, sobre el que conviene profundizar. El término inglés permite captar las dos acepciones, pues además de hacer referencia al acto de recordar alude al proceso de recuperar las piezas que se habían desmembrado: “re/member what was dismembered”. La brecha que el trauma implanta en la narración desestabiliza la relación del “yo” con su pasado, lo que a su vez pone en peligro el equilibrio psicológico de un ente desprovisto de memoria.

La fragmentación que se deriva de un pasado que se resiste a inscribirse dentro de la biografía del sujeto sólo consigue recomponerse por medio de la labor fundamental de construcción de la memoria.

Puesto que la experiencia traumática hace saltar en pedazos la unidad del “yo”, el trance del “re/member” en estas condiciones consiste en volver a juntar las piezas de unos recuerdos que el trauma “desmembró”. Esto presupone una visión del pasado como si se tratara

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de una amalgama de experiencias que sólo se pueden recomponer parcialmente por mediación de un proceso de recopilación y selección que es siempre insuficiente e inconcluso. Por tanto, este “re/member” culmina con la configuración de una narrativa que en último término permite unir, ordenar y encadenar cada una de las partes que componen el relato de una vida. Esto, en definitiva, da lugar a la configuración de una memoria narrativa.

De manera más general, la elaboración de una narrativa coherente contribuye también a la consolidación del sujeto, encargándose de restituir al “yo” mediante la construcción del relato de su pasado. El filósofo Locke es el primero en teorizar el poder de la memoria narrativa para otorgar permanencia al sujeto frente a la inestabilidad de sus acciones, comportamientos, cualidades físicas y psicológicas, etc. A pesar de la inconsistencia característica de la memoria, el “yo” se construye precisamente mediante la continuidad que proporciona la memoria narrativa. Dentro de este marco teórico, recordar implica narrar: “to be able to relate one incident or episode to another, and thereby to produce a version of the self ” (cit. en Whitehead, 2009: 63). Partiendo de esta observación, Locke vincula de manera directa identidad, recuerdo y narrativa, lo que le lleva a plantear un nuevo sentido de la subjetividad que germina durante la Ilustración para madurar durante el periodo del romanticismo. En este contexto no resulta extraño el desarrollo de un nuevo género, la autobiografía, entre las que cabe destacar las Confessions de Rousseau.

Las memorias de Rousseau enlazan distintos momentos en la vida de un “yo” que a pesar de las diferentes cronotopías y transformaciones mantiene íntegro su sentido de la identidad debido a la continuidad proporcionada por la narración.

En el siglo XX, el nexo entre la configuración de la subjetividad y la composición de narraciones pasa a un primer plano en el célebre ensayo de Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” (1977), donde sostiene que el sujeto no es el origen, sino el resultado del proceso de escritura. En otras palabras, el “yo” es una construcción, cuya coherencia se consigue por medio de la narración, de manera que la narrativa se encarga de proyectar al sujeto, en vez de al revés. Esta misma argumentación sirve de base para la identidad narrativa de Ricoeur, quien define la identidad como la historia que uno se cuenta

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a sí mismo o a otros sobre uno mismo. Es más, Ricoeur constata que a la pregunta del “quién” sólo puede responderse a través de una narración. Dentro de este marco teórico, la narrativa se encarga de construir la identidad permanente de un individuo, convirtiendo la trama en la mediadora entre el cambio propio de la experiencia y la permanencia de la identidad narrativa, lo que Ricoeur define como la “discordant concordance” (1983: 328). En otras palabras, las piezas incompletas del presente y el pasado se recomponen a través de un relato que otorga una congruencia a la experiencia que es por naturaleza fragmentaria e inconsistente. Esta visión de la subjetividad se resume magníficamente por los siguientes atributos, “[n]arrative identity is coherent but fluid and changeable, historically grounded but `fictively´reinterpreted, constructed by an individual but in interaction and dialogue with other people” (Ezzy, 1998:246).

Mientras que la experiencia traumática está marcada por la discontinuidad, el relato de Jakob impone sobre su historia un sentido de continuidad que facilita la distinción entre pasado-presente-futuro, siendo precisamente el proceso narrativo lo que une los diferentes momentos de su vida. En resumen, la experiencia pasada se configura en una trama que posteriormente permite darle un sentido, una coherencia y una continuidad a la vida del sujeto. De esto se vuelve a deducir que no se trata únicamente de que la memoria narrada desempeñe un papel central para subjetividad, sino que es la encargada de construir al “yo”. La novela reafirma los planteamientos de Ricoeur y de Barthes basados en la consolidación de la identidad por medio de una narrativa que impone una cohesión al tiempo que une cada una de las diferentes fases que componen la existencia humana. La trama produce una impresión de encadenamiento y continuidad de una biografía en la que el “yo” del pasado se enlaza con el del presente.

La fase de curación arranca cuando la víctima transforma los eventos traumáticos en una narración cronológica. En esta misma línea se asientan otras teorías, como la “scriptoherapy”. Suzette A. Henke emplea este término para referirse al carácter terapéutico de la escritura: “the process of writing out and writing through traumatic experience in the mode of therapeutic re- enactment” (1998: 36). La condición para superar el trauma es integrarlo en la narración biográfica, cuyo cometido es el de establecer una continuidad entre el pasado truncado, el trauma y los acontecimientos que se prolongan

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hasta el presente en el que el narrador se sitúa. La escritura potencia aún más esta capacidad de la narración de derribar sirviéndose del lenguaje el silencio constitutivo del “yo” traumatizado, la represión de ciertas memorias y las pérdidas no asumidas que persisten como ausencias. La naturaleza paradójica del diario de Jakob reside en plasmar una memoria quebrada que el propio relato contribuye a reparar con el fin de restablecer la unidad del “yo”. Desde su presente, por tanto, pretende representar un pasado dañado por la experiencia traumática en el que su propia identidad amenazaba con desintegrase.

En este sentido, la experiencia límite del trauma constituye un “anclaje” privilegiado desde el que reflexionar sobre la función de la escritura para la identidad del individuo. Por tanto, el diario en el que Jakob recoge su pasado traumático muestra el carácter dual de la narración. Además de contribuir a la recuperación psicológica del protagonista, en el mismo acto de composición está la prueba indiscutible de que, en efecto, ya ha conseguido superar el trauma.

Jakob recuerda las palabras de Athos “Write to save yourself and one day you will write because you are already saved” (Michaels, 1998: 176). La escritura aumenta la impresión de distancia respecto al pasado, al tiempo que provoca la ilusión de una identidad articulada, compacta y, por consiguiente, sólida.

Teniendo en cuenta el efecto reparador de la escritura, no es de extrañar la significación que se le atribuye en Fugitive Pieces. En la última etapa de su vida, Jakob hace hincapié en el valor reparador de la escritura, lamentando su incapacidad durante años para reconocerlo: “I already knew the power of language to destroy, to omit, to obliterate.

But poetry, the power of language o restore: that was what both Athos and Kostas were trying to teach me” (Michaels, 1998: 84). La escritura representa un instrumento de gran utilidad debido a la potencialidad de la hoja en blanco como soporte externo sobre el que verter el trauma. En relación con esto, es muy interesante trazar el desarrollo de Jakob como escritor, pues a través de él se perfila el alcance de la escritura. Durante su primera fase como poeta, Jakob aun no ha sido capaz de reconocer las pérdidas, manifestadas a través del subconsciente como ausencias indelebles. Cuando le muestra sus poemas a su amigo Maurice, éste exclama: “These aren´t poems, they´re ghosts stories” (Michaels, 1998: 163). La constatación es particularmente significativa, en especial el hecho de que utilice la

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palabra fantasma en lugar de muerto. La elección de los términos refleja cómo Jakob no ha logrado todavía nombrar las pérdidas y, por ello, sus familiares emergen como espectros que se resisten a ser enterrados. Al mismo tiempo, estas “historias de fantasmas” proporcionan unos precedentes para un futuro testimonio que además de permitirle a Jakob rememorar las pérdidas, también reivindique la injusticia que subyace a estas muertes. La narración cumple dos funciones; por una parte, supone el tributo a la memoria de las víctimas y, por otra, contribuye a llenar la ausencia con palabras que arrebaten el puesto a los fantasmas del pasado.

4. LA MEMORIA COMO TESTIMONIO Antes de escribir, Jakob se dedicaba a la traducción, que como ya se adelantó constituye una de las metáforas principales de la novela.

La búsqueda ricoeurniana que le conduce a poner palabras a la memoria del cuerpo para integrarlos en la narrativa de su pasado simboliza el proceso de traducción. El diario de Jakob deja al descubierto tres transposiciones o “traducciones” que desembocan respectivamente en memoria narrada, memoria comunicativa y memoria colectiva. La primera va del subconsciente de la memoria profunda a la aprehensión del recuerdo convertido en palabras. Se hizo mención anteriormente a cómo el lenguaje facilita la comprensión y reflexión de la experiencia pasada al configurarla en una representación del pasado. La segunda traslación culmina con la memoria comunicativa que parte de la experiencia del “yo” para transmitirse a otros. Finalmente, el recuerdo personal puede llegar a trascender al dominio público convirtiéndose así en memoria colectiva. La siguiente cita recoge estos tres procesos de “traducción”: “Once verbalized, the individual´s memories are fused with the inter-subjective symbolic system of language and are, strictly speaking, no longer a purely exclusive and inalienable property […] they can be exchanged, shared, corroborated, confirmed, corrected, disputed – and, last but not least, written down” (Hirsch, 2008:110). La última fase destaca el potencial de la narración de ir más allá del ámbito de lo privado, haciendo que el recuerdo individual pueda incluso llegar a formar parte del dominio público. La memoria narrativa no sólo posibilita la difusión de recuerdos, también los transforma adaptándolos a las normas y reglas

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de la cultura, la narratividad y la representación. La traducción es mucho más que una profesión para Jakob, es lo que da sentido a su mundo. La relevancia de la traducción ha sido objeto de controversias y numerosos estudios, como el notable ensayo de Walter Benjamin “The Task of the Translator” (1923). El documental Shoah (1985) de Claude Lanzmann también resalta la importancia de la figura de la traductora en el contexto del trauma del Holocausto como intermediaria entre el testigo y el director en su papel de espectador.

En relación con esto, Shoshana Felman hace referencia a cómo “the character of the translator is deliberately not edited out of the film-on the contrary, she is quite often present on the screen […] because the process of translation is itself an integral part” (2000:110).

Asimismo, la metáfora de la traducción reaparece en otros puntos de la novela con distintos matices. Desde su infancia Jakob descubre que la magia de la traducción interlingüística estriba en que la traslación es sinónimo de transmutación y, como tal, implica creación. La traducción de un poema de una lengua a otra da vida a algo nuevo que, sin embargo, no es del todo independiente ni puede separarse completamente del original. Al contrario, ambos se hallan estrechamente vinculados a través del nexo procurado por el traductor, quien crea en respuesta a lo leído. La traducción viene determinada por la lectura de un original, pero su resultado no es un duplicado en otro idioma (o al menos no tendría por qué serlo), sino que la mano mediadora del traductor contribuye con su propia invención personal a crear un producto nuevo, que evidentemente está vinculado al primero, pero en ningún caso constituye una simple réplica. Dicha visión es representativa del presupuesto de concatenación expuesto en la novela, que se extiende por analogía a otros aspectos de una realidad concebida como si fuese una sinfonía de piezas que se enlazan afectándose entre sí. Cualquier alteración tiene repercusiones sobre los demás y a la vez todo movimiento ha sido originado por algo. Esto, sin embargo, no sucede de manera mecánica, sino que siempre hay un margen de acción para la creación y la imaginación humana.

La traducción también puede aplicarse de manera simbólica a las relaciones que se establecen entre los protagonistas a diferentes niveles y en distintos ámbitos. La concomitancia de los personajes hace posible su identificación con piezas engranadas entre sí, aunque no por ello carentes de subjetividad. Cada conciencia está provista de libertad

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para elegir dentro de un mundo donde todo afecta y a la vez se ve afectado por las acciones de otros. La novela aboga por la solidaridad, la empatía y el reconocimiento de la subjetividad del otro como valores sobre los que se construyen las relaciones interpersonales. La trascendencia de las relaciones interpersonales también se pone de manifiesto mediante la significación atribuida a la memoria comunicativa, cuya esencia, como su propio nombre indica, radica en la transmisión de los recuerdos a otros. La narrativa del pasado no sólo posee unos efectos reparadores, sino que también hace posible la comunicación entre personas y específicamente en este caso, es posible entrever la función del lenguaje como testimonio. Dicha propiedad, de hecho, ha llevado a autores como Lyotard o Agamben a corroborar juicios como el siguiente: “Perhaps every word, every writing is born, in this sense, as testimony. This is why what is borne witness to cannot already be language or writing. It can only be something to which no one has borne witness” (Morris, 2001: 271).

En este sentido, la narrativa propicia unos vínculos entre los seres humanos sobre los que nos centraremos ahora. A la observación de que una de las funciones centrales del lenguaje es el testimonio se le debe añadir que la razón de ser de todo testimonio es la de dirigirse al “otro”.

Según Felman y Laub, la relación con el otro está en la base de todo testimonio, constituyendo por tanto una condición necesaria: To testify […] is more than simple to report a fact or an event or to relate what has been lived, recorded or remembered. Memory is conjured here essentially in order to address another, to impress upon a listener, to appeal a community […] To testify is thus not merely to narrate but to commit oneself, and to commit the narrative, to others (1992: 204).

Cualquier relato, independientemente de si es oral o escrito, siempre se presupone un receptor, pero la peculiaridad de la concepción de Felman del testimonio es que considera al “otro” como la meta. Dentro del contexto del Holocausto, Emmanuel Lévinas concluye que no existe el “yo” “without another who summons it to responsibility” (cit. en Thiselton, 2009: 244). La responsabilidad es un elemento central del testimonio que atañe tanto al emisor o testigo como al oyente. La posición del interlocutor también requiere un

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compromiso; escuchar, como en una ocasión explica el narrador de Fugitive Pieces es una disciplina y en el caso del testimonio traumático requiere una propensión a la comprensión y la empatía. Sin otro que se muestre dispuesto a escuchar, que evidencie una empatía, “an addressable other”, no hay historia. El testimonio carece de valor sin alguien que lo escuche, ya que no se trata de testimonios y, por ello, dependen directamente de la presencia de otro que escuche y comprenda, lo que Felman y Laub han denominado “bearing witness to a trauma” (1992:42). Cuando Jakob descubre los efectos terapéuticos de la narración, lo hace primero ayudado por Michaela y ya más tarde, en relación con la escritura que lleva a cabo en su diario.

Jakob necesita hablar, desvelar su pasado a un ser querido que le muestre su comprensión y le proporcione el apoyo emocional que anhela.

A lo largo de este artículo se puso de manifiesto la importancia de la narración que se ha asociado y comparado con la metáfora de la “traducción” debido a las funciones similares que ambas desempeñan.

En primer lugar, la narración cuenta con una dimensión ontológica referida a las historias o relatos por los que los individuos estructuran, interpretan y le dan sentido a sus vidas. En el caso de Jakob, la narración se centra en el dominio del individuo con el fin de proporcionarle una identidad o subjetividad. Asimismo, el proceso de escritura contiene importantes efectos reparadores que favorecen el duelo tras el trauma. Finalmente, la narración permite en última instancia comunicar las experiencias pasadas a otros, lo que además de fomentar las relaciones interpersonales, la vincula con el testimonio.

En conclusión, este trabajo realiza un estudio exhaustivo que demuestra cómo a través de la novela de Anne Michaels se interroga, se profundiza y se contribuye al desarrollo de algunas de las investigaciones más influyentes sobre la teoría narrativa de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. OBRAS CITADAS Assmann, J. 2006. Religion and Cultural Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Barthes, R. 1990 (1977). “The Death of the Author” en S. Heath, ed.

Image- Music- Text. London: Fontana.

Benjamin, W. 2004 (1923). “The Task of the Translator” en L. Venuti, ed. The Translation Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Caruth, C. 1995. Trauma Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

Culbertson, R. 1995. “Embodied Memory, Transcendence, and Telling: Recounting Trauma, Re-establishing the Self ”. New Literary History 28: 169-195.

Ezzy, D. 1998. “Theorizing Narrative Identity”. The Sociological Quarterly 39: 239-252.

Felman S. y D. Laub. 1992. Testimony. Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge.

Felman, S. 2000 “In a Era of Testimony: Claude Lanzmann´s Shoah”.

Yale French Studies 97: 103-150.

Foley, B. 1982. “Fact, Fiction, Fascism: Testimony and Mimesis in Holocaust Narratives”. Comparative Literature 34, Nº4: 330-360.

Freud, S. 2004 (1895). Studies in Hysteria. London: Penguin Classics.

Henke, S. 1998. Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women´s LifeWriting. London: McMillan.

Hirsch, M. 2008. “The Generation of Postmemory”. Poetics Today 29: 103-128.

LaCapra, D. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Michaels, A. 1998 (1996). Fugitive Pieces. New York: Vintage Books.

Morris, L. 2001. “The Sound of Memory”. The German Quarterly 74, Nº 4: 368-378.

Ricoeur, P. 1983. Time and Narrative. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Ricoeur, P. 2003. La Memoria, la historia, el olvido. Madrid: Edición Trotta.

Stoicea, G. 2006. “The Difficulties of Verbalizing Trauma: Translation and the Economy of Loss in Claude Lanzmann´s Shoah”. The Journal of the Midwest Language Association 39 Nº2: 43-53.

Thiselton, A. C. 2009. Hermeneutics: An Introduction. Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing.

Whitehead, A. 2009. Memory: The New Critical Idiom. New York: Routledge.

Wittgenstein, L. 2001. (1921). Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus. London: Routledge Classics.

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THE NEXT STEP: DARWIN, BRONTë, FOWLES* Gemma López Universitat de Barcelona gemma_lopez@ub.edu The present article proposes Heathcliff and Sarah Woodruff as monstrous beings who reclaim their desire to be agent subjects in a society and a narrative which deny such a possibility. It would be possible to argue, however, that their monstrosity might be that of the unique specimen, the potential first stage towards the improvement of species through natural selection as theorized by Charles Darwin in 1859. The multiple references to Darwin’s study in the novel by John Fowles demonstrate that such a theory could clarify what Sarah represents in the novel. In a retroactive manner, Darwinian theory might be used to understand what Heathcliff is, who Heathcliff is, and why he is the object of general animosity. It might be concluded that what is really monstrous about these two characters is that both are new specimens, avant la lèttre, and they occupy a space to which language has no access.

Key words: Monstruosity, desire, Darwin, Heathcliff, abjection.

El presente artículo propone a Heathcliff y Sarah Woodruff como seres monstruosos que reclaman su deseo de ser sujetos agentes en una sociedad y una narrativa que niegan tal posibilidad. Sería posible argumentar que su monstruosidad sea la del espécimen único, el potencial primer estadio hacia la mejora de la especie a través de la selección natural tal y como la teorizó Charles Darwin en 1859. Las referencias al estudio de Darwin en la novela de John Fowles demuestran que esta teoría clarificaría lo que Sarah *

Fecha de recepción: Marzo 2011

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representa en la novela. De manera retroactiva, la teoría Darwiniana podría usarse para entender qué es Heathcliff, quién es Heathcliff, por qué es objeto de tanta animadversión. Podría concluirse que lo que es realmente monstruoso de estos dos seres es que ambos son especímenes nuevos, avant la lèttre, y ocupan un espacio al que no tiene acceso el lenguaje.

Palabras clave: Monstruosidad, deseo, Darwin, Heathcliff, abyección.

1. INTRODUCTION Heathcliff and Sarah Woodruff could be described as creatures who reclaim their desire; the desire to be agent subjects in a society and a narrative which deny their subjectivity. There is no contradiction here; both Heathcliff ’s and Sarah’s situations may be possible if one takes into account the words of French philosopher Catherine Clément. In “The Guilty One,” Clément reminds us that “[s]omewhere every culture has an imaginary zone for what it excludes” (36). This is true. Every culture constitutes a universe in itself. The same could be argued about any narrative, which rules itself through certain dynamics which are established as the narration follows its natural progress. Each and every of the characters, images, symbols, and scenes are minutely limited and controlled by narrative dynamics. Nevertheless, maybe ironically, every narrative –like every culture- contains an imaginary zone where the material which has been excluded can reside. Such material might be called abject, but also monstrous. It has been created by narrative itself.

I will propose Heathcliff and Sarah as inhabitants of that imaginary zone of their narratives and, by extension, of their cultures.

I will demonstrate that these two abject and monstrous beings constitute desire –Otherness- to each and every other character of the novels they inhabit. In other words, I will argue that Heathcliff and Sarah are inhabitants of the space of desire, the faultline which every text allows, the twilight zone which every text constructs.

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I will begin by examining the dynamics established by desire, theorizing upon the subject, language, and the concept of otherness.

I will try to delimit the place (or, rather, the non-place) which desire occupies in culture/narrative. It is more than possible that this may be a failed attempt, since we (instinctively?) know aforehand that desire is limitless and, thus, it has no preestablished place within what we traditionally call ‘culture’. Thereafter, I will propose the character of Heathcliff as an object of (narrative) desire and, therefore, noncharacter. Finally, the character of Sarah (whom I will describe as a female Heathcliff) will be used to cast light upon the phenomenon which Heathcliff represents in the narrative dynamics established by Emily Brontë. That is to say, I will try to explain Heathcliff –and what he represents- through a theory in retrospective: the Darwinian theory of the origin of species. I will conclude that what is truly monstrous about these two characters is that they are avant la lèttre, inhabiting a space to which language, and thus definitions, have no access.

2. DESIRE, SUBJECTIVITY, LANGUAGE, OTHERNESS, VOIDS “Desire is what is not said, what cannot be said” (Belsey 1994: 76).

Desire is what is not said because it cannot be said. It is obvious that the word ‘desire’ can be articulated; we may even find a definition in any valuable dictionary. No definition, however, will prove completely satisfactory. Desire, its dynamics, its consequences, prove elusive terms. Let us take as an example British theorist Catherine Belsey who, in 1994, writes a whole volume of desire which is entitled, precisely, Desire: Love Stories in Western Culture. Every time Belsey tries to define desire, she stumbles upon the same problem: she only makes matters more convoluted. Here is an instance: [Desire is] a kind of madness, an enchantment, exaltation, anguishes … perhaps the foundation of a lifetime of happiness. […] The commonest and yet the most singular condition we know. At once shared with a whole culture, but intimate and personal, hopelessly banal and yet unique (Belsey 1994: 3).

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What is interesting about this definition is, precisely, that it fails to define its object. Belsey’s tentative language powerfully calls the attention of the reader: “a kind of ”, “perhaps”, “at once ... but”, “hopelessly ... yet”. The elusiveness of these terms promotes a void of meaning which the reader must actively fill, the author has proved unable to fix the definition, to put it bluntly, Belsey has not been able to find what Flaubert used to call le mot just. It is also interesting to observe the amount of contradictions Belsey incurs into in her four-line definition: desire is “The commonest and yet the most singular condition we know. At once shared with a whole culture, but intimate and personal, hopelessly banal and yet unique” (Belsey 1994: 3). In short, readers do not really know exactly what to think: is desire common or singular? Is it intimate and personal or is it shared with a whole culture? I would like to point out that my assessment of Belsey’s (non)definition here is far from negative. To the contrary, tentative language, voids of signification, even multiple contradictions, indicate that Belsey has offered an excellent proposal and her definition of desire is, ironically, most accurate, basically because it is not possible to offer a complete and satisfactory definition of what desire actually is. To try and give a name to what is inherently unnameable is an enterprise which we know is doomed to fail even before we embark upon it.

Maybe, instead of trying to define desire, we should ask ourselves which is the place that desire occupies within what is known as culture. But this also proves unsafe terrain since the terms “desire” and “culture” are antithetical. If the definition of desire is elusive is precisely because it does not occupy a solid, fixed position within culture; therefore, it cannot be articulated, defined, locked within linguistic limits. Far from frustrating us, such an elusiveness promotes the compulsion to keep on writing about desire, in a banal attempt to fix it (and also because speaking about what cannot be defined may prove an interesting game). We may try hard to fix desire to a definition, but we will continue to fail irremediably. This is due to desire itself. But also due to language.

Language, the realm of the subject. Let us recover Jacques Lacan’s words: we are born as organisms (that is, we belong in nature) and we transform into subjects as we interiorize culture. This

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interiorization of culture starts when we begin to learn language, obviously, since the transformation into subjects involves language use; the capacity to give meaning –to define- what is around us. But this comes with some baggage. Language becomes Other because it belongs to culture, not to nature (it is not organic, the way we are when we are born). Language precedes us, it is there before we are born, it exists beyond the subject and, as such, it does not belong to it. But, on the other hand, it is the only mechanism which we have (to this day) in order to define, in order to communicate with others and with ourselves. In short, we are born in complete connection with the organic world, but we become separated from it through multiple castrations, all of which mimic the primordial castration from the maternal body upon which psychoanalytic theory is based. In this process, we are left with only one alternative: we have to formulate our needs through a tool which is alien, but it is the only tool we have at hand.

We might speak, then, of a void that stands between us and the separation (as in any symbolic castration process). It might be a residue of our experience as organic beings, something beyond all definitions that language might propose. Lacan calls this “the real”.

Obviously, the real is not reality (since reality is culture); on the contrary, the real is that which is organic and beyond all definitions, but also something that we cannot name because it simply does not exist with the proposal of significations that language offers. We may find it in any arena regulated by the unconscious: dreams, slips of language, multiplicity of meaning… Each and every of these are related to a certain dissatisfaction which we are not able to specify. It is a void between the organism and the subject of language. This void promotes the appearance of desire; the desire for something which is unnameable (since desire itself is also unnameable) and, as such, unconscious. From this moment on, we will try to fill in this void with a succession of objects of desire which might take the most extraordinary of forms. It is an attempt to feel whole again, to heal the wound which has opened between the subject and the lost real. Desire is, then, constant metonymy, that which searches obsessively for substitution, permutation, translation. It will never become completely present. Desire is always absent and, in its absence, it is always present:

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Desire is that which is manifested in the interval that demand hollows within itself, in as much as the subject, in articulating the signifying chain, brings to light the want-to-be, together with the appeal to receive the complement from the Other, the Other the locus of speech, is also the locus of want, or lack.

That which is thus given to the Other to fill, and which is strictly that which it does not have, since it, too, lacks being, is what is called love, but it is also hate and ignorance (Lacan 1977: 263).

Lacan explains it very well: desire manifests itself in an “interval that demand hollows within itself.” Such a demand promotes that the subject should articulate the signifying chain (it speaks, it asks for something), while it discovers its lack, its need to open to the Other (through that other Other which is language). This is the reason why the Other is the location of language: we, subjects of language, create the Other through the words we use. But the Other is also the location of lack which has brought us to use language and demands that the hole be filled. Now comes tragedy. We demand from the Other that it fill the gap, but the Other is unable to do so, since it too is empty. That is to say, we project our desire upon the Other and construct it, in the knowledge that the process will construct us too.

Would it be possible, then, to speak about the desire of the Other? Can we say that the Other has desire? No. The dynamics of desire has proved that when the Other desires, it is not the Other anymore, it achieves the position of the subject. Then, we become the Other.

3. “L’ENFER C’EST LES AUTRES”: HEATHCLIFF ‘Why, about you!’ Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. ‘And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?’ ‘Where I am now, of course,’ said Alice. ‘Not you!’

Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. ‘You’d be nowhere. Why, you’re only a sort of thing in his dream!’ ‘If that there king was to wake,’

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added Tweedledum, ‘you’d go out –bang!- just like a candle!’ ‘I shouldn’t!’ Alice exclaimed indignantly (Carroll 1963: 238).

The twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum try to make Alice understand that she is only an image –a character- within the dynamics of the dream that the king is immersed in. Within such dynamics, if the king woke up, Alice would go out (“bang!”), just like a candle.

According to the twins, Alice is not “real”. What is interesting about this quote is the clarity of the twins’ views on the dynamics of dreams, unconscious, narrative (oniric, in this case) and its capacity to construct and deconstruct the characters which inhabit it, who have no autonomy beyond these dynamics. On the other hand, it is also shocking to see the violence with which Alice rejects to see herself as a projection which may effectively go out –vanish- once the dream – the narrative- is over. Alice does not want to be a dreamed object, she wants to have an autonomous identity beyond what narrative parameters establish. In other words, Alice is positioning herself in that liminal space of the Other which desires (to become an agent subject), just like Heathcliff.

This quote is useful to establish what happens to the character of Heathcliff within the narrative imagined –dreamed?- by Emily Brontë. Heathcliff is the object –the Other- who strives to become a subject, even when narrative dynamics transform his strive into a banal enterprise. From the very beginning of Brontë’s novel, Heathcliff is situate within the linguistic parameters of the foreigner, thus establishing solid links with Dracula, Satan, and all those alienated figures which appear to destabilise the presumed solidity of what we know, culture. In the words of Heiland, “[Heathcliff] does not so much tear things apart as show us how fragile they were to begin with” (Heiland 2004: 117). Although it is true that Heathcliff is presented as montrous and diabolical as Satan himself, what really unites him to the figure of the foreigner is its tragic ingredient. What is Heathcliff ’s tragedy? The tragedy of loneliness. When I refer to loneliness here I do not mean that he is on his own in a physical sense, but I am rather making a point about the metaphysical loneliness of the character who sees the world from a perspective that is completely unique: the loneliness of the monster, to put it another way. Heathcliff ’s reasons for his metaphysical and monstrous

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loneliness are multiple: the mystery of his provenance, his presumed orphanhood, his absolute dispossession from Victorian culture, his social class, his ethnic origin… All of these elements converge in one: Heathcliff is a new specimen and, as such, he is unique in his species.

That is the reason why he is so lonely.

And that is the reason why he is also beyond language, in a symbolic ambiguity which confers his most monstrous aspect. Who is Heathcliff? What is Heathcliff? Throughout the novel, many characters try to provide answers to these questions; they all fail irremediably, since Heathcliff –the object of desire- precedes the language with which he could be defined. Heathcliff stands beyond linguistic, narrative, and cultural dynamics. Enrique Gil Calvo, the author of Máscaras masculinas: héroes, patriarcas y monstruos, argues that: el monstruo puede ser una representación simbólica del Prójimo: del Otro y los otros, nuestros semejantes más ajenos, lejanos o socialmente distantes de nosotros. Si el Extraño parece un ser de otra especie (un monstruo) es porque se sitúa fuera de nuestro alcance ... [...] Esto explica el temor que infunde el forastero (Gil Calvo 2006: 84).

Heathcliff inhabits, then, the space of desire. For this reason, he acquires the status of character (dreamed, projected) not only for the reader of Bontë, but also for the rest of the characters of the novel. Gil Calvo, again, argues that “podría pensarse que el monstruo no actúa por sí mismo como sujeto agente, sino que se limita a servir de objeto” (Gil Calvo 2006: 85), but nothing further from the truth. The monstrous Other has the capacity of destroying the subject or, even worse, “como señaló Nietzsche, el que lucha con monstruos debe tener cuidado de no convertirse él mismo en monstruo” (Gil Calvo 2006: 85), since the monster is nothing but “una invención imaginaria del propio sujeto agente, causada por el temor a sí mismo” (Gil Calvo 2006: 86). As Sartre rightly said, “l’enfer c’est les autres” (Sartre 1944: XX).

