Menéndez Pidal, the Epic, and the Generation of '98

MENENDEZ PIDAL, THE EPIC, AND THE GENERATION OF '98 Samuel G. Armistead University of California, Davis The theme of this conference is Politics and Literature.1 For a medievalist , concerned primarily with textual criticism, such a topic might perhaps seem somewhat remote, but this is most certainly not the case. As with any other historical moment, crucially important political agendas , ideological and political contexts and subtexts, underlie and motivate much ofmedieval and Renaissance Hispanic literature: The epic, the ballad, didactic poetry and didactic prose, cancionero poetry, the sentimental novel, romances of chivalry, the Morisco novel, to name but a few genres, have vastly important political implications. And of course, also the ways and the contexts in which early works have been edited, studied, and interpreted by nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars are likewise consistently fraught with political considerations. I would like to address a problem that brings into play our approachor , at least, my approach-to studies on the medieval epic and ballad, on one hand, and the political and cultural agendas of modern scholarship , on the other. Thus, the title of this paper: "Menéndez Pidal, the Epic, and the Generation of '98". On November 14, 1968, Ramón Menéndez Pidal died in Madrid, at his home in Chamartin, at the age of 99 years. During his astound1 The present article is based on one of three plenary papers read at the conference : "The Poesis of Politics and the Politics of Poesis: 1998 Symposium on Peninsular Spanish Literature & Language," University of Missouri, Columbia, March 19-22, 1998. Though I have made numerous minor changes and some significant additions, I have in general maintained the colloquial style in which the paper was originally written and read. I want to thank my friend and colleague, ProfessorJohn Zemke, for honoring me with a generous invitation to participate in the Symposium. It is an honor for me and a source of great personal satisfaction that this essay will form part of a collective tribute to my admired colleague and friend, D. Emilio Alarcos. La corónica 29.2 (Spring, 2001): 33-57 34Samuel G. ArmisteadLa corónica 29.2, 2001 ingly long, dynamic, and unflaggingly productive life, Menéndez Pidal had renovated and revolutionized Spanish literary scholarship, textual criticism, philology, historical linguistics, dialectology, medieval historiography , and related disciplines, bringing them in line with the rigorous norms of modern Central European erudition, creating and fomenting the creation ofcrucially important editions and studies, which, in quality and in depth, could compete with the very best contemporary scholarship produced anywhere in Europe, and establishing an impressive following ofdisciples, brilliant younger scholars, who would carry on his work. This was a spectacular accomplishment, an accomplishment whose consequences continue to be felt even down to the present day. This vast, eminently successful undertaking, tended to locate Menéndez Pidal in a highly distinctive, singularly revered, situation with regard to Spanish intellectual endeavors. It came to be difficult -or almost unthinkable- to criticize el maestro. Certain projects such as, for example, collecting, editing, and studyingballads (romances)-were hardly undertaken at all, except under his aegis, on the assumption that nothing anyone else could do or say could possibly compete with his vast knowledge, his authoritative control, and the monumental unedited documentation at hand in his private archive. But in life, and very particularly in the lives of scholars, one of the worst mistakes one can possibly make is to die. It is an eventuality to be avoided at all costs, because, once it happens, people may well say some very unkind things about you and about your work. After the concluding eulogies, interested parties -impatient to open, to establish , for themselves and for their ideas, spaces previously occupied by the deceased- may well launch a concerted attack on one's scholarship , one's ideas, one's achievements. And the greater the scholar, the greater the attack. Al maestro, cuchillada, or, as the ballad says: "Tiraremos a lo alto / lo baxo ello se daría". The years following Menéndez Pidal's death have witnessed various attempts to contradict or even to negate essential features of his scholarship. I will review here just a few instances: Because of his...