I want to put forward the hypothesis that it was between 1599, the date when the First Part of Guzmán de Alfarache appeared in print, and 1605, the publication date of the First Part of Don Quijote, that the European novel emerged. This thesis is not new: I proposed it in 1967 in Protée et le gueux (Cros 1967), where I pointed out that Mateo Alemán’s and Cervantes’s texts established a genuine conflicting dialogue.

This survey studies how the “already said” (Intertextuality, Preconstructed, preconstrained...) is working linked with the interdiscurse, the ideological and discursive formations the transformational codes, using two terms from Julia Kristeva (Genotext and Fenotext) but with a different meaning related with the Human Geography ( genotype and fenotype). Edmond Cros ilstrates this functioning in “Citizen Kane”, “La Muerte de Artemio Cruz” (Carlos Fuentes, 1962) and “Guzmán de Alfarache” (Mateo Alemán 1599- 1604).

The process of transformation of the observable reality setts off not only an already elaborated linguistic material but also new intermediary structures that somehow are capable of displacing signs and homogenizing them within an identical code, named “Transformational Code” by Edmond Cros. This article ilustrates such process with the analysis of the first sequence of “Citizen Kane” (Welles, 1941), “La vida del buscón” (F. de Quevedo, 1626) and, more briefly, “La Región más transparente” (Carlos Fuentes, 1958), the Litin’s film “Viva el Presidente” (from Alejo Carpentier’s "El Recurso del método“1975) a Velazquez’s painting,”La Túnica".

This article presents some theorical notions from M.Bakhtin and L. Godmann necessary for understanding how is working the process of semiotic transformation that links the textual structures with the social structures.

Theory and Practice of Sociocriticism, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, (Coll. Theory and History of Literature, vol. 53 )1988] “Foundations for a Sociocriticism. Methodological Presuppositions ans Their Applications to La región más transparente by Carlos Fuentes” [Translated by (...)