Let us recover the idea that Heathcliff is not a character just for the reader but also for the rest of the characters who inhabit

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Brontë’s text. The dynamics established from the very beginning of the novel feature a narrator (Lockwood) who positions himself as a subject who narrates (through his diary entries) his object (Heathcliff). This has immediate repercussions upon our own way to imagine the character. In his total ignorance of the main character, Lockwood decides to fill in the voids of information which Heathcliff ’s taciturnity creates. Hence, he presents his object as a “dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman”, “an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose” (Brontë 2005: 4).

The beginning of the narrative, then, marks also the inauguration of Heathcliff as a dreamed object, the projection of whatever Lockwood wants to see. Later, Nelly Dean, the novel’s second main narrator, will end up reaffirming Lockwood’s projection: in response to her query as to what he thinks of Heathcliff, Lockwood replies that he deems him a “rough fellow”, to which Nelly hurriedly replies: “Rough as a saw-edge, and hard as a whinstone!”, and adds: “The less you meddle with him the better” (Brontë 2005: 37), assuring with her words that Heathcliff is positioned not just as the Other, but as the dangerous, monstrous Other.

There is very little Heathcliff may do to escape such a narrativization of his persona. His identity is created both through Lockwood’s projections and Nelly’s story of his arrival to Wuthering Heights, when he is between six and eight years of age and adopted

by Mr. Earnshaw. Far from being able to tell the family about his provenance, Heathcliff is only able to repeat “some gibberish” which nobody can understand (Brontë 2005: 39), thus placing himself beyond language and what is intelligible. No doubt this is the reason why the Earnshaws decide to give him a name, thus cutting him off from his potential genealogy and reaffirming the mystery of his origins. Such a mystery is both unfathomable and ominous: “from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house”, according to Nelly Dean’s story (Brontë 2005: 40). The enigma of Heathcliff ’s origins is the source of his non-identity, the lack of a family history promotes the ambiguity of this character and his presumed alliances with what is obscure and unknown, particularly in the nineteenth century, when ancestry marked fate. Nelly believes that “it appeared as if the lad were possessed of something diabolical” (Brontë 2005: 70), but she also falls prey to fantasy when she imagines a past for

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Heathcliff, one which could easily have been taken out of a fairy tale: You’re fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows, but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together? And you were kidnapped by wicked sailors and brought to England (Brontë 2005: 60-61).

Inadvertently, Nelly is writing not just the past but also the future of Heathcliff. He will, indeed, transform into the owner of two houses becoming, in the process, the sort of capitalist monster which is particularly terrifying in the hierarchical nineteenth century: the bourgois who acceeds to power through money as opposed to lineage.

The monstrous intruder is most dangerous when he dispossesses us from what we believe is ours by birth right.

After a while in an unknown place, Heathcliff comes back to prove that transformation is possible: Now, fully revealed by the fire and candlelight, I was amazed, more than ever, to behold the transformation of Heathcliff. He had grown a tall, athletic, well-formed man; beside whom my master seemed quite slender and youth-like. His upright carriage suggested the idea of his having been in the army. His countenance was much older in expression and decision of feature than Mr. Linton’s; it looked intelligent, and retained no marks of former degradation.

A half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified: quite divested of roughness, though stern for grace (Brontë 2005: 104).

This transformation clearly positions Heathcliff within the symbolic economy of culture; in spite of this, the quote proves how Nelly is still intent on describing Heathcliff as a liminal being. His nature, she claims, is still visible through the eyes which prove his

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“half-civilised” ferocity. A new stage opens for Heathcliff, one in which, in spite of his financial and social progress, each and every character speaking of him will continue to make disturbing references to his presumed connections with the diabolical, the unexplainable, the obscure, the dangerous. In short, each and every character will continue to project upon Heathcliff his/her own fears and desires. This is Catherine describing Heathcliff to naïve Isabella who claims she has fallen in love with him: ‘I wouldn’t be you for a kingdom, then!’

Catherine declared, emphatically: and she seemed to speak sincerely. ‘Nelly, help me to convince her of her madness. Tell her what Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation; an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone. I’d as soon put that little canary into the park on a winter’s day, as recommend you to bestow your heart on him! It is deplorable ignorance of his character, child, and nothing else, which makes that dream enter your head. Pray, don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He’s not a rough diamond - a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. I never say to him, “Let this or that enemy alone, because it would be ungenerous or cruel to harm them;” I say, “Let them alone, because I should hate them to be wronged:” and he’d crush you like a sparrow’s egg, Isabella, if he found you a troublesome charge. I know he couldn’t love a Linton; and yet he’d be quite capable of marrying your fortune and expectations: avarice is growing with him a besetting sin. There’s my picture: and I’m his friend - so much so, that had he thought seriously to catch you, I should, perhaps, have held my tongue, and let you fall into his trap’ (Brontë 2005: 111).

There is no bourgeois in the above description; we only read about an ambiguous creature, a hybrid between the human and the animal which reveals itself as monstrous as ever. Isabella herself, later, will also define Heathcliff as “a lying fiend, a monster, and not a human

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being” (Brontë 2005: 164). Young Cathy –Catherine and Edgar’s daughter- assures Heathcliff that he is as lonely as the devil and nobody will cry for him after his death (Brontë 2005: 298). As the narrative progression advances, Heathcliff ’s dark origins become increasingly ominous to the point that, near narrative closure, Nelly Dean still continues to wonder: “Is he a ghoul or a vampire? [...] where did he come from, the little dark thing?” (Brontë 2005: 341-342). Heathcliff is an unresolved mystery from beginning to end. It is only logical that, after his death, country folks assure that they can see his ghost walking on the moors. We still do not know who or what Heathcliff is, but we do have the feeling that he is the Other who desires.

4. “THE HOPEFUL MONSTER”: SARAH WOODRUFF Although The French Lieutenant’s Woman was written in 1969, it is a text which takes us to the past, effecting a marvellous revision of the Victorian period through a 20th century innovative narrator who offers comments and critical judgement throughout the narration. From a very simplistic point of view, this is the story of Charles Smithson, an aristocrat who finds himself in a difficult situation after meeting a mysterious woman, Sarah Woodruff. Such a meeting will compromise Charles’s engagement with Ernestina, a young woman who is very much a product of her age and, as such, completely opposed to the extremely advanced character that Sarah is. The story is permeated with references to Charles Darwin’s famous study On the Origin of Species, a text which Tony E. Jackson considers paramount in order to try and give meaning to the character of Sarah.

Who is Sarah? What is Sarah? These questions are familiar to us. Indeed, they are the same questions we posed when tackling the character of Heathcliff. Sarah and Heathcliff have a lot in common: both represent Otherness with the narrative dynamics established by the text, both inhabit the dark space that desire establishes beyond culture. The text itelf poses this question in an obsessive manner: “Who is Sarah? Out of what shadows does she come?” (Fowles 1969: 95-96). Sarah can indeed be defined: she is an intelligent woman (Fowles 1969: 57) who assumes intellectual equality with Charles (Fowles 1969: 140) and, for this reason, she is outside the strict

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parameters established by fierce Victorianism. However, the character of Sarah always remains aloof, perhaps positioned beyond anything that language can define, at all times displaying a behaviour which becomes incomprehensible to Charles, to the reader, to the narrator, to the author himself. Let us take the following extract as an instance of the above. Sarah and Charles have met in the Underwood; they suddenly feel the menace of being discovered: Charles felt pierced with a new embarrassment: he glanced at Sarah to see if she knew who the intruders were. But she stared at the hart’s-tongue ferns at her feet, as if they were merely sheltering from some shower of rain. Two minutes, then three passed. Embarrassment gave way to a degree of relief –it was clear that the two servants were far more interested in exploring each other than their surroundings. He glanced again at Sarah. Now she too was watching, from round her tree-trunk. She turned back, her eyes cast down. But then without warning she looked up at him.

A moment.

The she did something as strange, as shocking, as if she had thrown off her clothes.

She smiled (Fowles 1969: 180).

The above extract shows some ingredients which conform the character of Sarah: for a start, her elusiveness; Charles looks at her but she is looking elsewhere, in a dynamics that repeats itself in each of their encounters. Her face is always half-hidden, her regard is somewhere else, her personality cannot be, therefore, completely dilucidated. Secondly, her autonomy in relation to her own context.

Whilst Charles is honestly ashamed and worried about what might happen if he is discovered in this situation, Sarah does not seem to allow shame or guilt. Finally, her connections with desire, her ambiguity. Sarah casts down her eyes but, suddenly, she looks up at Charles. Her smile speaks volumes and tells us that all this is really a funny game for her. The simile that the narrator uses is interesting, to say the least: Sarah’s smile is as scandalous as if she had taken all her clothes off. Her smile, therefore, is a sexual smile not in the sense of an invitation to copulation, but in the sense of sexual liberation in

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an age which represses female (and, hence, male) sexuality. Some pages later, when Charles holds Sarah and is about to kiss her, the narrator points consciously to this same idea: [Charles] slowly reached out his hands and raised her. Their eyes remained on each other’s, as if they were both hypnotized. She seemed to him –or those wide, those drowning eyes seemed- the most ravishingly beautiful he had ever seen. What lay behind them did not matter. The moment overcame the age (Fowles 1969: 243).

What lies behind Sarah’s eyes –her identity?- does not matter.

She is a character far more advanced than the age, because she is an autonomous woman who decides upon her own identity, the Other who desires to transform into a subject. The writings of scientist Charles Darwin also outstripped his own age and that was the reason why both the writings and their author became the object of fierce criticism (the caricature of Darwin with the body of a monkey might come to mind here). However, On the Origin of Species (1859) is a text which constantly appears in John Fowles’s novel, maybe becoming a clue which we should take into account in order to cast light upon Sarah’s behaviour. As noted before, this is what Tony E. Jackson proposes in his article “Charles and the Hopeful Monster” (1997).

Jackson argues that we need to recover the most modern aspects of Darwin in order to understand John Fowles’s use of the Origin, since understanding the theory of evolution means understanding ourselves as live beings. In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, the meeting between Charles and Sarah allows Charles to go through a kind of mental evolution –the change from the notion of Victorian subject to that of the modern subject. This is an evolution which is produced due to the effects of manipulation to which Sarah submits Charles (Jackson 1997: 226). But what does this tell us about Sarah herself?

Throughout the novel, Sarah is presented as a kind of superior being with a more solid self-consciousness, who teaches Charles in the knowledge of Existentialism, a doctrine she is already proficient in

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(Jackson 1997: 227). Fowles and his conscious narrator, however, deny all access to the character’s psychology. There is a possibility that this may be due to the fact that the linguistic parameters of the 19th century do not allow a definition of what Sarah is. According to Jackson, Sarah can be described as “the hopeful monster of change”; i.e. a completely new specimen in the evolution of the species, one for whom there is no definition as yet. Within Darwinism, we may only understand newness in retrospective; that is, we are unable to narrate what is happening while it is happening, we can only name it once it has happened. Only in retrospect will we be able to understand it (Jackson 1997: 227). In the words of Darwin: It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages…

(Darwin 1985: 125).

Just as newness in the evolution of the species can only be described in the future, the monster itself (the new being) does not know what it is, because it also needs to define itself via temporality.

It lacks the experience of the passage from old to new, therefore it is unaware that it is a new being. This would explain why Sarah is elusive not only for Charles but also for the narrator, the author, and the reader.

The descriptions of this character always follow ambiguous paths: “as if ”, “seems”, “almost”... Sarah is Charles’s desire but, as a new being, as a monster, she also has her own desire which alienates her and forces her to describe herself through the vocabulary of desire: “nothing”, “hardly human”, “Do not ask me to explain what I have done. I cannot explain it. It is not to be explained”, “I am not to be understood even by myself ”. Sarah cannot be described because she is ahistorical. In other words, there does not exist, as yet, the vocabulary which will allow us to categorize Sarah’s condition. Like Heathcliff, she is a character avant la lèttre.

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5. CONCLUSIONS: HISTORICAL SUBJECTS Narrative dynamics positions the characters of Heathcliff and Sarah Woodruff as elusive and undefinable in a clear link with desire (“what cannot be said”). We have also seen that in their narrative position as the Other, as inhabitants of the dark area which the text’s progression allows, both are transformed as characters for the rest of the characters, who project onto them their desires, wishes, and fears.

Nonetheless, the placement of these two figures within the space of otherness would unauthorize the possibility that they also felt desire.

This seems to be the case. As the two texts advance, Heathcliff and Sarah prove that they are objects who strive to transform into subjects.

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has provided a clue to understand why this is the case.

Both Heathcliff and Sarah appear on scene as mutations, as hopeful monsters, to follow Jackson’s terminology, as new beings in the evolution of the species and, as such, as objects of fear and rejection simply because of their incapacity to be catalogued. Neither one nor the other fits into any of the roles of the age: Heathcliff is and is not a gift of God and a demon, a prince in disguise kidnapped by wicked soldiers, the owner of two houses, a usurper, a hero, a villain, a ghost; Sarah is and is not a Victorian governess, a fallen woman, a lost woman, a reject of society, a prostitute. Darwin tells us that “In social animals [natural selection] will adapt the structure of each individual for the benefit of the community: if each in consequence profits by the selected change” (Darwin 1985: 129, italics added).

As new entities, their identities cannot be constructed through specularization and/or identification, since there exists neither mirror nor identification object for them. The newer they are, the more alienated, the more abject, the more monstrous. Every step they take in narrative is another step towards their construction as unique creatures: the bourgeois and the new woman of the twentieth century.

The problem is that both they and those around them and the narrative lack the vocabulary to define them. Thus, both are relegated to that space beyond language, to the zone for what culture excludes, to the realm of desire: “what is not said, what cannot be said”.

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I would like to finish with a quote from On the Origin of Species which will allow me to provide a note on a future line of debate. What is the effect that the hopeful monster of change has on the rest of the species? Darwin has the answer: … as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement, will naturally suffer most. [...]Consequently, each new variety or species, during the progress of its formation, will generally press hardest on its nearest kindred, and tend to exterminate them (Darwin 1985: 159).

The monster has repercussions on its environment. As new species are formed through natural selection, the rest become increasingly strange until they are finally extinguished. But those forms which are in direct competition with those improved ones are the ones which will suffer more. Inevitably, all those who cross the paths of Heathcliff and Sarah Woodruff are doomed to their own extinction.

WORKS CITED Belsey, C. 1994. Desire: Love Stories in Western Culture. Oxford & Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Brontë, E. 2005. Wuthering Heights. Moya, Ana, Gemma López and Jacqueline Hurtley (eds.). Introduction and notes by the editors. Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona.

Carroll, L. 1963. The Annotated Alice. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. Introduction and notes by Martin Gardner. New York: New American Library.

Clément, C. 1975. “The Guilty One,” in The Newly Born Woman. H. Cixous y C. Clément. Translation by Betsy Wing. London: I. B. Tauris Publishers & Co Ltd, 1996.

Darwin, C. R. 1985. On the Origin of Species. New York: Random House, 1859.

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Fowles, J. 1969. The French Lieutenant’s Woman. London: Vintage, 1996.

Gil Calvo, E. 2006. Máscaras masculinas: héroes, patriarcas y monstruos.

Barcelona: Anagrama.

Heiland, D. 2004. Gothic and Gender: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

Jackson, T. E. 1997. “Charles and the Hopeful Monster: Postmodern Evolutionary Theory in The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” in Twentieth-Century Literature, vol. 43, nº 2, 221-242.

Lacan, J. 1977. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Edited

by J. Alain-Miller and translated by A. Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press & The Institute of Psychoanalysis.

López, G. 2007. Seductions in Narrative: Subjectivity and Desire in the Works of Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson. New York: Cambria Press.

Sartre, J. P. 1944. Huis Clos. Paris: Editions Gallimard.

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IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON’S LUCRETIA: REVISITING VICTORIAN POPULAR NARRATIVES OF MADNESS* Marta Miquel-Baldellou Universidad de Lleida mmiquel@dal.udl.cat The character of Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has often been considered the paradigm of ‘the madwoman in the attic’; an archetype arising from Gothic domestic fiction that would recur in later Victorian popular narratives and sensational novels, such as Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (1859) – which inaugurated Victorian sensationalism -, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) – which consolidated the genre. Nonetheless, it has rarely been noticed that Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Lucretia (1846), featuring a demented Victorian heiress as a result of her upbringing in an eminently male environment, was published one year before Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre (1847). This article aims at establishing intertextual links between some of these canonical popular Victorian portrayals of female madness and Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Lucretia in order to prove the influence Bulwer-Lytton himself, as well as his own personal life as a Victorian man of letters, exerted over them, thus recovering nowadays the status Edward Bulwer-Lytton deserves as a Victorian novelist.

Keywords: Victorian popular novels, sensationalism, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, gender, female madness.

El personaje de Bertha Mason a menudo ha sido considerado como paradigma de ‘la loca del ático’; arquetipo surgido de la ficción de corte gótico-doméstica que recurriría a lo largo de venideras narraciones populares y novelas de sensación victorianas, como The *

Fecha de recepción: Abril 2011

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Woman in White (1859) de Wilkie Collins – que inauguró el sensacionalismo victoriano - y Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) – que consolidó el género. Sin embargo, raramente se ha destacado que la novela del escritor victoriano Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Lucretia (1846), centrada en una heredera victoriana que pierde la razón debido a su educación en un ambiente eminentemente masculino, fue publicada un año antes que la novela de Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847). Este artículo pretende establecer lazos intertextuales entre estos cánonicos retratos populares victorianos de locura femenina y la novela Lucretia de Edward Bulwer-Lytton, para demostrar la influencia que Bulwer-Lytton, junto a su propia vida personal como hombre de letras victoriano, ejerció sobre ellos, recuperando así el estatus que Bulwer-Lytton merece como novelista victoriano en la actualidad.

Palabras clave: Novelas populares victorianas, sensacionalismo, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, género, locura femenina.

1. INTRODUCTION In Victorian times, popular narratives featuring insane women and fallen angels of the house often underlined women’s tumultuous discourse of anxiety, legal dependence, and subdued sexuality.

Madness and female hysteria, as Foucault (1971) pointed out and Showalter (1987) later corroborated, became a metaphor that gave voice to the unspeakable, that is to say, women’s condition. According to feminist precepts, through personifications of madness and sensation, instances of gender subversion were discussed in sensational novels while patriarchal testimonies cast a suspicious glance over women’s increasing threat to usurp power either as strong-willed demented heroines in novels or as powerfully gifted women writers giving voice to their own narratives.

Bertha Mason had mostly remained a secondary character in popular gothic romance until Jean Rhys resurrected her through her

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postcolonial adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea, published in 1961. Likewise, feminist theorists Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar also exalted Edward Rochester’s demented wife in their seminal interpretation of the madwoman in the attic, published in 1979, which precisely made reference to Brontë’s character Bertha Mason to address female madness as closely linked to women writers’ creativity. Although Charlotte Brontë’s novel cannot strictly speaking be termed as sensational fiction, through time her minor character Bertha Mason has become a representative archetype of the eighteenth-century gothic romance as well as an early embodiment of female madness in Victorian sensational fiction. Since then, NeoVictorian novels have attempted either to revive mystified memories or indulge in idealisations of the hysterical woman which have contributed to deconstructing the so-called Victorian ethics and cult of true womanhood through a feminist discourse.

Since Jane Eyre was published in 1847, it can be argued that most popular Victorian narratives of female madness were greatly indebted to Charlotte Brontë’s characterisation of Bertha Mason, Edward Rochester’s frantic first wife enclosed in the attic of Thornfield Hall. In this respect, despite the fact that she originally played a minor role in the plot of Brontë’s novel, Laurence Lerner argued that “Bertha Mason has become one of the major characters of English fiction” (1989:273). Nonetheless, even if Bertha Mason has often been heralded as the epitome of the madwoman, preceding such popular personifications of feigned or genuine female madness as Ann Catherick and Laura Fairlie in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (1860) or Lucy Audley in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), it has generally gone unnoticed that the Victorian writer and baronet Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton provided an even earlier forerunner of the popular Victorian embodiment of female madness through his novel Lucretia; or, The Children of the Night, published in 1846. As a matter of fact, Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, featuring an ambitious, cunning heiress and granting her the role of heroine, was published one year before Jane Eyre came to light. Hence, it can be argued that, despite the significant influence it exerted over later popular portrayals of Victorian female madness, up to now, BulwerLytton’s novel Lucretia and its author have not been granted the credit they truly deserve.

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Despite Bertha Mason’s extended shadow in Victorian popular narratives of madness, this article aims to identify intertextual links among popular Victorian portraits of actual, suspected or feigned female insanity, through characters like Bertha Mason, Laura Fairlie and Lucy Audley, in relation to Bulwer-Lytton’s less-known portrayal of an insane Victorian heiress in his novel Lucretia. This comparative analysis will highlight Bulwer-Lytton’s characterisation of Lucretia as a particularly influential heroine in Victorian narratives of sensation about female madness. The four prototypes of female insanity just mentioned disclose those values that were often demonised if found in women, such as Bertha Mason’s exuberant and exotic sexual freedom, Lucretia Clavering’s unusual intelligence and unlimited ambition, Laura Fairlie’s independent economic condition, and Lucy Audley’s will to take hold of her own life.

Bertha Mason incarnates madness as a result of sexual deviance.

Lucretia Clavering ends up enclosed in a lunatic asylum due to her unusual brightness and her unlimited ambition to achieve her goals.

Laura Fairlie is incarcerated due to her high income, which was not considered particularly becoming to a young lady, as it defied the socially-established convention of women’s economic dependence, and Lucy Audley also finishes her days in a mental institution after she acknowledges that she is the descendant of a madwoman, thus avoiding being prosecuted for bigamy and attempted murder. What follows is a succinct comparative outline of three of the most popular renderings of female madness in Victorian sensational novels, specifically focusing on the way these female characters originated and underlined their intertextuality with Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Lucretia.

2. BERTHA MASON AS A LEGACY OF GOTHIC DOMESTIC FICTION The uncanny figure of the madwoman emerged as a creation of the domestic fiction of the decade of the 1840s, whereby the capacity for violence found in demented women acquired political connotations. In this sense, the madwoman archetype appeared in the English culture of the mid-nineteenth century, to use Freudian terms, as if it was ‘the return of the repressed’; understood as the process

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whereby elements preserved in the national unconscious tend to reappear, thus highlighting the indestructible nature of the unconscious, no matter how one tries to conceal or destroy its presence. According to Isabel Armstrong (1987), deranged women suddenly came into vogue with the great domestic novels of the 1840s, and in this respect, Helen Small claimed that the character of Bertha Mason stood for a strange incorporation of Gothic theatricality into domestic fiction at the time (1996:140). From then onwards, critical writing about madwomen in the nineteenth-century novel has often been dominated by the example of Bertha Mason since, as Small further corroborates, very few novelists produced anything comparable to Charlotte Brontë’s description of female insanity (1996:141).

However, one of the few works which genuinely bears a close resemblance with Jane Eyre in its concern about female insanity is Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia. Actually, not only did Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia depict female madness, but it also highlighted this discourse as a central focus of attention, thus addressing female insanity in a more thorough way than Charlotte Brontë’s novel does since, despite its notorious critical acclaim later on and the importance attached to Bertha Mason through time, the discourse of female madness mostly remains peripheral in relation to the central plot of Brontë’s novel.

Lucretia and Bertha Mason mainly invoke the sentimental figure of the madwoman-in-love, even if nostalgically and often in dark parody. In both cases, the heroines become insane and begin to adopt wicked habits as a result of unrequited love. In Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Bertha Mason’s sexual potency mostly emerges when she becomes aware of Jane’s presence in the house, and in particular, when she finds out that Jane and Edward are going to get married, the point at which she finally decides to set fire to her husband’s bed. Bertha’s openly sexual behaviour renders her androgynous by Victorian standards, as she is often described by means of animalistic terms.

Likewise, Bulwer-Lytton’s heroine, Lucretia, also poses a threat concerning gender representation, as she is mainly characterised as an ambitious and extremely cunning woman, despite her outstanding youth. Lucretia is also endowed with an acute criminal capacity which is dismissed as far too masculine, and ultimately, decidedly monstrous if found in women. However, in his preface to the novel, BulwerLytton insisted on making a bid for sympathy by alluding

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sentimentally to the woman into whom Lucretia would have turned had she not been separated from her first lover and subsequently corrupted by the dubious tutorship of Oliver Dalibard, her husbandto-be, even though she never truly loves him. Accordingly, even if blatant parallelisms can be established between Lucretia Clavering and other popular villainesses such as Lucretia Borgia and even Lady Macbeth, Lucretia is condemned not because she is perceived as inherently cruel, but rather because she gradually becomes too determined and ambitious as a result of surrounding social and cultural circumstances. After all, it is sentimental vulnerability and motherly attachment, mainly interpreted as women’s major weaknesses, that finally prevent Lucretia Clavering from becoming another Lucretia Borgia, as her protracted personal history of crime ends in madness and enclosure in a lunatic asylum when she ultimately gets to know that Ben, the young man she slays towards the end of the novel, is really her kidnapped son. Hence, Bulwer-Lytton projects female criminality into the realm of monstrosity to preserve the Victorian cult of domestic virtue, thus showing that Lucretia’s mannish upbringing proves inappropriate for a young Victorian heiress.

Lucretia’s eventual signs of madness are revealed through her hysterical laughter. In this sense, the description of Lucretia’s depravity when she is finally apprehended closely anticipates that of Bertha Mason’s latent presence all through Brontë’s novel, especially with regard to her resounding laughter: As he [Beck] fell back into their arms a corpse, a laugh rose close at hand, -it rang through the walls, it was heard near and afar, above and below; not an ear in that house that heard it not. In that laugh fled for ever, till the Judgement-day, from the blackened ruins of her lost soul, the reason of the murderess-mother. (BulwerLytton 413) In this way, Lucretia’s laughter anticipates that of Bertha Mason when Jane arrives at Thornfield Hall and her first night at the house is disturbed by the echoes of Bertha’s laugh from her chamber in the attic, echoing all across the manor:

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This was a demoniac laugh – low, suppressed, and deep – uttered, as it seemed, at the very key-hole of my chamber-door. The head of my bed was near the door, and I thought at first, the goblin-laughter stood at my bedside – or rather, crouched by my pillow: but I rose, looked round, and could see nothing (Brontë: 155) In close resemblance with Bertha, the problems the madwoman presents in Bulwer-Lytton’s novel are evidence of the conflicting messages of the late 1840s. Lucretia’s story exploits romantic precedents in which the abandoned woman finds an alternative outlet for her disordered emotions in subverting any established gender conventions. Likewise, as Helen Small notices, Bulwer-Lytton himself felt divided over any claim Lucretia may have had for sympathy as, even though for most of the novel he deprives her of sentimental feelings, there are signs which ultimately betray Lucretia’s attachment as a mother, and thus Bulwer-Lytton’s attempt at humanising his subject (Small 151). In this respect, if Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Lucretia underlines the need to preserve domestic virtue to avoid the presence of such a determined heroine, through critical theory, and especially through Sandra Gilbert’s and Susan Gubar’s seminal interpretation, Bertha’s madness has often been associated with the feminist conviction that insanity represents a mode of rebellion against the constraints of patriarchy, so that Bertha, as an enraged alter ego, gives voice to Jane’s resentment as a Victorian angel of the house. And yet, as Small notices, to interpret the novel merely in this particular way involves dismissing Brontë’s original determination not to give female insanity a romantic reading, as was usually the case within Gothic domestic fiction. This dual discourse, between domesticity and protofeminism, can also be identified in Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, as Lucretia may be understood not only as a victim of her social circumstances but also as a villainess whose ambition for power renders her scarcely feminine and even androgynous.

Despite these outstanding parallelisms, Lucretia could not have directly influenced Jane Eyre as Brontë’s novel was already in the hands of its publisher when Bulwer-Lytton’s novel was published. In fact, one of the most remarkable differences between both works is that, in Brontë’s novel, Bertha Mason’s presence mainly remains peripheral,

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as she is incarcerated in the attic of Thornfield. Thus, it can be argued that, even if her presence is threatening, she is mostly held at a distance. Bertha Mason even appears to be set out of time. Having remained locked away in the attic for a period of ten years, she is correspondingly outmoded and arises as a costume drama madwoman used for theatrical effect; a remnant of the late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Gothic romance. By contrast, Lucretia’s presence is constant all through the novel as the reader bears witness to her fall as a woman. Hence, Bertha Mason’s peripheral, but constant, latent presence in Jane Eyre sharply contrasts with Lucretia’s overwhelming presence in Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, as she arises as both the heroine and villainess of the story.

In relation to the authors themselves, both writers, Charlotte Brontë and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, were often categorised as authors of domestic fiction, and as such, they were both accused of causing a stir among reviewers as a result of their failure to exhibit the moral conventions that were expected of that genre. However, it should be highlighted that Bulwer-Lytton particularly seemed to draw on personal circumstances to write his novel, mainly his tempestuous marriage to Rosina Bulwer-Lytton as well as his ultimate decision to confine her in a lunatic asylum. On the other hand, Charlotte Brontë grew increasingly interested in the evolving progress of medical theory and practice, and rather fond of studying any journals and books available and even attending occasional lectures on physiology and related subjects. Moreover, Brontë’s close knowledge of Walter Scott’s fiction appears as a certain link between her interest in the subject of female insanity and that of Bulwer-Lytton’s, especially taking into account Bulwer-Lytton’s fondness for Walter Scott in youth. In this respect, Brontë’s blending of romantic and realistic features in her portrayal of Bertha Mason appears in clear parallelism with Sir Walter Scott’s character Ulrica the Saxon in his eponymous novel Ivanhoe.

Like Ulrica, Bertha Mason also perishes by falling off a roof-top amid flames. As for Bulwer-Lytton, he also often acknowledged his debt to Walter Scott during the first years of his career as a result of his everlasting interest in historical novels.

Both Jane Eyre and Lucretia feature insane women whose madness is rooted in unrequited love, but both heroines are given

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different interpretations in their respective novels. Bertha’s female insanity is mostly described through an empathic focus on her animalistic traits, which highlight her deviant sexuality: In the deep shade, at the further end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal; but it was covered with clothing; and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face (Brontë 307) In contrast, Lucretia arises as a more refined woman, a Victorian heiress, who hides a particular feature that renders her different, precisely the latent masculinity which is the result of her upbringing, and which is ultimately the source of both her strength and her mischievous nature: Fortunately, the slow defect of her form was not apparent at a distance: that defect was in the hand; it had not the usual faults of female youthfulness, - the superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness of colour, - on the contrary, it was small and thin; but it was, nevertheless, more the hand of a man than a woman; the shape had a man’s nervous distinctness, the veins swelled like sinews, the joints of the fingers were marked and prominent. In that hand, it almost seemed as if the iron force of the character betrayed itself.

