James Fernández introduces his book on the problematic field of Spanish autobiography by undoing the standard supposition that Spain has no autobiographical tradition. This he accomplishes neatly, observing that although the published texts are few, there are autobiographies, and thus it is their readers, not writers, who are scarce. Evidence for his claim comes from nineteenth-century texts, peppered with regular recourse to the standard “greats” of the autobiographical tradition: Augustine, Teresa, Rousseau. He finds that all autobiography expresses a sense of loss, in part through recourse to equivocal or slanderous discourse. Consequently, he is among those who believe autobiographers when they insist that they would rather not write about themselves but do so out of obligation or duty.
In chapter 1 Fernández elaborates on the tension he finds between the traditional apologetic nature of autobiography, which others have called a bid for legitimacy; and the trope of apostrophe, a plea to an authority beyond the reader, whether God, an idealized reader, or a principle such as History. He draws an interesting parallel between Augustine’s and Teresa’s rejection of earthly life to appeal to God, and more modern autobiographers’ rejection of the daily course of existence to appeal to the Nation or Posterity for vindication.
Chapter 2 is a sharply written, fascinating account of the fate suffered by Joseph Blanco White’s autobiography at the hands of the men who rejected the ideological instability represented by his text. Blanco White (1775–1841) was a Catholic, an Anglican, and an Unitarian who footnoted his own autobiographical writings with commentary from later years. William Gladstone, Richard Whately, and Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo are cited as the watchdogs of tradition whose renditions of Blanco White excluded him from the canon. Resorting to apology himself, Fernández reveals the biases of previous evaluators while quietly stepping behind our contemporary agenda, biased in its own way.
Chapter 3 is a pastiche, darting rapidly between authors (Mesonero Romanos, Alcalá Galiano, Zorilla, Roure) and themes (family versus city; the Wandering Jew, the Prodigal Son). Trying to juggle a bid for historicity in autobiography with the supposition that autobiographical texts contain universal qualities, Fernández is forced to shed light on the former while slipping in evidence of the latter. This slights the texts, which are evoked but never really presented.
Fernández has set about a remarkable task in attempting to analyze relatively unknown nineteenth-century autobiographies, which are quite long and complex, in 130 pages, all the while grappling with theoretical issues and the reaches of pre-modernity in the likes of Augustine and its borderline author, Teresa. Ironically, his ideas about the sixteenth-century saint’s Vida are unfailingly superb. All in all, he has opened the door to an important new panorama of texts, asking readers even more important questions about why those texts are not more present in our own lives.
