40 of the lives of the four generations of the Rougon and Maquart families that preceeded him.
I believe that insufficient attention has been paid to Galdós‘s astonishing clinical observations and the depth of his medical learning. I echo Fuentes Peris‘ plea to, ―look beyond previous spiritual readings of the texts, by focusing attention on Galdós‘s critical engagement with contemporary discourses on deviancy and control‖ (Fuentes Peris 198), of which the discourse of degeneration is so prominent an example.
The origins and circulation of degenerationism in the middle-class of which Galdós was a member, and which influenced his interpretation of madness and social vices in Madrid society, will also be a theme of this study owing much to the insights of Foucault. So, too, will be the way in which Galdós used degenerationism to create the specific poetics of this group of his Naturalist narratives. I shall also argue that degenerationism was a form of social control, though the medium of knowledgepower 69 in that it not only constrained Galdós in the writing of his novels but also had the potential for influencing the way in which his readers saw themselves, and for changing their view of other sectors of society. Such power-through-knowledge indicates that Galdós‘s project of describing the ―middle-class‖ had a Foucauldian capacity for control, given that the lives of his fictional characters provided a lens
knowledge-power: ―A more extensive and finer-grained knowledge enables a more continuous and pervasive control of what people do, which in turn offers further possibilities for more intrusive inquiry and disclosure‖ (Rouse 96). It is difficult to imagine finer grained social representations of the age than those which emerge from Galdós‘s novels. I find a certain irony in the fact that a prime illustration of knowledge-power in the academy has been that of Foucault‘s own ideas; in works of sociohistorical criticism, his ideas are highly pervasive. 69