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Las 100 novelas:
Un Ranking de las
Mejores Novelas de la Historia
The list below is from the book The Novel 100: A Ranking of Greatest Novels All Time (Checkmark Books/Facts On File, Inc.: New York, 2004), written by Daniel S. Burt.
Burt holds a Ph.D from New York University with a specialty in Victorian fiction and was for nine years a dean at Wesleyan University, where he has also taught literature courses since 1989. He is also the author of The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time.
Note that in compiling the list of novels that was the basis for this book, Burt had to impose a number of constraints about what should be considered a novel. Although some works recognized as classics of science fiction (or, more broadly, speculative fiction) are on the list (e.g., Frankenstein; Dracula; Nineteen Eighty-Four), Burt specifically excluded works that seemed to veer too much from primarily naturalistic and contemporary-oriented narratives, thus excluding from consideration most science fiction and fantasy. Books such as Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Card's Ender's Game, Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz and Frank Herbert's Dune were excluded from consideration as "novels." Burt's functional definition of "novel" used here (i.e., books belonging to the "novel genre" or, in most cases, the "literary novel genre") is thus narrower than how the word is used by the general public. From the book's introduction, pages ix-x:
"What makes a listing of the greatest novels even more problematic is the lack of any consensus about which works rightfully constitute the genre... the novel is such a hybrid and adaptive genre, assimilating other prose and verse forms... A standard definition of the novel--an extended prose narrative--is so broad that it fails to limit the field usefully... I have been influenced in this regard, like many, by literary critic Ian Watt's groundbreaking 1957 study, The Rise of the Novel, which contends that the novel as a distinctive genre emerged in 18th-century England through the shifting of the emphasis of previous prose romances and their generalized and idealized characters, settings, and situations to a particularity of individual experience. In other words, the novel replaced the romance's interest in the general and the ideal with a concern for the particular. The here and now substituted for the romance's interest in the long ago and far away. As 18th-century novelist Clara Reece observed, "The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the times in which it was written. The Romance, in lofty and elevated language, describes what has never happened nor is likely to." Novelists began to represent the actual world accurately, governed by the laws of probability.
...It would be far too reductive and misleading, however, to define the novel only by its realism or accurate representation of ordinary life... It would be far more accurate to say that the novel as a distinct genre attempts a synthesis between romance and realism, between a poetic, imaginative alternative to actuality and a more authentic representation. For purposes of my listing, I have narrowed the field by categorizing as novels works that engage in that synthesis. Some narrative works judged too far in the direction of fantasy--Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Carroll's Alice in Wonderland--have been excluded. I have also made judgment calls on the question of the required length of a novel and have ruled out of contention such important fictional works as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis as falling short of the amplitude expected when confronting a novel."
