Contenido: Against the scholarly tradition of the late nineteenth century, the symbolic readings of Don Quijote show the idea of that book as a figure of a genuine Spanish philosophy. Unamuno’s contribution was not only central to the vindication of an anti-rationalist way of valuing the canon, but also gave his successors a metaphorical framework capable of relating the novel to Spain itself and to the myth of the Sphinx. In this way, Zambrano picked up that link between the book, the nation and the myth, and proposed an overcoming personal philosophy.

Contenido: Este trabajo propone una historia del Instituto de Filología de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires entre 1927 y 1946, período en el que fue dirigido por Amado Alonso. Mediante una reconstrucción documental exhaustiva, da cuenta en detalle de las acciones de gestión de Alonso, de los avatares institucionales del centro y de la producción científica de sus investigadores. Al vincular las facetas institucional, científica y académica, este trabajo permite comprender en una clave más compleja el derrotero teórico del centro argentino. En el decurso histórico que aquí trazamos es posible reconocer algunas de las disputas que caracterizan el funcionamiento del campo científico de los estudios filológicos y lingüísticos, de reciente constitución. En particular, mostramos que las tensiones entre el proyecto nacionalista de Ricardo Rojas y el de la regeneración científica española representado por Ramón Menéndez Pidal se ponen en juego tanto en el plano institucional como en lo que hace a la definición de un objeto de estudio para la disciplina y a la conformación de una perspectiva teórica para abordarlo. En un proceso no exento de conflicto, el Instituto de Filología, bajo la guía de Amado Alonso, configura una agenda científica que, a través de la incorporación del idealismo y la estilística como soportes teóricos, y de la perspectiva sincrónica en conjunción con una valoración positiva del cambio lingüístico, supone el apartamiento de la tradición filológica menendezpidaliana y la emergencia de la dialectología hispanoamericana como subdisciplina lingüística. 

Contenido: Based on some core ideas proposed by Alemán in his letter to Herrera and certain lines in the sixteenth century treatise on poverty, The Guzmán de Alfarache outlines a complex narrative structure tied to the symbology of pauperism. The author himself points out that the concept construction of poverty in his work is mainly a negative one, considering the majority of the poor as false ones. On the other hand, while reflecting the underlying ideological contradiction, Alemán allows diverse and unprecedented poverty characterizations that enable a deep reflection on the living conditions of beggars.

Contenido: This paper argues for the appropriateness and benefit of concepts and analytical tools from modern translation theories to consider medieval translation, in particular, the translation of French narratives into Middle Welsh. It will be especially fruitful to analyse the diffusion and cultural appropriation of several works that pertain to the Arthurian and Carolingian matter from a notion of translation that takes advantage of the developments of Translation Studies and Cultural Transfer, which argue for a consideration of translation as a type of cultural transfer (among others). Such an enquire will be in line with the most recent research trends, but it will also be grounded in “classical” studies such as those by Buridant and Copeland. This notion of translation is complemented by narratology and reception studies in order to comprehend the process under examination as a translational event, simultaneously oriented towards the source text and the target culture, as process and product. In this way, it will be possible to see that translation in a peripheral area such as Wales (in respect to France or England) is an extremely complex activity and that translators are cultural mediators, carriers of cultural meanings, and intermediaries between a foreign aesthetics and culture and native literary conventions. Lastly, just like research on medieval translation can benefit from modern literary theories, these can also find relevant theoretical and practical insight for their own field of study in our investigations. Taking into account the specificity of the medieval text and the practice of medieval translation, it is entirely possible to recognise shared research premises and that the phenomena under study have more elements in common than frequently assumed. 