(Bulwer-Lytton 50-1) At the outcome of the novels, Bertha perishes and is removed from the Victorian scenario where Jane and Rochester will eventually marry and live together, while Lucretia is confined in a lunatic asylum but is never ultimately destroyed. Bertha Mason’s peripheral presence, and particularly her laughter, renders her a lurking ghostly creature whose existence is questioned, whereas Lucretia’s ever-lasting and powerful presence entitles her to become the heroine-villainess in Bulwer-Lytton’s novel. Moreover, Jane Eyre portrays significant episodes

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of telepathy and ghostly apparitions, as residual features of Gothic domestic fiction, whereas Lucretia becomes a paradigm of the Newgate novel, depicting crime with accurate realism. Hence, if supernaturalism ultimately prompts the encounter between Rochester and Jane, realism exposes Lucretia to the scrutinising eye of the moral establishment.

Likewise, much attention has recently been placed on the racist undertones attached to the first Mrs Rochester and her predisposition to immorality and sexual liberation. Actually, according to Small, Bertha Mason would clearly fall within the Victorian psychiatrist James Cowles Prichard’s category of moral insanity. In Victorian times, both women and so-called savage creatures were held to be more vulnerable to derangement, because their will was presumed to be notoriously weak. In contrast, Lucretia, even if deemed insane, is intelligent and self-willed, and is enclosed for her unlimited ambition which even ends up in murder. Thus, both characters are confined but for significantly different reasons. If Bertha’s sexual desire is considered menacing, Lucretia’s powers of the mind, as well as her ambition, render her acutely threatening, and therefore, she needs to be expelled from the established gender conventions pertaining to the Victorian moral establishment.

3. BULWER-LYTTON’S LUCRETIA: BEYOND THE DOMAIN OF FICTION As James Campbell states in his article “Lucretia and the Influence of Home Education on Later Conduct”, at the centre of Lucretia, there exists “the shaping thesis about how intellect without ethical guidance leads to evil” (1986:51), since the central plot presents “an amoral villainess of commanding intellect, who, driven by jealous revenge, attempts to poison her rivals to secure a large fortune” (51). In this respect, Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia resembles a few more villainous Victorian heiresses of sensational novels of the time, in which young, but well-instructed heroines, make use of their powerful intellect to achieve their wicked aims, while subtly implying that a powerful mind is not regarded as appropriate for a submissive and dutiful Victorian heroine, thus taking it for granted that rising above her prospects may inevitably lead her to commit wicked deeds.

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Bulwer-Lytton’s attempts at teaching morality through the vileness of a female character caused a notorious upheaval in the Victorian society of the time, which had its effect on the considerable number of adverse reviews Lucretia received. By the time BulwerLytton’s novel was published, he had already written several other novels featuring a criminal as the protagonist, such as Paul Clifford (1830) and Eugene Aram (1832), which inaugurated the Newgate genre in England, precisely characterised by introducing a criminal as the hero of the novel. Nevertheless, none of Bulwer-Lytton’s works had received such negative reviews as Lucretia, which was condemned by the Athenaum periodical for exhibiting a markedly “moral unhealthiness of mind” (Campbell 53), and by the Morning Herald for being “as mischievous as those other works of the same author” (Campbell 53).

As a result, Bulwer-Lytton felt compelled to write a pamphlet to defend himself and his works, and in his pamphlet entitled A Word to the Public, published on January 23, 1847, Bulwer-Lytton argued that “crime had a legitimate and useful place in literature” (Campbell 53).

Nevertheless, in the case of Lucretia, it appears that, at the root of the objections and resulting upheaval, was the fact that the novel featured a young woman as the criminal heroine, since merely introducing criminal deeds into the realm of literature was considered a narratological twist commonly exploited in the penny dreadfuls of the time. Lucretia thus proves to be an implacable character, strong-willed and resilient, often described as embodying traits that were only traditionally attached to men. Nonetheless, Bulwer-Lytton claims that her acts, though vile and wicked, are ultimately the result of an uncaring family background; an upbringing merely based on profit and resentment engendered by unrequited love.

According to Ciolkowski (1992), the forgery of female subjectivity in Lucretia inscribed a specifically Victorian ‘anti-feminism’ which was aimed at preserving the sexual status quo, and eroding the basis for the participation of women in fields from which they were socially - if not legally - excluded in the early part of the nineteenth century (94). Nonetheless, in addition to his comment on that type of contemporary social discourse, as Marie Mulvey-Roberts argues in her article “Writing for Revenge: The Battle of the Books of Edward and Rosina Bulwer Lytton”, by means of Lucretia’s perpetual incarceration in a madhouse, Bulwer-Lytton “may well have created a distorted

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mirroring of the madness that he claimed was afflicting his wife” (167).

Therefore, apart from Bulwer-Lytton’s intention to underline the importance of early upbringing in young females, he may have also been referring to a particular case in which he had been personally involved. As Louisa Devey (1887) admits in the biography she wrote of Bulwer-Lytton’s wife, Rosina, when he was canvassing in Hertford for nomination as a Tory Member of Parliament, Rosina interrupted her husband’s address and made a speech urging the electors not to vote for him. Regarding Rosina’s actions as unequivocal signs of insanity, Bulwer-Lytton decided to have his wife committed to a lunatic asylum on June 21 1858, a decade after he had published his novel Lucretia in 1846, so that, in this case, fiction anticipated real life.

As a result of her enclosure, Rosina also wrote her autobiography A Blighted Life in 1866, which especially dwelled upon on her incarceration. However, it was not published until 1880, seven years after Bulwer’s demise. Rosina’s narrative is somehow reminiscent of Georgiana Weldon’s How I Escaped the Mad-Doctors (1878), which was also a protest against the right of husbands to correct rebellious wives during the Victorian period (Mulvey-Roberts 1994: xxix). BulwerLytton’s knowledge about female socialists who did not just leave the home and renounce conventional marriage but who also dared to rise in front of a large audience to address private issues probably came from Ann Wheeler, a social feminist and, significantly, his wife’s mother. In fact, as David Lytton Cobbold (1999), Bulwer-Lytton’s descendant, mentioned in 1999, Ann Wheeler together with William Thompson contributed to the early history of feminism with a significant volume entitled Appeal of One Half of The Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men (1825).

With regard to Bulwer’s novel, Lucretia Clavering’s disruption of the sanctum of the Victorian family and her desire for power outside the confines of the home underline the Victorian debates about the effects of modern society and industrialisation on moral and ethical structures. According to Ciolkowski, Lucretia can be read as a homily on the dangers of the post-industrial female subject and the incipient feminism that enables the heroine of the novel to test the limits of a politics of separate spheres (80). Lucretia Clavering’s feminine beauty encodes her as a woman, but her disdain for the protected field of the home and her desire for power in the public sphere of politics render

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her closer to masculinity. Brought up and educated by her bachelor uncle, Sir Miles St. John, to become his heiress, Lucretia is provided with all the trappings of masculine power. However, in order to achieve the wealth and freedom she desires she must also excel in embodying the perfect Victorian angel. Her fondness for theatricality enables her to manipulate all those with whom she comes into contact.

Nevertheless, as a result of the public discovery of her romantic involvement with the commoner William Mainwaring, against her uncle’s wish, Lucretia is disinherited and banished from her uncle’s estate. Ultimately, Lucretia is also forsaken by William who rejects her in favour of Lucretia’s half-sister, Susan Mivers, an angel of the house in fact, and Lucretia’s counterpart.

Subsequently, Lucretia gets involved with her French tutor, Olivier Dalibard, who initiates her into the world of crime. Actually, as Allan Conrad Christensen argues in Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Fiction of New Regions, it is Dalibard who truly “becomes the tutor, corruptor, and husband of the heroine Lucretia” (2003:114). Having been initiated in mischief, Lucretia, now Madame Dalibard, eventually has her husband murdered, poisons her second husband, destroys the life of her halfsister Susan, makes an attempt on the life of her young niece Helen to secure her son’s inheritance, and murders a young street boy, Beck, who, in clear resemblance to the tradition of classic Victorian melodrama, turns out to be her lost son. Lucretia’s ability to impersonate the female subject cherished by Victorian society enables her to move through the world with the advantage assigned to virtual Victorian angels of the house, hiding her unlimited ambition and cunning intelligence behind a meek and pious countenance. Lucretia is thus able to forge her female subjectivity, and Bulwer-Lytton’s novel thus explores a shifting negotiation of identity and difference which disfigures Victorian assumptions of gender.

With a view to turning her into an heiress, Lucretia’s mind has been educated for masculine pursuits, while her body has been trained to impersonate the Victorian angel to perfection. Her forgery of femininity brings into being an egotistical female subject, disguised in the forms of feminine beauty and fated to disrupt the mechanics of Victorian society. This is revealed early in the novel by means of an ambiguous description, in which she is characterised as “tall, - tall

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beyond what is admitted to be tall in woman; but in her height there was nothing either awkward or masculine, - a figure more perfect never served for model to a sculptor” (Bulwer 50). The forgery of femininity in Lucretia undercuts the naturalised link between femininity and morality that is cherished by middle-class Victorians, and destabilises the figure of the Victorian angel. Bulwer-Lytton seems to portray Lucretia as a monstrous form of femininity; a female mutation against which Victorian society must be on its guard. The forgery of femininity in Lucretia problematises the portrait of angelic femininity as she defies the Victorian binary model of sexual difference according to which woman must be the very antithesis of theatricality, thus revealing in the end, that the myth of the unitary soul is ultimately a mirage. The complementary nature of the fallen woman and the angel of the house, embodied by Lucretia’s appearance and her true inner nature, as well as by Lucretia herself and her half-sister Susan Mivers, would also play an important role in Wilkie Collins’s novel The Woman in White, published in 1859, significantly one year after Bulwer-Lytton had committed his wife Rosina to a lunatic asylum. Thus, this exchange of identities and personalities would also be further explored

by Wilkie Collins, with whom Bulwer-Lytton was closely acquainted.

4. THE SENSATIONAL CASE OF THE WOMAN IN WHITE According to Matthew Sweet, The Woman in White has generally been regarded as the first sensational novel, which can be defined as an enormously influential branch of Victorian fiction which blended the apprehensive thrills of Gothic literature with the psychological realism of the domestic novel (1999:xiii). The rise of the sensational novel was intimately connected with the development of Victorian consumer culture, a shift in social and economic behaviour that brought about the near industrialisation of pleasure. Wilkie Collins’ first efforts were written under the influence of Gothic fiction and Bulwer-Lytton’s historical novels, and yet the acknowledged source from which Collins drew his popular novel, The Woman in White, preceded Bulwer-Lytton’s incarceration of his wife only a few years.

The origins of Wilkie Collins’ novel The Woman in White (1859) have been acknowledged to involve several well-known Victorian

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personalities. It is estimated that on one moonlit summer night in the 1850s, Wilkie Collins and his brother, Charles Allston Collins, were escorting the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais from one of their mother’s parties in Hanover Terrace to his home at 83 Gower Street in London. Their conversation was suddenly arrested by a piercing scream which appeared to come from the garden of a villa close at hand. Before they could decide what course of action to take, the iron gate leading to the garden was thrown open, and from it came the figure of a young woman dressed in white robes that John Everett Millais described in the following terms: She was a young lady of good birth and position, who had accidentally fallen into the hands of a man living in a villa in Regent’s Park. There for many months he kept her prisoner under threats and mesmeric influence of so alarming a character that she dared not attempt to escape, until, in sheer desperation, she fled from the brute, who, with a poker in his hand, threatened to dash her brains out. (Millais 278-9) John Everett Millais’ actual description of the lady in white, whom Collins also saw as he was escorting his friend, bears a close resemblance with its fictional counterpart as described by Walter Hartright in the novel: It was then nearly one o’clock. All I could discern distinctly by the moonlight, was a colourless, youthful face, meagre and sharp to look at, about the cheeks and chin; large, grave, wistfully-attentive eyes; nervous, uncertain lips; and light hair of a pale, brownish-yellow hue. There was nothing wild, nothing immodest in her manner: it was quiet and self-controlled, a little melancholy and a little touched by suspicion; not exactly the manner of a lady, and, at the same time, not the manner of a woman in the humblest rank of life. The voice, little as I had yet heard of it, had something curiously still and mechanical in its tones, and the utterance was remarkably rapid. She held a small bag in her hand: and her dress – bonnet, shawl, and gown all of

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white – was, so far as I could guess, certainly not composed of very delicate or very expensive materials.

(Collins 24) The ambiguous description of a demented young woman in sensational narratives, mostly considered to have been created by Wilkie Collins, was forced to ground itself within contemporary debates about the nature of identity and the science of mental pathology. Wilkie Collins was no stranger to either physical or nervous illness, and it was during the late 1850s that he became particularly concerned about insanity. According to Sweet, the effortlessness with which Collins accomplishes this portrayal exploits a topical scary plot of the 1860s, that is, the threat of wrongful incarceration in a madhouse.

The end of the decade of the 1850s witnessed the phenomenon of the so-called “lunacy panic” in Great Britain, arising from a great number of cases involving individuals wrongly diagnosed, certified insane, and forcibly committed to madhouses. In an interview conducted with Wilkie Collins in 1871, the writer admitted the explicit effects these events exerted on the composition of his novel The Woman in White. Out in the country, the penny newspapers were fuelling speculation that the madhouses of England might enclose behind their walls an unknown number of sane individuals, mainly incarcerated for pecuniary reasons. It seemed medical men were allying with unscrupulous families who wanted to dispose of troublesome relatives. In their volume entitled Masters of Bedlam, Andrew Scull, Charlotte MacKenzie and Nicholas Hervey argue that “the boundary between sanity and madness was and remains uncertain; and there were inescapable moral and social components in all such judgements” (1999:181). Moreover, as John Sutherland claims in his book Victorian Fiction: Writers, Publishers, Readers (1995), the question of diagnosing insanity, and the problem of how to dispose of wearisome women, were a cause for concern in Wilkie Collins’s own circle.

As a matter of fact, one of the events that propelled the long friendship established between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins was their acting together in one of Bulwer-Lytton’s plays. On 16 May

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1851, Not So Bad as We Seem was performed with a cast including Mark Lemon - editor of Punch- , John Forster - then secretary to the Commissioners for Lunacy-, and Robert Bell - co-proprietor of the Manor House private asylum in Chiswick. Charles Dickens ensured that a police guard was on the door because of threats from Rosina Bulwer-Lytton, Edward’s estranged wife, who publicised her intention to assault Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort as they attended the opening night. Rosina had separated from the baronet in 1836 on very bad terms, and had continued pestering him with insulting letters – sending them to him directly, to his acquaintances, and also even to the press. Her anger intensified in 1848, when her husband banned her presence when their nineteen-year-old daughter, Emily, was on her death-bed, dying of typhoid in a cheap London boarding-house.

In June 1858, after Rosina’s outrageous attack in front of a crowd of electors in his Hertford constituency, Bulwer-Lytton felt compelled to abduct Rosina and commit her to the Wyke House Lunatic Asylum in Brentford. She was certified insane on the authority of John Conolly and Lyttleton Stewart Forbes Winslow, two of the most eminent psychiatrists in the country. In this respect, Bulwer-Lytton’s procedures at that time appear as not entirely removed from those of Count Fosco in Wilkie Collins’ novel. Rosina’s incarceration actually preceded the publication of The Woman in White. Nonetheless, Wilkie Collins was careful not to refer to the specific event that seems to have given rise to the plot of his eponymous novel. In any case, Rosina was more fortunate in real life than Laura Fairlie is in fiction, as Rosina was released from the mental institution where she had been enclosed after three weeks. The scandal that erupted in the Victorian society of the time as a result of Rosina’s enclosure forced Conolly and Forbes Winslow to re-evaluate Rosina’s mental condition and concede that her sanity was beyond question.

As Matthew Sweet further asserts, Bryan Procter, one of the metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy present at Rosina’s second examination, was precisely the dedicatee of The Woman in White and doubtless supplied Collins with many of the novel’s details (1999: xxix). Wilkie Collins’ use of a plot about an ageing and sour-tempered baronet who incarcerates his sane wife in a lunatic asylum greatly pleased Rosina, Bulwer-Lytton’s wife, who wrote to Collins claiming that she could provide him with material from her own experience

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which would enable him to create the most dastardly villain in literary history, mentioning that “the man is alive and is constantly under my gaze. In fact, he is my husband” (Robinson 1974: 141). Apparently, as a result of these blatant similarities between fact and fiction, BulwerLytton dismissed Wilkie Collins’ novel in a letter to Frederick Lehmann as “great trash” (Gasson 1998: 24). Nonetheless, significantly enough, Bulwer-Lytton was full of praise for Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novel Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), written by his protégée and published four years later than Wilkie Collins’ novel, despite the fact that this novel concludes with its heroine’s imprisonment in a French lunatic asylum, thus again bearing an acute resemblance with Bulwer-Lytton’s endeavours with regard to his own wife. As a matter of fact, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon not only shared an interest in sensational fiction, but they were also closely acquainted with each other. Mary Elizabeth Braddon regarded Wilkie Collins as her literary father and admitted that the plot of her novel Lady Audley’s Secret owed much to The Woman in White. Likewise, she was also to dedicate her novel Lady Audley’s Secret to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whom she considered her literary mentor, thus addressing him in the following terms: “in grateful acknowledgment of literary advice most generously given to the author”; which proves both Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s gratefulness and her indebtedness to the Victorian baronet.

5. SENSATIONAL FICTION GAINS PUBLIC ACCLAIM By the end of 1862, Mary Elisabeth Braddon had established her reputation as a leading writer in sensational fiction. She shared this position with Wilkie Collins, whose novel Woman in White, published two years earlier, had inaugurated the genre of the sensational novel. According to Jenny Bourne Taylor (1998), it was precisely Lady Audley’s Secret which epitomised the most notorious and disturbing aspects of the sensational fiction which was characteristic during the decade of the 1860s. Mary Elizabeth Braddon initially relied on the patronage of the masculine literary world, and her early career was fostered by two powerful older men, namely Wilkie Collins and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. By the 1860s, Bulwer-Lytton had become one of the most respected living English writers, and was particularly aware

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of Braddon’s early work, offering her enormous encouragement. As a result, Mary Elizabeth Braddon dedicated her novel to him, and both maintained copious correspondence until Bulwer-Lytton’s death.

Hence, Bulwer-Lytton is estimated to have played the role of mentor and literary father to his female protégée. As Sweet further claims, Bulwer-Lytton even once showed Braddon his private collection of photographic portraits of demented and lunatic patients, and it seems inevitable that his attempt to incarcerate his wife, Rosina, actually inspired elements of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s best-known sensational fiction.

On the other hand, John Maxwell, a publishing magnate, who became Braddon’s lover and lifelong partner, also exerted a deep influence on the young writer at both a personal and professional level.

Braddon had met John Maxwell in the late 1850s and started living with him in an unmarried union, even though he already had a wife, who had also been confined in a mental institution. This aspect in Braddon’s personal life echoes two recurrent themes in her sensational fiction: the difficulties posed before the reform of the divorce laws due to the indissolubility of marriage, and the confinement of the wife in an asylum; both themes widely explored in Lady Audley’s Secret. As a matter of fact, both Bulwer-Lytton’s and John Maxwell’s wives were committed to an asylum at some point in their lives, and both exerted a significantly personal influence on Mary Elizabeth Braddon.

Lady Audley’s Secret gradually reveals that, behind Lucy Graham’s identity, there lurks Helen Talboys, a bigamist and a suspected murderess. Subsequently, it is also disclosed that, behind Helen Talboys’ identity, there lies Helen Maldon; a woman who describes herself as inheritor of hereditary insanity on the part of her mother. According to Doctor Mosgrave’s diagnosis in the novel, “[t]he lady is not mad; but she has the hereditary taint in her blood. She has the cunning of madness, with the prudence of intelligence. I will tell you what she is, Mr.Audley. She is dangerous!” (372). Furthermore, this intermittent play of identities associates the anxieties about the breakdown of established class relationships and the mutability of social roles with a set of debates about the nature of identity and the limits of the inner self that intrigued Victorians and began to give shape to the emerging field of nineteenth-century psychiatry.

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In this respect, Braddon’s novel was soon compared with two earlier novels that also drew connections between female insanity, established gender conventions and social-class disruption: Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novel actually takes and transforms aspects of Bulwer-Lytton’s story. Lucy’s first husband, Robert Audley, avoids the scandal of a public trial and denies Lucy’s rights as a subject provided that she is confined in a lunatic asylum. Nevertheless, the description of her incarceration blurs any distinction between criminal responsibility as a villainess and wrongful confinement as a victim: (Dr. Mosgrave) ‘From the moment in which Lady Audley enters that house,’ he said, ‘her life, so far as life is made up of action and variety, will be finished.

Whatever secrets she may have will be secrets for ever!

Whatever crimes she may have committed she will be able to commit no more. If you were to dig a grave for her in the nearest churchyard and bury her alive in it, you could not more safely shut her from the world and all worldly associations.’ (Braddon 373) This previous excerpt, which echoes burying the individual alive, bears a close resemblance with Bulwer-Lytton’s portrayal of Lucretia’s incarceration in a lunatic asylum at the end of the novel: The place of her confinement thus continued a secret locked in his own breast. Egotist to the last, she was henceforth dead to him, - why not to the world?

Thus the partner of her crimes had cut off her sole resource, in the compassion of her unconscious kindred; thus the gates of the living world were shut to her evermore. (Bulwer-Lytton 423) As is the case with Lucy Audley, Lucretia ends her days in an asylum as a result of her crimes. Nonetheless, if Lucy’s madness seems to be feigned in order to avoid moral judgement, Lucretia’s more real and tragic insanity arises as a result of having killed her own son.

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6. CONCLUSIONS Despite its undeniable importance as a seminal text portraying female madness in popular Victorian narratives, Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia still remains a lesser-known Victorian novel of sensation, even though it preceded Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and both Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon acknowledged their debt to Bulwer-Lytton, as a friend and a mentor, respectively. The exploration of female madness as portrayed in all these novels taking Bulwer-Lytton’s seminal text as a focus of attention may shed some new light on canonical portraits of Victorian female insanity.

These four Victorian portrayals of female madness display differences, but also share outstanding similarities. Bertha Mason is enclosed in the attic of Thornfield Hall as a latent presence in the house, whereas Lucretia, Lucy Audley and Laura Fairlie - the latter mistaken for Ann Catherick - are incarcerated in a lunatic asylum as a result of their wicked deeds. Jane Eyre has often been highlighted as the forerunner of sensational fiction, mingling domestic fiction and gothic romance. The Woman in White is considered to be the first sensational novel, whereas Lady Audley’s Secret consolidated the genre.

Above all, Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia, the first of them all to be published, sheds its shadow over the rest significantly, as well as unveils a real domestic event which gained public attention in Victorian society at the time: the case of Rosina Bulwer-Lytton’s actual commitment in a mental institution.

Furthermore, apart from the blatant intertextual links that can be established among these four narratives, especially with regard to the discourse of female madness, and the actual connections in real life among writers such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, there are other issues that underline differences as well as parallelisms among these four novels, as is the case with the genre to which they belonged, the importance they attach to the figure of the double, the centrality given to the heroine in each of these narratives, the discourse they address, as well as the reasons why the respective heroines are termed insane, mainly owing to sexuality and gender subversion. As far as genre is concerned, Brontë’s Jane Eyre has often been considered as belonging to

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domestic fiction, whereas the rest of these novels have been traditionally regarded as sensational fiction, given the importance this genre acquired during the decades of the 1850s and the 1860s.

Moreover, all four novels display concern about the literary figure of the doppelganger, since Jane and Laura are conceived as victims, female angels of the house, who suffer the existence of their double mad counterparts, Bertha and Ann, respectively. Bertha Mason stands as the Creole female who inherited madness from her own mother and separates Rochester from Jane, whereas Ann Catherick knows Percival’s secret, that he was born out of wedlock, and her Ophelia-like madness renders her Laura’s alter ego as well as Sir Percival Glyde’s scapegoat. Likewise, in Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, the heroine Lucretia and her half-sister, Susan, become clear antagonists and counterparts, as is also the case with Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novel Lady Audley’s Secret, in which the heroine Lucy Graham hides her real identity as Helen Talboys. The centrality given to these demented women also differs in each of these novels as, in both Jane Eyre and The Woman in White, the madwomen play a minor role, whereas the actual heroines are Jane and Laura. In contrast, Lucretia and Lady Audley become actual demonised heroines and acquire central protagonism; likewise, their centrality allows the reader to gain insight into their motivations as female characters, thus rendering them more human, even if they are inevitably vanished from stage at the end.

These sensational novels also underscore a domestic as well as a protofeminist discourse, even if Lucretia and Lady Audley seem to respond more faithfully to feminist demands as enraged heroines.

Actually, it is worth noticing that, even if incarcerated, both Lucretia and Lady Audley die a peaceful death in the asylum, whereas Bertha and ultimately Ann die in strange circumstances, thus falling prey to the respective heroes’ purposes. Rochester becomes free to marry Jane, whereas Sir Percival and Count Fosco take advantage of Ann Catherick’s death to exchange her for Laura Glyde. Ultimately, despite Lucy’s failed attempt, it is only Lucretia of these four heroines who really commits a murder, thus arising as an actual murderess, even if it is implied that her actions respond to her upbringing and social circumstances.

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Finally, in relation to the cause of these heroines’ madness, Bertha Mason is the descendant of a lineage of demented women, traditionally linked to the sensuousness pertaining to the Creole female identity. Ann Catherick knows a secret which compromises social standards. Lucretia is too masculine, too intelligent, and holds too much power in her own hands. Lady Audley has committed the sin of starting a life of her own in spite of the fact her husband is still living. Because of the fact that they defied Victorian standards, all these heroines were considered deviants, and therefore, became social outcasts according to Victorian conventions, as they exemplified the threat of being incarcerated as a result of defying their husbands’ authority. All things considered, the significant relations established among these four novels, as well as the numerous points in common they present, turn them into paradigms of sensation and of that cultural portrayal of female madness which gained particular acclaim and popularity in Victorian times.

WORKS CITED Armstrong, N. 1987. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bourne Taylor, J. 1998. “Introduction.” Lady Audley’s Secret. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics. vii-xli.

Braddon, M. E.1998 (1862). Lady Audley’s Secret. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.

Brontë, Ch. 2008 (1847). Jane Eyre. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.

Bulwer-Lytton, Sir E. G. 2004 (1846). Lucretia; or, The Children of the Night. Doylestown, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press.

Bulwer-Lytton, R. 1994 (1880). A Blighted Life: A True Story. Ed. Marie Mulvey-Roberts. Thoemmes Continuum. Facsimile.

Campbell, J.L. 1986. “Lucretia and the Influence of Home Education on Later Conduct”. Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Boston: Twayne. 50-54.

Ciolkowski, L. 1992. “The Woman (In) Question: Gender, Politics, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia”. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 26.1 (Autumn): 80-95.

Collins, W. 2008 (1859). The Woman in White. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.

Conrad Christensen, A. 2003. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Fiction of New

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Regions. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.

Devey, L. 1887. Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton, with Numerous Extracts from her Ms. Autobiography and Other Original Documents. London: Swan Sonnenschein.

Foucault, M. 1971. Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London: Random.

Gasson, A. 1998. Wilkie Collins: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press Gilbert, S. and S. Gubar. 1984 (1979). The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Lerner, L. 1989. “Bertha and the Critics”. Nineteenth-Century Literature 44.3 (December): 273-300.

Lytton Cobbold, D. 1999. The Life of Rosina Bulwer-Lytton. Irish Beauty, Satirist and Tormented Victorian Wife, 1802-1882. Knebworth: Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust .

Millais, J.G. 1895. The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais. Vol. I. London.

Mulvey-Roberts, M. 2004. “Writing for Revenge: The Battle of the Books of Edward and Rosina Bulwer Lytton.’ The Subverting Vision of Bulwer Lytton: Bicentenary Reflections”. Ed. Allan Conrad Christensen. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 159-173.

Rhys, J. 2001 (1966). Wide Sargasso Sea. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics.

Robinson, K. 1974 (1952). Wilkie Collins: A Biography. London: DavisPoynter.

Scull, A., Ch. MacKenzie, and N. Hervey. 1996. Masters of Bedlam: The Transformation of the Mad-Doctoring Trade. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Showalter, E. 1987. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture 1830-1980. London: Virago.

Small, H. 1996. “The Hyena’s Laughter: Lucretia and Jane Eyre”. Love’s Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 139-178.

Sutherland, J. 1995. Victorian Fiction: Writers, Publishers, Readers.

Basingtoke: Macmillan.

Sweet, M. 1999. ‘Introduction.’ The Woman in White. London: Penguin Books. xiii-xxxiv.

Weldon, G. 1882. How I Escaped the Mad-Doctors. London: Mrs.Weldon.

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INTEGRATING THE SPEECH ACT OF REFUSALS IN THE INSTRUCTED SETTING* Vicente Beltran-Palanques Universitat Jaume I vicent.beltran@uji.es The purpose of this paper is to provide an instructional approach for the integration of a particular pragmatic aspect, specifically, the speech act of refusals.

To do that, the paper begins with a description of the speech under study and with a review of proposals for the teaching of pragmatic features in instructed settings.

Following that, an instructional approach for the integration of refusal strategies in the instructed setting is proposed.

Key words: Pragmatic competence, speech acts, refusals, instructional approaches.

El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar un enfoque instructivo para la integración de un aspecto pragmático en particular, concretamente el del acto de habla del rechazo. De este modo, el trabajo empieza con una descripción del acto de habla objeto de estudio y con una revisión de propuestas de enseñanza de aspectos pragmáticos en el contexto de instrucción. Seguidamente, se propone un enfoque instructivo para la introducción de las estrategias el rechazo en el contexto de instrucción.

Palabras clave: Competencia pragmática, actos de habla, rechazo, enfoques didácticos.

1. INTRODUCTION It has been suggested that language learners should develop their pragmatic competence in order to reach communicative *

Fecha de recepción: Abril 2012

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competence (Kasper and Rose, 2002). Pragmatic competence, which is one the main components of the communicative construct1 (Bachman, 1990; Celce-Murcia et al., 1995; Usó-Juan and MartínezFlor, 2006), should be fostered in the instructed setting in order to aid learners to communicate efficiently in various social encounters (Olshtain and Cohen, 1991; Judd, 1999; Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006; Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor; 2008, Beltran-Palanques, 2011).

Specifically, this particular competence involves the knowledge of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features, which might be taken into account when performing speech acts in different communicative interchanges (Kasper and Roever, 2005). The former refers to the linguistic resources that are required to convey communicative moves, while the latter is related to the social factors such as social status (i.e. the relative power that speakers have) and social distance (i.e. the degree of familiarity between speakers) that affect language performance (Brown and Levinson, 1987).

