El delirio de grandeza en la novela de grandeza Miau de Benito Pérez Galdós

Abstract

The novel Miau (1888) by Benito Pérez Galdós introduces the child, Luis Cadalso, as the receiver of some supposed divine apparitions. Luis is convinced that he hears God. When he says to his grandfather that God recommends his death, the grandfather suicides believing that he obeys a divine prophecy. In a similar way to the narrator of the novel, literary critics sometimes refer to the child´s experience of God as religious knowledge, and sometimes as a pathological symptom. The work is divided in three sections: (1) to argue that the testimony of Luis about God is not reliable and the character of “God” does not refer to the God of the Bible; (2) to describe the delusion of grandeur as one pathological symptom that explains a major part of the language and behavior of the child; and (3) to associate the child´s agreement with the idea of suicide with the delusion of grandeur.