Contenido: The Baroque Hispanic theatre, like other texts of the Seiscientos, registers the social concern for melancholy and its complement, madness, both of which are often related to dramas feautring royal or noble characters and their exercise of power, such as El príncipe melancólico by Lope de Vega and El melancólico by Tirso de Molina. In this work we are interested in investigating how this thematization is linked with the theatrical perception of the world and of life, and with the most significant rhetorical procedures through which these passions are conveyed in an unusual textuality to analyze Hispanic melancholy: short theatre. In this way, we will show how a minor and laughable piece like the entremés La venta of Francisco de Quevedo becomes a metatheatrical device that refracts representations of a strongly melancholic worldview, although disfigured in its parodic variant; as a result, the depth of religious, moral or existential questions is displaced to comic and satirical settings. In the chosen entremés, the dramatic action is focused on an inn or venta, a significant topic of seventeenth century literature in general, since it constitutes the folk locus of misery and deception where one is sold a pig in a poke.

Contenido: En 1617, Lope de Vega prologó la Parte IX de sus comedias, manifestando haberse hecho cargo de la publicación. Este acto fue de la mano con la exposición de una conciencia acerca de que la escritura era su profesión, con la búsqueda de que sus textos se perpetuaran de modo fidedigno y con la afirmación de que su producción constituía un aporte a las letras castellanas. A partir de entonces, a través de las dedicatorias y de los prólogos de sus obras dramáticas y de los volúmenes que las nuclean, Lope definió de un modo minucioso y particular cuáles eran las características que determinaban su figura como escritor, y el aparato iconográfico que encargó para dichas publicaciones acompañó esta intencionalidad subyacente. En las páginas que siguen, se indagará acerca de esa autoconstrucción de su propia imagen autoral y se determinarán las modificaciones que esta configuración paratextual adquirió paulatinamente. 

Contenido: The article presents a commentary on the work of St. John of the Cross focused on the symbolism of the mountain. The drawing of the Montecillo in autographic copy will be the starting point of the study that explores the mystical tradition lying behind it: from the Pseudo-Dionysius to the 12th century visionary Hildegard von Bingen and her contemporary, the philosopher Richard of St. Victor. The question on the relationship between the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius and the work of St. John is determined by the approach of the great scholar of Gnosticism Henri-Charles Puech. The medieval mystical tradition and the role of images in the inner experience will be addressed from the perspective of studies such as those of Jeffrey F. Hamburger.

Contenido: Starting from a discussion about the different philosophical, political and literary conceptions regarding the notions of a new man, concept that had a particular development in the russian literature and in the slogans and political ideals of the Russian Revolution, the present article aims to discuss the way in which the aforementioned concept is forged and given shape in two literary texts from the beginning of the revolution. In order to do so, we will analyze V. Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe and A. Lunacharsky’s Ivan in Paradise. Although both texts resort to religion to build by contrast a new secular ideal of man, their poetics and literary techniques produce not only very different models of the new man, but models that reveal the internal tensions among the revolutionary agents in respect of the path they wished for the revolution.

Contenido: This article analyzes the relationship between objects and historiography in the History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) by US Hispanist, William H. Prescott. Among the objects comprising his vast archival documentation were two indigenous skulls he requested from México. Influenced by the success of craniology during the early nineteenth century, Prescott’s interest in the skulls was twofold: to help construct a historical narrative about pre-Hispanic cultures and to contribute to a larger scientific project. Focusing on the interweaving of the discourses of science and history during the early stages of US Hispanism, this article explores the ways in which an object helps define a culture and shows how the history of objects and their transformations are inseparable from the discourse that names them.

Contenido: En este trabajo, presento algunas notas sobre los estudios de Folklore en el Instituto de Filología y Literaturas Hispánicas “Dr. Amado Alonso”, encuadradas dentro de su historia. Estas notas me sirven como marco para presentar mi propuesta de aproximación al relato folklórico con un enfoque genético hipertextual, que diseñé en el marco del grupo de investigación coordinado por Ana María Barrenechea. Ofrezco una breve reseña de las líneas de investigación relacionadas con el campo disciplinar del Folklore, desde la creación del Instituto en 1923 hasta la actualidad, y me detengo en los trabajos de Berta Elena Vidal de Battini, figura clave en los estudios de folklore. Incluyo una referencia diacrónica a los archivos generales de narrativa folklórica argentina, desde la primera Encuesta Folklórica de 1921, para ubicar en esta serie las investigaciones del Instituto de Filología. Dentro de ellas, inscribo mi propio trabajo y el de otros colegas que comparten este espacio académico en nuestros días, para destacar la continuidad de una línea de investigación en el ámbito del Instituto. 