On that account, it seems important to integrate pragmatic competence in the instructed setting by focusing on speech act realisation, paying special attention to the social factors which might affect language production (Olshtain and Cohen, 1991; Judd, 1999; Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006; Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor; 2008). Hence, the purpose of this paper is to provide an instructional approach for the integration of a particular pragmatic aspect, specifically the speech act of refusals. To do that, the paper begins with a description of the speech under study and with a review of suggested proposals for the teaching of pragmatic features in the instructed setting. Following that, we present an instructional approach for the integration of refusal strategies in the instructed setting.

2. THE PRAGMATIC FEATURE UNDER STUDY The pragmatic feature selected for study in this paper is the speech act of refusals, which falls into the category of Searle’s (1979) directive acts or into Bach and Harnish’s (1977) category of constative acts. This particular speech act is usually performed to convey a refusal in answer to other initiating acts such as requests, offers, invitations or

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suggestions. According to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory, refusal strategies are considered as one of the most facethreatening acts. The notion of face refers to the self-image that a person might possess, which can be somehow damaged by the utterance of a refusal, as it conveys a dispreferred message in which the interlocutor’s expectations are contradicted.

Due to the face-threatening aspect of refusal strategies, there is a tendency to perform them in a rather indirect manner as an attempt to mitigate their face-threatening nature and reduce the negative effect that their realisation might evoke (Gass and Houck, 1999). In fact, by avoiding directness, speakers can reduce the facethreatening nature of this speech act. To do so, it seems necessary to understand how to use pragmalinguistic resources adequately in view of the sociopragmatic conditions of the context of interaction, specifically the social distance between the participants, the social status of each interlocutor and the setting in which interaction occurs (Brown and Levinson, 1987). Other aspects that might be taken into consideration when refusing are the cultural values and perceptions of the interlocutors.

The use of indirect refusal strategies involves a rather complex process in which not only a good command of English language proficiency might be required, but also, and more importantly, a great degree of pragmatic competence. Both of these are required to perform such acts efficiently, and thus avoid miscommunication problems. In this regard, Eslami (2010: 217) points out that “there is strong need for pragmatic instruction in order to help learners interpret and realise this speech act successfully”. Therefore, language learners should know how to use refusal forms and functions appropriately depending on the social conditions of the context of interaction, which involve both a) possible differences in social distance and social status existing between the interlocutors, and b) the hearer’s cultural values and perceptions of the utterance performed. To that end, teachers might design specific methodological approaches that can favour language learners’ reflection on language realisation from a pragmatic perspective (Olshtain and Cohen, 1991; Judd, 1999; Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006; Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor; 2008).

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3. THE INTRODUCTION OF PRAGMATIC FEATURES IN THE INSTRUCTED SETTING It has been indicated that the setting in which the instruction takes place might have an effect on the quantity and quality of learners’ exposition to authentic pragmatic input as well as on the output opportunities (Kasper and Roever, 2005; Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2010a). On the one hand, in second language (SL) contexts learners will have greater opportunities for being exposed to contextualised pragmatic input and to use the language for real-life purposes (Kasper and Roever, 2005). On the other hand, in foreign language (FL) contexts, the possibility for both being exposed to appropriate pragmatic input and employing the target language (TL) are somehow limited to the instructed setting (Martínez-Flor and UsóJuan, 2010a). Consequently, especially in FL contexts, it seems essential to provide learners with appropriate and contextualised pragmatic input as well as to design specific methodological approaches which might engage learners in purposeful communicative activities (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2010a, 2010b; Beltran-Palanques, 2011). In fact, it is in the FL contexts where pragmatic instruction becomes even more significant due to the drawbacks that might be found.

In most instructed settings, teaching practices rely on the use of traditional language materials such as those of language textbooks (Vellenga, 2004), despite the fact that this type of source has been criticised for not incorporating sufficient and suitable pragmatic information (Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2010b; Beltrán-Palanques, in press). In order to improve such a situation, audiovisual materials (Washburn, 2001; Alcón, 2005; Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006; Martínez-Flor, 2007, 2009; Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor, 2008; Kondo, 2010; Usó-Juan, 2010; Beltran-Palanques, 2011) or natural occurring data (Martínez-Flor, 2010) can be employed as a way to provide learners with something like an authentic representation of speech act realisation. It is, however, important to note that the language used in audiovisual material as well as the scenarios shown are not real since they are designed for specific purposes such as entertainment. Also, they are not pedagogically-oriented. Nevertheless, this particular type of source can be of paramount interest for teachers since it might

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contain appropriate samples of language use in contextualised situations. In fact, as indicted by Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan (2010a), one of the most important aspects that should be taken into account when fostering pragmatic competence in the instructed setting is the quality of input, and it seems that by means of audiovisual materials learners can be exposed to appropriate examples of speech act performance. The authors also argue that other important aspects to bear in mind are those of output and feedback opportunities. In this regard, it could also be pointed out that learners should be engaged in purposeful production activities which might reflect everyday situations that they are familiar with; and that they should be provided with feedback on performance in order to better assist their process of learning. In line with this, several researchers in the field of interlanguage pragmatics have proposed different pedagogical approaches and techniques for developing pragmatic competence in the instructed setting (Olshtain and Cohen, 1991; Judd, 1999; Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006; Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor; 2008). As reported by Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan (2010b), Olshtain and Cohen (1991) are the first who advance a pedagogical approach for the integration of speech acts. Specifically, the authors consider that learners should be first exposed to the main pragmalinguistic features of the speech act under study, and after that, they should be given information about the different factors that might affect their realisation. Finally, learners should be provided with output opportunities in order to practice the different speech act realisations examined, as well as with feedback on performance. Olshtain and Cohen (1991) suggest the implementation of a methodological approach which consists of five steps. The first step, diagnostic assessment, consists of analysing learners’ level of awareness of speech acts in general and in particular that of the speech act object of study.

The second step, a model dialogue, implies learners’ exposition to particular examples of the speech act studied in different situations so as to make them reflect on the sociopragmatic features that might be involved in the speech act realisation. Then, learners can be provided with natural examples in which learners can observe speech act use.

The third step is known as the evaluation of a situation, its purpose being to reinforce learners’ awareness of the factors that might influence the choice of the different semantic formulae. In the fourth step, role-playing, learners are provided with output opportunities to

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produce the speech act. The last step is that of feedback and discussion in which learners can express their expectations and perceptions as well as the possible similarities and differences between their mother tongue (L1) and the TL. Similarly, Judd (1999) provides some techniques for the development of pragmatic competence which consists of three main parts, namely those of cognitive awareness, receptive skill development, and productive use. The first part is designed to help learners become aware of the differences between L1 and TL speech acts. The second one focuses on the learners’ recognition and understanding of the speech act under study. Finally, in the last part, learners are involved in a set of activities which range from controlled productive activities to free integrated activities in order to practice the specific speech act analysed.

In addition to this, Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan (2006) propose the so-called 6R Approach which consists of a methodological approach that is divided into main six phases. The focus of this approach is the integration of the speech acts of requests and suggestions in the instructed setting from a communicative approach. In the first phase, that of research, learners are provided with pragmatic information about the two speech acts under study. Then, learners are asked to write some requests and suggestions in their L1 as well as to give information about the sociopragmatic aspects that are involved in their pragmalinguistic realisation. The second phase, reflecting, implies both working on the examples that have been collected in the previous phase and completing an awareness-raising questionnaire. In the third phase, receiving, learners are provided with explicit instruction on the pragmalinguistic sources used for performing requests and suggestions.

After that, learners are encouraged to compare those speech act realisations with the speech acts strategies that are identified in their L1. In so doing, learners can examine the similarities and differences that can be observed in the two different languages. In the fourth phase, reasoning, learners should complete three different types of awareness-raising activities which could serve to enhance their pragmatic knowledge. Once they have completed this phase, learners are engaged in the fifth phase, rehearsing, which involves two main productive activities (i.e. controlled activities and free activities). The final phase, revising, refers to learners’ provision of feedback on performance. Finally, Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor (2008) propose a

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learner-based method to teach request-mitigating devices which is divided into three main stages. The first stage, learners’ exploration, consists of two main types of awareness-raising activities. The aim is that of providing learners with opportunities to work on the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of the speech act examined. In the second stage, learners’ production, learners are encouraged to practice request mitigating devices in the oral and written mode. Finally, in the third stage, learners’ feedback, learners have opportunities for receiving peer feedback on performance.

As can be seen, some methodological approaches and techniques can be implemented in order to foster pragmatic competence in the instructed setting. To do so, teachers should carefully select the pragmatic input, design specific communicative activities, and provide learners with feedback on performance (Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2010a).

4. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE TEACHING OF REFUSALS The proposed instructional activities have been elaborated following Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan’s (2010a) suggestions concerning the teaching of pragmatic aspects. These authors emphasise the importance of providing learners with appropriate instances of input and opportunities for production as well as with feedback on performance. In this particular case, the teaching of the speech act of refusals is not based on spontaneous data, but rather on pragmatic input selected from audiovisual materials. The input selected captures the use of refusal strategies in various contexts so that learners may be exposed to different pragmatic realisations (Beltrán-Palanques, 2011). The proposed activities aim at teaching learners how to perform refusal strategies by paying special attention to the contextual factors which might affect language use, and feedback on performance is also provided so that learners may reflect on their output. Drawing on previous research (Olshtain and Cohen, 1991; Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006; Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor; 2008), the suggested activities are divided into the following set of phases: comparing, exploring, selecting, producing and providing feedback.

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The first phase, comparing, involves first the teacher’s exposition of the notion of social distance and social status and how these aspects might affect language use. After that, teachers may make learners reflect on the realisation of refusal strategies not only in the second language (L2), but also on their own L1 (Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006; Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor, 2008). In so doing, learners can be asked to think of various strategies in both languages in order to compare them in terms of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features. To complete this activity, learners should be provided with two different data-collection sheets (Table 1 and Table 2).

Specifically, the activity consists of collecting various refusal strategies in learners’ L1 and L2 in order to reflect on their pragmalinguistic realisation as well as on the sociopragmatic features which can influence their use. Then, learners should consider the refusal strategies and classify them according to their level of directness or indirectness (Table 1).

Table 1. Data-collection sheet (adapted from Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006) Data-collection sheet Refusals in L1 - Data-collection sheet Level of directness and indirectness Refusals in L2 - Data-collection sheet Level of directness and indirectness Once learners have classified them, they should discuss with the rest of learners the data obtained and how the different strategies are organised. After that, learners can complete the answer sheet shown in Table 2 in which information concerning the different strategies should be given. Particularly, learners are required to provide a context in which the different refusals collected might occur by focusing on the participants’ relationship, role, age, gender, and their intention.

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Table 2. Data-collection sheet for examining refusal strategies Refusals in L1 Strategy: Context: Participants’ relationship, role, age, gender, and intention: Refusals in L2 Strategy: Context: Participants’ relationship, role, age, gender, and intention: In this phase learners are expected to reflect on the crosscultural differences between their L1 and L2 as well as on the different factors that can affect refusal realisations. Moreover, learners can be asked to describe situations in which they consider that failures in communication when performing refusal strategies might arise. The major aim of this activity is to make learners reflect on their pragmatic performance of refusals in both languages by paying attention to the pragmalinguistic realisation and the sociopragmatic features underlying that production.

Having reflected on the differences between refusal realisations in L1 and L2, we can move to second phase, that of exploring.

Specifically, in the second phase, teachers should present learners with pragmatic input. To do that, teachers can use some film scenes in which the speech act of refusals is used in different contexts. In this way, teachers expose learners to authentic-like samples of language in which the speech act under study is employed contextually (Alcón, 2005; Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006; Martínez-Flor, 2007, 2009; Kondo, 2010; Usó-Juan, 2010; Martínez and Fernández, 2008; BeltranPalanques, 2011). When carrying out this particular activity, learners should also be given an answer sheet which contains a short questionnaire (Table 3).

Table 3. Film answer sheet (adapted from Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006)

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Which strategies are employed?

Describe the participants in terms of gender and age.

Where are they?

What is the role played by each participant?

What status is represented by each participant?

How would you describe their relationship?

What are the participants’ intentions?

Select the option you think is suitable Speakers’ social distance: stranger / acquaintance / intimate Speakers’ social status: equal / high Recapitulating How might sociopragmatic features affect pragmalinguistic realisations?

To what extent might communicative purposes not be achieved if pragmalinguistic features are not realised according to sociopragmatic conditions?

Learners should pay attention to the different refusal strategies appearing in the input provided and examine the sociopragmatic conditions under which each pragmalinguistic realisation occurs (Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan, 2006; Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor, 2008; Kondo, 2010; Usó-Juan, 2010; Beltran-Palanques, 2011). In order to present learners with varied contextual situations, it is important that the input selected should contain different settings and that participants’ roles as regards social distance and social status relationships should also vary.

After completing the answer sheet, learners can take part in a whole-class discussion on the information collected, paying particular attention to the form and function of the refusal strategies, and how they are affected by the context of the situation. The purpose of this activity is twofold, first it attempts to extend the presentation of refusal strategies, which is not appropriately presented in language textbooks (Beltrán-Palanques, in press), and secondly it aims to make learners reflect on the use of refusal formulae in various contexts.

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In the third phase, selecting, teachers can show learners different situations in which various refusal strategies are used in answer to other speech acts. In this particular case, excerpts from films might be also employed, albeit, when possible, natural occurring data should be used as it can provide a better representation of speech act performance. Then, teachers can present learners with different scenarios and with various refusal strategies in order to make them select the formulae that they think are most suitable for such contexts.

Moreover, learners should also justify their pragmalinguistic choice by taking into account the sociopragmatic conditions of the situation. In order to help learners better understand the situations it is important to provide them with sufficient contextual information about the participants and the settings. Example 1 might serve to illustrate how this activity can be designed. In this specific case, a refusal is given in answer to a request.

Example 1. (source: Beltrán-Palanques, 2011: 79, taken from The Constant Gardener) Situation 1: Tessa and Justin, a couple, leave the hospital after Tessa gives birth. Unfortunately, their baby has not survived. While they are on the road, Tessa sees a woman carrying a new-born baby, accompanied only by another child. They were also at the hospital and the mother of the baby died after having given birth.

Tessa: Justin: Tessa: Justin: Tessa: Justin: Tessa: Justin: Tessa: Justin:

Stop, stop, stop. [Justin stops the car.]

Tessa.

It’s 40 kilometres to Miluri. It’s gonna take them all night.

We shouldn’t get involved in their lives, Tessa.

Why? Be reasonable. There are millions of people. They all need help. That’s what the agencies are here for.

Yeah, but these are three people that we can help.

Please.

Justin.

Select the refusal strategy that you think is more suitable: 1. No way Tessa.

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2. I’m sorry, Tessa.

3. Are you kidding?

Justify your choice: In completing this activity, learners might have the opportunity to reflect on the sociopragmatic features that can influence the pragmalinguistic selection. Particularly, learners are presented with examples which resemble authentic language.

Once learners have become aware of the relationship between the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features which might affect refusal realisations, they can be engaged in the fourth phase, that of producing. Specifically, we propose two different activities: email exchanges and role-plays. In these two activities, special emphasis is given to social factors (i.e. social status and social distance) as they can exert a great influence on pragmalinguistic realisation. The first activity, email exchanges, involves teacher-learner and learner-learner exchanges of emails. To do this, teachers should elaborate on various situations in which learners might use refusal strategies. The scenarios should contain sufficient information about the roles and relationship between the participants for learners to understand what they are expected to do. At first, teachers can initiate the email exchange with learners, and once the latter become more familiar with the activity, the on-line interaction can be done exclusively among learners.

As regards role-play activities, learners should be first provided with written examples taken from films in which refusal strategies are employed, so that they can examine the different dialogues from a pragmatic perspective. After that, they can be encouraged to elaborate on situations which involve different instances of social status and degrees of social distance. In designing the different role-play situations, learners should discuss with teachers any doubts related to the roles they are expected to play and the relationship between the participants, as well as to the settings in which the interactions take place. While some students are performing the different role-play scenarios, the remaining group of learners can be asked to focus on their peers’ interactions in order to pay attention to the sociopragmatic features underlying their pragmalinguistic realisation.

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Finally, the last phase, providing feedback, focuses on learners’ opportunities for receiving feedback on performance. In this case, we suggest first having a whole-class discussion about the different activities performed throughout the whole instructional sequence in order to see whether learners have appropriately understood the smooth functioning of the speech act of refusals. Moreover, learners may also be encouraged to state the difficulties found when performing refusals and teachers should make comments on learners’ performance in order to better assist their process of learning. After that, teachers can have small individual interviews with each learner to provide further feedback on performance.

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS The aim of the current paper is to present an instructional approach for the integration of the communicative speech act of refusal in the instructed setting, since its realisation appears to be rather complex due to its face-threatening nature (Brown and Levinson, 1987). Therefore, it seems paramount to propose an instructional approach for the integration of this particular speech act in the instructed setting as an attempt to show learners how social aspects might influence language production. The suggested instructional approach might serve as an example to show teachers how the speech act of refusals can be taught. Particularly, the proposed activities involve a set of phases in which special attention is paid to the pragmalinguistic features and the sociopragmatic conditions that might determine language use. In fact, the instructional approach begins with a set of activities whose purpose is to show learners how language performance depends on the underlying context of the situation, that is, the relationship between the participants and the setting in which such communicative actions occur. Also, it presents learners with opportunities for output in the written and oral mode, as well as with feedback on performance. To sum up, by means of this practical approach, learners can become aware of the fact that social features such as the context of interaction and the participants’ relationship in terms of social distance and social status might influence the realisation of speech acts.

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NOTES 1

The term communicative competence was first coined by Hymes (1972) who indicates that language should be examined by paying attention to communication.

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Bach, K. and R. M. Harnish 1977 Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Bachman, L. F. 1990. Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bardovi-Harlig, K. 2001 “Empirical evidence of the need for instruction in pragmatics” in K. R. Rose and G. Kasper, eds.

Pragmatics in Language Teaching. Cambridge: University Press.

Beltrán-Palanques, V. (in press) “Examining refusals in ELT textbook: A focus on transcripts”. Interlingüística.

Beltran-Palanques, V. 2011 “Analysing refusals in films” in J. Ruano, M. J. Fernández, M. Borham, M. J. Díez, S. Bautista, P. Álvarez, and B. García, eds. Current Trends in Anglophone Studies: Cultural, Linguistic and Literary Research. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.

Brown, P. and S. C. Levinson. 1987. Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Celce-Murcia M., Z. Dörnyei and S. Thurrell. 1995 “A pedagogical framework for communicative competence: A Pedagogically motivated model with content specifications”. Issues in Applied Linguistics. 6:5-35.

Eslami, Z. 2010 “Refusals: How to develop appropriate refusal strategies” in A. Martínez-Flor and E. Usó-Juan, eds. Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, Empirical and Methodological Issues.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company Gass, S. M. and N. R. Houck. 1999. Interlanguage Refusals: A CrossCultural Study of Japanese-English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Hymes, D. H. 1972 “On Communicative Competence” in J. B. Pride and J. Holmes, eds. Sociolinguistics. Baltimore: Penguin Education, Penguin Books.

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Judd, E. 1999 “Some issues in the teaching of pragmatic competence” in E. Hinkel, ed. Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kasper, G. and K. R. Rose. 2002. Pragmatic Development in a Second Language. Michigan: Blackwell.

Kasper, G. and C. Roever. 2005 “Pragmatics in second language learning” in E. Hinkel, ed. Handbook of Research in Second Language Learning and Teaching. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Kondo, S. 2010 “Apologies: Raising learners’ cross-cultural awareness” in A. Martínez-Flor and E. Usó-Juan, eds. Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, Empirical and Methodological Issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Martínez-Flor, A. 2007 “Analysing request modification devices in films: implications for pragmatic learning in instructed foreign language contexts” in E. Alcón and M. P. Safont, eds.

Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning. Amsterdam: Springer.

Martínez-Flor, A. 2009 “The use and function of ‘please’ in learners’ oral requestive behaviour: A pragmatic analysis”. Journal of English Studies. 7:35-54.

Martínez-Flor, A. 2010 “Suggestions: How social norms affect pragmatic behaviour” in A. Martínez-Flor and E. Usó-Juan, eds.

Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, Empirical and Methodological Issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Martínez-Flor, A. and E. Usó-Juan. 2006 “A comprehensive pedagogical framework to develop pragmatics in the foreign instructed setting: The 6Rs approach”. Applied Language Learning. 16:3964.

Martínez-Flor, A. and E. Usó-Juan. 2010a “Pragmatics and speech act performance” in A. Martínez-Flor and E. Usó-Juan, eds. Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, Empirical and Methodological Issues.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Martínez-Flor, A. and E. Usó-Juan. 2010b “The teaching of speech acts in second and foreign language instructional context” in A. Trosborg, ed. Pragmatics Across Languages and Cultures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Olshtain, E. and E. D. Cohen. 1991 “Teaching speech act behaviour to non-.native speakers” in M. Celce-Murcia, ed. Teaching as a Second or Foreign Language. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

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Searle, J. 1997 “A classification of illocutionary acts” in A. Rogers, B. Wall, and J. P. Murphy, eds. Proceedings of the Texas Conference on Performatives, Presuppositions, and Implicatures. Washington DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Usó-Juan, E. 2010 “Requests: A sociopragmatic approach” in A. Martínez-Flor and E. Usó-Juan, ed. Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, Empirical and Methodological Issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Usó-Juan, E. and A. Martínez-Flor. 2006 “Approaches to language learning and teaching: towards acquiring communicative competence through the four skills” in E. Usó-Juan and A. Martínez-Flor, eds. Current Trends in the Development and Teaching of the Four Language Skills. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Usó-Juan, E. and A. Martínez-Flor. 2008 “Teaching learners to appropriately mitigate request”. ELT Journal. 62:349-377.

Vellenga, H. 2004 “Learning pragmatics from ESL and EFL textbooks: how likely?”, Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. Consulted in December 20th of 2012 .

• http://tesl-ej.org/ej30/a3.html Washburn, G. N. 2001 “Using situation comedies for pragmatic language teaching and learning”. TESOL Journal. 10:21-26

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NORTH AND SOUTH PERSPECTIVES: A METAPHORICAL APPROACH TO THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE ENERGY SECTOR* Victoria Martín de la Rosa Elena Domínguez Romero Universidad Complutense de Madrid mvmartin@filol.ucm.es; elenadominguez@filol.ucm.es The present paper looks at the close relation which exists today between the role of women and the energy sector. The metaphorical rendering of this relation, as seen in advertising discourse, will be analyzed from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics.

In this analysis, North and South differences will be also considered. For the purpose of clarity, two advertisements taken from The Economist and Newsweek, two leading magazines in the business sector, will be used in the analysis as examples of the South and North perspectives. This study of the advertising discourse will be mostly based on Forceville’s theory of pictorial metaphor, mainly centered on the non-verbal component, and the work by Kövecses claiming that the choice of the source domain in metaphors is usually conditioned by cultural connotations.

Key words: Cognitive Linguistics, metaphor, pictorial metaphor, gender, energy, advertising.

El presente trabajo se centra en la relación existente entre el papel de la mujer y el sector energético hoy en día. La interpretación metafórica de esta relación, tal y como se muestra en el discurso publicitario, será analizada desde la perspectiva de la Lingüística Cognitiva. Las diferencias existentes entre las perspectivas Sur y Norte también serán tenidas en cuenta. Con esta finalidad, dos anuncios sacados de reputadas revistas en el ámbito de la economía como The *

Fecha de recepción: Mayo 2012

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Economist y Newsweek se tomarán como ejemplos de estas dos perspectivas en el análisis. El estudio del discurso publicitario se basará fundamentalmente en las teorías de Forceville sobre metáfora visual, centrada fundamentalmente en el componente no verbal de la metáfora, así como en el trabajo de Kövecses en defensa de que la elección del término fuente de las metáforas está generalmente condicionada por connotaciones culturales.

Palabras clave: Lingüística cognitiva, metáfora, metáfora visual, género, energía, publicidad.

1. INTRODUCTION Discourse relating women and energy is no doubt the result of a long tradition of gender oriented discourse studies. Sensitivity on women and gender-related issues has paved the way for the creation of a number of national and international forums on related issues (Wamukonya, 2002). This has derived in five main international conferences that have taken place since 1975: World Conference of the International Women’s Year (Mexico City, 1975), World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women (Copenhaguen, 1980), World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievement of the UN Decade for Women (Nairobi, 1985), Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) and the five-year review of the Fourth World Conference on Women in 2000.

In this context, it is not hard to imagine the reasons why virtually all major development organizations seek to incorporate gender issues into their programs: (i) efficiency grounds and (ii) search for social equity. Facts reveal that most of the progress in this sense has been achieved by the energy sector even if many of the projects are still nowadays designed beyond their possible effect on the role of women. Not in vain, in the last few years, energy issues have started to show a clear female oriented dimension in which women are considered to be not only the main end users of energy but also human beings well qualified to be potentially integrated into energy

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administration programs. Needless to say, the importance of widening women’s access to electricity as well as the need to set up microcredits to guarantee this access in some parts of the world is currently at issue. The idea of latitude also conditions the role of women in their relation with energy and is therefore to be considered as well. Despite Clancy and Roehr’s statement in defense of concepts like “North” and “South”, which avoid the negative connotations conveyed by the terms “developing” and “developed” countries (2003: 16), the truth is that differences arise and become obvious as soon as energy is approached from a Northern or a Southern perspective.1 In the light of these preliminary considerations, the present study aims at analyzing the role of women in the field of energy as much as the North/South latitude implications to be considered when establishing this relation. With this purpose in mind, the metaphorical representation of these relations in the context of magazine advertising will be approached from a cognitive perspective. Two advertisements taken from the magazines The Economist and Newsweek (Chrevron and Shell, respectively) will work as examples of advertising discourse in the field of the energy industry. The selection of these two advertisements has been motivated by the fact that they are specifically South and North oriented and represent the need for a close collaboration. Also, they prove that there needs to be room for improvement in the South as well as in the North, and they both emphasize the important role to be played by women in the future of this sector worldwide.

We have already mentioned already that the study of metaphor in magazine advertising will be approached from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics and the new theory of Conceptual Metaphor, which clearly signaled a switch in the study of metaphor, from a rhetorical device to a conceptual phenomenon (Lakoff, 1980). This theory has been applied to different fields such as economics (White, 2004; Cortés de los Ríos, 2010) or advertising. Metaphors are an excellent persuasive strategy for the advertiser to bring about a certain type of behaviour on the part of consumers. Advertisers choose the metaphors with the intention of exploiting mappings -between the source and target domains- which enhance the ideas which are generally taken for granted in our collective understanding, such as

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the cultural values of the community in which the advertisements are launched (Mc Millan and Cheney, 1996; Kövecses, 2005, 2010) (Zaltman and Coulter 1995; Kövecses 2005 and 2010). Nevertheless, even though the implementation of this new theory of metaphor has produced much insightful knowledge, there are still some limitations which, at least in the field of advertising, have been mainly noticed by authors like Forceville (1994, 1996, 2006), who states that “if metaphor characterizes thinking, [and] is thus not an exclusive attribute of language, it should be capable of assuming non-verbal and multi-medial manifestations as well as the purely verbal ones that have hitherto been the central concern of metaphor studies” (2006: 379).

In this sense, scholars like Kennedy (1982) or Hausman (1989) and Forceville (1994, 1996) have envisioned other possible, non-verbal manifestations of metaphor which will be also considered in the present study.

The study has been organized as follows: this first introductory section frames the topic and precedes the theoretical framework which, at the same time, has been divided into two subsections: (i) the role of women in the energy industry and (ii) a brief portrayal of the artistic metaphor, more specifically pictorial metaphor, as coined

by Forceville (1994). In the third section, two advertisements have been analyzed so as to give place to a discussion (fourth section), from which some final conclusions have been drawn in section five.

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The aim of this paper has been already said to be two-fold: (i) the South/North perspective and its relation with the role of women in the energy industry as well as (ii) the metaphorical representation of this relation in advertising discourse. The two following subsections are thus devoted to providing some background information about these two topics.

2.1. Women in the energy sector Research about the topic of gender and energy focuses on the role of women in the sector, both in developing and developed

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countries.2 Since it is a prime ingredient in production, subsistence and leisure activities, energy should be available worldwide to men and women alike. Men and women should have equal opportunities not only in terms of access to energy but also to its administration.

Even today, women tend to be the ones who influence their households’ direct and indirect energy consumption and educate children for future energy use in many developing as well as developed countries. That is the reason why two different advertisements, South and North oriented, have been chosen for the analysis.

Focusing on the universe of African rural communities, which is portrayed in the first advertisement to be analyzed in the present study (Chevron), it can be stated that cooking energy accounts for roughly 90% of all household energy consumption in many countries in Africa (i.e. Nepal, Burkina Faso, Kenya or Zambia). Most of the time, this means that women in poor communities spend more time walking long distances to try to get fuel, than working on income generation.

This picture leads to the feminization of poverty in relation with energy since women and their children are the ones in charge of fuel provisioning. But at the same time, it places them in a central position in terms of energy administration and consumption (Cecelski, 1995; Parikh, 1995).3 Energy tends to be seen as more gender-neutral in the North. However, scholars like Clancy and Roehr (2003) claim that this is not always the case in the North if we take into consideration the fact that the number of women who live below the poverty line in the North is much higher than that of men living under the same conditions. Both advertisements are thus intended to face the conventional identification of energy with a masculine power by giving women a more prominent position and relating their daily effort of self-improvement with the need for achievements in the sector, South and North.

2.2. Metaphor in advertising Before moving on to the cognitive analysis of the South and North advertisements dealing with the topic of women in the energy industry, there are important devices used for conceptualization that need to be explained in some detail: metaphor, metonymy and image schemas. This will be done in the light of the works on Cognitive

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Linguistics by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999); Johnson (1987); Lakoff, (1987, 1993); Kövecses (2002, 2005, 2010); and more specifically, in view of the research carried out by scholars like Forceville (1994; 1996; 2006) and Cortés de los Ríos (2010).

Metaphor has been traditionally studied from its verbal perspective. However, some scholars have also looked at the pictorial, non-verbal manifestations of this device. The first studies on pictorial metaphor were mainly focused on artistic representations. This is the case of scholars like Kennedy (1982), Hausman (1989) and Forceville (1994, 1996). Working with a number of pictures, Kennedy (1982) tried to formulate his own theory of metaphor by applying Richard’s (1971) concepts of tenor (primary subject) and vehicle (secondary subject), his main contributions being the following: (i) to consider metaphor as a mechanism that allows one to differentiate what is relevant from what is not; (ii) to set the criteria to identify tenor and vehicle. Taking Black’s “interaction view” as a starting point (1979), Hausman highlighted the following features of pictorial metaphors: (i) the tension resulting from the application of metaphor; (ii) the presence of meaning units; and (iii) the interrelation of meaning units in an integration or family resemblance that functions like a community (1989: 59).