| Rank |
Title of Great Novel |
Year |
Author |
Religious Affiliation of Author |
| 1 |
Don Quixote |
1605, 1630 |
Miguel de Cervantes |
Catholic |
| 2 |
War and Peace |
1869 |
Leo Tolstoy |
Russian Orthodox |
| 3 |
Ulysses |
1922 |
James Joyce |
Catholic (lapsed) |
| 4 |
In Search of Lost Time |
1913-27 |
Marcel Proust |
Jewish Catholic |
| 5 |
The Brothers Karamazov |
1880 |
Feodor Dostoevsky |
Russian Orthodox |
| 6 |
Moby-Dick |
1851 |
Herman Melville |
Transcendentalist |
| 7 |
Madame Bovary |
1857 |
Gustave Flaubert |
Catholic |
| 8 |
Middlemarch |
1871-72 |
George Eliot |
Anglican; agnostic |
| 9 |
The Magic Mountain |
1924 |
Thomas Mann |
Lutheran |
| 10 |
The Tale of Genji |
11th Century |
Murasaki Shikibu |
Buddhist/Shinto culture |
| 11 |
Emma |
1816 |
Jane Austen |
Anglican |
| 12 |
Bleak House |
1852-53 |
Charles Dickens |
Anglican |
| 13 |
Anna Karenina |
1877 |
Leo Tolstoy |
Russian Orthodox |
| 14 |
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
1884 |
Mark Twain |
Presbyterian |
| 15 |
Tom Jones |
1749 |
Henry Fielding |
|
| 16 |
Great Expectations |
1860-61 |
Charles Dickens |
Anglican |
| 17 |
Absalom, Absalom! |
1936 |
William Faulkner |
Presbyterian |
| 18 |
The Ambassadors |
1903 |
Henry James |
Anglican |
| 19 |
One Hundred Years of Solitude |
1967 |
Gabriel Garcia Marquez |
Catholic |
| 20 |
The Great Gatsby |
1925 |
F. Scott Fitzgerald |
Catholic |
| 21 |
To The Lighthouse |
1927 |
Virginia Woolf |
Neo-pagan |
| 22 |
Crime and Punishment |
1866 |
Feodor Dostoevsky |
Russian Orthodox |
| 23 |
The Sound and the Fury |
1929 |
William Faulkner |
Presbyterian |
| 24 |
Vanity Fair |
1847-48 |
William Makepeace Thackeray |
|
| 25 |
Invisible Man |
1952 |
Ralph Ellison |
|
| 26 |
Finnegans Wake |
1939 |
James Joyce |
Catholic (lapsed) |
| 27 |
The Man Without Qualities |
1930-43 |
Robert Musil |
Catholic |
| 28 |
Gravity's Rainbow |
1973 |
Thomas Pynchon |
Catholic; agnostic |
| 29 |
The Portrait of a Lady |
1881 |
Henry James |
Anglican |
| 30 |
Women in Love |
1920 |
D. H. Lawrence |
|
| 31 |
The Red and the Black |
1830 |
Stendhal |
Catholic |
| 32 |
Tristram Shandy |
1760-67 |
Laurence Sterne |
Anglican (Church of Ireland clergyman) |
| 33 |
Dead Souls |
1842 |
Nikolai Gogol |
Russian Orthodox |
| 34 |
Tess of the D'Urbervilles |
1891 |
Thomas Hardy |
|
| 35 |
Buddenbrooks |
1901 |
Thomas Mann |
Lutheran |
| 36 |
Le Pere Goriot |
1835 |
Honore de Balzac |
Catholic |
| 37 |
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man |
1916 |
James Joyce |
Catholic (lapsed) |
| 38 |
Wuthering Heights |
1847 |
Emily Bronte |
Anglican |
| 39 |
The Tin Drum |
1959 |
Gunter Grass |
Catholic |
| 40 |
Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable |
1951-53 |
Samuel Beckett |
Church of Ireland (Anglican) |
| 41 |
Pride and Prejudice |
1813 |
Jane Austen |
Anglican |
| 42 |
The Scarlet Letter |
1850 |
Nathaniel Hawthorne |
Transcendentalist |
| 43 |
Fathers and Sons |
1862 |
Ivan Turgenev |
Russian Orthodox; agnostic |
| 44 |
Nostromo |
1904 |
Joseph Conrad |
Catholic; atheist |
| 45 |
Beloved |
1987 |
Toni Morrison |
|
| 46 |
An American Tragedy |
1925 |
Theodore Dreiser |
Catholic; Congregationalist; Chrisitan Science |
| 47 |
Lolita |
1955 |
Vladimir Nabokov |
Russian Orthodox |
| 48 |
The Golden Notebook |
1962 |