Contenido: On July 18th 1936 a military uprising occurs which triggers the Spanish Civil War confronting two sides: nationalists and republicans. In this context the so-called emergency theatre arises with the purpose of functioning as an instrument of agitation and propaganda at the service of the republican cause. The aim of this theatre is to combine the revolutionary theme of the time with the classics of the Golden Age theater, since they had a connection with the popular masses that contemporary playwrights could not ignore. In 1937 Rafael Alberti appropriates Cervantes´s Numancia adapting it and putting it at the service of the republican cause to highlight its heroic example when the nationalists start to attack Madrid and it is essential to encourage fighters as well as civilians in the resistance. Alberti´s work stands out the republicans´ fight and resistance leaving no place for a possible defeat and will become Spanish people as Numancia avengers. The present work relates to Numancia in 1937, its rewriting process through the paradigm of Gerard Genette´s hypertextuality, the resignification of Cervantes´s text in the Spanish war context, and how this version functions as an ideological parapet to exalt the republican values.

Contenido: Este trabajo se propone abordar el corpus lírico incluido en las Cartas escritas durante el periodo comprendido entre el 9 de noviembre de 1608 y fines de diciembre de 1632. Los poemas, propios, ajenos y pretendidamente de “otros poetas” se encuentran en veintiséis misivas, casi todas enviadas al duque de Sesa. De este modo y a partir de los valiosos materiales que provee este epistolario, es posible proponer la puesta en marcha de una determinada configuración autoral al mismo tiempo que se hacen visibles importantes fragmentos de la biografía de nuestro autor. Sin descuidar los patrones establecidos para el género epistolar, Lope desliza en sus cartas elementos que, a nuestro parecer, pertenecen a universos poéticos y ficcionales que dan cuenta una vez más de la compleja estética que articula una y otra vez su vida y su obra. 

Contenido: Maximino appears in the final pages of the novel, at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls. This character has received almost no critical attention, perhaps due to the fact that he plays such a small part in the story. Nevertheless, he represents the figure of the “king” at the hardest of times: the transfer of power. Based on Kantorowicz’s remarkable study, especially regarding the political-theological analogies between the rex-sacerdos and the Corpus Christi-Corpus mysticum, my work interweaves biblical and historical kings cited or evoked throughout the text, to finally address the idea of royalty suggested in the first pages of the novel. Thus, from the end to the beginning, the image of Maximino gains substance, ultimately becoming an allegorical figure. St Paul is the poetic and theological cornerstone of this story centered on artifice.

Contenido: This paper attempts to offer a brief overview on some aspects of the archive identified with the names of lunfardo and cocoliche, in order to propose a research in this field, based on the questions and challenges posed nowadays by the ongoing debates and struggles on language and gender. This overview is based on a working hypothesis that allows us to describe the place of this glotopolitical archive in the present. This hypothesis postulates that these debates emerge from a historical form of language –known as “modern languages”– which can be described –among other features– as a politically constructed device for inclusion and exclusion.

Contenido: In this work, exploratory in nature, we intend to describe the morphophonological aspects of -o(w/v)sky/i, which, has not been previously studied as a lunfardo’s appreciative morpheme. We postulate that its source is linked with the reanalysis and gramaticalization process of easter European surnames’ endings. Moreover, we will link -o(w/v)sky/i with the variety of contact originating from the yiddish and the rioplatense spanish (valesco for Feierstein [1993] and Conde [2011] or castídish for Skura & Fiszman [2015]), in the context of the massive immigration. Thus, we hope to show a number of similarities between -o(w/v)sky/i and the italian formants studied in Di Tullio (2014).