The Configuration of the Artist Hero and Its Mutations in El doctor Centeno and Il piacere

Abstract

This paper makes a comparison between novels from the fin de siècle with the purpose of showing the perplexing evolution of the hero artist in European novels (from the Spanish and Italian traditions) through realistic and decadent methods. The characteristics of the configuration of the playwright Alejandro Miquis in El doctor Centeno (1883) will be exposed to show how these are tied to the strategies of the second realism represented by Pérez Galdós, as well as the contrast of the way of articulating his artist character with respect to his contemporaries, such as Gabriele D’Annunzio and its most emblematic novel Il piacere (1889) which concentrates a good part of the topics of the decadent novel. In this sense, this article also outlines two of the main elements defining the artist’s novel: the bohemian and the dandy.