Doris Lessing |
|
| 49 |
Clarissa |
1747-48 |
Samuel Richardson |
|
| 50 |
Dream of the Red Chamber |
1791 |
Cao Xueqin |
|
| 51 |
The Trial |
1925 |
Franz Kafka |
Jewish |
| 52 |
Jane Eyre |
1847 |
Charlotte Bronte |
Anglican |
| 53 |
The Red Badge of Courage |
1895 |
Stephen Crane |
Methodist |
| 54 |
The Grapes of Wrath |
1939 |
John Steinbeck |
Episcopalian |
| 55 |
Petersburg |
1916/1922 |
Andrey Bely |
Russian Orthodox; Theosophy; Spiritualism |
| 56 |
Things Fall Apart |
1958 |
Chinue Achebe |
|
| 57 |
The Princess of Cleves |
1678 |
Madame de Lafayette |
|
| 58 |
The Stranger |
1942 |
Albert Camus |
Catholic; Existentialism |
| 59 |
My Antonio |
1918 |
Willa Cather |
Episcopalian |
| 60 |
The Counterfeiters |
1926 |
Andre Gide |
|
| 61 |
The Age of Innocence |
1920 |
Edith Wharton |
|
| 62 |
The Good Soldier |
1915 |
Ford Madox Ford |
Catholic; agnostic |
| 63 |
The Awakening |
1899 |
Kate Chopin |
Catholic |
| 64 |
A Passage to India |
1924 |
E. M. Forster |
|
| 65 |
Herzog |
1964 |
Saul Bellow |
Orthodox Jew (lapsed); Anthroposophist |
| 66 |
Germinal |
1855 |
Emile Zola |
Catholic |
| 67 |
Call It Sleep |
1934 |
Henry Roth |
Jewish |
| 68 |
U.S.A. Trilogy |
1930-38 |
John Dos Passos |
Catholic |
| 69 |
Hunger |
1890 |
Knut Hamsun |
|
| 70 |
Berlin Alexanderplatz |
1929 |
Alfred Doblin |
Catholic |
| 71 |
Cities of Salt |
1984-89 |
'Abd al-Rahman Munif |
|
| 72 |
The Death of Artemio Cruz |
1962 |
Carlos Fuentes |
Catholic |
| 73 |
A Farewell to Arms |
1929 |
Ernest Hemingway |
Catholic |
| 74 |
Brideshead Revisited |
1945 |
Evelyn Waugh |
Catholic |
| 75 |
The Last Chronicle of Barset |
1866-67 |
Anthony Trollope |
Anglican |
| 76 |
The Pickwick Papers |
1836-67 |
Charles Dickens |
Anglican |
| 77 |
Robinson Crusoe |
1719 |
Daniel Defoe |
Protestant Dissenter (Presbyterian) |
| 78 |
The Sorrows of Young Werther |
1774 |
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
Deist |
| 79 |
Candide |
1759 |
Voltaire |
raised in Jansenism; later Deist |
| 80 |
Native Son |
1940 |
Richard Wright |
Seventh-day Adventist; Communist |
| 81 |
Under the Volcano |
1947 |
Malcolm Lowry |
Methodist; Anglican; agnostic |
| 82 |
Oblomov |
1859 |
Ivan Goncharov |
|
| 83 |
Their Eyes Were Watching God |
1937 |
Zora Neale Hurston |
|
| 84 |
Waverley |
1814 |
Sir Walter Scott |
Anglican |
| 85 |
Snow Country |
1937, 1948 |
Kawabata Yasunari |
|
| 86 |
Nineteen Eighty-Four |
1949 |
George Orwell |
Anglican |
| 87 |
The Betrothed |
1827, 1840 |
Alessandro Manzoni |
Catholic |
| 88 |
The Last of the Mohicans |
1826 |
James Fenimore Cooper |
Episcopalian |
| 89 |
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
1852 |
Harriet Beecher Stowe |
Episcopalian; Congregationalist |
| 90 |
Les Miserables |
1862 |
Victor Hugo |
Catholic |
| 91 |
On the Road |
1957 |
Jack Kerouac |
Catholic; Buddhism |
| 92 |
Frankenstein |
1818 |
Mary Shelley |
|
| 93 |
The Leopard |
1958 |
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa |
Catholic |
| 94 |
The Catcher in the Rye |
1951 |
J.D. Salinger |
Jewish Catholic; Scientologist |
| 95 |
The Woman in White |
1860 |
Wilkie Collins |
|
| 96 |
The Good Soldier Svejk |
1921-23 |
Jaroslav Hasek |
Catholic |
| 97 |
Dracula |
1897 |
Bram Stoker |
Church of Ireland (Anglican) |
| 98 |
The Three Musketeers |
1844 |
Alexandre Dumas |
agnostic; Catholic |
| 99 |
The Hound of Baskervilles |
1902 |
Arthur Conan Doyle |
Catholic; Spiritualist |
| 100 |
Gone with the Wind |
1936 |
Margaret Mitchell |
Catholic |
CRÍTICA SARCÁSTICA de Poesía+Letras a la lista.
