- La regenta
infobox Book
name = La Regenta
author = Leopoldo Alas "Clarín"
country = Spain
language = Spanish
genre = Realist Novel
publisher = (copyright expired)
release_date = 1885
media_type = Print"La Regenta" is a realist
novel by Spanish authorLeopoldo Alas y Ureña , also known as "Clarín", published in 1884 and 1885.Plot
The action is located in "Vetusta" (a province capital city, very identifiable with
Oviedo , capital ofAsturias ), where the main character of the work, Ana Ozores "La Regenta", marries the former prime magistrate of the city, Víctor Quintanar, a kind man but fussy and much older than her. Feeling sentimentally abandoned, Ana begins to be courted by the province casanova Álvaro Mesía. To complete the circle, canon D. Fermín de Pas (confessor of Ana) also falls in love with her and becomes the unmentionable rival of Mesía. A great panorama of secondary characters, portrayed by Clarín with merciless irony, completes the human landscape of the novel.Interpretation
The author uses the city of Vetusta as a symbol of vulgarity, inculture and hypocrisy. On the other hand, Ana incarnates the tortured ideality that perishes progressively before a hypocritical society. With these forces in tension, the
asturian writer inclemently constructs a cruel story on the Spanish provincial life, fitted to his leader classes, in the days of the Restoration, in the end of the 19th century.External links
es Full text of the novel can be found [http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/SirveObras/12473959873481628265679/index.htm here]
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