Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:22:46.227Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Money, Desire, and History in Eduardo Mendoza's City of Marvels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Joan Ramon Resina
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Eduardo Mendoza's City of Marvels recuperates the historical novel while subjecting it to the conventions of romance. These generic strategies relate to the manifest self-made man's rise to economic might between the two Barcelona World's Fairs and Barcelona's development as a modern metropolis—and to a later celebration: the 1992 Olympic Games. The depiction of the adventures of capital and the production of marvels responds to the bourgeoisie's role in Spain's modernization and to money's mediating function as a symbol of desire. The accomplishment of marvels involves the conquest of time and the substitution of illusory timelessness for historical contingencies. Timelessness mediated by money negates history through the production of ersatz historical images, which reinscribe an idealized past as the object of desire. A restoration—the figurative replication of historical events—is the response to nostalgia for a missed historical opportunity by a subject seeking myth's illusory power.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 109 , Issue 5 , October 1994 , pp. 951 - 968
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail M “Discourse in the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Holquist, Michael. Trans. Emerson, Caryl and Holquist, . Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. 259–427.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold “Clinamen: Towards a Theory of Fantasy.” Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1982. 200–20.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix Capitalisme el schizophrénie: L'anti-Œdipe. Paris: Minuit, 1972.Google Scholar
de Miguel, Amando Sociología del franquismo. Madrid: Euros, 1975.Google Scholar
Frye, Northrop Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971.Google Scholar
Gilabert, Joan “Dos momentos de la ‘morada vital’ barcelonesa en la narrativa catalana moderna.” Ideas '92 7 (1990): 29–41.Google Scholar
Gilabert, Joan “El mito burgués y la literatura catalana de fin de siglo.” Resina, Mythopoesis 167–16.Google Scholar
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Faust. Ed. Trunz, Erich. 2nd. ed. Hamburg: Wegner, 1952.Google Scholar
Halbwachs, Maurice The Collective Memory. Trans. Ditter, Francis J. Jr., and Ditter, Vida Yazdi. New York: Harper, 1980.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques “The Mirror Stage As Formative of the Function of the I As Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” Ecrits: A Selection. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. New York: Norton, 1977. 1–7.Google Scholar
Leclaire, Serge Psychanalyser: Essai sur l'ordre de l'inconscient et la pratique de la lettre. Paris: Seuil, 1968.Google Scholar
Le Goff, Jacques Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages. Trans. Ranum, Patricia. New York: Zone, 1988.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Trans. Milligan, Martin. Moscow: Progress, 1974.Google Scholar
Mendoza, Eduardo City of Marvels. Trans. Molloy, Bernard. London: Collins, 1988.Google Scholar
Mendoza, Eduardo La ciudad de los prodigios. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1986.Google Scholar
Mumford, Lewis The Myth of the Machine. New York: Harcourt, 1967.Google Scholar
Resina, Joan Ramon “El dilema de la modernidad: Historia o mito?” Resina, Mythopoesis 251–25.Google Scholar
Resina, Joan Ramon, ed Mythopoesis: Literatura, totalidad, ideología. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1992.Google Scholar
Riquer, Borja de “La societat catalana.” El temps del modernisme, cicle de conferències fet a la Institució Cultural del CIC de Terrassa, curs 1979/80. Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 1985. 17–35.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg The Philosophy of Money. Trans. Bottomore, Tom and Frisby, David. Boston: Routledge, 1978.Google Scholar
Touraine, Alain La société post-industrielle. Paris: Denoël, 1969.Google Scholar