현실과 픽션: 피오 바로하의 자전적 글쓰기 -『과학의 나무』(1912)를 중심으로-

Abstract

El árbol de la ciencia of Pío Baroja is a novel published in 1912 and is considered the most outstanding novel among his many works. Baroja himself recalls in his various memoirs that it was created at the height of his intellectual energy and is the most complete novel. The novel consists of seven parts and the protagonist Andrés Urtado, alter ego of Pío Baroja, graduated from medical school like Baroja. After working as a local doctor for more than two years in the village of Alcolea del Campo, he returns to Madrid. He marries Lulú, whom he had met before, but he loses his wife and baby during childbirth, so he commits suicide in despair. The novel mainly deals with the period from 1987, when the author began studying medicine as a medical student in Madrid, to 1898, when the war with the United States broke out. Many problems that Spain had at the time are bitterly criticized through the protagonist Andrés: faculty members indulged in Spain’s poor educational environment, teaching methods and mannerism; All kinds of corruption and illegality in the hospital; local tofu politics (caciquismo) as a deep-rooted evil that exists in the Spanish countryside or small towns; the inhuman life of prostitutes and the prostitution in big cities, pimps and gangsters who exploit them, the public power that protects the exploiters. Because of these contents, it is also considered one of the typical novels representing the Generation of 98. On the other hand, the life of the protagonist Andrés Urtado is so similar to Pío Baroja that many researchers evaluate it as an autobiographical novel. Like the protagonist of the novel, Pío Baroja attended medical school and worked as a local doctor in a rural Spanish village. In addition, one of his brothers died of tuberculosis, and his father’s job forced him to travel to various places in Spain. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between Baroja’s autobiographical writing and his novel referring the autobiographical texts published intermittently after 1911 and the seven memoirs published after 1944.