Building on the previous work by the scholars mentioned above, Forceville (1994, 1996) moved forward and was the first to introduce a comprehensive theory of pictorial metaphor, which has offered a very useful model for analysis. In this theory, he suggested that, just like the verbal metaphor, the pictorial one is comprised of two terms: (i) a “literal primary subject” and (ii) a “figurative secondary subject” (1994: 3). Each metaphor, following Lakoff and Johnson (1980), involves a projection of one or more features of the secondary domain (“source domain”) onto the domain of the primary subject (“target domain”). According to the author, some of the questions that can be addressed when trying to identify a metaphor are: (i) What are the two terms of the metaphor? and (ii) What is the projection of properties from the B-term (“figurative”) to the A-term (“literal”)?

(Forceville, 1994: 2). Some years later, Forceville (2006) developed his theory and established two well distinguished types of metaphor: monomodal and multimodal metaphors. Monomodal are those

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metaphors “whose target and source are exclusively or predominantly rendered in one mode” (2006: 383) while multimodal are those other metaphors “whose target and source are each represented exclusively or predominantly in different modes” (2006: 384).

Besides metaphors, the two other cognitive devices previously mentioned which are frequently used in advertising are metonymies and image schemas. Unlike metaphors, metonymies take place within one single domain, that is to say; there is a “stand-for” relationship in metonymies where one entity is taken to stand for another, the typical schema being X for Y, where X represents the source meaning and Y symbolizes the target meaning of the metonymic operation. Both metaphor and metonymy, which may interact in a number of ways (Taylor, 1995; Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez 1999a, 1999b; Geeraerts, 2003), are exploited to maximize the creation of cognitive effects on the minds of consumers. As for image schemas, they can be defined as very basic and skeletal images commonly used in cognitive operations that work as the source domains in many metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Lakoff and Johnson, 1987; Gibbs, 1994). Also, they motivate the way we think, reason, and talk when the positive or negative values attached to images get mapped onto the pictures which are part of that meaning. In Gibbs’ words: “they can be defined as preverbal concepts which are grounded in early perceptual-body experiences, which underlie the embodiment of our mind” (1994: 416). These schemas, it will be seen in the analysis of the two advertisements which has been undertaken in section 3 of the present study, can include the image of verticality, of a path leading to a destination, of a container (with an inside and an outside), etc.

The hypotheses guiding this paper in terms of the conceptual devices necessary for the interpretation of the role of women in the energy sector and its representation in advertising discourse are thus the following: (i) metaphor plays a basic role when it comes to making the product/service both memorable and desirable to the consumer by conveying those positive values to be highlighted by the advertiser; and (ii) metaphor is particularly relevant in the analysis of advertisements because, apart from its cognitive nature, it is a vehicle for transmitting cultural connotations of the community where it is used (Kövecses, 2005, 2010).

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3. ANALYSIS OF ADVERTISEMENTS 3.1 Chevron This advertisement, selected from The Economist (March 3, 2012), is divided into two well differentiated parts: the left-hand side shows the figure -face and neck- of a coloured woman who seems to have an African origin. The right-hand side, meanwhile, includes the verbal message conveyed by the advertiser, that is to say; by the worldleading oil company (Chevron). At first sight, the potential reader of the magazine is thus exposed to the comparison of the coloured woman with the oil company (Chevron) which takes place in a multimodal scenario where the pictorial and the verbal components are consciously interrelated.

Following Sperber and Wilson in their consideration that cognition is designed to choose relevant phenomena and process them in the most effective way (1986: 151-155), further analysis is needed in order to appreciate the relevance of this identification established between the woman and the oil company. And it is worth noticing in this sense that the woman’s skin colour evokes her Southern, probably

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African origin. This could be explained by the new role that women from the developing countries are currently playing in the energy sector. Not in vain, the existence of many programs devoted to involving women in the energy industry is actually a fact in African countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe or Kenya.4 Keeping this in mind, it is not hard to realize that the picture of the black lady, by means of metonymy, stands for all the women from countries in the South who have taken, or might take, an active role in the energy sector thanks to these programs.

Moving onto the verbal side of the advertisement, which includes the headline and the body of the message, the first thing which catches the reader’s attention is a new left/right layout division.

On the right, the headline takes the form of a contract under the terms “Big oil should support small business”, followed by the agreement “we agree”- and the signature of the President of S&S Supplies and Solutions (Chevron) and the Chief Procurement Officer (Chevron).

The rest of the verbal message or body appears at the bottom of the advertisement, to the left, and reads: “Every day, Chevron relies on small businesses around the world. Electricians. Mechanics.

Manufacturers. We spent billions on local goods and services last year.

And helped thousands of entrepreneurs get ahead with microloans.

We’re helping small businesses thrive. Because we need them. Just as much as they need us. Learn more at Chevron.com/weagree”. This is preceded by the logo of the company with its leitmotif “Human energy”.

Since the body is framed in the image of the black lady, this is somehow making it clear for the reader that most of the entrepreneurs being reached by the microloan system operated by Chevron are assumed to be women, black African women standing for women from the South. Thanks to this multimodal message, advertisers reach their goal while consumers learn about Chevron’s commitment with poor women from the South. The human quality of this energy is stressed in the leitmotif of the company “Human energy”, which personifies the energy produced by the company through the use of the attributive adjective “human”. At the same time, the paradigm of humanity is also activated by the proximity of the human face.

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To put this idea in terms of the conceptual, cognitive devices taking place in the consumers’ minds when being exposed to the advertisement, it is to be noticed that the ultimate aim of the advertiser, a world-leading company (Chevron), is the promotion of its energy production. “Big oil”, hence, by means of a metonymy in which the product (oil) stands for the producer (Chevron), refers to the metaphor’s literal A-term or PS. Meanwhile, the feminine side of energy can be taken as the metaphor’s figurative B-term, the SS. This means that, according to the information provided by the verbal and the pictorial messages in the advertisement, this metaphor could be phrased as follows: OIL IS A WOMAN. That is to say, the metaphor under analysis is multimodal since the source or A-term (OIL) is rendered in a verbal mode while the target or B-term (WOMAN) is rendered in a pictorial mode. By emphasizing this completely different, female side of energy, the metaphor under analysis seems to be giving a new dimension to the energy industry.

At the end of the body of the message, readers are encouraged to visit the website chevron.com/weagree, where they can access the different advertisements created for this same campaign known as “We agree. Do you?” The discourse which underlies the different advertisements is intended to show a more human face of the company, as it seems to commit itself to providing partner communities with some benefits (Oil companies should support the communities they are a part of), always revealing an empathic position (The world needs more than oil).

3.2 Shell Like the advertisement just analyzed, this second one, taken from Newsweek (December-February, 2012), taps issues concerning the energy industry. The perspective, though, is completely different.

Here the reader is moved to the other side of the earth, to the northern hemisphere. It is so cold in this new scenario that nothing is felt more necessary than the heating provided by an energy company like Shell (a global group of energy and petrochemical companies present in more than eighty countries).

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This second advertisement is also divided into two halves: verbal and pictorial. The upper part reveals the verbal message with the headline and the body. The headline reads: “Let’s heat our cities with cleaner energy.” Meanwhile, the body of the message goes as follows: “How can we help keep people warm while reducing emissions? Natural gas could be one of the answers. When used to create electricity, it is the cleanest-burning of all the fossil fuels.

What’s more, there is plenty of it there could be enough to last for the next 250 years. Shell is helping to deliver this gas to more countries than any other energy company. Let’s power our future with gas. www.shell.com/letsgo Let’s go.” The reader’s attention is soon caught by the repetition of the same syntactic structure -let’s heat our cities / let’s go- linking the beginning and end of the verbal message. This repetition dynamizes the discourse at the same time as it turns consumers into participants in the cold scenario depicted. Also, the idea of promoting an eco-friendly product -natural gas used to create electricity would help to reduce emissions- is equally appealing to consumers because it touches on a very important cultural value.

The pictorial side of the message shows a stereotyped winter image of an American city, possibly the city of New York, as can be

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deduced from the colour of the taxis. The cold weather makes it hard for a lady who occupies the centre of the image to keep moving forward. From her attitude, leaning a bit forward as though trying to protect herself from the cold, it is clear that she is completely determined to go ahead with her daily life even if that implies fighting extreme conditions. The fact that most of the pedestrians portrayed in the advertisement are females makes it also clear that the advertiser is basically relying on the female gender to transmit the message. The male gender, though still present -there is a man crossing the roadclearly occupies a more peripheral position to contribute to the discourse on women and energy which, it has been previously mentioned in the present study, has taken the ground in the last decade, with women consequently starting to occupy more priority positions in the sector.

The picture in the advertisement can therefore be said to constitute the best representation of its verbal message. The movement forward of the lady can be easily identified with the linguistic indicator “let’s go” and, hence, with the positive attitude of the company to keep progressing too. Being exposed to the coherent message of the pictorial and verbal sides of the advertisement, the intended idea of dynamism can perfectly be perceived.

When it comes to the cognitive devices supporting the message, it must first be said that the company Shell promotes energy supply by showing its intention to move forward in a search for innovation and that, in this sense, the use of its leitmotif “let’s go”, which refers to the literal A-term or PS of the metaphor, plays a key role. At the same time, the portrayal of a number of people, most of them females, who are moving forward with decision despite the difficult weather conditions, can be taken as the metaphor’s figurative B-term, the SS. This mental process results in a metaphor which can be phrased as: THE DETERMINATION OF THE COMPANY TO KEEP PROGRESSING IS THE DETERMINATION OF MANY CITIZENS, MOSTLY WOMEN, TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD DESPITE DIFFICULT CONDITIONS. The advertisers are activating a multimodal metaphor in which the source or A-term (THE DETERMINATION OF THE COMPANY TO KEEP PROGRESSING) and the target or B-term (THE

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DETERMINATION OF THE PEOPLE TO MOVE FORWARD) are rendered in different modes: verbal and pictorial, respectively. Two schemas are implied in this process: the path schema, one of the most recurrent sensory-motor activities, which signals a progression along a number of stages which has to be covered as one moves forward; and the “part for whole” schema, given that the depiction of the scene is meant to trigger the whole sequence in which people and cars will be making their way forward. As for property transfer from B (SS) to A (PS), firm determination and resolution are to be also highlighted.

4. CONCLUSIONS It has been made clear already that women are still underrepresented in the energy sector, South and North speaking.

Trying to fight this reality, the sector seems to be paving the way for the empowerment of women in the Southern hemisphere by founding institutions such as WOESA or ENERGIA, which work in countries like Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In the northern hemisphere, despite the existence of a more egalitarian society, we still find large disparities in energy consumption (Clancy and Roehr, 2003: 20), which means that further involvement of women in this sector is a goal to be equally pursued. Keeping this in mind, the two advertisements chosen for analysis have been taken from two reputed publications in the business sector, The Economist (Chevron, for the South perspective analysis) and Newsweek (Shell, for the Northern approach). Energy is felt to be a gender-issue down in the South more than it is in the North, this being the reason why the study has moved from the South (advertisement 1) to the North (advertisement 2).

The approach to cognitive devices like metaphors, metonymies and image schemas has been necessary for the analysis of the advertising discourse. The strong cultural grounding of metaphors becomes clear when focusing on the mapping exploited between the source and the target domains in each of the advertisements. Thus the secondary subject (SS) chosen in both adverts alludes to very specific cultural issues in our society according to Kövecses’ idea that “cognition is inherently cultural” (2005: 200). In the first

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advertisement, the fact of projecting human qualities over non-human entities such as oil can be seen as a common mental process. In this case, though, the projection is taken a bit further when these qualities are stated to be not only human, but also feminine, the intention being that of reversing the typical masculine image of oil in light of the new direction taken by society. In the case of the second advertisement, the ideas of strong determination and firm decision are highly valued in our contemporary society, where being up and active does actually count.

The cultural grounding in metaphors usually comes supported by the creativity component. It is needless to say at this point that the very idea of making connections between two different domains is already an exercise of creativity on the side of the advertiser, who tries to make the message more cognitively relevant by attempting to catch readers’ attention. In the first case, the secondary subject has been chosen with the clear intention of portraying the debut of the new female face of energy in society. A completely different process is activated in the second advertisement: while triggering the dynamism of young and strong companies like Shell, women are the ones pictured moving forward, possibly suggesting the idea that they make the decisions concerning energy consumption. Despite the two perspectives, though, getting better living conditions for women thanks to the energies advertised -either human or ecofriendlybecomes a common message.5 The analysis carried out previously in this paper proves that all the metaphors in the two advertisements under study interact with the two other cognitive devices already mentioned: metonymies and image schemas. In the case of metonymies, it can be stated that the stand-for relation “part for whole” in the first advertisement is quite revealing: the face of the black woman is used to refer not only to the woman as such but to all women in the countries in the South. This is also the case in the second advert, where the same metonymy is activated: a static scene which leads to a whole sequence of makebelieve in which people and cars seem to be actually moving. As for the image schemas which have been activated in these two examples, it is to be pointed out that the schema of space, either as “verticality” or as “movement over a path”, has been used in both cases to reinforce

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the positive value already conveyed by the metaphors at issue.

Advertisement one shows a woman who seems to be up and ready to face challenges while the central woman in advertisement two is crossing a road leading her somewhere. Not in vain, a coherent, integrated use of cognitive devices such as metaphors, metonymies and image schemas has been proved to be crucial in advertising discourse. The role of multimodality has been equally seen.

NOTES In Brandt’s Report, North refers to the industrialized countries which belonged to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) (Brandt, 1980). Nowadays, the term would also cover the Eastern European countries, Australia and New Zealand. The South, meanwhile, includes all the remaining countries which are not part of the North.

2 There are institutions of international or regional scope which work in this direction. In the first case, we come across the WIGSA (Women, Technology, Society) Internet site, whose main function is to promote innovation, science and technology strategies that enable women, especially those living in developing countries, to actively participate in technology and innovation for development; in the second case, with a more or less regional emphasis, we can mention ENERGIA-Africa, which is present in 13 African countries, and is the key for gender and energy issues in the region, being aimed at creating equal opportunity and access to energy resources for the poor; and WOESA (Women in Oil and Energy South Africa), whose aim is to facilitate and promote business opportunities and enhance the participation of South African women in the oil and energy sector by offering them practical training and funding.

3 Even if the present analysis is focused on Africa for methodological purposes, this is also the case in many areas in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean (UNDP, 1995, 1997).

4 Particularly, we find WOESA (Women in Oil and Energy South Africa), which was established in 2002 and tries to foster an environment conducive to the empowerment of women in this sector.

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5

The last report from unwomen.org (http://www.un.org/gsp/report) is the result of the work done by a 22-member Panel, which was established by the Organization General Secretary in August 2010 to formulate a new blueprint for sustainable development.

The Panel’s final report “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing” comments on the need for women to be empowered in all sectors in society and to have a greater role in the economy, which is considered to be critical for sustainable development.

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Clancy, J. and Roehr, U. 2003. “Gender and energy: is there a Northern perspective?”. Energy for Sustainable Development. 7(3): 16-22.

Cortés de los Ríos, Mª E. 2010. “Cognitive devices to communicate the economic crisis: An analysis through cover in The Economist”.

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Dirven, R. and R. Pörings, eds. 2003. Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. Berlin: Mouton de Grüyter.

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379-402. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Geeraerts, D. 2003. “The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in composite expressions”. In R. Dirven and R. Pörings (eds.).

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Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. 435-465.

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Kennedy, J. 1982. “Metaphor in pictures”. Perception. 11: 589-605.

Kovecses, Z. 2002. Metaphor. A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kövecses, Z. 2005. Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation.

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Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, G. 1993. “The contemporary theory of metaphor”. In A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought. 202-251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.

McMillan, J.J. and G. Cheney. 1996. “The student as consumer: The implications and limitations of a metaphor”. Communication Education. 45(1): 1-15.

Ortony, A., ed. 1979. Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, F. J. 1999a. Introducción a la Teoría Cognitiva de la Metonimia. Granada: Método.

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UNDP. 1995. “Gender and Human development”. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr_1995_en_contents.pdf Last accessed April 10, 2012.

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Wamukonya, N. 2002. “A critical look at gender and energy mainstreaming in Africa”. Available at: http://www.un.org/ womenwatch/daw/forum-sustdev/Njeri-paper.pdf. Last accessed April 10, 2012 White, M. 2004. “Turbulence and turmoil in the market or the language of a financial crisis”. Ibérica. 7: 71-86.

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APPENDIX Sources of advertisement illustrations: Figure 1 Advertiser: Chevron The Economist. March 3, 2012 Figure 2 Advertiser: Shell Newsweek. December-February, 2012

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ACQUIRING CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: INNATE CAPACITY OR THE FRUIT OF INSTRUCTION?* Melania Evelyn Sánchez Reed Universidad de Málaga melaniasanchez@uma.es Simultaneously the most simple and the most complex achievement that we accomplish in our lives, the true nature of first language acquisition has awakened the interest of the world’s greatest thinkers as far back as the ancient world. This article presents the analysis of a transcription belonging to the CHILDES database that records the speech performance of a British infant girl of two years and four months of age, with the aim of using this analysis to support a twofold discussion: a) whether language acquisition is an innate capacity or whether it is the result of learning and teaching; and b) the importance and influence of the role of the parent or caretaker (focusing on the use of caretaker-talk) and the general environment of the child to elicit language skills and reach successful language learning. We argue in favour of the crucial role this input plays in the development of the infant’s conversational skills.

Key words: First language acquisition, caretaker-talk, innateness, speech environment.

A la vez el más simple y más complejo de los logros que alcanzamos en nuestra vida, la adquisición de la primera lengua ha despertado el interés de los más célebres pensadores. Este artículo presenta el análisis de una transcripción ubicada en base de datos CHILDES que recoge una muestra del habla de una niña británica de dos años y cuatro meses con el objetivo de emplear este análisis para apoyar un doble debate: a) si la adquisición de la lengua es una capacidad innata o el *

Fecha de recepción: Marzo 2011

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resultado del aprendizaje y la enseñanza; y b) la importancia e influencia del padre o tutor (centrándonos en el uso del habla materna) y el entorno del niño para suscitar una competencia lingüística y alcanzar un aprendizaje del lenguaje satisfactorio, argumentando el papel crucial que desempeñan estas influencias externas en el desarrollo de las habilidades lingüísticas del niño.

Palabras clave: Adquisición de la primera lengua, habla materna, innatismo, entorno del habla.

1. INTRODUCTION Learning a first language is, simultaneously, the most simple and the most complex achievement that we accomplish in our lives, as Leonard Bloomfield once put it: “this is doubtless the greatest intellectual feat any one of us is ever required to perform” (Bloomfield 1976: 29). Precisely because of this dichotomy, the origin of first language acquisition has awakened the interest of the world’s greatest thinkers as far back as the ancient world. Plato himself “felt that the world-meaning mapping in some form was innate”, and Sanskrit grammarians “debated over twelve centuries whether meaning was god-given (possibly innate) or was learned from older convention” (Atique 2009: 8).

This article presents the analysis of a transcription belonging to the CHILDES1 database that records the speech performance of a British girl named Ella of two years and four months of age with the aim of using this analysis to support a twofold discussion: a) whether language acquisition is an innate capacity or whether it is the result of learning and teaching; and b) the importance and influence of the role of the parent or caretaker (focusing on the use of caretaker-talk) and the general environment of the child to elicit language skills and reach successful language learning. For this reason, the aim of this analysis is not only to describe the main features of the child’s utterances, but also those of the caretaker, as it is argued that the input the infant receives plays a crucial role in the development of the child’s conversational skills. Both points will be argued in view of the different theories that have been suggested over the years to account for the

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origin of first language acquisition, and for the importance of the role of the parent or caretaker.

2. FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: STRUCTURALISM VS. GENERATIVISM Dealing with first language acquisition or, what is the same, the origin of language, we have the basic notions provided by the structuralist and generativist paradigms, led by Saussure and Chomsky, respectively. Structuralism is an empirical approach that maintains that the human mind is a “tabula rasa, empty, unstructured, uniform as far as cognitive structure is concerned” (Chomsky 1979), that is, waiting for outside data to be introduced. However, this theory is not sustainable, mainly, because when children are acquiring their native language(s) they constantly produce utterances that they have never been exposed to, a feat that would be impossible to achieve if the production of language relied solely on the reproduction of outside input. Generative grammar, on the other hand, argues that the only explanation for the human ability to create entirely new utterances without apparent outside instruction is that we are genetically endowed with an innate competence for language acquisition and production.

We have the ability to create an infinite number of never-before-heard utterances with the knowledge of a finite set of rules, which are, conversely, learnt from outside input. The innate capacity for language production is owed to the child’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD).

Chomsky’s term LAD refers to a genetic device in the brain which makes language acquisition come naturally to human beings. The LAD is then stimulated by outside input so that the process of language acquisition and production can develop, different outside inputs resulting in the development of different languages. This genetic endowment came to be known as Universal Grammar (UG).

Subsequent to Chomsky’s theories in the 1950’s, criticisms arose against the generativist theory of innateness. It was argued that the concept of LAD was “unsupported by evolutionary anthropology, which tended to show a gradual adaptation of the human brain and vocal chords to the use of language, rather than a sudden appearance of a complete set of binary parameters delineating the whole spectrum

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of possible grammars ever to have existed and ever to exist” (Atique 2009: 19). Bearing this in mind, Atique proposes that “while all theories of language acquisition posit some degree of innateness, a less convoluted theory might involve less innate structure and more learning” (Atique 2009: 20). This theory suggests, therefore, that language acquisition is, in fact, a combination of outside input and an inherent innate capacity.

Therefore, although Chomsky suggests abandoning the empirical approach in order to explain first language acquisition, a certain amount of learning is also key in language learning. Nonetheless, it is a fact that the theory of innateness cannot be cast aside either, as some have suggested; one theory cannot be discussed without the other. The abandonment of empiricism results an impossible feat, as rationalist theories have no alternative but to be studied through empirical data. Language must by force be studied through its use, as nobody can yet get inside the brain to see how it works. Performance can be our only mirror of competence, and this competence may very well be innate. But, the truth remains that, despite all these centuries of research on the subject, little is known about the true nature of language acquisition and the origin of language.

3. THREE THEORIES FOR FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Bearing in mind the two aforementioned major paradigms (structuralism and generativism), we can move on to discuss the three most common approaches to the phenomenon of language acquisition: a) the behaviourist approach; b) the innatist approach; and c) the interactionist approach.

The behaviourist approach, which was very popular until the beginnings of the 1960´s, believes language acquisition to be the result of a process of imitation that is supported by both positive and negative reinforcement. To put it in simple terms, children will copy their parent’s speech and depending on the response they get, whether they get praised or corrected, they will know whether what they said was right or wrong and be able to build their grammatical knowledge.

However, this theory, rooted within the structuralist paradigm, has

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many flaws to it. Children come up with utterances which they have never come across, such as *drived (the regularisation of an irregular verb), and, on the other hand, function words, undoubtedly the most used words in adult speech, take some time to appear in child speech.

Furthermore, children only appear to imitate utterances they have used before and only seem to learn rules when they are at the appropriate stage in their development. For example, take the following conversation (McNeill 1966: 69 cited in Hudson 2000: 138): Child: Nobody don’t like me.

Mother: No, say ‘Nobody likes me.’

Child: Nobody don’t like me.

[Eight repetitions of this dialogue, then:] Mother: No, now listen carefully. Say ‘Nobody likes me.’

Child: Oh! Nobody don’t likes me.

This implies that if language acquisition were exclusively a matter of imitation a situation like this would never occur. At first, the child is not even aware that he is saying anything wrong and does not seem acknowledge the difference between his utterance and his mother’s. And later, when he tries to correct himself, he only picks up on the -s suffix of the verb. Children, therefore, seem to ignore those features “which are beyond their level of competence” (Hudson 2000: 138).

In turn, the innatist approach, led by Chomsky, appeared in the 1960’s within the generativist paradigm and suggested that language competence is innate, developing the UG theory. Children are simply born with a capacity for language learning, enabled by the LAD in the brain which activates this ability when exposed to the right external input. Cruttenden presents Chomsky’s three basic arguments to support the innateness of language acquisition: a) the existence of language universals, “generalizations which have as their scope all languages” (Greenberg 2005: 9). Languages seem to share intrinsic characteristics, such as structure-dependency,2 that “cannot possibly be due to anything other than a specific cognitive capacity in man” (Cruttenden 1979: 101);

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b) the poor constructions of everyday speech. If human beings were not endowed with a natural predisposition for language learning, the feat would result impossible as “language is so poorly constructed and impaired in performance (by hesitations, repetitions, false starts and so on)” (Cruttenden 1979: 102); and c) the speed of language learning. “Language could not be learnt with the speed it is unless the child were preprogrammed to do” (Cruttenden 1979: 103).

However, innatism “does not eliminate the adult world as a source of linguistic knowledge […] adult language presents the relevant information that allows the child to select from the Universal Grammar those grammatical principles specific to the particular language that the child will acquire” (Ochs and Schieffelin 2009: 298).

Finally, the interactionist approach “focuses not only on structures and mechanisms internal to the child, but also on the powerful influence that experiential and social factors have in concert with unobservable mental faculties” (Gerber and Wankoff 2009: 59), arguing that what is crucial for the development of first language acquisition is actually the interaction between this innate capacity and the environment in which the child develops. A child, therefore, needs a one-to-one interaction with an adult speaker for language acquisition to be successful. Furthermore, this theory supports the need for caretaker-talk, a simplified register that is adapted to the given capacity of the child in question to help him or her learn the language.

This last approach leads us to the paper’s second principal discussion: the importance of caretaker-talk and the environment for the successful acquisition of our first language.

4. COMMUNICATING WITH CHILDREN: CARETAKER-TALK Caretaker-talk (also known as child-directed speech ‘CDS’, motherese or baby-talk ‘BT’) is a simplified model of speech used to address small infants. It is a slower and more paused speech that uses

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very simple sentence structures, and a great amount of questions, repetitions and imperatives; all this, typically combined with a higher pitch and a more exaggerated intonation than that of the adult register whilst holding eye-to-eye contact with the child.

Roger Brown distinguished two major processes involved in caretaker-talk (which he refers to as BT): a) simplificationclarification; and b) expressive-affective. The first process involves a basic simplification of language with the “probable desire to communicate, to be understood, with, perhaps, some interest also in teaching the language”. The second process, in turn, includes an “expression of affection” with the further aim of capturing the child’s attention (Brown 1977: 4-5). I would like to note that Grover Hudson makes a point of distinguishing between the terms caretaker-talk and baby-talk (BT), and, to my mind, quite rightly so. Caretaker-talk is, in fact, what Roger Brown is describing under the term BT. Hudson makes an amusing point when he says that using baby-talk to teach babies to speak is as useful as “driving like a 16-year-old would be for teaching a 16-year-old to drive”, that is, completely and utterly useless.

As he says, “babies already talk like babies, so what is the earthly use of parents doing the same?” (Brown 1977: 10). Many parents actually refuse to use such simplified registers. However, all they probably delete are the silly words and the overly exaggerated high pitched voice of BT, most likely still employing many features of caretakertalk, such as pauses, imperatives, repetitions, etc. as the use of this register seems to appear naturally in all of us.

“Conversation with an interested adult may be more crucial to the acquisition of syntax than any particular techniques used by the adult” (Snow 1977: 39). This suggests that the key to language learning is actually the interaction between the child and parent.

Adults must express interest when communicating with children and give them their undivided attention. A powerful argument in favor of the importance of interaction is the proof that just exposure to the language is not enough for its successful acquisition. Yule discusses the case of a normal child who was brought up by his deaf parents.

This child interacted with his parents through sign language and only accessed speech through television and radio. As a result, he did not develop conversational speaking skills, but learned sign language

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successfully. Therefore, “the crucial requirement appears to be the opportunity to interact with others via language” (Yule 2006: 150).

Another important issue is that using language effectively does not only involve the mastery of a set of grammatical rules: what of pragmatics? People are constantly conveying meanings that they have not literally expressed and children, surprisingly enough, pick this up very soon. Roger Brown disagrees with Blount and Van de Geest’s assumption that children learn the syntax and semantics of their language before mastering the pragmatic angle, and supports his claim with a real life example of a child perfectly understanding the pragmatic meaning of an utterance spoken to him by his mother. In this case, the mother always said to the child: ‘Why don’t you…’ and the young boy immediately took this to be an order, which is the pragmatic meaning of the sentence, even though, really, it is a normal interrogative question that should grammatically demand an explanatory answer. However, the child never got confused (Brown 1977: 23).

5. ANALISING FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: TRANSCRIPTION FROM THE CHILDES DATABASE

A

This section presents the analysis of a transcription taken from the CHILDES database, so as to see examples of real-life child-parent speech performances. The transcription shows the speech utterances of young Ella, an infant of British nationality aged two years and four months. The document, which dates back to 1998, belongs to Dr. Michael Forrester, the child’s father. He is a professor in the department of psychology of the University of Kent and he transcribed various speech performances of his daughter, Ella, from the age of one to the age of three years and six months (Forrester 2002). These performances were recorded on video and then transcribed. The video captions are also available to the researcher through the database, although they have not been employed for the present analysis which is solely based on the typed transcription.3 The transcribed conversation takes place within a natural everyday environment. The child is in her own home and in the company of her parents, this situation allowing the child to express herself naturally, a feat that is

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commonly unachievable if the child is interviewed by an unknown researcher in an unknown environment.

The speakers included in the recorded conversation are Ella and her father Michael. Silvia Forrester, her mother, is also present but she does not intervene. Their conversation takes place in the family’s kitchen. The father opens the conversation by asking his daughter what she wants for breakfast: “do you want some banana or toast?” To which the child answers “no, I like (nu)tella”.4 Note here that she is using the negative adverb ‘no’ plus a simple sentence made up of a subject, a verb and an object. Her father suggests banana or toast, which she immediately refuses and then suggests something she likes (nutella). Then he repeats her answer, “nutella alright”, thus reinforcing it. Notice that he says the word nutella properly, whereas the girl just managed to say “tella”. We see he tries to correct her utterance. She then states again her wish to have nutella, but still says: “I want (nu)tella”, not saying the word properly. Therefore, her father’s correction has not served its purpose, this being clear argument for not supporting the imitation theory of language acquisition. Note also that now she uses the verb “want” which is actually the verb that was used to ask the question in the first place.

Again, we see that she forms a subject + verb + object sentence.

Then, Ella points to a camera and asks what it is by saying “I don’t know (wh)at (th)at”. In this utterance, firstly, her pronunciation is faulty as she is unable to say the consonant groups -wh and -th, omitting them altogether, and secondly, the sentence ungrammatical.

An adult would say: “I don’t know what that is” or maybe “What’s that?

I don’t know”. We do not know what construction the child is angling for, maybe neither, as we cannot fully judge child’s grammar with the standards of adult grammar. In fact, Maria Teresa Guasti does not even consider these kind of sentences to be ungrammatical, arguing that they belong to children’s grammar (Guasti 2004: 11).

The next line, “a camera”, is also uttered by Ella, so she is actually answering her own question. This can be taken as an example of self-repair, that is, to correct or resolve ones own utterances.

