On the Shores of Nationalism: Latin American Philology, Local Histories and Global Designs

Articles ON THE SHORES OF NATIONALISM: LATIN AMERICAN PHILOLOGY, LOCAL HISTORIES AND GLOBAL DESIGNS Nadia Altschul Johns Hopkins University Romantic medievalism is generally understood as a quest for national origins in which "popular" epic poems stand for the original identity of a language-based nation-people. Within this intellectual and disciplinary context the Poema del Cid became not merely the first long narrative poem extant in Castilian but Spain's national epic. For several decades, a self-critical branch of medieval studies has been elucidating this coupling ofmedievalism and nationalism. For instance, a pan-European perspective has recendy been presented by Patrick Geary in The Myth ofNations and by Joep Leerssen under the sign of literary historicism. Furthermore, since its foundation in 1976, the journal Studies in Medievalism has been particularly active in scholarly engagements with this connection; while in hispanomedievalism discussions have centered on die scholarship ofRamón Menéndez Pidal, as can be observed in works by Maria Eugenia Lacarra, E. Michael Gerii, and Catherine Brown. I will not attempt to dislodge the coupling observed in disciplinary historiography between the nation-state and medieval studies. I do want to suggest that this nationalist model in the historiography of medievalism also seems to have become imprinted by a type of selfreferentiality , what we may call a self-referential nationalism. In odier words, that the established disciplinary context mentioned above emphasizes the bond between scholars, their works, and the origins of their "own" language-based nation-people. It is clear, however, that medievalists have not limited themselves to study their "own nations" or the origins of their "own language". The study of medieval Iberia offers a good location in which to discern this self-referentiality, since Ta corónica 35.2 (Spring, 2007): 159-72 160Nadia AltschulLa corónica 35.2, 2007 bodi as a "belated" national field and as a favored object ofthe Romantic gaze the panorama of nineteenth-century Castilian medieval studies would be particularly incomplete without the inclusion of, for instance, German and French hispano-medievalists.1 Even while French and German hispano-medieval scholarship has not been in the forefront to the extent diat the scholarship ofMenéndez Pidal has been, non-Spanish European authorities have existed in the collective consciousness of the discipline since the beginnings of Iberian medieval studies (Yakov Malkiel, "Era omine esencial..." 373-75).2 An even less studied disciplinary case is the existence of early nineteenth-century non-Europeans in the study of the Iberian Middle Ages and of our particular concern, of Latin Americans. Here I will concentrate on a transatlantic perspective on Castilian philological knowledge focusing on the Caracas-born grammarian, editor, politician and legal scholar Andrés Bello (1 781 -1 865) who began editing the Poema del Cid soon after his arrival in London in 1810.3 Working on the common premise that medieval studies has its modern beginnings in Europe and particularly in German philological methodology, I explore two instances of disciplinary engagement with Bello's Latin American medievalism. First, Yakov Malkiel's position on the scholarship of Bello vis-à-vis that of Maria Rosa Lida, and second, Luis Galván's placing ofBello's Cidian scholarship outside the national 1 As an example, the Frenchman Francisque Michel, fust editor ofthe Oxford manuscript ofthe Chanson de Roland, was also the first editor ofthe Mocedades de Rodrigo in 1 846, achievedwith the backing oflhe illustrious German hispano-medievahst Ferdinand Wolf(Leonardo Fîmes and Felipe Tenembaum, 182). 2 Two solid pages ofMenéndez Pidal's necrology arc a catalogue offoreign non-Spanish authorities that according to Malkiel must have spin red the young Pida] as '"!'here must have been ... something dazzling and, at the same time, profoundly humiliating for a proud and ambitious young Spaniard, in his early twenties, to discover that, to secure dependable information on the sources of his own culture, he had to turn for help and guidance to foreign authorities..." ("Era" 375). In terms ofstudies on French and German medievalism, see the discussion ofHermann Knust 's editorial endeavors by Hugo Bizarri, as well as more general engagements in the articles by Ludwig Schrader and Bartolomé Bennassar. For Iberian medievalism in the United States...