Missing Information in the Fictional Worlds of Benito Pérez Galdós A Modern and Vital Experiment

This paper will examine the use of missing information in some novels by Benito Pérez Galdós: the trilogy El doctor Centeno, Tormento, La de Bringas. Galdós’ plots are built on allusions and withheld information, and revealed by different narrative voices; they require an active participation on the part of the reader, who must put together different blocks of information as though they were tesseras in a mosaic. This missing information leads to subjective textual lacunas, that is, they are deliberately interlocutory and relational, in order to lead the reader to a continual collaboration and to make him/her create logical connections between the text’s different perspectives. The use of this reticence strategy creates an almost metafictional relationship between Galdós’ works and the reader, a bond that is surprisingly modern with respect to the latter’s horizons of expectation.