Furthermore, it would be a case of spontaneous self-repair, being “produced or initiated by an ongoing speaker” (Forrester and Cherington 2009: 169).5 Instances of self-repair have been found in

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child-speech as early as age one, generally in the form of “skills of combining sound change with gesture”, this way “altering […] actions in pursuit of a response” (Forrester 2008: 106). Also, note that “during naturally occurring talk, speakers and listeners display orientation towards providing opportunities for speakers to repair their own talk as opposed to being explicitly corrected” (Forrester and Cherington 2009: 168). Therefore, the parent plays a specific role in eliciting a response from the child. Going back to the transcript, as we can see, Ella is given enough time to realise for herself the answer to her own question, not being provided with an immediate answer. Ella, of course, really knows the answer, as it does not take her very long to realise, maybe at a closer glance, that the object is in fact a camera, to which she utters “ohhh waa gaaa”, using the exclamation oh!, this way acknowledging her recognition of the object. The father then questions her again: “What’re you doing with my camera?”. It is a common trait in caretaker-talk to question children, as this encourages them to speak and, also, the rising tone of a question helps to attract their attention. Ella laughs in response and answers that she is “holding it”. The fact that she laughs implies that she understands the pragmatic implications of her father’s question: that she should not be touching the camera. Here we must also note the use of the verb suffix -ing, which is actually listed by Brown as being the first grammatical morpheme acquired (Brown 1973: 271 cited in Hudson 2000: 127) and, precisely, at the age of two, Ella’s age. Furthermore, we see that she already masters the use of the object pronoun ‘it’. The father continues to give her a warning and tells her to be careful with the camera and that “its not a to:::y”. We see that he is using lengthened speech when saying “toy”, this way he is emphasising his message, prolonging the word, again, to capture the child’s attention.

The last part of the conversation shows how the child gets distressed because she misunderstands her father’s words and thinks she is being called a baby. Ella is asked a simple question: “what pictures do we take with the camera?” to which she answers with a perfectly grammatically structured sentence, “I can’t remember”, consisting of a subject, an auxiliary verb, the negative particle not, and a verb in the infinitive. Furthermore, she uses the contracted form of cannot, the most common form in speech. The father then repeats the question: “you can’t remember?”, this way, positively reinforcing

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what she has just said. And then he utters the sentence that causes Ella’s confusion: “did we take pictures when Ella was very small?” She answers by shouting “no”, lengthening the vowel (“no::o”), and says “I’m not tiny baby, dada”. Note only one error in this utterance, that of the absence of the indefinite article <a>; the indefinite articles <a>/<an> are among the later functional words that children master, generally at the age of three (Brown 1973: 271 cited in Hudson 2000: 127). Ella’s father then tries to convince her that he was referring to when she was a baby, and tells her not to shout at him because it is naughty. We see how he is teaching her manners as learning a language is not only about learning a set of grammatical rules, but also a social code. Ella just continues to stress more and more strongly that she is not a baby: “no, I do, I’m not a baby”. It is interesting that this time she uses the indefinite article <a>. Above it was stated that <a>/<an> appeared at a later stage of development (around three years of age), but Ella is already using them at two years and four months of age. Ella then says she is “a big girl”, using basic adjectives (big/small). The father agrees with her and says she is “a very big big girl”, positively reinforcing her and emphasising how big she is with the repetition of the adjective. She continues to utter a sentence that has an unintelligible word “I’m xxx6 a little baby”, but immediately corrects herself by saying “I am not a little baby”, showing another example of self-repair. In this last utterance, two elements are of importance. From a syntactical point of view, we find the use of the expanded form of the first person singular personal pronoun and the verb to be, most likely, Ella realises that full forms are more forceful.

From a semantic point of view, in turn, we find the use of the word little. Note that this is the first time that this word has appeared in the conversation, previously we have read “small” and “tiny”. This shows that Ella can already handle several labels for the same concept, i.e. synonyms. Finally, the transcription ends will Ella still trying to explain that she is not a baby: “I’m not a little baby, a big”.

Concerning Ella’s performance we observe that her sentences, although simple, are perfectly grammatical most of the time. At two years old, she seems to go beyond the telegraphic two-word sentences that are associated with her age group. She constructs sentences which are made up by a subject, a verb and an object, (the canonical order for English sentences), she uses the indefinite articles <a>/<an> which

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are among the last grammatical morphemes acquired. However, a grammatical morpheme listed by Hudson as being acquired around two years and six months of age is the use of the irregular past tense (Hudson 2000: 127), which Ella does not use at all. All the verbs she employs are in the present tense. Moreover, when the father speaks to her about the past she does not understand and becomes annoyed. So, her grasp of the past tense is obviously not fully established. Granted, Ella is still two months away from the age appointed for the mastery of this feature, but we have also just seen that she masters the use of the indefinite article, a feature identified at a considerably later stage of development. Naturally, this is because the different stages of language development are only general approximations based on regularities found in child language acquisition. Each child will develop the different features of his/her language in unique ways and so, although there are certain maxims that can indeed be generalised, such as the appearance of a child’s first words at about one year of age, the fact is that a particular age cannot be identified with specific verbal achievements with any degree of accuracy.

Regarding the father’s utterances, we generally see that he questions her (“do you want some banana or toast?”, “What’re you doing with my camera?”) and reinforces and corrects her utterances by repeating them (“nutella alright”). Therefore, the main features that were distinguished above for caretaker-talk are reflected in this real-life extract. However, recalling Hudson’s aforementioned division between caretaker-talk and BT, I would like to note that Ella’s father does not make use of the BT that Hudson criticises. Indeed, he employs child-directed speech in his constant use of questions and repetitions, but no diminutives or, let us say, ‘silly’ noises are employed for the child’s benefit. Ella is a little old for BT as this speech tends to be reserved for babies under one year of age. Nevertheless, it is a fact that many adults continue to employ this register, much to the child’s irritation, well into their second, third or even four year of life.

6. THE USES OF CARE-TAKER TALK Caretaker-talk has been much discussed as a main tool for language teaching, but evidence has shown that it is rather a matter of

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securing communication with the child than a conscious attempt at teaching a language. In the 1970’s, Garnica, who studied the importance of child-directed speech in language acquisition, interviewed a group of mothers and asked them whether they were aware of a change in register when talking to their young children, and, not only were they aware of it, but argued that it actually “helped them to communicate” (Brown 1977: 14). The data collected from Garnica’s interviews, therefore, suggests that mothers use caretaker-talk “not with the tutorial goal in mind, but to control attention, improve intelligibility, [and] mark utterances as directed at the child” (Brown 1977: 16).

Concerning response to caretaker-talk, a study performed in 1973 by Stratton and Connoly revealed that young children definitely do respond to the higher pitched sounds that characterise this register.

Their study was carried out with three to five-day-old babies and consisted in exposing the infants to different sound frequencies and measuring their heart-rate responses to these sounds. The results revealed that “500 Hz is a frequency that infants favor perceptually” and that this was the usual frequency in which adults spoke to children, “whereas much of the speech of adult to adult […] would be in a lower, less perceptually salient range” (Sachs 1977: 53).

Furthermore, going back to Garnica’s interviews, one of the interviewees claimed the following (Garnica 1977: 87): There are plenty of times I don’t stop to think that he’s two and I’ll just mumble something at him or make some kind of demand on him and don’t really think about whether or not he can understand it. And that’s when he’s most likely not to respond at all.

So, in view of these facts, we can assume that children respond to caretaker-talk, not only because of the high-pitched tone used, which they favour but, more importantly, because of the attention that is being given to them when adults speak in this register. Children are fully aware that this speech is only directed at them. Therefore, when they hear it, they know that they are getting the adult’s undivided attention, which is, above all, what all children want.

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7. CONCLUSIONS Overall, the interactionist approach to language acquisition appears to be the most satisfactory one, as evidence points to the fact that it is the interaction between the parent or caretaker and the child that allows the latter to develop speech competence, and that the mere exposure to speech is insufficient for language to develop successfully. Let us recall the aforementioned case of the boy who only received speech input from television and radio programmes because his parents were deaf and who, as a result, never did acquire competent speech. Finally, concerning the innateness of language acquisition, human beings are undoubtedly endowed with a genetic disposition for language development. This innate disposition, however, lies dormant and must be awakened by exposing the child to an optimum environment for language learning, that in which continuous access to language input and, most importantly, active interaction with other speakers of any language(s) are available.

NOTES Child Language Data Exchange System.

Structure-dependency argues that “all linguistic processes [belonging to any language] are dependent on the details of the structure to which they apply” (Cook and Newson 2007: 234).

3 The full transcription is included at the end of this article in an appendix. I would like to thank Dr. Michael Forrester (University of Kent) for giving me permission to provide this document, and also Dr. Brian MacWhinney (Carnegie Mellon University), main researcher in the construction of the CHILDES database, for his kind assistance.

4 Word fragments appearing in brackets have been omitted from speech, following the CLAN transcription guidelines employed in the CHILDES database (MacWhinney 2010: 48). See MacWhinney’s 2010 The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk (http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/manuals/clan.pdf) to read the full CLAN manual.

5 Forrester and Cherrington distinguish two main different types of self-repair “spontaneously produced” or “other-initiated”, i.e.

1 2

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when someone else has triggered the correction (2009: 169).

Note the use of the symbol ‘xxx’ to indicate unintelligible vocal material, following the CLAN transcription guidelines employed in the CHILDES database (MacWhinney 2010: 21).

WORKS CITED Atique, Samina. 2009 “Psycholinguistics and Language Teaching Methodology”, Islamabad: Allama Iqbal Open University.

Consulted on the 20th of April 2010 • http://www.scribd.com/doc/23033766/Psycholinguistics-TEFL. Bloomfield, Leonard. 1976. Language. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Brown, Roger. 1973. A First Language: the Early Stages. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Cited in Hudson, Grover. 2000. Essential Introductory Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Brown, Roger. 1977. Introduction. Talking to Children: Language input and Acquisition. Ed. Catherine E. Snow and Charles A. Ferguson.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-27.

Chomsky, Noam. 1979 “Empiricism and Rationalism”. Language and Responsibility: Based on Conversations with Mitsou Ronat. New York: Pantheon. Consulted on the 20th of April 2010.

• http://www.chomsky.info/books/responsibility02.htm Cook, Vivian James and Mark Newson. 2007. Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: an Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Cruttenden, Alan. 1979. Language in Infancy and Childhood: a Linguistic Introduction to Language Acquisition. Manchester: University of Manchester Press.

Forrester, M. 2002 “Appropriating Cultural Conceptions of Childhood: Participation in Conversation”. Childhood: A Global Journal of Child Research, 9: 255-278.

Forrester, M. 2008 “The Emergence of Self-Repair: A Case Study of One Child During the Early Preschool Years”. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 41(1): 99-128.

Forrester, M. and Sarah M. Cherington. 2009 “The Development of Other-related Conversational Skills: A Case Study of Conversational Repair During the Early Years”. First Language, 29(2): 167-192.

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Garnica, Olga K. 1977 “Some Prosodic and Paralinguistic Features of Speech to Young Children”, ed. Catherine E. Snow and Charles A. Ferguson. Talking to Children: Language input and Acquisition.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gerber, Sima and Lorain Szabo Wankoff. 2010 “Historical and Contemporary Views of the Nature-Nurture Debate: A Continuum of Perspectives for the Speech-Language Pathologist”, ed. Brian B. Shulman and Nina C. Capone.

Language Development: Foundations, Processes, and Clinical Applications. Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. 55-94.

Greenberg, Joseph Harold. 2005. Language Universals: with Special Reference to Feature Hierarchies. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Guasti, Maria Teresa. 2004. Language Acquisition: The Growth of Grammar.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Hudson, Grover. 2000. Essential Introductory Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. MacWhinney, B. 2010. The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk.

Third Edition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Consulted on the 20th of April 2010.

• http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/manuals/clan.pdf McNeil, David. 1966. The Genesis of Language, a Psycholinguistic Approach.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cited in Hudson, Grover. 2000.

Essential Introductory Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Ochs, Elinor and Bambi B. Schieffelin. 2009 “Language Acquisition and Socialization: Three Developmental Stories and Their Implications”, ed. Alessandro Duranti. Linguistic Anthropology: a Reader. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. 296-328.

Sachs, Jacqueline. 1977 “The Adaptive Significance of Linguistic Input to Prelinguistic Infants”, ed. Catherine E. Snow and Charles A. Ferguson. Talking to Children: Language input and Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Snow, Catherine E. 1977 “Mothers’ Speech Research: from Input to Interaction”, ed. Catherine E. Snow and Charles A. Ferguson.

Talking to Children: Language input and Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yule, George. 2006. The Study of Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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APPENDIX: THE TRANSCRIPTION Clan - [biggirl] @Begin @Languages:en @Participants:E Ella Target_Child, F Mike Father, M Silvia Mother @Options:CA @ID:en|Forrester|E|2;4.|female|||Target_Child|| @ID:en|Forrester|F|||||Father|| @ID:en|Forrester|M|||||Mother|| @Media:biggirl, video @Transcriber:Mike Forrester @Comment:Ella is 28 months old. @Comment:Here is a picture: *F:do you want some banana or some toast → %gpx:child touching camera near high-chair *E:no I like (nu)tella → *F:nutella alright → *E:I want(nu)tella → *E:I don’t know (wh)at (th)at → *E:a camera → *E:ohhh waa gaaa → *F:what’re you doing with my camera ↗ *E:he he (0.5) hmm holding it holding it → *F:be careful with it → *E:oh, why ↗ *F:you know why → *E:why ↗ *F:because it’s ⌈not → *E: ⌈wha wha wha → (0.5) *F:its not a to:::y → *E:he (.) hey hey &=laugh → *E:&=sings → %gpx:continuing to touch camera . *F:what pictures do we take with the camera ↗ (1.)

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*E:I can’t remember → *F:you can’t remember ↗ *F:did we take pictures when Ella was very small ↗ (2.) *E:no::o → *F:she was tiny tiny baby → *E:no::o → *F:+, no → *E:I’m not *tiny baby, dada* → *F:I didn’t say you were (.) → *F:I said when you were → (1.5) *F:don’t shout at me (.) → *F:that’s naughty (1.) → *E:no, I do, I’m not a baby → *E:I’m (1.) eh a big girl → %gpx:while saying big girl, she rocks back and strongly withdraws her hands to her lap in what Forrester calls a body pout *F:you are → *F:a very big big girl → *E:I’m xxx a little baby → *E:I am not a little baby → *F:what darling ↗ *E:I’m not a little baby, a big → @End

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HISTORIA Y TRADICIÓN EN LA ENSEÑANZA Y APRENDIZAJE DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS EN EUROPA (IX): SIGLO XIX, HACIA EL PRESENTE DE LA DIDÁCTICA DE LENGUAS MODERNAS* Mª José Corvo Sánchez Universidade de Vigo mcorvo@uvigo.es This article aims to present an overview of the teaching of foreign languages in Europe during the nineteenth century. We will undertake this task following the historical method we have applied in all the previous articles. That is, through analysis and illustration of the evolution of linguistic material designed to teach and learn foreign languages in Western Europe in this century.

After the humanistic period, as it is known, the history of this discipline developes around national traditions; in the eighteenth century European languages having taken over Latin, the dominant foreign language until the sixteenth century. The development of this discipline to the present is based on this fact.

After the Enlightenment, when a system of teaching foreign languages similar to that of the previous centuries is observed, the modern period of the different national traditions begins. This reveals the change from the past of teaching of foreign languages in French, Latin or Greek, to the present of teaching modern languages.

Key words: Teaching and learning, foreign languages, history and tradition, 19th century.

Este artículo tiene como objetivo dar a conocer los pasos dados en la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras en Europa a lo largo del siglo XIX, tarea que acometeremos, en la misma línea metodológica que todos los trabajos anteriores1, a través del análisis y la *

Fecha de recepción: Marzo 2012

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ilustración de la evolución del material lingüístico concebido para enseñar y aprender lenguas extranjeras en el Occidente europeo a lo largo de este siglo.

Tras el periodo humanista, como ya es sabido, la historia de esta disciplina se desarrolla en torno a las diferentes tradiciones nacionales y ya en el siglo XVIII se consolida el dominio de las lenguas europeas sobre el latín, la lengua extranjera dominante hasta el siglo XVI. Sobre este hecho gira el desarrollo de esta disciplina hasta la actualidad. Tras la Ilustración, continuación del modo de actuar de los siglos precedentes en la labor de enseñar las lenguas modernas como extranjeras, arranca ahora el periodo moderno de las diferentes tradiciones nacionales, momento a partir de cual pasamos del pasado de la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras en francés, inglés, latín o griego, al presente de la enseñanza o didáctica de lenguas modernas.

Palabras clave: Enseñanza y aprendizaje, lenguas extranjeras, historia y tradición, siglo XIX. 1. INTRODUCCIÓN El siglo XIX, que después de la Revolución Francesa y con una Inglaterra en plena revolución industrial comienza sobre un escenario dominado por la presión ejercida por la Francia napoleónica sobre los diferentes estados europeos, con la pretensión de expandir sus dominios en el continente, representa el inicio de una nueva época en la historia de la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras: el comienzo del periodo moderno, protagonizado por las diferentes tradiciones nacionales o, lo que es lo mismo, el inicio del presente de la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras. El francés y el inglés continuan siendo en este siglo las lenguas más demandadas; no obstante, las circunstancias propias de la época, unidas al impulso industrial y comercial y al desarrollo del sistema de comunicaciones –en Europa el ferrocarril acortaba las distancias, facilitando la comunicación por tierra, y América Central y América del Sur se convirtieron en objetivos de mercado más

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fáciles por mar2–, fomentaron la necesidad de aprender otras lenguas como medio de comunicación en el ámbito internacional, en el que el uso de las lenguas clásicas se limitaba ya casi exclusivamente al entorno escolar y académico.

Este siglo en la historia de la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras está plagado de nombres de autores, quienes se enmarcan en dos grupos bien diferenciados: por un lado, están los que buscan innovar con sus ideas y nuevas maneras de presentar su material didáctico y sus seguidores y, por otro lado, están aquellos que se dedican a reproducir de forma más o menos “actualizada” lo que ya se venía haciendo con anterioridad. Es un periodo en el que, por tanto, confluyen las tendencias innovadoras con las tradicionales y en el que Alemania y Francia son fundamentalmente los focos de irradiación de las nuevas directrices metodológicas, contando entre sus representantes principales con Ahn, Olledorff y Robertson, seguidores del método tradicional o de gramática y traducción, o con Gouin, entre los defensores de un enfoque o metodología natural.

Otros factores que también contribuyen a todos estos cambios son los siguientes: el desarrollo de los estudios de lingüística, que favorecen la aparición de nuevos enfoques didácticos; el mayor número de quienes demandan un aprendizaje práctico de lenguas extranjeras – “los idiomas se aprenden más y más por razones prácticas, no sólo para adornar la figura del hombre `culto´” (Sánchez 1992: 194)–, que fomentan la práctica de esta actividad también fuera de las escuelas, en nuevos centros privados en los que los cursos de idiomas se adaptan más a las necesidades concretas del alumnado; y el auge experimentado por la industria del libro, beneficiado en gran medida por la rápida y amplia difusión de los nuevos “productos” –los nuevos métodos–, que ahora circulan más fácilmente por toda Europa y también llegan a América, convertidos en novedades editoriales. Todos ellos factores que, sin lugar a dudas, propician el enorme desarrollo experimentado por la disciplina que nos ocupa en el siglo XIX y hasta nuestros días.

Por lo tanto, en las páginas siguientes, en primer lugar, nos detendremos a conocer la situación general de las lenguas y su estudio en el siglo XIX, para entender que el interés por ellas se amplía sobremanera y que ahora también las lenguas modernas se introducen

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en los planes educativos y su enseñanza como extranjeras se oficializa, al ser incorporadas como nuevas asignaturas de los currículos escolares.

En el campo más amplio de la lingüística, además, constituye una de las etapas más florecientes de la historia, pues en ella se desarrollan los trabajos de figuras tan relevantes como el alemán Franz Bopp y el danés Ramus Christian Rask –cofundadores de la gramática comparada–, o los alemanes Grimm, Schlegel, Humboldt o Diez, importantísimas aportaciones que constituyen el preludio del carácter científico que dominará la lingüística moderna a partir ya de las nuevas escuelas lingüísticas europeas: la de los neogramáticos, liderada también por los alemanes y con la que se inicia la lingüística científica y la estructuralista, ya en el siglo XX, representada principalmente por el suizo Ferdinand de Saussure3, responsable finalmente de delimitar el objeto de estudio de la lingüística como ciencia. En el conjunto europeo resulta destacable el particular papel desempeñado por Alemania; por ello, ilustraremos los avances lingüísticos de la Europa del siglo XIX principalmente a través de los conseguidos por los lingüistas y pensadores de este país y su lengua.

Y en segundo lugar, nos centraremos en presentar los materiales didácticos diseñados para la enseñanza de las lenguas modernas como extranjeras y los analizaremos desde una perspectiva global en la Europa de este siglo, un momento en el que, como veremos, las nuevas tendencias se imponen sobre las tradicionales, emprendiéndose con ello un camino en la historia de la didáctica de lenguas que conduce hasta nuestros días.

2. SITUACIÓN GENERAL DE LAS LENGUAS Y DE SU ESTUDIO Desde la perspectiva actual, el XIX es el siglo del Nuevo Humanismo o Neohumanismo, caracterizado por el interés general de mantener la enseñanza de las lenguas antiguas en las escuelas, si bien de una forma renovada. Y junto a ellas, también ahora las lenguas extranjeras entran a formar parte de los programas escolares como consecuencia de las reformas educativas llevadas a cabo en los diferentes países europeos4. A las diferentes razones aducidas en las páginas introductorias, otra circunstancia histórica relevante que favoreció la presencia de las lenguas extranjeras en los currículos

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escolares la constituyó la sucesión de movimientos nacionalistas acontecida a lo largo de este siglo, que generó la expansión de nuevas entidades geo-políticas, con grandes efectos sobre los grupos lingüísticos que compartían el mismo territorio, pues los nuevos estados también comenzaron a enseñar sus lenguas oficiales a las minorías lingüísticas. Y junto al multilingüismo, como por ejemplo en Luxemburgo o Austria5, la emigración es otra de las razones principales que explican la importancia atribuida a la enseñanza de lenguas en otros países.

En Alemania ya desde el siglo anterior se viene prestando atención especial a las lenguas extranjeras y a su enseñanza y se dan importantes avances legislativos con el fin de reformar los métodos de enseñanza y la organización del sistema educativo, para dar cabida también a las lenguas extranjeras dentro del currículo escolar6. Pero es principalmente ahora, en este siglo, cuando se generaliza este interés por las lenguas en Europa y, en especial, en los países con una larga tradición en el comercio exterior, como los Países Bajos o Bélgica, resultado comprensible en el nuevo contexto histórico de la revolución industrial, donde el aumento de la actividad comercial genera una necesidad de comunicación internacional sin precedentes.

En el conjunto de Europa, no obstante, en el ámbito de la educación destaca principalmente el papel de Alemania y de la lengua alemana. La situación en la primera mitad del siglo deriva en un renovado interés por las lenguas clásicas, debido a las denominadas Humboldt-Süvernschen Reformen acontencidas entre los años 1808 y 1819, en fomento de la unificación de la enseñanza secundaria como preparación neohumanista para el acceso a la universidad y de acuerdo con la cual, la cultura y las lenguas de la Antigüedad representan la base de la formación7. De este modo, la lengua latina recupera su protagonismo en las escuelas, junto al griego, y lo pierden algunas de las otras lenguas modernas extranjeras. Esta situción se reconvierte de nuevo a partir de la segunda mitad del siglo, tras una nueva reorganización del sistema escolar, que vuelve a contemplar a las lenguas modernas en un primer plano en el reino prusiano y que irá acompañada por otros cambios muy relevantes en cuanto a la mejora metodolológica de su enseñanza como extranjeras, gracias a las contribuciones de Viëtor y otras figuras de las que hablaremos más adelante. Y los resultados se

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plasman en los nuevos productos editoriales, a la cabeza de los cuales se encuentran importantísimos editores –por su éxito hasta el día de hoy– en el ámbito de la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras, como es Gustav Langenscheidt. (cf. Christ 2010: 18) Además, el alemán desde los últimos años de la primera mitad del siglo destaca como idioma de las ciencias, dada la relevancia del desarrollo científico alemán. Y en España, por ejemplo, sucede que: “El atractivo de la cultura alemana en general se ve reforzado a lo largo de los decenios siguientes por la posición destacada de la ciencia y tecnología alemana. Saber alemán adquiere un fin práctico en el contexto tecnológico y se restringe, en primera línea, a una de las cuatro destrezas lingüísticas: la comprensión lectora.” (Marizzi 2001: 4) Efectivamente, el siglo XIX es un periodo protagonizado en Alemania por una élite de eruditos e investigadores, quienes con el apoyo de las representaciones administrativas y políticas – corporaciones científicas y despachos ministeriales– encumbraron la ciencia alemana en todas sus disciplinas y colocaron a su país a la cabeza del progreso científico. La “democratización de la enseñanza” o Demokratisierung der Bildung y la ampliación del acceso a la enseñanza superior, por un lado, y la creación de institutos de investigación autónomos, que conduce a la aparición de una burocracia científica y al ejercicio de una auténtica “política científica”, por otro, son dos de las principales razones que lo justifican: “La respuesta alemana o, mejor dicho, de Prusia en su calidad de estado federado con mayor peso específico en el Reich al desafío que nacía se concretizó en el sistema Althoff. […] se caracterizó por el ejercicio de una política científica determinada en dos procesos: la municipalización y la regionalización del fomento de la investigación científica y la enseñanza. La financiación y dirección científica habían sido durante el siglo XIX en Alemania cometidos estatales. En los últimos decenios del mismo se asistió a la multiplicación del número de universidades técnicas, el notable incremento de los estudios naturales y la diferenciación entre tareas de investigación y enseñanza […]. Fruto de ello fue, por ejemplo, la primera escuela de comercio en Leipzig (1898) y las posteriores en Frankfurt y Colonia (1901). Junto a ellas experimentaron, igualmente a escala municipal, un gran impulso la fundación de academias para medicina práctica.”8

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El interés por el estudio de su lengua, tanto para propios como para extraños, hace que este siglo sea testigo de grandes avances: la gramática alemana con Jakob Grimm se ocupa también de su desarrollo histórico a partir de la publicación del primer tomo de su Deutsche Grammatik, aparecido en 1819; en colaboración con su hermano Wilhelm, los Grimm comienzan con la publicación de un diccionario de la lengua alemana a partir de 1852, que continúa siendo la guía más completa del vocabulario alemán; y Konrad Duden, director de un instituto de enseñanza secundaria de Schleiz –en el estado de Turingia– publica su Schleizer Duden en 1872 y su Vollständiges Orthographisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache en 1880, es decir, los primeros Duden de una serie de 25 ediciones hasta la actualidad, pues la última edición de su Diccionario Ortográfico Completo data de octubre de 2010 y sigue ejerciendo de fuente prescriptiva del correcto alemán de hoy en día.

Aunque enormemente relevante, no podemos considerar esta producción gramaticográfica y lexicográfica alemana como el resultado de una manera aislada a la hora de afrontar los estudios lingüísticos, pues en realidad representa una preocupación común en Europa, donde a principios de siglo, con el surgimiento de la gramática y de la literatura comparadas, los comparatistas comienzan su andadura.9 El comparatismo lingüístico, identificado con el método comparativo, esto es, histórico-comparativo10, y derivado de un sentido evolucionista y enciclopédico, en un principio se desarrolla en el campo de la filología comparada en una doble vertiente: “Por un lado, la gramática comparada hizo posible identificar el método comparativo en un sentido restrictivo consistente en reglas formales y casi mecánicas, y, por otro, en una segunda restricción, se identificó la gramática comparada con la lingüística histórica” (García 1994: 113). Separada la gramática comparada11, el comparatismo lingüístico pasa a ser considerado un estado prehistórico o precientífico del lenguaje.

Consistente en la observación principalmente de los cambios fonéticos y morfológicos resultantes de la evolución de diferentes lenguas y en diferentes épocas, y basándose en el principio de la regularidad, tiene como objetivo último su reconstrucción histórica sobre la base de la llamada hipótesis genética, que permite establecer las relaciones de parentesco entre las mismas a través de una anterior, conocida como

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protolengua. En la primera mitad de siglo, la preocupación máxima de sus representates es establecer el parentesco entre las lenguas mediante el análisis de la estructura morfológica; posteriormente y a lo largo del siglo, la investigación fonética va cobrando mayor imporancia.

El origen de esta nueva preocupación por las lenguas se halla en el descubrimiento del sánscrito12, un acontecimiento importantísimo que desvela una lengua que sorprende por su antigüedad, riqueza de formas y precisión, y su visible parentesco con las lenguas europeas. Todo ello despierta el interés de muchos lingüistas, que se dedican a su estudio y entre los que destacan el alemán Franz Bopp y el danés Ramus Rask13 como pilares fundamentales de la gramática comparada y quienes contaron posteriormente, entre otros, con los hermanos Grimm como continuadores de su trabajo.

Aunque sin extendernos mucho, debemos recordar que en 1808 Friedrich von Schlegel publica en Heidelberg su programa para una lingüística comparativa y genealógica en su famosa obra Über die Sprache und Weissheit der Indier, donde aplica al indoeuropeo la metodología de la filología comparada y lleva a cabo una clasificación naturalista de las lenguas. Y es en 1816 cuando el alemán Franz Bopp fomenta el interés en la posicion central del sánscrito en el estudio comparativo de las lenguas con su libro Über das Konjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache, también conocido como Sistema de conjugación o Konjugationssystem de Bopp, obra que le convierte en el fundador de la gramática comparada. En ella establece metodológicamente el parentesco genético de las lenguas a partir de sus estructuras verbales, lo que ya antes de él había postulado el inglés William Jones. A partir de este momento, la lingüística amplía su campo de estudio de forma extraordinaria, sobre todo en el del estudio histórico de las lenguas, que conduce a una investigación más práctica y más alejada de lo puramente teórico o especulativo.

En 1818 August Wilhelm von Schlegel se centra en la fundamentación de la comparación histórica de las lenguas romances y el comparatismo a partir de él comienza a tomar otras directrices encaminadas a la formulación rigurosa de las leyes fonéticas, la

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reconstrucción científica del indoeuropeo y el establecimiento de la Stammbautheorie o teoría de la relación genética entre las lenguas. Y un año después aparece la Deutsche Grammatik o Gramática alemana de Jakob Grimm14, obra con la que nace la gramática comparada de las lenguas germánicas, poco antes de que aparezcan a partir de 1820 las primeras publicaciones sobre el lenguaje de Humboldt, pensador, investigador y defensor del valor universal de las formas de las lenguas y principal representante del comparatismo de orientación idealista del siglo XIX15. El primer fascículo del Deutsches Wörterbuch de los hermanos Grimm se publicó en 183216 y supuso el comienzo del intento de crear un exhaustivo diccionario del alemán. En el campo de las lenguas románicas, uno de los representantes más destacables es el alemán Friedrich Christian Diez con su obras Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen (1836-1838) y Etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Sprachen (1853).