No es tarea complicada analizar y rebatir a posteriori una lista de las cien mejores novelas de la historia; hay muchas y buenas y el criterio del editor es siempre subjetivo. En principio, creo que participo del setenta por ciento de las elecciones: hay unas treinta novelas que me dejan dudas tanto de su ranking como de su permanencia en la lista. Estoy seguro de que dentro de 30 o 40 años serán sustituidas por otras que ahora permanecen demasiado cerca, o quizás lejos, para situarlas en la lista de Mr. Burt. Partiendo de su análisis, y siendo injusto e irreverente, pues no me he leído el libro, es claro que las preferencias, el concepto de novela mismo son determinantes para establecer un ranking, tal como establece el autor. Pero Daniel Burt me lo ha puesto fácil: ha saltado por encima de los autores hispanohablantes. Pedro Páramo. ¿Onetti, Vargas Llosa, Cortázar y su Rayuela? En qué estaba pensando este hombre. Situar a Victor Hugo tan abajo en el ranking debería aumentarle los impuestos un 3%. Las perspectivas. Si me sitúo en una posición occidental y los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica son el ombligo del mundo, quizás me convenciera la lista. Pero si es literatura universal, y a menos que este señor sea un experto en literatura oriental -que veo que no desconoce, pero no hablamos sólo de China y Japón-, no son las cien mejores novelas de la historia. En todo caso, las cien mejores novelas occidentales bajo el prisma norteamericano. Muerte a Foucault y al Deconstructivismo derridiano. ¿Se acuerdan de Las mil y una noches? Ah, claro: es que son colecciones de historias, no una novela... ¿Y El Decamerón?. Y en cuanto al ranking. Por Dios, tengo úlcera de estómago cada vez que veo que Genji no está entre las cinco primeras, y ver a Kafka -el espíritu del siglo XX, como poco- por debajo de Toni Morrison y Doris Lessing, por ejemplo, me genera dudas de fe. Beloved es una gran novela. Pero Toni Morrison no es Franz Kafka ni lo será, afortunadamente para ella. ¿Saramago? Y El Corazón de las Tinieblas no es novela... porque lo dice todo en cien páginas, pudiendo decirlo en trescientas. ¿Y Orlando o Mrs Dalloway? ¿Los Cuentos de Canterbury? ¿Coloca a Los Buddenbrooks, de Thomas Mann? Esta, por ejemplo, me sobra porque considero que las hay mejores. Si hubiera elegido La Muerte en Venecia... Cada uno tiene su lista, y no digo que la de Daniel Burt sea un esperpento, pero sí creo que ha sido parcial y adora su literatura por encima de otras. ¿Y La Perla u otra novela de Tanizaki? Pero insiste en su libro, tal como aparece más arriba:
"
Some narrative works judged too far in the direction of fantasy--Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel , Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress , Swift's Gulliver's Travels , Carroll's Alice in Wonderland --have been excluded."
Man, decir que Los Viajes de Gulliver o que Alicia en el País de las Maravillas han ido demasiado lejos... ¿Con eso quieres decir que Kerouac sí puede ir lejos formalmente y adaptar el ritmo jazzístico beat para su novela, pero conceptualmente no se debe? Si es por creación formal, Rayuela tiene que estar, guste o no su estilo. El pobre Lewis estará desconsolado. Eso de la literatura de la imaginación debe ser en un mundo paralelo: se ve que no tiene nada de fantasioso un tipo que duerme en un ataúd, chupa sangre y odia el ajo -si eso no es ir demasiado lejos...-. Lo de Gargantúa y Pantagruel lo entiendo: ese gigante es un tragón. Supongo que El retrato de Dorian Gray es demasiado decadente. Y que Borges es otra cosa. ¿Malraux, Pushkin, Calvino, Beauvoir, Sartre, Genet, Celine, Colette, Corneille, Maupassant, Chéjov, Turguéniev, Cela, Unamuno, Fernando de Rojas, Strindberg, Moravia, Primo Levi, Svevo? Probablemente alguno de estos no cabe entre los cien, pero seguro que podrían sustituir a algunos los cien de la lista sin provocar jaquecas. Sinceramente, no creo que El Lazarilo de Tormes sea peor novela que La Edad de la Inocencia. ¿Y La señoritas de Wilco o la irresistible La Conjura de los Necios? El sobrino de Rameau, de Diderot, la hecho de menos. Pero, explicándome mal como suelo explicarme, creo que se me entiende. Han traducido -supongo que en todas las ediciones en inglés- El Gatopardo como El Leopardo. No entiendo nada. Dios mío, soy un caprichoso: no aparece La Naranja Mecánica. I'm so sorry, Burt.
© 2006 Poesía+Letras.
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