Premium
Reading (on) the Tram
Author(s) -
Amann Elizabeth
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12029
Subject(s) - reading (process) , representation (politics) , plot (graphics) , space (punctuation) , public space , history , literature , sociology , art , political science , law , philosophy , linguistics , engineering , politics , architectural engineering , statistics , mathematics
This article examines the representation of the experience of public transportation in Benito Pérez Galdós's ‘La novela en el tranvía’, a short story published just months after the inauguration of the first tram line in Madrid in 1871. The first half of the essay explores the different ways in which omnibus and tram travel were represented in nineteenth‐century literature and examines how Galdós draws on these conventions in representing the experience of public transportation in the story. The second part of the article examines the importance of this new space in Galdós's treatment of the narrator's quixotism: what happens when the Don Quixote plot is re‐enacted on a streetcar?