Bopp introduce diferentes conceptos, como el de la flexión o el de la ley fonética, y su ingente producción culmina con la publicación de su gramática comparada, titulada Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Littauischen, Altslawischen, Gothischen, und Deutschen (1833-1852). Junto a ella, la obra Etymologische Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen mit besonderem Bezug auf die Lautumwandlung im Sanskrit, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Littauischen und Gothischen (1833) de August Friedrich Pott también constituye una importante contribución a la lingüística comparativa. Bopp, quien consideraba el griego, el latín y las demás lenguas europeas variedades de una lengua originaria, preservada mejor en el sánscrito, establece las bases de la gramática comparativa indo-europea; el libro de Pott, por su parte, marca el inicio de una fonología científica, pues en sus investigaciones etimológicas este autor, además de proporcionar un diccionario etimológico comparativo de raíces verbales comunes al sánscrito y a otras lenguas, establece las bases del estudio científico de una fonología común indo-europea, asegurando que la fonología es el acceso más fiable a la etimología.

Los estudios relativos a las lenguas romances y germánicas acercaron un poco más a la lingüística a su objeto y finalmente las contribuciones de los continuadores de este avance, los neogramáticos –Delbrück, Paul, Brugmann, etc.– lograron colocar en perspectiva

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histórica todos los resultados de las comparaciones y establecer el orden natural de los hechos que las relacionan. Sus logros serían, no obstante, cuestionados y matizados poco después por los creadores y seguidores de la dialectología, surgida también durante el siglo XIX con el objetivo de investigar sobre la variedad de las lenguas habladas y la distribución geográfica de los rasgos lingüísticos.

El interés por las lenguas habladas conduce a la compilación de los primeros grandes diccionarios monolingües en el caso de algunas lenguas menos estudiadas hasta la fecha, como la polaca o la checa, y a la observación de otras muchas, aunque fuesen habladas por minorías17. Así, este interés, que constituye uno de los aspectos más innovadores de este siglo, igualmente condujo a la publicación de diferentes diccionarios de corte etimológico y enciclopédico sobre la lengua de los gitanos, las lenguas orientales, las lenguas celtas, el latín, el griego clásico, el árabe, el hebreo, el armenio o las lenguas romances, como el citado anteriormente de Diez. Otros títulos reseñables son: A dictionary, Tibetan and English de Csoma da Körös (1834), el primer estudio serio del tibetano clásico; Wörterbuch der lateinischen Sprache de Wilhelm Freund (1834), que constituye la base de los diccionarios de latín desde mediados del siglo XIX; Origen […] de los jitanos, y diccionario de su dialecto (1848) de R. Campuzano y Wörterbuch des Dialekts der deutschen Zigeuner (1898) de R. von Sowa; Mongolisch-deutsch-russisches Wörterbuch, nebst einem deutschen und einem russischen Wortregister (1835) de Iakov Ivanovich Schmidt; Gründzüge der griechischen Etymologie (1858) de George Curtius; A Gaelic-English dictionary (1842) de Evan Maceachen; An English and Welsh dictionary de Thomas Edwards y An English-Welsh pronouncing dictionary de William Spurrel, ambos sobre el galés y publicados en 1850; y el Nouveau dictionnaire de la langue française de Larousse de 1856, uno de los diccionarios más importantes del siglo y el primero de un gran número de diferentes ediciones posteriores que han llegado hasta nuestros días. Larousse ilustró cada entrada con un ejemplo de su uso e incluyó cierta cantidad de información enciclopédica, así como una lista de expresiones latinas transferidas al francés.

Este interés también condujo a la publicación de importantes catálogos y colecciones bibliográficas, que son contribuciones pioneras de la lingüística tipológica y comparatista moderna. Constituyen la

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obra de figuras tan importantes como Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, Pallas, Miriewo, Vater y Adelung, que también son referencia fundamental del comparatismo moderno junto a los anteriores autores citados. Remitimos a los siguientes dos ejemplos para conocer mejor la naturaleza de sus trabajos: de la extensísima obra del sacerdote jesuita español Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro destacamos en este punto su Catálogo de las lenguas de las naciones conocidas y numeración, división y clasificación de éstas según la diversidad de sus idiomas y dialectos en un total de seis volúmenes (1800-1805)18. Junto a la obra de Humboldt, es una referencia fundamental del comparatismo moderno. El segundo ejemplo es la obra de Johann Sverin Vater de 1847: Litteratur der Grammatiken, Lexika und Wörtersammlungen aller Sprachen der Erde.

Y junto a la preocupación por las lenguas habladas, se halla también la atención prestada a la lengua de los sordos, que se manifiesta tanto en relativos avances educativos19, como en la publicación de obras dirigidas a una minoría, como fue la siguiente reedición de la obra de Bonet de 1620 llevada a cabo por el editor Friedrich Werner en 1895: Vereinfachung der Buchstaben und die Kunst Stumme sprechen zu lehren. Von Juan Pablo Bonet, Barletserbant seiner Majestät, Adjudant des Feldzeugmeisters der Artillerie von Spanien und Sekretär des Kronfeldherrn von Kastilien. Gewidmet Sr. Majestät dem König Don Philipp III., unserm Herrn. Aus dem Spanischen Übersetzt von Friedrich Werner Taubstummenlehrer. (cf. Niederehe 1999: 268)20 3. LAS LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS: AUTORES Y OBRAS Los manuales de naturaleza gramatical proliferan ya desde las primeras décadas del siglo XIX y van preparando el camino de la nueva modalidad que presidirá las que seguirán apareciendo, como nuevos métodos personalizados elaborados por profesores de idiomas que los firman como sus autores, en la línea de otros anteriores que a lo largo de este siglo ya son considerados como autoridades. Las primeras gramáticas, de corte más tradicional y basadas en el análisis de las partes del discurso y sobre la imitación de los modelos literarios, dan paso en este siglo a métodos más innovadores, como los de Ahn, Ollendorff y Robertson y definitivamente se confirma el paso de las gramáticas meramente descriptivas a los métodos teórico-prácticos iniciado ya en

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el siglo anterior. En ellos la traducción es una actividad complementaria imprescindible, en consonancia con la tendencia predominante y heredada en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras. Los métodos de estos autores experimentaron un éxito notable y se convirtieron en el modelo de numerosas adaptaciones realizadas a partir de ellos a las principales lenguas europeas.

Resulta imposible dar cabida en un trabajo de esta naturaleza a todos los autores y obras protagonistas de la disciplina que nos ocupa en los diferentes territorios europeos del siglo XIX; por ello, con la intención de ofrecer un resultado representativo, nos centraremos a continuación en conocer, en primer lugar, los nombres de quienes innovaron, convirtiéndose en los nuevos maestros de este siglo, así como la repercusión de su obra a través de la mención de algunos de sus seguidores; completaremos el análisis de la obra gramatical con la mención de otras de corte lexicográfico creadas también en este siglo con un claro fin didáctico. Y en segundo lugar, trataremos los principales exponentes de las nuevas tendencias metodológicas, ya a finales de siglo.

3.1. Nuevos autores y nuevas actualizaciones El siglo arranca sobre la observación del estudio de la gramática, como continuación del siglo anterior, y se consolida el método de gramática y traducción, que dominaría el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje de las lenguas modernas como extranjeras durante varias décadas. Concebido para fines intelectuales y académicos, en su origen su objetivo es el aprendizaje de la gramática prescriptiva para el estudio y traducción de la literatura clásica griega y latina21; en el proceso de enseñanza de las demás lenguas, el propósito final igualmente descansa en su aprendizaje para poder leer su literatura. Aplicado en la enseñanza de estas lenguas, con el fin de facilitar su aprendizaje en el nuevo contexto de la época, este método jugó un importante papel en la primera mitad de siglo, cuando generalmente resultaba más útil poder leer un idioma extranjero que poder usarlo como medio de comunicación oral.

En consonancia con ello, sus características más importantes se pueden resumir en las siguientes: se centra en la lectura de textos

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literarios y en la traducción, un ejercicio que incluye el análisis sistemático y la comparación y memorización de las reglas gramaticales; la práctica de la enseñanza se basa en la oración como unidad básica; se recurre al empleo de la lengua materna de los alumnos, a través de la cual estos aprenden la gramática de un modo deductivo, pues se parte siempre de la regla para llegar al ejemplo, y en un programa de aprendizaje fuertemente mediatizado por el profesor, cuyas explicaciones gramaticales deben practicarse a través de la traducción; el léxico se adquiere a través del estudio y la memorización de listas bilingües; son esenciales tanto la exactitud en la traducción, como el conocimiento de las normas, por eso los errores deben ser siempre corregidos; se potencian las habilidades de lectura y escritura y se relega la competencia oral, de tal modo que la práctica oral se limita básicamente a la lectura por parte de los alumnos de las frases traducidas o de ciertos paradigmas gramaticales; y los materiales empleados son auténticos y se seleccionan en virtud de su valor literario, no por su complejidad gramatical.

La principal innovación que se da ahora radica en el carácter práctico de las obras de los autores de este siglo, que configuran una nueva modalidad en el diseño de manuales destinados a la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras, más orientados a enseñar a hablar y a escribir. Son los nuevos “métodos”, podríamos decir, “de gramática aplicada” conocidos por los nombres de sus creadores que se introdujeron en el aprendizaje de las principales lenguas europeas y del latín y que disfrutaron de una enorme difusión editorial tanto en Europa, como en Estados Unidos. Los que disfrutaron de mayor éxito fueron los de Ahn, Ollendorff y Robertson.

El primero de ellos, Johann Franz Ahn (1796-1865), publicó en Colonia en 1834 su Praktischer Lehrgang zur schnellen und leichten Erlernung der Französichen Sprache y funda su método sobre el principio básico de aprender una lengua extranjera del mismo modo como se ha aprendido la materna (cf. Ponce 2006: 75). Disfrutó de una gran aceptación y unos años después se aplicó en otros manuales para aprender inglés, español, italiano, holandés y ruso22. Todos ellos son muy similares en cuanto a su configuración y se presentan en un conjunto de lecciones cortas y sencillas con un contenido gramatical mínimo y elemental, acompañado de frases usuales simples y un léxico cotidiano; en

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general, todos ellos presentan una estructura similar: “cada sección del libro o lección se inicia con un breve resumen gramatical, ejemplificado en sintagmas o estructuras cortas. Siguen luego unas doce palabras y acaba la sección con frases para traducir en la lengua que se aprende.

El conjunto es, desde luego, sencillo y práctico” (Sánchez 1992: 208).

Entre sus seguidores se encuentran, por ejemplo, los siguientes autores: Francisco de Paula Hidalgo, Henrique Brunswick y Camilo Vallés. El primero publica en 1876 en Madrid el Método de Ahn. Primero y segundo curso de portugués con la clave de temas, un manual de portugués para españoles; Brunswick publica en Oporto en 1888 su Curso de língua hespanhola para uso de portugueses (cf. Ponce: 74 y 66); y Vallés publica en Madrid la tercera edicición de su Nuevo método para aprender alemán según el sistema de F. Ahn. Primer curso en 1889, y la segunda de su Segundo curso y de su Tercer curso. Trozos escogidos de literatura alemana, acompañados de notas explicativas en 1890. (cf. Marizzi 2001: 9) Mayor aún fue el reconocimiento internacional del método de Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff (1803-1865). El así llamado método ollendorffiano, consistente en presentar las estructuras de la lengua a través de frases cortas acompañadas de un vocabulario complementario, de la explicación gramatical correspondiente, de algunos ejemplos representativos, de una parte o tema de traducción de frases referidas a los aspectos gramaticales tratados y de diálogos que reflejan la interacción entre el profesor y el alumno, se presentó en su Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à lire, à ecrire et à parler une langue en six mois, appliquée à l´allemand, aparecido en París en 1835 y se reprodujo después en otras adaptaciones al inglés, al francés y al italiano, en 1838, 1843 y 1846, respectivamente.

El método recogido por Ollendorff en esta gramática alemana para franceses gozó de mucho éxtito tanto en Europa como en Estados Unidos y entre sus innumerables seguidores cuenta con Eduardo Benot, autor en 1852 de su Nuevo método del Dr. Ollendorff para aprender á leer, hablar y escribir un idioma cualquiera, adaptado al italiano. Benot, en cuya obra aparece de forma clara la crítica a las gramáticas tradicionales, adaptó el método de Ollendorff a manuales para la enseñanza del francés, inglés, italiano y alemán a hispanohablantes. Así, por ejemplo, en Madrid en 1896 vio la luz la tercera edición de su Ollendorff reformado. Gramática alemana y método para aprenderla y de su Clave de los

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temas: un manual de 175 lecciones con 528 reglas y 350 temas o ejercicios de traducción inversa que sirven “junto con las preguntas gramaticales de las pp. 642-650, para examen y repaso” y el “Solucionario de la versión española del método Ollendorff ”, respectivamente. (Marizzi 2001: 10) Conozcamos mejor el método del francés Théodore Robertson a través de una adaptación que realizó Pedro José Rojas hacia 1850 para el aprendizaje del castellano en su Nuevo curso práctico, analítico, teórico y sintético del idioma inglés […] adaptado al castellano: “En este librito la lección comienza con un texto en letra muy destacada y con números sobre algunas sílabas. A continuación sigue la tradución literal, poniendo debajo del original la exacta traducción al español. Luego se añade una versión «castiza», más libre y literaria, y a continuación se ofrecen actividades diversas, especialmente de conversación, con preguntas en español y traducción inglesa; una fraseología para traducir a una y otra lengua; una revisión de la lección precedente sugerida a través de una serie de preguntas; ejemplos de pronunciación con anotaciones puntuales sobre los ejemplos aportados; una parte de lexicología en que se explican ciertos términos y sus funciones gramaticales (dos páginas y media); una sección de sintaxis (que también incluye morfología y debería llamarse gramática); un ejercicio de tradución al inglés y una composición, que consiste también en la traducción de frases del español al inglés. El esquema se repite en cada lección.” (Sánchez 1997: 87) El profesor de inglés y lexicográfo Pierre Charles Théodore Lafforgue (1803-1871), conocido como Théodore Robertson, se basa en la práctica como principio fundamental orientador en la enseñanza y aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera: “Pour apprendre en peu de temps une langue vivante, je crois qu’il faut pratiquer, c’est-à-dire, lire, traduire et parler, dès la première leçon” (Robertson 1839: 10).

Comenzó a ponerlo en práctica en 1825 y a difundirlo primero en el medio periodístico, para darlo a conocer de forma íntegra después en su publicación Cours pratique, analytique, théorique et synthétique de langue anglaise, publicada en París en 1939.

Entre sus innumerables representaciones posteriores podemos citar: el Curso de lengua italiana, escrito con arreglo a las bases del metodo de

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Mr. Robertson de Pedro de Barinaga, publicado en Madrid en 1843; El Robertson español o sea Curso práctico-teórico de Lengua Francesa, de Joaquín Mendizábal, publicado en Madrid en 1846 y reeditado varias veces (cf.

Suárez 2008: 161); o la adaptación al español realizada por Friedrich Booch-Árkossy y aparecida en Leipzig en 1853 bajo el título: Methode Roberson. Spanisch complet in vier Monaten. Praktisch-theoretisch Lehrgang der Spanischen Schrift- und Umgangssprache […]. La repercusión de este método superó el cambio de siglo y sus adaptaciones han seguido publicándose hasta la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Junto a todos ellos, además, no debemos dejar de mencionar la obra de aquellos que se dedicaron a reproducir de forma más o menos “actualizada” lo que ya se venía haciendo en los siglos precedentes, perpetuando la obra de antiguos maestros, como Miranda, Oudin, Sobrino o Franciosini y de otros no tan antiguos, como Arnold o Meidinger. No podemos detenernos en todos ellos, pero sí conviene conocer algunos casos ilustrativos.

Así, por ejemplo, sobre Franciosini, Sánchez refiere lo siguiente: “En 1870 se imprimió en Barcelona y Buenos Aires un Nuovissimo Franciosini, ossia Grammatica della lingua Spagnuola per uso degli Italiani. Y como en aquellos años el nombre de moda era Ollendorff, la obra trata de contemporizar con los nuevos tiempos. Por eso añaden los autores: adatta al metodo del Dottore Olledorff. El nombre de Franciosini debía ser todavía suficientemente conocido y famoso como para encabezar la gramática con su nombre y utilizarla como cuerpo fundamental de la obra.” (Sánchez 1992: 196) Igualmente sucede ahora con la obra de Sobrino. Ejemplo de ello es Le nouveau Sobrino ou Grammaire Espagnole-Française, simplifiée et réduite à XXII leçons, de Francisco Martínez de 1811 (cf. Suárez 2008: 155). En opinión de Sánchez : “Los ‘Sobrinos’ del siglo XIX ya no son auténticos; se han introducido cambios exigidos por los nuevos tiempos que corren […] Aunque la doctrina gramatical sea sustancialmente afín […], la disposición del texto, la ordenación de los diferentes puntos y la redacción en general sufren diversas modificaciones. Al mismo tiempo, las explicaciones son abundantes y extensas […]. Se dan numerosos ejemplos y también se incluyen características de las gramáticas contemporáneas, especialmente el Tema. Este apartado

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está constituido por textos seleccionados con el fin de ilustrar los puntos gramaticales expuestos y apuntan hacia la práctica de determinadas partes de la oración. Se ofrecen en traducción interlineal, siendo la traducción del francés sólo parcial y dejando en blanco los elementos en que inciden los objetivos lingüísticos de la unidad o apartado.” (Sánchez 1992: 198) Otro caso ilustrativo es el siguiente ejemplo sobre la obra de Arnold y Meidinger – recordemos que sus manuales fueron de los primeros modelos que intervienen en el método tradicional de gramática y traducción–. Nos referimos a la siguiente obra de Johann Basilius Wilhelm Benecke, profesor de español en Hamburgo y autor del siguiente manual de español: Spanisch Grammatik, mit zweckmässigen Aufgaben zu Uebungen, mit Gesprächen, und mit Spanischdeutschen Wörterbuche.

Ganz nach der Art der beliebten Arnoldschen Englischen und der MEIDINGERSCHEN französischen Grammatik bearbeitet, impreso en Leipzig en 1814.23 Finalmente, debemos mencionar que, si bien las gramáticas prácticas –aunque la mayoría no prescinde de la parte teórica– son las más numerosas en este siglo, también siguen apareciendo otros libros de corte teórico, más puramente gramaticales, aunque no tienen tanta aceptación como aquellas. Estas obras no siempre son fáciles de clasificar. Un ejemplo lo encontramos en el Compendio de gramática italiana formado sobre los mejores autores de Luis Bordas, impreso en Gerona en 1824 y dividido “en las cuatro partes de que consta toda gramática, dando no mas que aquellas definiciones necesarias, y esto unicamente por conformarme con el uso de los gramáticos; porque quien emprende el estudio de un idioma estrangero, se le debe suponer enterado ya en el nativo”, como el propio autor declara en las páginas de su prólogo24, donde también confiesa seguir la distribución de Chantreau25 al abordar los artículos, nombres y pronombres. Otro ejemplo es la obra de Konrad Lüdger Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der Spanischen Sprache, impresa en Leipzig en 182826. Así como la Gramática alemana precedida de un cuadro histórico del origen y progresos de esta lengua (Madrid, 1844) de Julius Kühn, el primer profesor de alemán del I.E.S. San Isidro de Madrid, una gramática descriptiva conforme al modelo latino. (cf. Marizzi 2001: 3)

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El carácter práctico y de utilidad, no obstante, domina el panorama editorial y, junto a las obras mencionadas, también gozan de gran aceptación otro tipo de libros de naturaleza lexicográfica redactados con el claro objetivo de resultar útiles como auxilios lingüísticos. Para no extendernos en este tema y ofrecer un listado de obras al azar en diferentes idiomas, ilustraremos este punto con algunos ejemplos de la producción de diccionarios bilingües español y alemán de este siglo, en el que se intensifican las relaciones hispanoalemanas y otros formatos, como el diccionario de bolsillo, resultan muy prácticos como herramientas lingüísticas en los desplazamientos de los alemanes tanto a España como a América.

Dentro del conjunto, algunos ejemplos destacables son: el diccionario de bolsillo Kurzgefaßtes spanisch-deutsches und deutsch-spanisches Taschenwörterbuch (1807) de Daniel Braubach, los dos tomos del Kurzgefaßtes spanisch-deutsches und deutsch-spanisches Taschenwörterbuch o Diccionario de faltriquera, o sea portátil […] (1808 y 1809) de Johann Daniel Wagener, el Spanisch-deutsches […] Taschenwörterbuch für Kaufleute, Correspondenten und Sachführer (1829) de P. Deranco, el Neues SpanischDeutsches und Deutsch-Spanisches Wörterbuch (1829 y 1833: español-alemán y alemán-español) de Franceson; el diccionario de bolsillo SpanischDeutsches Wörterbuch zu dem Spanischen Lesebuch publicado por Victor Aimé Huber en Bremen en 1832; el diccionario manual Nuevo Diccionario de la Lenguas Castellana y Alemana, el más completo que se ha publicado hasta el día. Neuestes und vollständigstes Spanisch-Deutsches und Deutsch-Spanisches Handwörterbuch27 de 1858 del director de la Escuela de Comercio de Lepzig Friedrich Booch-Árkossy –intelectual políglota y coautor de otros diccionarios de alemán con las lenguas polaca y rusa, así como autor de manuales, gramáticas y libros de diálogos de estas y otras lenguas y del que ya hemos tratado con anterioridad– y el Spanischer Sprachführer. Konversations-Wörterbuch (1887) de Heinrich Ruppert, un diccionario de bolsillo en tres partes: un diccionario de conversación alemán-español, un pequeño vocabulario español-alemán de poco más de cincuenta páginas, pensado para la comprensión del vocabulario elemental que el viajero alemán se encontraba en los rótulos e indicaciones públicos, en las tiendas o en los menús de los restaurantes y un anexo gramatical, con el que concluye la obra en la página 526.28

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3.2. Nuevas obras: hacia el presente de la didáctica de lenguas modernas Junto al enorme éxito de los métodos citados, en este siglo también se da una reacción de rechazo a la metodología más extendida y en la segunda mitad del mismo, algunos profesionales de la didáctica de lenguas empiezan a defender la desvinculación de la metodología utilizada para las lenguas clásicas y abogan por desarrollar un nuevo método basado en la eliminación de la gramática y la traducción y por un proceso de aprendizaje basado en un enfoque más natural.

Comienzan así a darse a conocer una serie de autores que configuran un movimiento renovador o reformista, que defienden la competencia oral sobre la escrita. Estos no siempre, no obstante, resultan fácilmente clasificables en un primer momento, cuando su posición en contra de la gramatica aún no es tan radical. Tal es el caso de Langenscheidt, editor y profesor de idiomas en Berlín que conoció un enorme éxito comercial con sus publicaciones: fue autor de un material fundamentado en una sección de textos con traducción interlineal y pronunciación figurada, en torno a la cual giraban los ejercicios y explicaciones, incluidas las relativas a la gramática, pues, de acuerdo con él: “[…] el conocimiento de una lengua será sólido si acompaña el conocimiento de las reglas de esa lengua, la gramática, de la cual nace la práctica… La práctica mecánica (repetitiva) ayuda al desarrollo de un indefinido «sentido del idioma»; pero el conocimiento claro y la seguridad en la expresión escrita sólo se logra con la gramática.” (apud Sánchez 1997: 93) Pero lo cierto es que, según avanza el siglo, aumenta el número de defensores de la aplicación de un enfoque más natural en la metodología de la enseñanza de lenguas, de tal modo que resulte más práctica, y entendiendo con ello, principalmente, oral y según la manera en la que los niños adquieren el lenguaje. Es decir, siguiendo una concepción didáctica en la que se contemplan actividades orales y escritas, tales como hablar en la lengua extranjera dialogando con el profesor, ejercitarse mediante la repetición y la memorización de frases o construcciones usuales y el empleo de preguntas y respuestas, que aseguren la comprensión de lo expuesto, etc.

En esta línea se sitúa el “método de la naturaleza” del francés Nicolás Gouin Dufief (1776-1834), aplicado en su exitoso manual de

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francés Nature displayed in her mode of teaching languages […] Adapted to French (1804, Filadelfia), que poco después conocería su adaptación también al español de la mano de Manuel de Torres y L. Hargous: Dufief ’s Nature Displayed […] Adapted to Spanish (1811, Filadelfia). Así como el del inglés Thomas Prendergast (1806-1886), recogido en 1864 en su The Mastery of Languages, or the Art of speaking Foreign Tongues idiomatically y que después aplicaría a diferentes idiomas: francés (1868), alemán (1868), español (1869), hebreo (1871) y latín (1872).

O El francés François Gouin (1831-1896), quien defiende el aprendizaje de lenguas por medio del oído, del juego y del movimiento en su obra L´Art d´enseigner et d´étudier les langues de 1880. El método de este autor se vale de oraciones que se relacionan lógica y naturalmente, y se basa en secuencias de oraciones relacionadas con actividades cotidianas –se habla de “las series de Gouin”–: toma el verbo como base de la lengua y posibilita el aprendizaje de palabras por temas de forma gradual. Cada serie de oraciones, que equivale a la descripción de una acción de la vida diaria, introduce nuevas frases y su aprendizaje facilita la retención y memorización mediante la asociación de ideas. La gramática se subordina a las series de frases.

Una fecha importante en este contexto es el año 1882, cuando aparece publicado el panfleto titulado “Der Sprachunterricht muß umkehren!” del fonetista alemán Wilhelm Viëtor29 (1850-1919). En él Viëtor critica la situación de la práctica de la enseñanza de lenguas (cf.

Melero 2000: 43) y reclama un cambio profundo, de tal modo que la prioridad sea la lengua hablada. Este hecho constituye el punto de partida del movimiento reformista en Alemania en contra del enfoque estructuralista imperante en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas, por no satisfacer con un resultado comunicativo, y a favor de la búsqueda de nuevas metodologías capaces de responder a la demanda social de un nuevo contexto internacional industrial y comercial y de una mayor y mejor compentencia oral en las lenguas extranjeras.

Y de este modo, a partir del último tercio del siglo se populariza y termina consolidándose el denominado método directo, conocido así porque su finalidad era enseñar la lengua extranjera sin mediación de la traducción; también conocido como “natural”, “inductivo” o Reformmethode (cf. Neuner 1989: 148), pronto es también muy

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utilizado en Francia. Y cuenta con los alemanes Gottlieb Hennes y Maximiliam Berlitz y el francés Laumbert Sauver entre sus principales exponentes. Todos ellos profesores de lenguas y, al mismo tiempo, fundadores de escuelas de idiomas, donde implantaron sus particulares métodos de enseñanza, muy populares y de enorme éxito tanto en Europa como en América; además, contaron con numerosos seguidores hasta el siglo XX. Con el objetivo principal de la consecución de una enseñanza activa que se desvie del rígido método de gramática practicado hasta entonces, este método aboga por potenciar las habilidades orales, que deben primar sobre la competencia escrita, y entre sus características principales figuran: preferencia absoluta al idioma hablado, lo que conlleva la práctica de la conversación y la técnica de pregunta y respuesta; atención primordial a la pronunciación, para lo que la fonética debe ser aplicada a la enseñanza; eliminación de la lengua materna del alumno en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje, lo que invalida el ejercicio de la traducción; aprendizaje del idioma cotidiano y no literario; adquisición intuitiva de las reglas gramaticales, ya que la gramática se enseña inductivamente y sin el apoyo de la traducción; enseñanza del nuevo vocabulario a través de la demostración, objetos, imágenes y asociación de ideas; paso de la oración como núcleo al texto y contextualización tanto de las estructuras como del vocabulario, de tal modo que las palabras deben ser presentadas en frases y las frases deben ser practicadas en un contexto y no enseñadas de forma aislada y desconectadas; concesión al error, que no se castiga aunque deba subsanarse, pues se persigue la aplicación correcta de las reglas, gramaticales y fonéticas; y limitación del uso de la lengua materna a la comprensión del léxico.

Berlitz, en particular, fue un entusiasta de las lenguas; como alumno en los Estados Unidos, a donde llegó con la edad de diecisiete años, aprendió latín, griego y varias lenguas modernas y después ejerció su profesión como docente, gozando de un gran éxito como profesor particular, primero, y en el Warner Polytechnic Collage, después. Además, creó diferentes escuelas de idiomas, primero en Estados Unidos y luego también en Europa, donde puso en práctica el “sistema de Berlitz”, basado en un enfoque conversacional consistente en la inmersión del alumno en la lengua extranjera, de tal modo que durante todo el proceso

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de aprendizaje –en un plazo computado en semanas y en un desarrollo diario intensivo– se hace uso exclusivo de esta. De la formación tradicional recibida como aprendiz de lenguas, llega a su método gracias a su ayudante el francés Nicholas Joly, quien le sustituye durante seis semanas en las que Berlitz debe ausentarse por enfermedad; al incorporarse constata los avances orales de sus alumnos, porque estos solo han hablado en francés con su profesor –este solo ha empleado su lengua nativa en la clase, sirviéndose de gestos, objetos, etc. y sin recurrir a la traducción–, ya que él no habla inglés. El éxito de su particular método, en definitiva, le traslada hasta nuestros días, pues han seguido abriéndose escuelas bajo su nombre durante todo el siglo XX, también en Sudamérica y en Asia, en las que se pueden aprender prácticamente todas las lenguas principales del mundo en la actualidad.

De modo similar, las obras lexicográficas de este siglo evolucionan para presentarse como las obras lexicográficas del futuro –o, si preferimos, como las de nuestro presente–; y también determinadas combinaciones de pares de lenguas, como la española y alemana, por ejemplo, empiezan a contar ahora con una producción bilingüe más amplia, pues por fin también se materializan los Hinübersetzungswörterbücher, es decir, los diccionarios en los que el usuario tiene la lengua materna como lengua de partida y la extranjera como lengua de llegada, y en sus diferentes formatos conocidos: como gran diccionario, diccionario manual y de bolsillo.30 4. CONCLUSIONES Hemos desarrollado este trabajo a partir de una necesaria contextualización de la época y de las lenguas y de su estudio en el siglo XIX, que nos ha permitido conocer tanto el auge experimentado por los estudios de lingüística en general, como los avances relativos a las lenguas extranjeras en particular. En este punto hemos ilustrado nuestra exposición con nombres de autores, obras y reformas educativas alemanes por lo destacable del papel de este país en el conjunto de Europa en la época.

Respecto a los avances relativos a las lenguas extranjeras, estos se concretizan, en primer lugar, en la introducción de su

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estudio en los programas escolares tras las reformas educativas llevadas a cabo en los diferentes países europeos ante las nuevas circunstancias del momento, que también propician el aumento de las organizaciones privadas que ofrecen cursos de idiomas –no olvidemos que ya desde finales del siglo XVIII el progreso de la industria, el comercio, los medios de comunicación y las relaciones internacionales demandan un conocimiento social de las lenguas modernas. Y en segundo lugar, en la aparición de nuevas obras lexicográficas y de nuevos métodos didácticos gramaticales de la mano de los autores, muchos de ellos profesores de enseñanza secundaria o de universidad. En nuestro análisis, por cuestiones de brevedad y espacio, nos hemos centrado en los más representativos, tales como Ahn, Ollendorff, Robertson o Gouin, quienes contaron a su vez con un gran número de seguidores.

En lo referente a las reformas educativas, un trabajo más profundo conllevaría ahondar en las regulaciones particulares establecidas para el estudio de la enseñanza de las lenguas extranjeras en cada país por separado, en los que se desarrollan los nuevos planes escolares estatales que han conducido hasta la situación actual en cada uno de ellos; esto nos permitiría conocer otros detalles interesantes, en los que nosotros no hemos podido deternernos. No obstante, en lo que atañe a la enseñanza de las lenguas extranjeras podemos creer que, a pesar de la recomendación generalizada en algunos de ellos ya a finales del siglo del enfoque natural, la inercia del empleo de la metodología tradicional se dejará sentir hasta la aparición del método audiovisual, ya en el siglo XX, repercutiendo en el fracaso del método directo e influyendo en la posterior metodología mixta o ecléctica.

Igualmente es cierto que no hemos mencionado a otros muchos autores que también hubieran podido estar recogidos en estas páginas: los consideramos, no obstante, aunque no los hayamos citado explícitamente, pues todos ellos protagonizan la disciplina que nos ocupa en este siglo. La mayoría de ellos, además, destacan por ser innovadores, en mayor o menor medida, pues con sus obras intentaron mejorar la práctica de la enseñanza de lenguas de su época, permitiendo la confirmación del paso de las gramáticas meramente descriptivas a los métodos teórico-prácticos y empleando técnicas entre lo tradicional y lo novedoso, como la traducción interlineal del

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método de Robertson o la transcripción fonética o figurada del método de Langenscheidt, por ejemplo.

Por razones de brevedad y espacio, nos hemos limitado inicialmente a conocer algunos de los principales representantes del método comparatista y así hemos sabido que el papel de sus iniciadores se había centrado en el estudio comparativo exclusivamente, sin llegar a reflexiones concluyentes sobre el valor histórico de las mismas. A medida que avanza el siglo, se comienzan a plantear otras cuestiones sobre la naturaleza de las lenguas más allá de la simple comparación y el método comparatista, válido para la reconstrucción de determinados hechos, conduce a la observación de otros fenómenos lingüísticos que son objeto de estudio para germanistas y romanistas, con una orientación ya plenamente historicista. También hemos bosquejado diferentes aspectos lingüísticos en los que si bien no hemos profundizado, no son por ello menos destacables, como el estudio de las leyes fonéticas, que llevó al uso de instrumentos de captación de sonidos cada vez más sofisticados, dando origen a la fonética descriptiva de incalculables consecuencias en los tiempos actuales.

También colateralmente hemos mencionado de forma sucinta otros trabajos y a otros autores del siglo anterior, como los estudios de William Jones sobre el sánscrito, tan importantes para las corrientes lingüísticas del siglo XIX. Las referencias hacia atrás y hacia adelante en el tiempo nos han resultado inevitables en nuestra exposición y así hemos podido, por ejemplo, conectar dos publicaciones separadas por un siglo: el Konjugationssystem de Bopp de 1816 y el Tours de linguistique générale de Saussure de 1916, que son dos hitos en la historia de la lingüística moderna. Y lo hemos hecho, en primer lugar, para poder comprender mejor lo que acontece en este periodo y que constituye la conquista real de este siglo en la enseñanza de lenguas: la deslatinización general de los estudios gramaticales y el paso de las tendencias tradicionales a las nuevas tendencias. Y en segundo lugar, para poder contemplar esta época de la disciplina que nos ocupa con perspectiva histórica, como preámbulo de los avances que están por llegar en el siglo XX, con la certeza de que estos solo resultarán comprensibles si conocemos los pilares sobre los que se sustentan, es decir, sus antecesores en el siglo XIX.

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NOTAS Publicados en esta revista a partir del año 2004.

La Hamburg-Amerikanische Paketfahrt-Aktiengesellschaft – o Hapag–, por ejemplo, dispuso en 1856 de una línea regular en barco desde Hamburgo al continente americano.

3 (1857-1913). Sus lecciones universitarias fueron recogidas por sus alumnos en la edición póstuma de su “Curso de Lingüística General”.

4 Por ejemplo, la enseñanza del alemán se introduce en el sistema público español con el plan de estudios del 17 de septiembre de 1845.

5 En la Unión de los Países Bajos, por ejemplo, se enseña holandés a la minoría hablante de francés en la región de Walloon desde 1815; otro caso destacable es el acontecido en el reino austro-húngaro: Austria había impuesto el alemán como lengua oficial en 1620 y los estados nacionales ahora se acogen a la tradición de la enseñanza de la lengua oficial como herramienta de unificación.

6 Algunos ejemplos de esta reforma son el General-Land-SchulReglement en Prusia de 1763 o el Kurfürstliche Schulordnung für die bürgerliche Erziehung der Stadt- und Landschulen in Bayern de 1778. Gracias a estas reformas educativas, las lenguas extranjeras se introdujeron como asignaturas en el currículo de la enseñanza secundaria.

7 Más sobre el estudio de las lenguas extranjeras en los Gymnasien o institutos de educación secundaria y en las Realschulen o institutos de enseñanza media puede consultarse en Hüllen 2005: 75-91.

8 Otros detalles sobre los aspectos tratados, así como sobre el sistema Althoff de organización y patrocinio de la investigación científica en la Alemania del Segundo Imperio pueden consultarse en López 2003: 238 y ss.

9 Sin olvidar, junto a los sofistas, la importante aportación de la lingüística comparada del Renacimiento. (cf. Corvo 2010: 170) 10 También llamado comparado o histórico-comparado.

11 Igualmente, los primeros pasos de la gramática comparada hay que buscarlos en la filosofía europea de los siglos XVII y XVIII y de forma concreta en los trabajos de Leibniz. (cf. Corvo 2011: 184) 1 2

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Gracias principalmente a los estudios de William Jones sobre esta lengua (1746-1796) en el siglo XVIII. 13 Su obra principal fue Undersögele on det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse. Fue el primero en establecer las primeras leyes fonéticas y su trabajo constituye la base de los modernos métodos en lingüística comparada. También escribió una gramática de la lengua lapona y contribuyó con Champollion a descifrar jeroglíficos egipcios, sentando las bases de la Egiptología.

14 Lleva a cabo la explicación comparativa de todas las lenguas germánicas, centrándose en sus estadios más antiguos y en la determinación del valor etimológico de los sonidos. Con esta obra sienta las bases para el tratamiento comparativo de las lenguas germánicas, dentro de las cuales el gótico clásico resulta tan determinante como el sánscrito dentro de la familia indoeuropea.

15 Destaca su nueva concepción de la naturaleza del lenguaje como capacidad o facultad del hombre para expresar sus pensamientos y sentimientos a través de un conjunto de sonidos articulados.

Opina que se da una dependencia recíproca entre el pensamiento y el lenguaje, porque “las lenguas son propiamente un medio no tanto de presentar la verdad ya conocida cuanto, mucho más, de descubrir la verdad antes desconocida. La diversidad de las lenguas no es una diversidad de sonidos y signos, sino una diversidad de visiones del mundo. La razón y la finalidad última de toda investigación lingüística residen en eso”. Teniendo en cuenta, además, que “prescindiendo del uso inmediato para la vida, el único estudio de lenguas que conserva importancia es el de aquéllas que poseen una literatura, y tal estudio está subordinado a la atención prestada a ésta.” (apud García 1994: 120). Estudioso de las lenguas en su búsqueda de una antropología comparada, su obra recoge la fundación de la Lingüística General como ciencia.

16 Obra extensísima, de ochenta volúmenes, que no se completaría hasta 1960.

17 En la Península Ibérica destacamos, por ejemplo, el caso del gallego.

Su introducción en el sistema de enseñanza no se produce hasta bien entrado el siglo XX; no obstante, en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX comienza una época de revitalización de la lengua y la 12

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literatura gallegas de la mano de escritores como Eduardo Pondal, Rosalía de Castro o Manuel Murguía. También en el siglo XIX, esta lengua comienza a ser objeto de estudio en trabajos lexicográficos y se recopila primero junto al castellano en diccionarios bilingües realizados con la intención de recoger su léxico característico y ponerlo a disposición del público interesado, configurado en un principio por las élites intelectuales. El caso de la gallega representa una situación de desarrollo diferente a la de la lengua catalana, con mayor desarrollo histórico, y que en este siglo cuenta con la publicación en 1823 de la Gramática catalana Predispositiva pera la mès facil Inteligéncia de la Española y Llatina de Joan Petit i Aquilar, otro ejemplo más entre las grámaticas, tratados de ortografías y diccionarios existentes ya en el mercado catalán con el fin de facilitar el aprendizaje del español y del latín. (cf.

Cala 2001: 37) Redacción en castellano ampliada de la última parte de su obra magna Idea dell´Universo –publicada durante su exilio en Italia, tras la expulsión de los Jesuitas de los Reinos de España decretada por Carlos III–, es un tratado enciclopédico cosmográfico, antropológico y lingüístico de 21 volúmenes estructurado en tres partes: “Historia de la vida del hombre”, “Elementos cosmográficos” y “Lengua”. En esta tercera, que ocupa un total de cinco volúmenes, expone el parentesco de todas las lenguas conocidas y por esta labor pionera se le considera el padre de la Moderna Filología Comparada. Fue el contacto mantenido con otros jesuitas también expulsados de diferentes partes del mundo lo que le permitió conocer otras lenguas lejanas y no documentadas hasta entonces. Con anterioridad, su interés por las lenguas ya le había llevado a escribir otras obras, como su Origine, formazione, mecanismo ed armonia degl`Idiomi de 1785 y Vocabulario poliglotto, con prolegomeni sopra più de CL lingue, un repertorio de vocabulario con introducciones sobre más 150 lenguas, y Saggio practicco delle Lingue con prolegomeni e una raccolta di orazioni dominicali in più di trecento lingue e dialetti, es decir, una recopilación práctica de lenguas con introducciones y una recolección de oraciones dominicales en más de trescientas lenguas, ambas publicadas en 1787.

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Como la fundación de la Escuela Real de Madrid en 1805, continuación de los pasos dados ya a finales del siglo XVIII en España con el apoyo de Carlos V. 20 En este contexto destaca también la obra del jesuita conquense Hervás y Panduro Escuela española de Sordomudos, ó arte para enseñarles a escribir y hablar el idioma español de 1795.

21 Su origen se halla en el estudio de la gramática y la retórica clásicas llevado a cabo en el siglo XVI. 22 Prueba la amplia y duradera difusión del método de Ahn el hecho, por ejemplo, de que la edición número 30 de su primer curso de alemán viera la luz en Leipzig en 1871, bajo el título: Nouvelle méthode pratique et facile pour aprendre la langue allemande.

Premier Tours y encuadernado conjuntamente con la séptima edición de su Second Cours y de su Traduction des thèmes français. Premier et second Cours. (cf. Marizzi 2001: 7) 23 Véase Corvo 2011a: 180 y 2011b: 340.

24 Sin numeración.

25 Autor ya tratado con anterioridad: véase Corvo 2011a: 179.

26 Que incluye un “librito de prácticas” al final: “No deja de ser sintomático de los nuevos tiempos, aunque estas prácticas no estén integradas en los capítulos correspondientes.” (Sánchez 1997: 99) 27 Cuenta con dos tomos: el primero contiene la parte español-alemán en un total de 1132 páginas y el segundo, la parte alemánespañol a lo largo de sus 704 páginas. Conoció su séptima edición en 1887, lo que nos habla de la gran acogida que experimentó este diccionario en su época.

28 Sobre la lexicografía bilingüe española y alemana del siglo XIX, consúltese Corvo 2008b: 126-132. Y sobre estas y otras obras de naturaleza no exclusivamente lexicográfica, consúltese Corvo 2011: 339-342.

29 En 1886 funda la asociación de nuevos filólogos Deutsche Neuphilologen-Verband y en 1887 la revista Phonetische Studien, convertida en 1893 en la más conocida Die Neueren Sprachen: Zeitschrift für den Neusprachlichen Unterricht, en la que se hace expresa su reforma.

30 En Corvo 2008b: 133 se ofrece una caracterización de este tipo de obras en la combinación de lenguas español y alemán.

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OBRAS CITADAS Bordas, L. 1824. Compendio de gramática italiana formado sobre los mejores autores. Gerona: Imprenta de A. Oliva.

Cala Carvajal, R. 2002. “Materiales pedagógicos para la enseñanza de la lengua castellana en Cataluña (ss. XVIII-XIX)” en Miguel Ángel Esparza Torres et al. (eds.) SEHL 2001. Estudios de Historiografía Lingüística. Actas del III Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Historiografía Lingüística, vol. II. Hamburg: Buske. 35-44.

Christ, H. 2010. “Geschichte der Fremdsprachendidaktik” en W. Hallet y F.Königs G. (eds.) Handbuch Fremdsprachendidaktik.

Seelze-Velber: Klet - Kallmeyer. 17-22.

Corvo Sánchez, M. J. 2011a: “Historia y tradición en la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en Europa (VIII): BabelAFIAL 20, 163-191.

–2011b: “El foco alemán: gramáticas y otros libros para extranjeros” en José J. Gómez Asencio (dir.) El castellano y su codificación gramatical III: De 1700 a 1835. Burgos: Instituto de la Lengua castellano y leonés. 327-345.

–2010. “[…] (VII): Edad Moderna – Las lenguas nacionales”. BabelAFIAL 19, 251-281.

–2009. “[…] (VI): Edad Moderna – La reforma humanística de la lengua latina y de su enseñanza”. Babel-AFIAL 18, 207-243.

–2008a. “[…] (V): Edad Media – Las otras lenguas, vernáculas, sapienciales y religiosas”. Babel-AFIAL 17, 233-252.

–2008b. “Breve Historia de la Lexicografía Bilingüe Española y Alemana hasta el siglo XIX” en Manuel Bruña Cuevas (coord.)

Lexicografía bilingüe y plurilingüe del español (siglos XV-XIX), vol.

XXII. Sevilla: Univ. Sevilla. 113-139.

–2007. “[…] (IV): Edad Media – La enseñanza del latín”. Babel-AFIAL 16, 151-178.

–2006. “[…] (III): Antigüedad clásica – Roma”. Babel-AFIAL 15, 4364.

–2005. “[…] (II): Antigüedad clásica – Grecia”. Babel-AFIAL 14, 175188.

–2004. “[…] (I): Antigüedad”. Babel-AFIAL 13, 93-110.

García Gabaldón, J. 1994. “Sobre el Comparatismo Lingüístico y Literario”. Teoría/ Crítica 3, 113-127.

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Hüllen, W. 2005. Kleine Geschichte des Fremdsprachenlernens. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.

López Sánchez, J. M. 2003. “Política cultural exterior Alemana en España durante la República de Weimar”. Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 25, 235-253.

Marizzi, B. 2001. Manuales de lengua alemana de dos siglos: exposición de libros de textos con ocasión de los 156 años de alemán en la enseñanza pública: I.E.S. San Isidro. Madrid: Asociación Española de Germanistas.

Melero Abadía, P. (2000). Métodos y enfoques en la enseñanza/ aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera. Madrid: Edelsa.

Neuner, G. 1989. “Methodik und Methoden: Überblick“ en Bausch, K.-R., Christ, H., Hüllen, W. Y Krumm, H.-J. (eds.) Handbuch Fremdsprachenunterricht. Tübingen, Basel: A. Francke. 145-153.

Niederehe, H. J. 1999. BICRES II. Desde el año 1601 hasta el año1700.

Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Ponce de León, R. 2007. “Materiales para la Enseñanza del Español en Portugal y para la Enseñanza del Portugués en España: Gramáticas, Manuales, Guías de Conversación (1850-1950)” en Gabriel Magalhães (coord.) Actas do Congresso RELIPES III. Covilhã: Universidade da Beira Interior; Salamanca: Celya. 59-86.

Robertson, T. 1839. Cours pratique, analytique, théorique et synthétique de langue anglaise. París : Derache.

Sánchez Pérez, A. 1997. Los métodos en la enseñanza de idiomas. Madrid: SGEL. –1992. Historia de la enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera. Madrid: SGEL. Suárez Gómez, G. 2008. La enseñanza del francés en España hasta 1850. ¿Con qué libros aprendían francés los españoles?. Barcelona: Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias S.A.

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Eric Hobsbawm, 2011. How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism. London: Little, Brown* Christopher Rollason rollason54@gmail.com Review of How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism (2011), a collection of essays by Britain’s veteran Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, tracing the history of Marxism as a belief-system and arguing for its continued relevance in the light of the current crisis of global capitalism.

The city of Trier, in Germany just over the border from Luxembourg, once seat of an archbishopric and later part of Prussia and subsequently, the former West Germany, enjoys the curious distinction of still boasting a Karl-Marx-Strasse, thanks to the circumstance that the founder of Marxism was born there in 1818. The same city is also the former capital of the Western Roman Empire and imperial seat of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. The stones of Trier serve as a reminder of the life and death of belief-systems, and interrogate the thoughtful visitor as to whether the once seemingly impregnable system of Marxism has any more life left in it today than the old pagan religion.

Certainly, eleven years into the twenty-first century, it might seem difficult to imagine a less fashionable theme to consecrate a long and appreciative volume to than Marxism. However, if anyone can get away with it, it has to be Eric Hobsbawm, who, publishing this book at the ripe age of 93, occupies the unassailable position of the Englishspeaking world’s foremost Marxist historian, and, having unreconstructedly stuck to his Marxist guns in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, has the necessary credentials and weight to offer the world a study of this nature.

Hobsbawm, the product of hybridated identities (born in Alexandria of Jewish-Germanic origins, long since resident in Britain) and author of such essential historical works as The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital and Industry and Empire, now presents what he calls “a set of studies in the history of Marxism” (399) – sixteen chapters *

Fecha de recepción: Marzo 2012

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encompassing multiple aspects of the thought of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and their Italian successor Antonio Gramsci, and of the history of Marxism as an intellectual and political movement and its changing fortunes up to the present. Most of the texts have been published before, though not necessarily in English, but Hobsbawm has carried out a systematic revising and updating exercise on his pre-existing material, with a care and skill that allows the whole thing to be read as a logical sequence.

The previously published material takes various forms. Some pieces appeared in the first place as introductions to works by Marx (the Grundrisse), Engels (The Condition of the Working Class in England) or both (The Communist Manifesto). The two chapters on Gramsci reprise earlier introductory material, in the case of the second originally in Italian. Three chapters on the reception of Marxism were originally published in Italian as part of a multi-author historical conspectus of Marxism; a further three chapters are excerpted from a book published by Hobsbawm in Britain in 1982, The History of Marxism. The first and penultimate chapters are largely new; the closing chapter, “Marx and the Labour Movement: the Long Century”, is based on a lecture given in German in Linz, Austria, in 2000. Even if we are dealing essentially with material that is not new to print as such, the author’s updating effort has visibly been far more than perfunctory: in recycling these writings, he has been fully aware of the need to make them pertinent to the second decade of the present century. None of the material that started life in Italian or German has been published before in English, and here Hobsbawm shows a commendable desire to make as much as possible of his writing available to a wider public, and, implicitly, an even more laudable absence of the Anglocentric parochialism that too often characterises British intellectuals (it helps, of course, that he is not British by origin).

Along the way, Hobsbawm as a historian displays his by now familiar impeccable analytic and expository skills and in-depth knowledge of his subject-matter. The book contains, notably in the chapters on the Manifesto and “the fortunes of Marx’s and Engels’ writings”, invaluable information on the textual and publication history, translation and international reception of some of the major

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works in the Marx/Engels canon, Capital included. It should be added that the only Marxist philosopher apart from Marx and Engels themselves singled out for detailed discussion is Gramsci (apparently for his indeed useful concept of hegemony) – there is no close analysis of, say, Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse or (to cite a British name) Raymond Williams. Nonetheless, here as in a book like The Age of Capital, Hobsbawm signally eschews the trap of Eurocentrism, treating world history as an interrelated totality and giving Asian and Latin American Marxism, in particular, their due.

Considering all that is there, as a general research aid this book should rapidly earn its spurs: of the author’s scholarship there is not the slightest doubt.

It is worth stressing that the book’s material is organised as a coherent, chronological narrative, its sequence corresponding in broad terms to the time-frame of the subjects discussed. Thus, it validates Marxism in terms of narrative form as well as of content. Here, one might conclude that Hobsbawm is throwing down the gauntlet to the postmodernists. It is not always sufficiently noted that the celebrated critique of “grand narratives” (the English term being, incidentally, a portentous and somewhat dubious translation of the French “grands récits”) launched by postmodernism’s high priest Jean-François Lyotard in his manifesto of 1979, La condition postmoderne, is aimed not only at classical liberalism but also at Marxism, devaluing not only the Enlightenment notion of progress but also its Marxist successor: in other words, the replacement of Marxism by postmodernism as ruling discourse on the Western left is a phenomenon not of continuity but of rupture.

Hobsbawm’s book takes its title from the celebrated aphorism from Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world (...): the point is to change it”. The author thus affirms Marxism as, even for our days, more than a philosophy – as a recipe for political and social change, of continued validity and relevance. At the same time, he admits that Marxism as a belief-system no longer exerts the intellectual fascination that it did until two decades ago; as he puts it in the chapter “The Influence of Marxism 1954-83”, as the world entered the 1980s “few observers predicted the speed and scale of the reversal”, adding self-deprecatingly,

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“Certainly I did not”. He closes that chapter with the observation: “The twenty-five years following the centenary of Marx’s death were to be the darkest years in the history of his heritage” (384).

Darkness or no darkness, our historian remains a Marxist, with not the slightest hint of conversion to postmodernism, deconstruction, multiculturalism, cultural relativism, postcolonialism, or any other of the discourses that have to a large extent replaced Marxism on today’s Western left. Nor has he become any kind of cyberprophet or acolyte of the new technologies. What needs to be gleaned, then, from the pages of this book is what Eric Hobsbawm believes Marxism is, and what characteristics he finds in it as a belief-system that continue to convince him, flying in the face of fashion, to offer it as a remedy for our times.

Among the components of Marxian or later Marxist theory, those which might appear striking for our day as elements for debate – whether to be accepted, revised or refuted – include the labour theory of value, the alienation/reification/fetishisation triad and the related concept of false consciousness, the mastery of nature, the contradiction between the forces and relations of production, capitalism as a system prone to periodic crisis, the classless society as ultimate goal, and the project of universal emancipation (with, for classical Marxism, the proletariat as standard-bearer). Especially controversial today might prove the notion of a historically static “Asiatic mode of production”, less oriented to development and transformation than Western modes, and the prediction, as made notably by the Belgian Marxist Ernest Mandel a few decades back, of the inevitable absolute immiseration of the peoples of what was then known as the “third world”.

It is further important to recall that these specifically Marxist concepts are underpinned by a number of epistemological assumptions which Marxism shares with the liberal world-view of the Enlightenment – some of which, however self-evident they might have appeared thirty years ago, may now look quaint to those reared on postmodernism. These include the belief in reason and the rationalist preference for the secular over the religious, the concept (even if qualified) of progress and the validity of a teleological perspective, the

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assumption that a coherent and all-embracing narrative of history is possible and makes sense, the elevation of totality over fragmentation, and, perhaps above all, the notion of universals - of universal human nature, human potential and, ultimately, human liberation.

Such, I would argue, are the traits of Marxism as a belief-system that implicitly emerge from Hobsbawm’s book. Only in passing does he specifically allude to Marxism’s postmodern detractors, as in stray references to “extreme forms of postmodernist relativism” (392) or “the imagined communities of ethnic, religious, gender, lifestyle and other collective identities” (417). However, what might be called an X-ray picture of Marxism can be deduced from his pages.

Thus, Hobsbawm speaks approvingly of the Enlightenmentderived Marxian concept of progress, “the belief in human history as progress towards what must eventually be the best possible society”, within an intellectual framework in which “reason provided the basis of all human action and the formation of society” (20). He clearly believes in a positive mutation from Enlightenment values into Marxism, seeing both as manifestations of a secular world-view and arguing for a “continuity with the pre-Marxist tradition of rationalism and progress” (296). In this philosophical framework, he affirms, “for Marx progress is something objectively definable, and at the same time pointing to what is desirable”, namely the “triumph of the free development” of all, a concept underpinned for Marxists by the “assumed correctness” of historical-materialist analysis (130). At the same time, if progress is to mean anything one also has to admit the possibility of its converse, namely regression. Here, Hobsbawm repeats the stark message of twentieth-century Marxism that the choice is between “socialism and barbarity” (121), as well as more generally evoking “historical decay and regression” as a legitimate issue (145).

Further, Hobsbawm conceives Marxism as a form of depth reading, and therefore as antagonistic to empiricism and empowered by its hermeneutic nature to refute more surface-oriented readings as erroneous: “The fact that analytically it penetrated deeper than the superficial phenomena accessible to empirical criticism implied an analysis of the ‘false consciousness’ which stood in the way, and the

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(historical) reasons for it” (44). Here there is surely a conflict, perhaps irresoluble, with postmodernism and its multiple surfaces and colliding subjectivities. Hobsbawm also considers Marxism to be a system grounded in a conception of totality, “a comprehensive, all-embracing and illuminating view of the world” (381). It follows that he believes that universals exist, the dictatorship of the proletariat as conceived by classical Marxism thus being not an end in itself but a staging-post on the way to the full “emancipation of humanity” that will be achieved “through the historically inevitable rise and triumph of the proletariat” (361). For Hobsbawm, then, Marxism conceives the proletariat not as a vector of sectional group rights, but as a metonym for a humanity envisioned (in however utopian a fashion) as a whole.

Hobsbawm is aware enough that Marxism is currently beleaguered (as, it might be added, is, the parallel edifice of another rationalist, secular, anti-empiricist and hermeneutic world-view, namely Freudianism). He remains convinced that Marxism’s totalising vocation is far more intellectually credible than the kaleidoscope of fractured subjectivities that have taken its place; and at his age, if he believes he has better things to do than read up on postmodernist thought (Lyotard is conspicuously absent from the book’s index), any such decision should surely, even more so given his intellectual eminence and record of hard work, be respected even by the most passionately intense detractors of anything remotely resembling a coherent narrative.

It may reasonably be suggested that if Marxism is to return in our day as an intellectual and political force, it will necessarily have to adapt itself to a number of phenomena which have arisen on the world agenda since its eclipse. These include: the environmental challenge (here Walter Benjamin offers a lead, with his proposal of replacing the “mastery of nature” by the mastery of relations between humanity and nature); the rise of the so-called “emerging economies”, above all China and India, which adumbrates a coming multi-centred world economy with the US no longer in pole position, thus burying Marxian and post-Marxian notions of either an immobilist “Asiatic mode of production” or inevitable non-Western immiseration; and the growth of information and communications technology (another phenomenon anticipated by Benjamin), which has created a

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networked world that, capitalist though it may be, makes Soviet-style isolationism all but impossible and has given rise to paradoxes like that obtaining between a hyper-wired South Korea and an all but ITdead (and ten times less prosperous) North Korea. Indeed, one of the harshest challenges today to anyone still calling themselves a Marxist may be to ask whether, in whatever circumstances, the old Soviet Union could have invented the Internet (which, despite its Pentagon origins, none will deny escaped the grip of the Western state apparatus with remarkable speed ...)

The question, then, is whether the Marxist world-view, with its currently ill-regarded baggage of scientific rationalism and attachment to a much-derided logic of coherent narration, has anything to offer to the twenty-first century. Certainly, Hobsbawm offers a compelling accumulation of historical evidence for the validity of Marxist perspectives. His defence, at the beginning and end of his book, of Marxism’s relevance to our time, however, relies primarily on economics, foregrounding how the current economic and financial crisis bears out Marx’s analysis of the internal contradictions of capitalism – “endless bouts of tensions and temporary resolutions, growth leading to crisis and change, all producing economic concentration in an increasingly globalised society” (14) – or, again, “a built-in mechanism that generates potentially system-changing periodic crises” (418). It is on this basis that Hobsbawm affirms that anyone confronting “the problems facing the world in the twenty-first century … must ask Marx’s questions” (15), and that he concludes the book by reiterating that “capitalism is not the answer, but the question” (417) and that “once again the time has come to take Marx seriously” (419).

Hobsbawm does not attempt a detailed defence of the philosophical aspect of Marxism, as a depth-reading of the world predicated on the possibility of progress. Nonetheless, to “take Marx seriously” surely also means to take him seriously philosophically. Such an ontological defence may be extrapolated from the pages of Hobsbawm’s book, which do very visibly imply the validity as concepts of both progress and regression. If, as postmodernist theory and practice might seem to suppose, there is no such thing as regression – if, on relativist grounds, the world-view of certain Central Asian

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theocratic movements is just as valid as that of a Western liberal - can there ever be progress, for anyone? If a concept like barbarism is deemed inadmissible – if (one might here recall certain recent debates in France) there is no such thing as vestimentary retrogression, or if any criticism of punishments or customs that impair physical integrity can be written off as culture-bound – then, conversely, is any concept of civilisation also and equally meaningless?

It is surely not beyond the bounds of belief that there may still be a case for arguing in favour of the continued utility of Marxist analysis, in a rapidly mutating world – a world the multipolar and networked nature of which was not foreseen by the philosopher from Trier whose insights may yet nonetheless, subject to their necessary adaptation to new realities, prove of greater use to the future of humanity than the siren lucubrations of a thousand Lyotards. Eric Hobsbawm’s book certainly defies fashion; the jury is out on whether it, and the Marxism it narrates, will also prove to have the capacity to defy gravity.

NOTES Eric Hobsbawm died on 1 October 2012, as this number was going to press. I have chosen, however, not to modify the present text.

WORKS CITED Lyotard, J.-F. 1979. La condition postmoderne. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.

Marx, K. ‘Theses on Feuerbach’. [1845]. Early Writings. Tr. R. Livingstone and G. Benton. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.

421-423.

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Culler, J. 1975. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Graham, J.W. 1975 “Point of view in The Waves: Some services of the style en S. Lewis, ed. Virginia Woolf. A Collection of Criticism. New York: McGraw-Hill Guiora, A., R. Brannon y C.Dull. 1972 “Empathy and second language learning”. Language Learning. 22:111-130 15- Cuando se cita algún texto, trabajo o artículo consultado en Internet, ha de indicarse el día, el mes y el año en los que se accedió a la página web correspondiente. Por ejemplo: Dahlgren, M. 1993 “From Narratology to Pragmatics: Narrators, Focalizers and Reflectors in Some Works by William Faulkner”, BABEL a.f.i.a.l.

Consultado el 20 octubre de 2009 • http://webs.uvigo.es/babelafial/number2.html

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